Cancel culture was a big topic back in the year 2020 or something. It still is a big part of our world but not much people are actually talking about it. Cancel culture should have been eradicated or morphed by now after 5 years, but it still exists. That is what concerns me. I was writing about Clubhouse and social media back in those days when cancel culture was talked a lot. Now I have other concerns to write about cancel culture.
Cancel culture is basically this: You can't stand to see or hear something but you can't logically oppose it, since you lack the understanding of many things. And you decide to capitulate on people's accumulated anger towards it to eradicate it from existence. Let's dive a bit deeper into this.
First and foremost, what is canceling? It is not raising your voice against something, it is rather making something disappear from the world. That something is usually a person, instead of an idea or a behaviour. Because you can't easily cancel an idea or a behaviour but you can let off your steam on a person enough to make them crawl back to obscurity. So when we are talking about cancel culture, it is destructive on people, not an idea or behaviour or a country or something.
Also how can people actually create a culture out of cancelling? Creating a culture takes time right? Well in today's world, it doesn't need much time because we have social media. There are a lot of easily manipulatable people on social media. There are lots of comfort driven minds on social media. There are lots of small minded people o social media. When you combine all these, you already have a crowd to herd towards an anger focused movement. That is why cancel culture sparkled swiftly into flame. You can also take a look at trends.
The people who are trying to benefit from rage rarely has any reliable information about anything in this world. So when someone says some argumentative thing or even a completely normal out of the ordinary thing, those cancelers don't even try to understand what is going on. They just don't like it and it must be wiped off from the earth and they must feel it like a victory. They are not opposing the bad things or supporting the good things. Gaining clicks on social media by igniting an angry mob is their agenda.
If the cancel culture logic was any ordinary or productive, it would have been focusing on bigger picture rather than humans. Because, just because someone says 1 bad thing, doesn't always mean they are bad overall too. You should take other actions or words of the person too. If you decide the person is harmful, you can start raising your own voice and gather people around you with perspectives and ideas. Cancel culture just choses itself a victim. And this witch-hunt kind of logic will oppress people with fear of being cancelled. You will have less beneficial opinions voiced compared to destructive opinions.
One related thing about cancel culture is trolls. Trolls are a little bit different than cancellers, they are the result of humans losing humanity or a spine altogether. They are paid liars. Soon they will be replaced by AI though. But trolls don't have the intention of doing anything at all. They just spread the venom that is given to them. Of course they are dangerous but unless they control masses, they are not as effective as cancelers.
Should we actually cancel something or someone? It depends. Of course we must resist and dismantle things like American imperialism, Israeli invasions, Russian expansionism ...etc. But these are massive structural forces, not individuals, and social-media driven cancel culture won’t help us in these cases. On the contrary, we need to raise our own voices and build real opposition. Fueling anger is not a good strategy since we have enough destructivity in this world already.
Humankind has a very narrow perspective, because having a broader perspective takes effort and pain. Convenience makes people dumber and more confident of themselves. Those kind of people love cancel culture, since they can't thrive, they have to destroy others. Humans are separated a lot of times in the history because of their narrow mindedness and lack of self-control. When I still see cancel culture living and harming people, I am concerned. Haven't you seen enough bad examples yet? Cancel culture should have been eradicated because it is not productive or beneficial. Or it should have been changed its form into a better way. Some people actually ended their lives because of it. But it still lives and you know what, that should be canceled. Don't cancel me please. See you at the next post.
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