4.3.2 #canceled (research essay)

English 102, April 2021

With the pandemic we can look back on a year of things cancelled. Holidays were cancelled. Sporting events were cancelled. Concerts were cancelled. While 2020 was the big year of all good things cancelled many would say that the year itself should be cancelled. Certainly, the main reasons the year was hated was that most work and schools went online with Zoom and it was hard to get a roll of toilet paper. Would I go as far to say 2020 was a god-awful year? Of course, I worked in a grocery store and people were insane. Would I say it needs to be cancelled? Well, no because that doesn’t really apply in this setting. We had a lot of canceled events but to cancel the year is hard because in principle cancelling doesn’t work that way. Why doesn’t cancelling apply in this setting? Well, what is cancelling to begin with? Is cancel culture beneficial in society? Can someone truly be cancelled, who does cancel culture hurt? Is cancel culture hurting more than helping? When has cancel culture gone too far? How do people interact with the idea of cancel culture on social media? What happens in a fandom when someone is cancelled or actively being cancelled? Do fans go too far? Has there been a time when a fandom has gone too far? Is there still room to enjoy what is created by a cancelled entertainer?  Cancel culture may be a good form of social justice in society but the ways in which it is used and abused online has swayed far from its actual purpose.  

The conveniences that the internet and social media has brought have certainly outnumbered the bad. Today social media can branch together family who have not seen each other in days, months, or years and now especially due to the pandemic. There is however a downside to platforms like this. These platforms undoubtedly can bring the worst out of people hopping on a trend or hashtag. When someone makes even the slightest misstep people act online to let everyone know. This has brought about a new era to social media with rising concepts of cancel or call out culture. But what is cancel culture? One explanation form “Disruptive rhetoric in an age of outrage” by Michael Welsh explains that cancel culture has become its own societal discourse of social issues in which people can take to social media and announce that someone is cancelled for a perceived crime by the accuser.  

With cancel culture social media has become reactionary instead of investigating whether these claims are true. In “With (Stan) ding Cancel Culture: Stan Twitter and Reactionary Fandoms” Hailey Roos explains that “cancel culture is intended to hold powerful people accountable, but it has been constantly appropriated, and its influence has been diminished because of how frequently people are cancelled for less serious offenses.” What ways can someone be cancelled? There can be social media movements led by hashtags declaring someone is cancelled which can lead to extreme consequences to those, the people cancelling and those being cancelled. The action taken by those who are cancelled can be to take accountability in their actions and reflect on them and change or they can defend and deflect what is being accused of them to keep the status they have. Joseph Ching Velasco in “You are Cancelled: Virtual Collective Consciousness and the Emergence of Cancel Culture as Ideological Purging” explains that there can be those who are accused of committing a crime they did not commit for the sake of someone else’s gain. In the same sense though cancel culture as an act in society is confusing as it can be used for its purpose or as a “power play” which leads to a need for more understanding on how to wield such a power. There is not a clear-cut way of knowing for certain if in the moment it is merely just a business move or if the person did something wrong.  

Today the internet, more specifically social media platforms, have decided that there is a need for judge, jury, and executioner in the matter of social issues. Who oversees making such decisions and on what terms are used to judge? From “Twitter, What’s The Verdict?” Aya Imam explains that it can be said that growing up we are taught through fairytales and fables that everything is good versus evil, where we take every situation and boil it down to that. In terms of defining every situation in terms of black and white that leaves little room for the person to defend themselves. If someone is justifiably cancelled what are these codes of conduct that they have broken? Then it seems for that everyday people have taken matters into their own hands by essentially “cancelling” someone if they don’t follow societal rules (Imam 2).  

When it comes to hearing about cancel culture the first people to come to mind would be celebrities. Celebrities fill our newsfeed on the daily with videos, stories, etc. for the public’s entertainment. There has become a sense of connection with celebrities and their audience, where they need to adhere to their publicized person or face the consequences (Roos 3-4). With this constant connection more issues become known or are dug up. In recent years, the celebrities that people associate with cancel culture are names like Harvey Weinstein and Billy Cosby, who both have a list of sexual assault allegations against them. Others like Kathy Griffin, who posted a photo of herself holding a “bloody” Trump mask, or Taylor Swift who will be discussed later in this essay. 

Aya Imam briefly discusses the disparities in cancel culture: 

Does Harvey Weinstein deserve the backlash he’s received? Yes, 1000% yes. But does James Charles – a very famous YouTuber who was initially called out by another YouTuber for endorsing the ‘wrong’ vitamin brand – deserve the false accusations of being a sexual predator (which, in turn, resulted in millions of people unfollowing and unsubscribing from him)? No, I don’t believe he deserves that (Imam 2). 

