Is Anyone REALLY "Cancelled"?

Is "cancelling" really doing us any good, or should we cancel the cancel culture?

Many people, especially rich and famous ones, have been “cancelled” in the last couple of years alone. JK Rowling for transphobic tweets (and in turn… JK Rowling cancelling Stephen King for supporting transgendered women), Ellen DeGeneres for allegedly having a toxic workplace culture, and Roseanne Barr for racial tweets-- just to name a few.

Celebrities are commonly “cancelled” by the public, more than likely because they are constantly in the public eye with a huge following. The bigger they are, the harder they fall it seems. And social media is quick to jump at an exposed throat.

It isn’t a surprise that someone with over a million followers on Twitter could be cancelled easier than a neighbour down the street, or someone you know personally. Not to mention, it’s much easier to be mean on the internet-- it’s something called the online disinhibition effect.

You don’t really know this person, so why should you care? Your life continues on like normal, you fall asleep at night and never have to think about the repercussions of your actions. Sometimes the person doesn’t even know they’ve been dragged through the mud until the entire world knows first, like the case of Justine Sacco.

The hashtag #HasJustineLanded was trending while the plane

was still in the air and Sacco, who barely had 170 followers

at the time, was none the wiser.

Now, while Sacco was fired from her job and faced much backlash, can the same be said about everyone who experiences being “cancelled”?

JK Rowling is still worth around 820 million euros, and while the Harry Potter books seem to have slowed in sales, it’s arguable that she’s still doing… well, just fine.

So with celebrities and other public figures usually being in the centre of cancel culture, does it really hold any merit? And while you can easily announce that someone has been cancelled online, is that where it should end?

If someone tweets or posts something insensitive, or racist, or xyz, should they be “cancelled”, thrown to the wolves and then forgotten about? Or should our goal lean more