3/7/23
Why Cancel Culture Is Bad
Cancel culture is the withdrawal of public attention from celebrities or public figures, or even harassing them, due to acts they have done that are deemed by the general public as not socially acceptable today. Essentially, cancel culture consists of scrutinizing the targeted person’s past actions, pulling one’s support, sending hate messages, or even death threats. Despite this initially happening to big name celebrities at first, this can also happen to people that don’t have big social media platforms. Over the years, people on social media have been abusing cancel culture and using it for the smallest things such as a misinterpreted joke. This has a ripple effect all the way down to young adults and teenagers who see these scenarios pan out and start to change how they think because they want to fit in.These younger generations are more susceptible to being influenced so, if they see that people around them are being canceled for mistakes, it puts pressure on teens and young adults to act a certain way, so they don’t get canceled. Therefore, Cancel Culture negatively affect social media users psychologically and socially by making people afraid to speak their minds while also giving extreme power to those who are doing the canceling.
Firstly, cancel culture creates a ripple effect that not only affects the lives of the person being canceled, but persons they are associated with, which cause them to question their identity. Normally, when someone is canceled, they suffer the consequences of their actions, but their friends and families can also be affected. When you associate yourself with someone who does bad things, people start to look at you differently because they assume that you are similar. Although I have never never canceled, I have experienced the psychological impact of being judged for people I associate with. This happened to me in high school where I was tired of hanging out with the smart/good kids and started hanging out with friends that were not always liked by the teachers. At first, my teachers did not really seem to notice, but with time, they started to treat me differently. I was always the student that talked to teachers after class and had good relationships with them. However, since I was hanging out more with my other friends, my teachers started to say that I was changing and that I should cut it out. Nothing other than the people I hung out with had changed about me. I still participated, did my homework, and had good grades. My teachers’ reactions due to my shift of friend groups started to make me question my sense of self and who I want to become. I started being with the people that I wanted to be with but it was coming at a cost. This shows how just associating yourself with people that seem bad will affect your relationships with other people and self-esteem. Cancel culture can have effects just like this and it could be even worse when it gets blown out of proportion. An article published by The Walrus, a Canadian newsletter that publishes fact-based journalism and idea-focused events, details a situation with a CFO named Adam Smith who received some bad publicity when voicing his opinion on how same-sex marriage isn’t a crime at a Chick-Fil-A drive through, and consequently got fired from his job (Jeyapalan). Adam Smith, who was dad,filmed the moment and the video went viral. While thiis dad had to deal with financial struggles, his children would also have to deal with backlash from the school. School can be a harsh and unwelcoming environment especially if your father has just been put on the internet making controversial statements. Potentially, these kids could have been bullied or teased for something that they did not do. Consequently, the effects of cancel culture unintentionally affected the mental health of teenagers through intense backlash.
Often cancel culture is detrimental to the social life of teenagers since it leads to people becoming isolated from the community. When someone gets canceled, it becomes very hard to voice your opinion as everyone only focuses on what you did in your past. Since no one wants to talk to you, your social life becomes non-existent. When your social life is nonexistent, you have no one to celebrate the achievements so it makes your goals seem insignificant. Teenagers need companionship in order to have a sense of belonging and purpose. During hard times, having no friends to talk to can be really rough as you have no one to turn to when you need advice. While you do have your parents, it’s easier to talk about some topics with your friends as the relationship is much different. Which can make you feel isolated and feel lonely. Socially, cancel culture can be harmful and be extreme. A recent article in the New York Times discusses how more and more teens are impacted by cancel culture. In this article, there is a girl named L who had the unfortunate experience of being canceled by her friends at school. She did not even know the reason why she was canceled; as she stated, “ All the friends I had previously had through middle school completely cut me off.” She also pointed out, how her friends, “Ignored me, blocked me on everything, would not look at me” (Yar and Bromwich). She could not talk to anyone because no one wanted to interact or be associated with her. Her friends, the people who should be supporting her through hard times, did not try to help her. Instead, they insulted her and called her names. Not only was L being silenced, but she was also cyber bullied which lowered her self-esteem. She started becoming quiet and did not have the socialization a teenager needs while in school. This school’s environment was supposed to promote growth and be a friendly space turned into a negative environment due to cancel culture. Summarily, cancel culture can turn an entire community against a person, ruining their social relationships.
