AUSTIN FOLKERTSMA
senior editor
austin.folkertsma@my.tccd.edu
Cancel culture is extremely toxic, and it needs to stop before it does any further damage.
It has taught people that if someone makes a mistake or glorifies an individual that society doesn’t inherently like, people should stop supporting them, and their career is over with a simple hashtag.
A person can lose everything they’ve worked for just because of a joke they tweeted over a decade ago. No second chances, no reset button, their social life is done unless you’re a celebrity. An average person is unlikely to come back from it, forever shunned from their social groups.
What are we doing putting people like James Charles and Shane Dawson in the same conversation as Mr. Potato Head.
People like Charles and Dawson were proven to have done heinous acts, yet society still supports them. But at the same time, people stay quiet when a plastic potato that has been around since the 1950s gets canceled because it has the prefixes “Mr.” and “Mrs.” in front of it because it “promotes gender roles.”
Another example of this toxic culture is the NFL team formerly known as the Washington Redskins. Their 87-year-old name and logo were considered an offensive racial slur toward Native Americans, leading them to now be known as the Washington Commanders.
What about the other Indigenous mascots of these other various sports teams? How long will it take for them to get taken down?
Cancel culture taught us that people are not allowed to make mistakes or correct their mistakes. People need to make mistakes because how else are we supposed to learn that something we do is wrong? We learn this when we’re little.
If people realized everyone has a different opinion, so many wars would be stopped. People need to realize the world doesn’t revolve around them and respect the fact that everyone has an opinion, and they have the right to the First Amendment, freedom of speech.
It’s gotten to the point where people are in constant fear and feel like they need to watch their backs. People can’t say what they want on social media because people are too sensitive.
The world has more issues to deal with, like the war in Ukraine. Why do people focus so much of their attention on Eminem because of his “angry lyrics and profanity.” That’s who Eminem is. Are we canceling people for being who they are now?
Even NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers was canceled because he’s unvaccinated. So, are we canceling all unvaccinated people at this point? The way I see it, we’re only canceling people because they have a platform. If an absolute nobody did something terrible, they wouldn’t get canceled. People wouldn’t even care.
