The consideration of cancel culture by students.
BY CARLY WITT, ’23.
With the growing popularity and presence of social media in our lives, there are bound to be times of confrontation and drama. In the past few years, the growth of cancel culture has affected every aspect of social media.
Although cancel culture can technically be rooted back to early 2010 Tumblr blogs when calling out celebrities and people such as One Direction and Kevin Hart, the cancel culture we know today came into play into 2017.
Freshman Tatum Ringlien said, “I think cancel culture started as something good, but over time has become something extremely toxic on social media and needs to be under control.”
When asking someone of our age an example of cancel culture lots would say the cancellation of Shane Dawson, Jeffree Star, James Charles, all people who were under fire from the Internet when people came forward about allegations against them.
“I remember seeing TikToks of people smashing makeup pallets, burning and throwing merch into a dumpster, it seems really extreme but I understand if the fan has been really hurt by what the person has done, I remember when someone I watched was cancelled and it was really hard to deal with since I was such a huge fan,” Ringlien said.
Some people have gone so far as to lose friends and relationships because they support someone after they’ve been cancelled. It seems to divide people and groups so much because the problematic thing they did was so bad.
“I remember when a YouTuber I loved for so many years was cancelled, and it was so hard because, at the same time I was so upset with what they had done. It was really conflicting and hard to navigate,” sophomore Katie Harris said.
But out of cancel culture, some people have even found a career. YouTube channels like Tea Spill and Shook have curated very successful channels by posting drama, pop culture updates and who is being canceled at the moment, which has helped spread the effects of it.
“I’ve seen those channels, and sometimes I’ll watch a video because it’s not very biased, and gives good information on the situation,” Harris said.
Recently, more allegations against YouTuber David Dobrik have come to light with him losing sponsorships and over 100,000 subscribers. Everything happened quickly, and yet some feel there are worse people out there to cancel.
“Yes, what he did was horrible and he deserves to be disciplined for it, but I feel like there are so many worse people out there on the Internet who deserve the same cancel treatment as others,” Ringlien said.
Cancel culture has a way of growing on its own, and there is no way to tell what is in store for it. It seems every week, there is a new controversy, a new drama to keep up with, and new opinions of celebrities being pushed out.