Not only does cancel culture affect those who are canceled, but also those doing canceling. Teenagers have the power of cancel culture that allows them to not only cancel celebrities or friends, but also to take down professional research or expert opinions when it goes against their ideologies. Teenagers are in a stage in their life where they learn from others people’s actions. When they start to see from social media users that when something upsets them, they have the power to complain and change what they don’t agree with, and this ability to cancel becomes a problem. This amount of power that teenagers have is way too much for them to have. Teenagers tend to think more with emotion than adults; they shouldn’t be challenging evidence or research that took time and effort to create. This starts to become an insult to those people in their professions because they worked hard to get the degree and credibility that they have. Simply because an emotional teen says they don’t agree or it makes them feel uncomfortable, the professionals have to remove it. This will start to let them believe that through pressure, they can change anything even if it’s made by people who are experienced in the fields. This can be seen in a article written by James Pfaus, a neurobiology and psychology professor at Concordia University, where Meyer-Bahlburg, Lowrey and Hooven were kicked off their administrative positions due of claims that they made that were not on par with the viewpoints of social justice warriors (Pfaus). These social justice warriors are providing models for the younger generations that if they don’t agree with what other people say then they have all the right to complain and take it down just because they find it offensive. To not accept their viewpoint and simply disregard it would not only be disrespectful but absurd knowing that these social justice warriors more often than not have no credibility in the field. These scientists were kicked off their respect
I’ve positions just because the universities that they work for don’t want bad publicity. This is because the situation can damage the unversitys’ reputation especially if these justice warriors blow the situation out of proportion and use the power of social media to spread the news. This will raise a generation full of spoiled entitled kids that will just continue to intoxicate the generations that come after them. Clearly, teenagers cannot be given this immense amount of power that allows them to take down professional work.
In conclusion, cancel culture provides the community too much power, resulting in the targeted individual suffering psychologically and socially. For example, the psychological effects of not knowing who you are anymore because of people shaming who you are based on experiences from the past or the people you are around with. The social interaction between people when canceled gets diminished almost completely because no one wants to talk to you. This can cause havoc on a teenager who needs companionship to have a healthy mental health. This is all capable because of the power that cancel culture gives teenagers which is too much for them to handle. Therefore, it became clear that cancel culture is very problematic and we should encourage people to not partake in it .
Annotated Bibliography
Pfaus, James G. “The Cancer of Cancel Culture: Spreading ‘Correct’ Scientific Ideologies across North American Academia – Archives of Sexual Behavior.” SpringerLink, Springer US, 7 Nov. 2022, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-022-02452-y#Sec2.
The article talks about how Cancel Culture is getting so powerful to the point that Universities must start to let go of scientist that are doing productive research because people don’t agree with the conclusions that these scientists come to. These universities have to let go of the scientist because the need to protect their brand as a university as if they don’t, they will have to deal with legal terms. So, it’s cheaper and better for the universities to just simply let go of them rather than taking their chances with them. I can use these to add to the power that cancel culture is implying. This will lead to students to believe that if they don’t like something that is said even with evidence they can go against the university and take it down. While this connects less to teens and young adults as it talks about how cancel culture is becoming dangerous as it grows.
Jeyapalan, Thivya. “Cancel Culture and the Pressures of Being a Teen Online.” The Walrus, 24 Jan. 2023, https://thewalrus.ca/teen-walrus-cancel-culture/.
The article talks about a young man who’s political career was essentially taken away from him due to a comment that he made almost a decade ago. The article also brings up a story from Adam Smith whose life was taken away from him after a video of him voicing his opinion on same sex marriage at a chick-fil-A drive-through got popularity. I will use this article as a form of pathos and ethos to show that cancel culture puts too much power on people behind the screen. This goes back to teens because Smith was a father of four and he lost his job after the video of him was posted. His children’s life was affected tremendously because the man voiced his opinion.
Yar, Sanam, and Jonah Engel Bromwich. “Tales from the Teenage Cancel Culture.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 31 Oct. 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/31/style/cancel-culture.html.
The article gives a list of stories about teenagers who got canceled in their schools. The stories are told through a third person and first person perspective as there are quotes that the teenagers recite. These stories talk about the effect of being canceled did to these kids and how their lives were almost taken away from them. I want to use story four where it talks about a girl who cancelled for something she did not do. She asked her friends what she did but all they did was shame her and this led on for her most of high school. In the story I can take the effect that she starts to lose who she is which is a psychological affect. This can be used as pathos by connecting feelings to the intended audience.