Cancel Culture

 

Since quarantine started, I have been on TikTok a lot. I probably spend at least two to three hours a day on the app alone, because I am that bored. Something I have noticed is that “cancel culture” is very prevalent and lots of “creators” or just normal people like you and me, can get “canceled.” Cancel culture in itself should be a good thing; holding others accountable for their actions, in hope that they will educate themselves and change. However, this is almost never the case. Most of the time, people care more about bashing and “canceling” the person than the actual issue at hand. For example, some creators on TikTok have been canceled for lip-syncing the n-word. Now, that is a terrible thing, and they must be held accountable for their mistake, but I have seen first-hand that there are people who care more about canceling that person than the community that was affected. Not to mention there were people in the comments who were not Black trying the excuse the person’s behavior.

To continue the conversation about cancel culture, this week I made an assumption that was not true. When a very popular creator was excited to reach 100 million followers, everyone started canceling and calling her spoiled. There were so many TikToks bashing this girl, until it got to the point where she had to go on Instagram live to say it was all a misunderstanding. From one of the TikToks that appeared on my feed, I made a completely false assumption based on what others believed was to be true. Because of the decisions I made this week, I realized I need to stop believing things on the internet that most likely are not true, because most of the time there is more than meets the eye. I also realized how hypocritical humans are--we will judge people for doing something, but will end up doing it as well.