While they are designed to connect people around the world in a fun way, social media apps can actually be very toxic. Social media promotes different culture waves and trends that heavily influences its users and society. “Cancel culture” is a trend that is being abused on Twitter lately.
To be “cancelled” is when a person or company is exposed for their wrongdoings or past mistakes. You can normally see a famous icon get “cancelled” with the hashtag “#__________isoverparty.”
While “cancel culture” started off as a harmless way to expose racists, rapists, homophobes, and sexists, people are now abusing it causing defamation over the smallest things. It’s flooding everyone’s social media and bringing a lot of negativity and toxicity. It has become so ridiculous that Burger King was cancelled just a few days ago.
Via Faith Villanueva, an active Twitter user said, “Social media has definitely changed, in my opinion, for the negative. On places like Twitter and Instagram we have accounts that are dedicated to tearing down other people and ‘exposing’ celebrities. These accounts cause a lot of partisan issues and uncivil discourse amongst people in the comment sections and at the end of the day we have people who have never even met each other before that now have ‘problems’ with each other because of a social media ‘fight.’”
Another very active social media user, Khaaliyah Suggs, gives her take on this through a very different angle. “‘Cancel culture’ isn’t the real issue, ‘stan culture’ is.” ‘Stan culture’ is a trend that goes along ‘cancel culture’ where fans express their diehard love for an icon, which can also be very toxic. Khaaliyah elaborated saying, “In stan culture, the fans treat the person as a god-like figure that does no wrong. The issue with that is they are regular people and they make mistakes. In our everyday lives we don’t ‘cancel’ someone for their mistakes. We may be angry for a while, but then we choose to forgive that person or forget that person. Not send hateful messages and threaten their lives. Or bring up everything in their past.”
When asked about how she has been affected by “cancel culture” Pamela Mera said, “After cancel culture became a thing I have noticed I don’t post on social media as much, specifically Snapchat and Instagram. The reason for this is that I never know if what I’m posting is going to be offensive or negative to someone even though I would never have that intention. ‘Cancel culture’ now has added a worry that I never had before.”
Don’t forget there are ways to combat “cancel culture.” If you feel that your feed is flooding with hateful spam from this trend you can always report it. Don’t be afraid to take this to Twitters Community Guidelines.
Caption: Tweet that got Burger King “cancelled.”
Source: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-8367807/Taylor-Swift-fans-Burger-King-Party-trending-Twitter.html
