'Jesus was killed because people didn't like what he was saying. So, could you call him the first celebrity victim of cancel culture ? ' , asked Philomena Cunk.
Cancel culture began long before the start of the internet. Of course back in those days, the quote on quote conclusion usually leads to death. And back in those days whatever controversial opinions you had wouldn't be known the masses much less worldwide unlike today.
But as time pass by and the world changes, technology has allowed us to have communication with pretty much anyone with the introduction of telegraph, phones and eventually the internet. The rise of internet and creation of social media would be what led to modern day cancel culture.
Cancel culture sounds great, on paper. After all the idea of boycotting something or someone for being inappropriate, misleading or generally being terrible for the public sounds great. After all why would anybody be subjected to such a thing. For instance, who would want to listen to someone to spread words of anarchy, racism or perhaps even fascism, after all these are what we are modern society would consider wrong. But unfortunately it is a double edge sword.
In the modern social media, it is unacceptable to have an opinion, unfortunately. It simply is. Because it is impossible to have an opinion about something without offending someone. Even if I say 'rape is bad' which itself is an universally accept fact, there would be at least one person saying so otherwise. It does not matter what my statement may be, it certainly does not matter if it is correct because there would be at least one person criticizing it so. It matter no longer how or why, but you are now offended and you need to vent, and you are going to be unreasonable.This is true on a lot of platforms, especially the blue bird twitter.
Today, twitter is now synonymous with cancel culture because there's always someone getting offended by something. While getting offended on something seems normal, after all even in the 1900's if a newspaper published something inappropriate or controversial, the newspaper would be flooded with angry people sending letters telling the publishers something along the lines of how much they dislike it. But twitter is a whole lot of hotpot of people looking to be offended by someone or something. Every twitter tweet has at least one person getting offended by said tweet. Unfortunately, this is not specific to twitter but almost every social site and twitter being a prime example. While being offended by something seems rather normal, it is the rather the actions made by the offended which makes it drastic.
Back when Facebook was still cool. Me being a high school teenager, I did a lot of dumb stuffs on it. Interestingly one of them was making dumb and troll comments, specifically the sounds of cheeks clapping, as unfunny as it is now it was hilarious then. The problem now is that those comments still exist, just a hundred fold worse. Making those comments on Facebook means nothing much to me then, after all nobody knows who I was and that in itself means I hold little to no accountability in real life. This is also true for today's social sites, after all I can make multiple accounts, all anonymous and being anonymous led to a lack accountability.
In real life, no sane person would stand up on one another for having a different opinions, nor would he make the person feel less than that of a man, much less threatened him for his opinions. Unless that person has a blonde bobcut hairstyle with sunglasses, then she's a you know what. Of course there may be circumstances to this scenario but under normal circumstances it's hard to find one who will disagree and get offended on anything simple. But this is not the situation online. In online circumstances, anything goes. Anything includes a series of racist, misogynistic, homophobic, facist to anything bad including death threats. After all, no ones know you you are so you rant all your hatred away online. It does not matter what issues your words will cause to whosoever is on the receiving end. You've done it and you probably will do it again.
One of the more well known unhinged places is game lobbies, specifically speaking 'CoD lobbies'. CoD lobbies were places where unhinged edgy teenager came together to have fun, by absolutely trash talking to everyone else on the lobbies. Racial slurs were the norms when one gets absolutely destroyed, then it follow by the usual 'I fucked your mum'. As terrible as they were, we never really meant those insults, they were more or less extreme vulgar thrash talks. Of course you can also chalk it up to kids being kids. However, it's hard to justify it when a grown up man mouthed slurs.
Going back to twitter, one of the most loud people are the alphabet people; the LGBTQ. They have a reputation on the internet, certain not a good reputation of being angry at everything that goes against their wishes. One such was scenario was the release of a video game; Hogwarts Legacy, one whose creator made a comment about her dissatisfaction with the one of the alphabet of the said community which resulted in them trying to cancel the video games and bashing anyone who wants to play the video game. Maybe it is hard to separate the art from the artist but it certainly is unreasonable to threaten anyone for wanting to play a game.
Among all the myriad of examples, the internet is simply a very unreasonable place in one way or the other, filled with unreasonable people. Perhaps this a major headache to a lot after all, it's bitter pill to swallow when one sees people acting like an absolute monster seemingly without a consequences. Someone can speak absolutely harsh words and slurs, make death threats and face little to no consequences. After all, what's the worst that will happen? Banning from the site? I can make a new account and profile and repeat in 10 minutes. It means nothing. Absolutely no repercussions.
In more ways than other, being on internet compared to reality is like having multiple or perhaps unlimited identities but it works perfectly fine. You can always move on to the other, just like making a new account. And it's hard to fix the situation and will probably never be fixed.