Shut Up Kristyn! | Misc

52 | cancel culture 2

I first wrote a rant on this topic back on December 30, 2020 and the conversation that it opened up with the people who read it was really interesting. It's now the middle of 2022 and the topic is still extremely relevant. Thus, I am back with more thoughts on it and now I am sharing them with all of you.

One of my favorite podcasts, You're Wrong About, by Sarah Marshall (and formerly, Michael Hobbes), did an episode on this a while ago. I've been skipping around and listening to episodes at random since I started listening to it last December, and now I'm finally listening to this one which was released almost exactly year ago.

I'm going to be including some quotes from the episode throughout this rant because Michael's research was AMAZING and very thorough. They made some fantastic points and I wanted to share a few of the things I learned.

The first thing I want to bring up is how the term "cancel" (as we are using it in this context) began. Like a bunch of other modern slang terms, it was taken from black culture. Black artists would put it in their songs and it was used in primarily black television shows. However, the word was used in relation to people that you know. For example, a character would tell their ex, "You're canceled," and it would basically mean "You're cut out of my life/I have no interest in you/etc." Kinda like how we use "Cut them off." It meant you won't have any association with that person anymore.

Now it obviously means something very different. Generally, you don't "cancel" your racist neighbor down the street. The term mostly applies to public figures.

"Cancel culture" as we know it today really amped up around the time the #MeToo movement began and Harvey Weinstein's downfall started. Though the phrase "me too" in relation to sexual assault originated on MySpace in 2006, it was 2017 when it became a larger movement. I was a junior in high school at the time and I vividly remember this, as well as the moral panic it fused.

People (primarily men, though there were some women who shared these opinions) started fearing that anything a man did could be taken the wrong way and the woman would take to Twitter and end his life via a scathing tweet. I think this is where the whole "you do something wrong and your entire life is over because of the internet" idea that is associated with cancel culture started.

I previously mentioned how much it bothers me that there isn't a happy medium between ignoring something that someone did/said and trying to ruin their career because of it. In regard to #MeToo, a woman couldn't talk about her experience with sexual assault without people being like "She's trying to ruin this good man's life!1!1" when like... no. It was meant to bring awareness to the frequency of sexual assault and a place where survivors could talk to and support each other. The purpose wasn't to drag every man responsible to the depths of hell, although that would be nice.

Are we even surprised that the focus shifted to the poor, innocent men though? Won't someone think about all the men who are suffering because of this? WON'T SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THEM??? THE MEN ??? THE SUFFERING M E N ???

As Sarah Marshall said in the episode, "...As a society, it is our job to have more speeds than 'Nothing' and 'Life Destroyed'." You can bring awareness to something or hold someone accountable without your intention being to send them to a vacuum where nothing they do will ever have any meaning anymore.

It's also interesting how the "cancellation" of people almost always happens on Twitter. It's extremely unlikely to see Instagram or Facebook posts where people are getting cancelled. And, I think, part of this is the mob mentality on the app.

For example, back in March, Zoe Kravitz was trending when an old interview resurfaced where she made some comments about then 14-year-old Jaden Smith where she was like, "You're only 14, I have to check what I say to you." And some people were like "Hey, this thing you said was mega sketch and kinda fucked up," but then it turned into a massive rally for her to be cancelled.