Cancel Culture: Accountability or Justice for Digital Mobs?

In recent years, social media has become very popular and many people use it on a daily basis, especially celebrities such as influencers, artists, actresses, and more. Social media can build their career- but it can end it just as quickly. Cancel culture is the practice of publicly calling somebody out for wrongdoings in an attempt to “cancel” them. The original idea of cancel culture was to hold people accountable for their mistakes, but has it gone too far? 

Many people still argue that cancel culture is necessary for accountability and social change. A good example of this would be Kanye West, a rapper. He was considered “cancelled” for his antisemitic remarks- and faced a lot of backlash. Companies like Adidas and Balenciaga have severed their ties with him, platforms like Facebook have removed his content, and most importantly, he’s lost fans and gained a negative image in the public eye. 

However, in some other cases, people argue that cancel culture got too unfair and harsh- one example being Alison Roman, a writer for the New York Times. In 2020, she interviewed Chrissy Teigen and Marie Kondo, both Asian women, about their product lines and criticized them. A controversy sparked around her, accusing her of racism. Her column in the New York Times was removed, and she received strong backlash from readers and commenters. However, some speculate that Alison Roman had no racist intentions as her comments had nothing to do with the fact both women were Asian. 

These are just two examples, but there have been many other instances of cancel culture. In some of them, it’s tame and understandable, in others it can quickly spiral out of control. 

In my opinion, I think that cancel culture has lost all of its original meaning- nowadays, people will try and run a hate train on anybody they can just to see them get cancelled. It isn’t about accountability anymore, and there are very few cases where cancel culture was used for its   original purpose. Another thing to note is that cancel culture can be very harsh on the person you’re trying to cancel. Harassment on the internet and a potential loss of a career can be very stressful. However, there will always be a good side and a bad side to it, and it’ll always be there as long as the internet is around.