Cancel Culture: Stop Contributing to it.

The twenty-first century has seen the rapid and relentless growth of social media. With that comes the incredible and often scary level of connection that we have to each other, including celebrities and other public figures. And while these connections can foster great relationships and communities, it also fosters communities of hate and knocking down others.

Celebrities, public figures, and sometimes just everyday people have become the victims of social media’s “cancel culture”; cancel culture has become a new phenomenon in the past five years on the internet. It’s when a person does something unfavorable in the public eye and are subsequently “cancelled” or written off by society. People are cancelled for valid reasons such as murder or sexual assault, but most of the time people are written off as soon as they are accused of something and have little chance of recovery.

A recent victim of cancel culture was Kevin Hart, who was ripped to shreds after being announced as the host of the 2019 Oscars after a Twitter user dug up a tweet from several years back in which Hart made a distasteful joke about the LGBTQ+ community.

Social media was quick to “cancel” Kevin Hart, and they were successful in their efforts, as Hart, who had previously apologized publicly for the tweet, stepped down from the hosting gig.

A tweet from Kevin Hart in 2011.

But where is the line going going to be drawn? Kevin Hart had apologized for his words and has shown his support for the LGBTQ+ community since this tweet. When will society stop canceling and start encouraging the growth and evolution of people and their points of views?

Cancel culture is toxic, and leads to no positive impacts on our society. Some day, there will be a President of the United States who made a slip-up on social media years back. We have to evaluate what kind of person they are today and how they have proven that they have changed since making those remarks; it is not conducive to society to normalize the destruction of somebody’s life, especially when it somebody we do not even know.

So stop tweeting with #cancelled and stop taking headlines at face value. Instead, tweet with #change or #growth and read the full article (and check the source!) before you decide to contribute to cancel culture.