Screeches from The Underground: A Commentary On Cancel Culture
Cancel Culture is the most dangerous things lurking and slithering through your social media feeds, most dangerous since Facebook’s Russian Bots and Right-Wing ads, except now these creatures are not just automated, given instructions, but are people with an actual belief system and, if you want a chance of success, you might want to begin tiptoeing on the ice because, with these people, it can all be gone before you can blink.
Cancel culture is like when a defendant shows up in the courtroom, his accusation is read out, and then the Jury are sent to deliberate. There is no concern for facts, but the accusation itself which floats around in speculation is already a concrete fact to them. It very much relies on the powers of hear-say, and the deep, worrying political beliefs that lay underneath. When a celebrity is cancelled now, you’ll just see K-Pop Stans fluttering and spamming with videos of their favourite dancers and singers and, now, it’s people saying that there is just K-Pop fans posting the videos, and that they don’t know why the celebrity is cancelled. Usually, these will come and go, but before all of that there was a serious concern about the damage Cancel Culture can do to one’s career.
The latest to call out this circus of childish absurdity filled with crazed fans giving those who attended an old Beatles concert a run for their money, is President Barack Obama.
“There is this sense sometimes of, ‘the way of me making change is to be as judgmental as possible about other people.’ And that’s enough,”
He’s absolutely right, in the way that no change will be made through judging others and completely eviscerating them due to one mistake they might have made like, what? Thirty years ago? Of course there are exceptions, such as Kevin Spacey, who probably only signed up for Baby Driver because the word Baby is in it, and he deserves to be blacklisted. Hell, it had such a bad effect even I was shocked. Ansel Elgort and Targon Egerton’s ‘Billionaire Boys Club’ which only featured Kevin Spacey, made a whopping one-hundred and twenty-six dollars worldwide, which is just how much a story from the past can affect a career. We’re lucky the Kevin Spacey story is true, because if it wasn’t? That’s a man’s living dissipated, flushed down with the shits.
There’s also rampant hypocrisy hiding within the Cancel Culture craze. Best example, we could say, is “comedian” Lena Dunham. Dunham has gone through her fair share of controversies, including the time where two sides of the political spectrum raged at her after she wrote in her memoir how she had spread open her little sister’s vagina to see what was inside. There was also the time where she said “BELIEVE ALL WOMEN!” and then, in true Lena Dunham fashion, did not believe all women.
Murray Miller, writer for girls, was accused of sexual assault by the actress Aurora Perrineau. Now, what do you think Lena Dunham (BELIEVEALLWOMEN) did in response? You probably already know because it’s a two year old story, but nevertheless she didn’t believe Aurora. Lena Dunham has a huge part in activism sometimes but I have never seen a person more loathed by those she hates and those she supports. She’s the irritating child swapped between the Left and Right when the two get a nasty divorce, a gross amalgamation of prejudice, contradiction, and hateful ignorance.
Cancel Culture is what happens when people begin to think that people who make mistakes are terrible people. It is also what happens when people think they have never made a mistake, and it creates this terrifying god complex where these people, hiding behind Twitter shields, throw their tomatoes and cry when one is thrown back. Somebody apart of Cancel Culture as a soldier would be very willing to shoot, but when shot would jump up madly and yell: ‘HEY WHY’D YA SHOOT ME!?’
It doesn’t take much to know that the people who serve this harsh, Old Testament punishment are usually radical fans of a certain artist. I guess the easy example is the Word-Militia of K-Pop Stans that hurl threats and insults, but it’s even more than that. The thing is, cancelling someone is fine until the person getting cancelled is the one that you devote your money, time, and even faith to. Say it was Ariana Grande, being accused of sexual assault. Now not only would that fly under the radar because there would be such a vicious push-back, such a mad riot on the battlefield of the trending page, that it would be forgotten about quickly. They’d make it go away, defending their God to the death like a nice little martyr.
As of writing this, I think it’s safe to say that Cancel Culture is passed it’s time. It’s a shrivelled old bean of a phenomenon sitting in the Internet Old Folks home, with Vine and Kik and Gawker. There’s not much to say anymore, apart from that it’s still kind of there and it needs to be stomped out immediately, given a healthy dose of bug-spray, and forgotten about forever. Of course it won’t be, and the most we can do is take it as a joke, let it run it’s monthly course, and then go home to our scandalous Royals and crooked Presidents, and wallow in that sadness instead.
