#CancelCultureMustFall

Wikipedia defines cancel culture (also known as call-out culture) as a modern form of ostracism in which someone is thrust out of social or professional circles - whether it be online, on social media, or in person. Those subject to this ostracism are said to have been "cancelled". The expression "cancel culture" has mostly negative connotations and is commonly used in debates on free speech and censorship. I have previously written about the need to exercise great care regarding the opinions that we put in the public domain arguing that as much as there is freedom of speech, there is no freedom after speech. The focus of this post is to give my take on the cancel culture which I feel is a bad thing which we should not be caught up in.

Bianca Schoombee She was touted as being among one of the favourites to be crowned Miss South Africa 2020 until racist and body shaming tweets that she posted when she was fourteen surfaced. A #Biancamustfall hashtag then followed and she had to apologise, withdraw from the beauty peagant and delete her twitter account. It did not end there, the modelling agency that she was signed with went on to cancel her contract.

Chrissy Teigen Having been a social media darling with a following of 13.5 million on twitter and 35 million on Instagram, her world crumbled when she was accused of cyber bulling in May this year. Nasty messages that she sent to then teenager Courtney Stodden in 2011 surfaced and sparked a public outcry. The result was that Macy's dropped her product lines due to customer complains, she stepped down from a previously planned voiceover role in a Netflix comedy and also from Safely, her home cleaning brand with Kris Jenner.

The 2021 Tokyo Olympics The show director of the Olympics opening ceremony was dismissed, one day before the event was due to start. The reason being that a footage of the former comedian from the 1990s had emerged in which he appeared to make jokes about the Holocaust. This was 23 years ago!

Again at the same Olympics, a composer quit the team creating the ceremony after it emerged that he had bullied classmates with disabilities at school!

Claira Janover "The next person who has the sheer nerve to tell me All Lives Matter... Imma stab you. "Imma stab you and while you're bleeding out, imma show you my paper cut and say, "my cut matters too."' - this was her trying to make her point in a tick tok video that went viral in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. What started as a mere tik tok video ended up being on the limelight on Fox News, New York Post and Daily Mail. Claira, a Harvard graduate was fired from her dream job with one of the big 4 accounting firms just a month after joining them due to public outcry. She also received death and rape threats.

He who has no sin... Looking at the few examples cited above, it cannot be denied that these people may have committed some wrong acts. Actually some of them said pretty nasty stuff. However, was cancelling them the solution? I don't think so. I love the biblical story of a woman who was brought to Jesus having been caught in the act of adultery. The penalty would have been death by stoning. To the people who were carrying stones ready to stone, Jesus said the words "He who is without sin, let him cast the first stone at her" and the story ended with the no one stoning the woman. This is because we all fall short. We have all done or said bad stuff which we are not proud of. We all make mistakes. The only difference is that our bad stuff or opinions are not in the public domain. When we understand this, we will choose the path of forgiveness and not stoning.

We grow There are certain views that we used to hold which have evolved over time. This may be because we are now mature or we got more enlightened with time. As much as ignorance is not a defence, can one suffer now due to acts committed or opinions of many years ago (of course this excludes unlawful acts)? In some cases, one may have educated themselves later in life and no longer hold the same views.

Correction over punishment The mob justice of the cancel culture is to punish the supposed offender. This involves putting pressure on the employers to have the person fired, or have sponsors cancel sponsorship deals or partnerships. This is meant to inflict the deepest form of pain on the person. Unfortunately, corporates are quick to succumb to pressure for the fear of being cancelled themselves. Why is punishment the only option and not education or correction? Why is an acknowledgement of the wrong and an apology not good enough to let go of the wrong? Why is satisfaction only gained when the person being cancelled is down and out? Will this culture not find itself in our personal relationships?

Things change There are jokes, opinions and social norms which were acceptable many years ago but not today. This is because things change. To define someone in the context of what they said decades ago doesn't seem right. One thing we can be certain about is that some of the jokes that we may laugh at today will be offensive in years to come. Opinions that we don't find fault in today will be frowned upon as disgusting in the future, such is the nature of the changing dynamics of our societies.

Free speech What cancel has done is to stifle free speech. People are now scared to express their thoughts for fear of being cancelled. Everyone has to be politically correct. Yet, it is in the expressing and debating of different ideas that the society is enriched and those in the wrong can see the light. One may argue that celebrities tend to have influence over their followers and therefore what they say matters. As much as that is true, the point that they are humans too should not be missed.

No way out Cancel culture is here to stay. Many people within the social media circles are quick to catch up on the hashtag train without giving it much thought. Companies are also not willing to lose business due to association with a person who has been condemned in the court of public opinion. Again, as I have said previously, all we can do is to think twice about how much of ourselves we put out there - because the internet has long memory.