Alexandra Edwards
Peter Camilleri
English 170
8 October 2023
Cancel Culture Needs To Be Canceled
Public shaming has been a phenomenon widely practiced by cultures around the world. However, with the introduction of social media and the internet, a new concept has been developed. Now, when someone has committed a wrongful action that the public disagrees with, they are not tarred, and they are not feathered—they are simply ‘canceled’. While social media has been around since the beginning of the millennium, cancel culture is a generally new concept that has taken the internet by storm. Instead of having tomatoes thrown at you, a hashtag is created that trends across every single platform. This then begs the question: Is this fair? Can we really crucify mistakes without a chance of redemption? Through analyzing an instance of widespread cancelation, we can explore the complexity of cancel culture and discover why the concept is not an effective way of handling accountability at all.
Cancel culture might be a new concept, though it does have origins that date back to the Middle Ages. It consists of public shaming, which is where people were basically humiliated in dehumanizing ways and vigilantism, which is when criminals are punished without legal authority. However, cancel culture is able to thrive because of something else: Mob Mentality. This concept is mainly described as being the lack of self-awareness when part of a group or the reduction of responsibility and accountability senses in a person (Davies, 2011). Usually when people associate with a large number of people, they will begin to adopt the views of the group. This is called the Contagion Theory, and it proposes that “crowds exert a hypnotic influence on their members that results in irrational and emotionally charged behavior” (James 2014). This is an especially frequent occurrence in cancel culture because it takes a large group to fully cancel someone and is usually the result of people losing their own inhibitions due to their mentality becoming aligned with the group’s (James 2014). Take the cancellation of YouTube personality Shane Dawson, for example. Three years ago, when the entire world was confined to their homes and streaming services became extremely popular, Shane was at his peak. However, being very popular comes with its obstacles. One day in 2020, someone decided to do a deep dive into Shane’s past and discovered his problematic actions. This then caused his entire fanbase to dive into his past as well and realize how much of an awful person he was. In summer of 2020, he lost close to a million followers on YouTube and his friends even began speaking out against him saying it was “a long time coming” (Carreno-Muller 2022). By the end of 2020, everyone had accepted Shane’s cancellation, including himself.
Towards the later stages of this event, people wouldn’t even bother to conduct their own research on why they should hate the man, they just assumed he was a bad person. Even though he is, the situation has set an unlikely precedent. It has made it acceptable for people to not do research anymore and just adopt whatever mentality is the most popular. For example, the rumor that Shane was intimate with his cat was accepted as fact by the entire internet. Despite having no evidence to back up the rumor, people believed it anyway because it was the most popular theory surrounding the situation. When people think back on Shane’s cancellation, they do not think of his racist actions or his inappropriateness towards little girls━they think of him and his cat.Why is this dangerous? Because outrageous rumors are the ones being more widespread than the actual problematic actions. It is desensitizing the internet to crimes in general because it is not seen as important, causing more people to be canceled for irrational claims. Just last year, Olivia Wilde was canceled solely based on the fact that she was dating Harry Styles. Doja Cat was canceled because she was slightly mean to her fans for a justified reason. Ariana Grande was even canceled for ‘homewrecking’ when both participating parties were broken up with their significant other. Cancel culture has set the precedent that literally anything is worth canceling except actual crimes. This is where it gets truly dangerous, because how is it fair that criminals are able to thrive on social media while people who make mistakes have to be crucified? Johnny Depp, who committed atrocities against his ex-wife Amber Heard, was able to walk free while the entire internet flamed Amber for making a weird comment about her dog getting stung by a bee. Actual victims are being silenced and criminalized because of cancel culture and the truly devious intentions behind it.
Despite having intentions of uplifting and strengthening victims, cancel culture has amplified oppressors instead. The public may think cancel culture is helping hold people accountable for their actions, but it’s just making it easier for actual criminals to get away unscathed. Not only are innocent people being run through the mud for small and mundane things, criminals are also able to avoid or just ignore their cancellation and pretend like it doesn’t exist. This is an unacceptable standard and as a society we have to find a better way of dealing with accountability than simply a hashtag.

Works Cited

https://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2984&context=td
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13347-016-0216-4
https://www.expertcircle.uk/should-cancel-culture-be-cancelled/
Most of the information I got from myself and twitter