Cancel Culture - A Double Edged Blade (2020)

According to New York Post, Charli D’Amelio, a popular 16-year-old TikTok content creator, recently came under fire due to a YouTube video uploaded on The D’Amelio Family channel. The video in question showed the D’Amelio sisters and their father having dinner with another popular content creator James Charles. In the video, Dixie displayed disdain towards the dish that the chef had made by smelling, convulsing and running out of the room to vomit. Meanwhile, Charli asked the chef if she could have “dino nuggies” instead and expressed her disappointment that she had not yet reached 100M followers on TikTok.

Viewers’ reactions towards the D’Amelio sisters led to Charli losing 1M followers on TikTok. Dixie also put out a statement, saying, “I’m so grateful for all of the opportunities I’ve had, so I would never in any way want to be taken as disrespectful, especially from an out-of-context 15-second clip. So basically, my team knows I throw up a lot. I could throw up at the smell, the thought or the taste of anything. So, when they saw the snails, they were like, ‘Oh, let’s get her and try to see if we can get a reaction out of her.’ I love Chef [May] and I would never disrespect him in any way and maybe don’t judge someone’s personality over a 15-second video.’”

While the D’Amelio sisters may be the most recent targets, cancel culture is not an unfamiliar thing in the digital communication space. Due to the accessibility of creating and viewing online content, a specific sociopolitical climate and the archiving of said content, the widespread practice of cancel culture has become increasingly both volatile and far-reaching. 

Both sides of the spectrum - those that support cancel culture and those that reject it - have their own points of view. On one spectrum, it establishes a system of checks and balances - reminiscent of nuclear blackmail and coercion tactics. According to Elle Australia, Halsey, a renowned musician, expressed her fear of cancel culture, stating, “I would be like, ‘This is it. I’m done.’ And everyone would be like, ‘Relax, you’re not going to lose your career over one thing you said on the internet.’ Now it’s like ‘No, you actually fucking can.’” That said, Beatrix Herriott-O'Gorman, a writer from LA who has worked for a film company, stated, “I do think about cancel culture constantly when I post on social media. I don't believe that's necessarily a negative thing, while it is exhausting, as I believe being more mindful and thoughtful about your words and actions online and offline is important and something that many of us haven't grown up being encouraged to do.”

 However, on the opposite spectrum, there are also people like former president Barack Obama - according to NYT - who stated a clear disdain for call-out and cancel culture, stating, “This idea of purity and you’re never compromised and you’re always politically ‘woke’ and all that stuff... You should get over that quickly. The world is messy; there are ambiguities. People who do really good stuff have flaws.” Personally, I do not think my moral compass can be the judge and jury of the actions of Twitter denizens and the afflicted celebrities. However, the prevalence of cancel culture itself is something that is both fascinating and terrifying.

The medium has proven to be useful in spreading awareness and rallying people to action. In the case of Harvey Weinstein and the emergence of the #Metoo movement, cancel culture gained popularity as celebrities exposed Harvey Weinstein’s actions, leading to an investigation, a divorce, a firing, and a court trial. The overwhelming pressure placed by the populace through social media and news outlets became an example of cancel culture as a format for public democracy.

For people like Harvey Weinstein or Jeffrey Epstein who committed sexual assault and other criminal acts, cancel culture has become a tool to instill swift judgement on them. However, in the cases of people exercising their First Amendment rights, cancel culture has also become a toxic fog shrouding the online community. As a result, the question of whether cancel culture is beneficial or detrimental has become increasingly relevant as more people are being scrutinized - especially on outlets like TikTok and YouTube. While cancel culture does not dissuade creatives from releasing content, there is an air of paranoia within these communities as everything posted online is archived and can be used as ammunition against the creators themselves.

