A high-pitched sound wakes me up, hundreds of notifications pop up. I open my eyes, and it's not really a surprise, I was born on the rise of social media. It appears as if I have become immune to the hateful comments floating around the internet as if what happens on the other side of the screen evaporates into nothingness. My favorite role model has been canceled. The amalgamation of ideas on the internet presents itself as the craving gratification it produces. Far in the pool of opinions, just one is correct and deserves to outshine the rest. My generation, Gen Z, and the Millennials are the founders of this concept: cancel culture. Do we not see how much destruction it is causing?
After 2017, when the Weinstein exposé came out, the power of the public struck everyone. Since then cancel culture has become a snowball rolling down a steep hill. 55% of people participating in cancel culture are a range from 18-34 years old. Are young people responsible for normalizing cyberbullying through cancel culture? The pattern of ostracizing people has become so common that we have conditioned ourselves to rethink our own opinions to be able to fit in.
Seek justice and provide a platform to those who deserve it, is the principle of cancel culture, or it once was. It preaches a person's development simultaneously discouraging growth. Their most prevalent supporters are now their stronger critics. Around the world, I have seen the change people around my age can create from Greta Thunberg to Jasilyn Charger. Our ideals and opinions should not be dictated by a group more and more selective even more so when we are in our journey to discover who we are. Personal preferences should not be a determining factor to be canceled. Anything illegal or against a person’s rights must be taken with utmost seriousness. As a student, I learn every day often make mistakes. Those mistakes don’t determine who I am, they reinforce my ability to get past does. As quickly as someone is canceled as fast their learning experience is taken away. Their audience is deprived to hear the other side to be educated.
Cancel culture preaches a person’s development, but it discourages growth. This tells a lot about our society. Why do we cancel our chance to grow so rapidly? Why can we not see the value of making mistakes and celebrate those who become stronger thanks to them? Is only one opinion allowed? Since when did having your own opinion, a different opinion, become a crime? Someone you once looked up to can be turned against you in the blink of an eye. The conundrum in your head fighting against conflicting thoughts There have even been instances where I don’t see the mistake, the atrocity a person made to get canceled. This tells a lot about our society, we live in a society where discussions are discouraged in the fear of opposition to our own beliefs.
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