People in western society often debate about whether cancel culture holds people accountable for their actions or punishes people for having different opinions. Cancel culture happens when people remove support from certain figures because they believe the views or actions of the people they cancel are offensive or morally wrong, according to dictionary.com. This practice can sometimes lead to excessive punishments for people with controversial views or statements.
One example of cancel culture is the backlash against J.K. Rowling’s controversial comments about the transgender community. Rowling voiced concerns about the health effects of transitioning and the effect of transgender people’s access to women’s areas on women’s rights and safety; in return, people advocated for boycotting Rowling’s books and the upcoming Harry Potter TV show for her opinions, with some of them even sending her death threats, according to an article in Glamour. Although people should be able to share their opinions on Rowling’s viewpoints, unchecked negativity can snowball into increasingly harsh reactions. Sending someone death threats over unpopular opinions is completely unacceptable behavior. People should be mindful of their activity online to make sure that their responses are not excessively harmful.
Kevin Hart, a famous comedian, also suffered from cancel culture. When he was announced as the 2019 Academy Awards host, Twitter users brought up his previous jokes about potentially having a gay son from almost a decade prior and argued that Hart should not be allowed to host the Oscars, according to a Billboard article. Hart stepped down from his hosting duties and apologized for his jokes multiple times, the article continued. While the motives of convincing Hart to apologize for harmful things he said are admirable, causing him to lose his position as an awards host was too harsh. His jokes happened several years before he received backlash for them. It is unfair to punish people with such severe consequences for trivial things that happened years or even decades ago without consideration for how these individuals could have changed.
While cancel culture begins with the morally appealing motive of correcting people’s wrongdoings, it can often overstep and excessively punish, humiliate, and ruin people’s livelihoods for simply saying something insensitive or having an unpopular opinion. It’s important to be mindful of how our social media presence can affect other people and to be able to distinguish between calls for justice and punishments for people who “deserve it”.