‘Ummm yeah, I can’t believe he posted that. He’s cancelled.’
Shaped by the rise in digital activism and online political organisation over the past decade, our present post-pandemic political sphere is characterised by the convergence of wokeism, left-wing politics, and a push for change and freedom of speech. This amalgamation has given rise to a term we’ve coined as ‘cancel culture,’ a phenomenon that attempts to address the righting of historical wrongs in our modern era by enforcing social accountability online.
‘Cancelling’ someone is now an immutable concept in our current political discourse where any individual’s capacity to condemn someone’s behaviour – both online or in real life – is contingent upon their connection to wifi and ability to use a keyboard.
The past 20 years of history have undergone unprecedented political change, such as the legalisation of same-sex marriage, expansion of civil rights legislation for minorities, environmental protection measures, recognition of Indigenous rights, support of refugee and asylum policies, and overall greater recognition of non-western, non-traditional socio-cultural practices. All of these said political changes are positive and are leading towards a safer and more inclusive society, where individual human rights of self-expression, safety, non-discrimination, the right to work and adequate shelter are under extreme protection.
Due to these changes, many believe our generation is possibly one of the luckiest to ever exist. Despite current world issues, at large there has not been a greater time in history that has adopted progressivism more expansively and cohesively in such a short period, or a generation with more access to more education, safety, health and technology on such a vast scale in comparison to the accessibility of these advantages in the past.
Some see it as a means of rectifying someone else’s behaviour, correcting their terms of speech or possible perceptions on subjects that may offend a certain group of people, which in concept is a constructive way of creating online accountability in an age where anything can be said, and anyone can see it. Some see it as a punishment tactic, to remove someone’s celebrity or popularity status through bandwagoning another user’s idea, collectively deciding that this said person no longer exists on the plane of online relevance or must be condemned to public ostracism because of something they’ve said or done.
The wokeism that birthed cancel culture is shaped by a recognition of systematic inequality, an educated recognition of historical wrongdoings and an attempt to deconstruct all forms of privilege and hierarchy, creating a highly controversial and emotionally charged contemporary discourse. However, when these passionate concepts are channelled through social media platforms, we continually see a clash between the ‘ignorant’ and the ‘educated’ in confrontational and polarised interactions, and cancel culture becomes a form of censorship. Someone can be cancelled and ignored for saying a slur online, while another can be cancelled and lose their job for their mere personal opinion.
There’s an attempt within cancel culture and within our young Western political plane in general, to reject not only mainstream cultural norms and values in an attempt to rewrite historical wrongs that perpetuate injustice but to deconstruct all values contrary to those of the canceller. There’s a slow but steady depletion of personal opinion online where individual convictions and ideas are muffled due to the fear of individual cancellation.
These positive social changes, alongside the pervasive dissemination of addictive and attention-captivating content via social media, have contributed to the emergence of a generation that lives only in a mis-reality, where one’s online persona overshadows their presence and identity in real life. The time spent engaging with these platforms directly correlates with our perceived significance of digital existence, which should be secondary to our presence in real life.
And it is not to say that someone’s online presence is insignificant and their words weightless, but I believe that there shouldn’t be a dispensable, self-endowed ability by any one person on the internet to remove, degrade and deplete someone’s entire existence by cancelling them online.
My advice, don’t feed into it! It’s not a real thing, and it shouldn’t be. The more the term is used casually, the more likely it is to be adopted as a legitimate social convention rather than an illegitimate spineless claim.
Say what you think respectfully if you feel the need to say it.
If you don’t have anything nice to say, shut your phone and go outside.
And if you don’t like someone else’s opinion online, remove them, block the page or delete the app. Then go outside.