The archivization of social media has led people to ignore the fact that most people naturally progress as social norms change. As a result, social media becomes the downfall of celebrities as their own words from even years ago under different ideologies become scrutinized to fulfill sociopolitical agendas. According to Austin Michael Hook’s “Cancel Culture: Posthuman Hauntologies in Digital Rhetoric and the Latent Values of Virtual Community Networks”, cancel culture can be perceived as an example of a hauntological phenomenon. Derrida’s concept of hauntology refers to the revival or persistence of something from the past - like a ghost. It certainly rings true in today’s online world where everything anyone says is archived and always lingering - like a ghost of one’s past or ideologies. Hook states, “Now, between 2018-2020, to cancel an individual is to willingly enter the archive, the totality of one’s expressions on digital media, for the purposes of shutting down a particular group or individual.” 

He also notes, “Cancel culture is no longer part of a set of reactionary behaviors that seek to call-out someone for crossing burgeoning social boundaries, but a methodological deconstruction of someone’s ethos (their relationship to their community) in order to culturally and socially blacklist them.” In other words, in a way, cancel culture has become weaponized in order to suppress and target those who do not meld with an established system of values.

According to NYT, Katie Herzog, a freelance journalist, came under fire in 2017 when she wrote an article for The Stranger about trans people reverting transitions. Seattleites responded by burning copies of The Stranger and putting up stickers portraying Herzog as a transphobe, leading her to become a social pariah. The article in question was not a narrative-driven piece. Rather, it was a story about a trans person choosing to detransition and why trans people choose to. However, that did not stop the torrents of spite aimed at Herzog who said she was “wildly reviled” and lost “dozens” of friends due to the article.

Aside from journalists, comedians also commonly face this issue as the material they write reflects the ideologies and norms of past eras. In other words, due to the archivization and permanence of online content, what may have seemed harmless to say before does not mean it is harmless today. Furthermore, although people may change in their values, the ghosts of their former selves continue to linger in the digital space. According to USA Today, NBC’s ‘SNL’ fired cast member Shane Gillis days after he was hired in 2019 due to racial remarks towards Asians in a podcast a year prior. Due to the incident, Gillis put out an apology statement, stating that comedians “take risks” and that he has “missed” during his career. Regardless, the statement did little to stifle the tremendous backlash. 

Referring back to Hart, after he resigned from his position for hosting the 2019 Academy Awards, he apologized on Twitter but other comedians gave their opinions on the matter. According to AP, Billy Eichner stated, “A simple authentic apology showing any bit of understanding or remorse would have been so simple.” On the other hand, comedian Kathy Griffin took a more empathetic stance, stating, “He wrote that tweet eight years ago when gay marriage wasn’t even legal yet, so we all do things. God knows in my 23 specials I’ve said heinously inappropriate things.”

Hook states, “Our modern communication platforms (Twitter, YouTube, Facebook) have the power to transform our public sphere into a cold and alienating atmosphere devoid of truth in the form of virtue and principle—of honest and critical opinion.” Social media and online content platforms have become forums where people can congregate and, through these connections, develop certain values as a singular entity. In the cases of Hart and Gillis, due to their deviations from those values, they were targeted. 

Cancel culture is a double edged sword. On one hand, it is a tool for public democracy - a means of bringing awareness and calling action against those who have brought harm to society. However, on the other hand, as Hook states, “Cancel culture is increasingly dependent on and fixated on the past and the resurrection of not merely egregious behavior but any banal action that is incongruent with present norms.” For creatives like journalists, comedians and musicians, creating content can also spawn those who disagree with it. According to Herriott-O’Gorman, she stated, “I think people jump to conclusions, which is silly and we live in a highly reactive age. It's never before in human history been possible for as many people to respond to anything instantaneously, which is bound to yield weird and unprecedented results. I think people have a range of sensitivity levels and there is likely always someone who will react negatively to something you say or do.” Due to a lack of practicing “dissoi logoi”, the intentions of artists’ creations or celebrities’ statements can be skewed to fit a certain rhetoric. Whether or not cancel culture is a blessing or a curse is up to how the general populace utilizes it.