I would like to note that as I was doing my research, I picked this article and this quote because it did display the gap between how serious or not Weinstein’s or Charles’s situations were but at the current time it has become known that James Charles has multiple allegations of sexual misconduct (texting/messaging primarily) with minors. With the James Charles cancellation he was friends with another YouTuber, Tati Westbrook, and owner of a vitamin supplement company, who recorded a video accusing of Charles of behaving inappropriately with straight men. The video and its message were then condensed down to it being about Charles endorsing a rival vitamin company. In “How Can We End #CancelCulture – Tort Liability or Thumper’s Rule?” Nanci Carr explains how a situation much like James Charles’s can show that when a celebrity is cancelled it is more off a hunch than actual information. So, then what decides why, how, or what extent someone is cancelled? There is no real set of rules on cancelling someone. Carr explains that “we are living in a ‘cancel culture’ where if someone, often a celebrity, does something either illegal or unethical, society is quick to ‘cancel’ them, or lessen their celebrity standing or cultural capital (133).” For Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein, yes, they face consequences for their actions but when it comes to Taylor Swift was the punishment fitting of the crime? 

As I had said previously mentioned Taylor Swift for a moment had been cancelled. Most if not all articles on the topic of cancel culture touched on what happened to Taylor Swift. Truly, I do not think anyone would consider her to be cancelled because she faced no major backlash financially but what the situation did damage was her reputation, which would become the topic of her 6^th album. Swift’s story goes all the way back to 2009 when Swift won an award and Kanye West stormed the stage to let her and everyone know that Beyonce had the best video of the year. Swift and West had different paths from this event with Swift being pegged as a victim and West as the villain, which led to if other situations arose that Swift was playing the victim because that first moment garnered her so much sympathy and people saying that it helped her career back then. Fast forward to 2016 after West and Swift had mended fences as Swift puts it in “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things” and West had called to ask if he could reference Swift in a song. The song in question was “famous” would later be released for everyone to hear the line, “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex, why, I made that bitch famous.” Swift claimed she had only heard the first part of the lyric and was never made aware of the part where West would call her a bitch or that he made her famous. This led to bitterness on social media between Kanye West, his wife Kim Kardashian, and the Kardashian’s friends and family.  

The following quote by Swift was at the 2016 Grammy Awards after winning album of the year and many believe it is in reference to the situation: 

As the first woman to win Album of the Year at the Grammys twice, I want to say to all the young women out there, there are going to be people along the way who will try to undercut your success or take credit for your accomplishments or your fame, but, if you just focus on the work and you don’t let those people sidetrack you, someday when you get where you’re going you’ll look around and you will know that it was you and the people who love you who put you there. And that will be the greatest feeling in the world. Thank you for this moment. (Griffiths) 

Taylor Swift in this moment wanted to show that she got to where she was on her own and for the Kardashian this moment would lead to her releasing clips of the recorded conversation. While the phone conversation was recorded what we saw in 2016 was an edited version posted on Snapchat by Kim Kardashian, years later the full conversation would be released online to reveal more truth to Swift’s side of the story. The below picture is a tweet that Kardashian tweeted before the release of Kardashian’s video, she posted on Twitter “Wait it’s legit National Snake Day?!?!?They have holidays for everybody, I mean everything these days!” with a slew of snake emojis. As shown in the picture it was liked over 300 thousand times and shared over 200 thousand times.  

Kardashian’s tweet doesn’t seem too malicious at face value. The tweet doesn’t mention anyone by name, doesn’t mention the need to cancel anyone, nor does it attack anyone. Kardashian’s plan was methodical, by simultaneously posting this tweet and posting the edited video it jumpstarted others to take the idea that Taylor Swift was a snake and not to be trusted. There was an onslaught of attacks on Swift and her character. The hashtag #TaylorSwiftisoverparty was a worldwide trend. In the article “From Cancel Culture to Changing Culture” Liz Theriault explained that “[Swift] was being sent ‘mass amounts of messages’ telling her to ‘either shut up, disappear, or [as] it could also be perceived as, kill yourself.’” The extent of tweets towards Swift ranged from benign to telling her to kill herself or for her to be killed. In terms of cancellation, yes Taylor Swift was indeed cancelled but online forums made her the target of worse hate. Cancel culture should not be to take the opportunity to break down someone even more than needed, in this situation it should have been to take accountability of your actions however benign they may have been. For cancel culture this is one of many examples of how we make quick calls about someone’s character due to social media outlets (Imam 3). In the below tweet the user says, “I love this #taylorswiftisoverparty…. been at this party since 1989…. most annoying and ridiculous singer in the biz…. ok! Kill her!” This shows the extreme hate that was directed at Swift during the cancellation. With respect to the following person, I have blacked out their image and username.