America & Cancel Culture: a Love/Hate Relationship

By Chris Dailey
    It’s another week day and 19-year-old Dixie D’Amelio and her younger sister, Charli, are eating dinner in a video with other social media stars and the D’Amelio parents.
    As a joke, their private chef, who is on the joke alongside the D’Amelio family, give Dixie a snail to eat, saying it’s a mushroom to get her to eat it, as they know she is prone to freak out when she eats certain foods.
    Dixie throws up after she eats the snail and millions of people online cancel the D’Amelios in the next wave of what is known as ‘cancel culture.’
    Cancel culture (or call-out culture) is a modern form of ostracism in which someone is thrust out of social or professional circles -- either online on social media, in the real world, or both. Those who are subject to such ostracism are said to be "canceled."
    Following the snail event, Charli, who was on her way to reaching 100 million TikTok followers, lost over 3 million.
    Eventually, the ‘cancellation process’ came to a halt and people moved on. It is a prime example of what cancel culture can do. And in many cases, it can lead to even more severe consequences.
       Sometimes, cancel culture is good, as stars who do bad things are faced with consequences for doing so. 
    “Personally, I think cancel culture has pros and cons,” said Wall High School junior Micah Rubin. “On one hand, it makes people more conscientious about the things they say online. However, cancel culture can have negative implications as people’s lives and careers can be ruined over rather insignificant posts and comments.”
    Another prime recent example of the cancel culture in effect is Ken Jennings, who was set to become the next host of “Jepoardy!” after the passing of longtime host, Alex Trebek. Jennings had an old inappropriate tweet that was found, people “canceled” him and questions were raised as if he should be the host.
    Weeks later, the story died down, but Jennings was certainly worried for the few weeks he was being stared at by the public eye for his past comments.
    “It’s overused, for some things I guess it could be good for some things, but getting canceled for something said years ago when everyone wasn’t so sensitive is outrageous,” said Wall freshman Matt Krokosz.
    The majority of students when asked seemed to not be in favor of cancel culture. It can change your life, most times for the worse.
    Cancel culture is certainly making headlines across the Internet day by day and every month a new celebrity  is canceled, some for severe sins, others for minuscule things.
​    The internet is a place where everything can be kept and tracked, almost like a giant storage unit of all of your past words. If anybody can take a lesson from the acts of cancel culture it’s to be careful of what you say and do as it can, and most times will, come back to bite you.