Cancel culture instills fear deep inside us. Each time I find myself posting about something political or otherwise controversial on my social media, very clearly defining what I believe, there’s always an inkling of doubt and worry in the back of my mind.
“What if people take this the wrong way?”
“Is this too controversial to post about?”
Often, I take it down.
Often, I wonder why individuality is becoming devalued.
Often, I hear whispers in the halls of people talking about what someone said in class, or what they didn’t say, criticizing them and dubbing them as “problematic.”
Especially as a journalist, I’m constantly doubting myself when I want to speak out through writing. Not only does my writing reach an unpredictable audience, but people from my daily lives have complete access to everything I publish — it’s not something I can hide from.
Cancel culture doesn’t only apply to huge online presences, followings or fame. It affects all of us. That hesitation you feel when you want to speak up in class — that’s fear of being seen as “offensive” and gaining dislike by others. Cancel culture is the most brutal modern form of social ostracism.
Nowadays, it’s so normalized to be afraid to voice your own opinion. Recognizing that this is not something that progresses society, but regresses it, is how to put ourselves on the path to regain the desire for uniqueness.
In modern social settings, it’s hard not to feel the need to walk on thin ice and be aware of what the people around you perceive as misconduct.
The nature of social media promotes social conformity with no room to stray from the path of what’s socially acceptable; unique personas are becoming increasingly sparse. Freedom of expression is a key example of what cancel culture imposes on.
The 21st century isn’t the first example of public shaming: medieval Europe and Puritan colonies also practiced harsh forms of punishment for perceived wrongdoing.
The scarlet letter is a term that entered our language from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1850 novel, “The Scarlet Letter.” In the novel, the protagonist, Hester Prynne, is forced to wear a red letter A on her clothing to represent her act of adultery. In actual colonial America, Puritan colonies used a variety of letters to represent acts of sin: “B” was worn for blasphemy, “D” for drunkenness and “I” for incest. In Massachusetts, a woman was whipped and her clothing branded with the letter “B” for committing an act considered blasphemy. The punishment was public, with the intent of bringing excessive shame upon the woman.
By weaponizing personal belief, cancel culture thrives on implying the necessity of conformity to a single, rigid moral perspective.
On the track that society is on, it won’t take long until holding yourself to morals loses its purpose — erasing individuality and devaluing genuineness. The quality of individual thinking will start to ebb away. Diversity of thought and opinion is what fuels, especially, the world of journalism. If every writer were afraid of offending someone or being “too problematic,” so much of the magic and truth of journalism would wither and start to become unoriginal. The ability to voice our individuality is what this country was originally built on — it’s a privilege to be unique.
