22/03/2022
As we approach a new week, we would also like to introduce a new humanitarian relation problem that is currently a huge problem on our society today, and that is Cancel Culture. We know that everyone of us might have heard of cancel culture at some point. But to put everything clearly, we would like to explain what Cancel Culture is and how does it affect our society may it be positively and negatively, and what are the different actions that we could do to lessen its dreadful effects.
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First, what is “Cancel Culture”? Cancel culture is a group of people who basically bands together into expelling someone from society who they deem has done a social crime or mistake, or even just someone who has a different opinion. They proceed to “cancel” the person accountable of the mistake, may it be in the past or present, and punish them in the form of public humiliation; deplatforming them from various social platforms; boycotting the person; finding ways to terminate his/ her employment from jobs; or even badmouthing or pushing them into the point of depression until the group feels that they have served “justice”. Moreover, they create this social atmosphere that basically pulls in other people into joining them into dragging the cancelled person until his/ her social image is ruined into shambles.
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But why do people do this? What are the positive sides and negative sides of cancel culture and what do people earn from doing this phenomenon?
Cancel culture originally was for people to voice out the injustices that are happening, and is a form of movement to incite a change to the world, different advantages are:
- It enables people to seek accountability when systems of justices fail to judge certain people.
- Cancel culture helps people gain a voice for themselves and voice out the different wrong doings of an individual
- Cancel culture is basically a new form of boycott, in which people can bring on movement and create a social change.
- Protecting the value of the things that were damaged by the mistakes of the cancelled persons.
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These are various advantages that cancel culture could bring, but why does it seem so bad right now? Here are some different disadvantages that cancel culture may bring:
- People in cancel culture prioritize their hate and jealousy towards the cancelled person as their main goal in dragging them down rather than the reason of correcting their mistakes.
- Cancel culture may bring punishment to the person way worse than the mistake that they did.
- Cancel culture hurts freedom of speech and creates a nasty social stigma.
- Threats and violence are underpinned towards the cancelled person.
- The person being cancelled is guilty until proven innocent. Sometimes people can be cancelled even though they are innocent, because of some baseless rumors that cancel culture stirred up.
- Cancel culture can bring power to irresponsible mobs (especially online) and say different harsh things to the cancelled person, even though it is unjustified and gets away with it without any consequences.
- Cancel culture does not fix the problem, it just punishes the one responsible.
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Cancel culture in the is hard to demolish, as it lives up in the name of justice with people riding either to do what is just, or to exploit the opportunity to ride the cottontail of the group to deal harm to others or to even “troll”.
That is why we as the iHUMANE would like to offer advice to everyone who would encounter Cancel Culture as it is our advocacy to bring help to others in this problem.
- Prioritize restoration (fixing the mistake, aiding the victim, etc.) than retribution (punishing the perpetrator, spreading the mistake rather than stopping it) when trying to exact your justice especially when joining the so-called cancel culture.
- If you deem that the crime of someone is big enough, try to report to the right authorities, rather than gathering people and exacting your own punishment.
- Try to criticize the current mistake and don’t dig deeper to his/ her past mistakes that is not connected to the current situation just to defame and oppress the cancelled person.
- Know your limits as a person, it is not right to harm others just because they harmed one. Harming them only makes you as worse as them.
- Its okay to create a movement as long as you’re doing it for a greater change.
- Don’t waste your time cancelling people if your doing it for personal hateful reasons, hate doesn’t lead to anything.
- Cancelling for clout is meaningless, go fix your personality if you dug yourself this deep.
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Thankyou for reading this far. For any insights and reactions, please feel free to address them through the comment section or message the iHUMANE page. God bless!
