When if cancel culture being deliberately manipulated?

Vicky

The term “cancel culture” may be unfamiliar for most of us. However, I am sure that most of us have at least taken part in this culture once. It refers to that someone is being “cancelled” because he or she did or said something offensive. The most vulnerable kind of people to be the victim in this culture is usually people with power and impact such as celebrity. It is because someone being cancelled means that he or she are not allowed to appear in any forms of media, so the power and the impact of the person would be deprived. For example, the person would be removed from shows or even advertisements. He is no longer an influential person culturally.

Personally, I agree the notion of this culture- punishing the misbehaved person especially those with high socioeconomic status. For this kind of people, fining is not a punishment at all as they have a lot of money. The real punishment is destroying their career path and taking away their means of earning money: fame and reputation. It is easy for these people to hide their wrongdoings. In the past, even this kind of people misbehave, the public usually forget it very soon. Thus, no significant consequences for the wrongdoings. Also, normal people actually cannot punish this kind of people. Therefore, cancel culture actually provide a channel for the public to monitor and regulate the public figure and in turn remind the public figure to be careful of their every single act and word.

However, it turns bad when it is being abused. Originally, the person is being cancelled because he did or said something offensive. However, people abuse it by cancelling people only because they have an opposite opinion. Opposite opinion is not necessary to be wrong or offensive. The abused situation leads to freedom of speech is being deprived and it may eventually become bullying. It takes away the most precious thing in the democratic society. the public figure will become what the public wants them to be. It is like the robot manufacturing factory- every robot is the same. For example, if the majority political opinion in the society is democratic political party, people who support the opposite party will be cancelled or boycotted. They will be removed from the current job opportunity, commercial activity, brand sponsorship and internet impact. The society becomes a society that is unable to accept diverse opinions.

Recently, I discovered a problem that some people would use this phenomenon to vilify some public figure. In recent years, many Korean celebrities are being cancelled one by one because they did something bad or unacceptable such as bullying or compensated dating in the past. However, there are some cases that the celebrities are vilified by someone who hate this celebrity. For example, the Korean actor Kim Seon Ho was getting into the scandal that he forced his ex-girlfriend to make an abortion. However, it then revealed that the fact is distorted by his ex-girlfriend.

I believe that if the culture can be utilized and not being abused, the culture brings more advantages than disadvantages. It can also prevent the influential people from abusing their power and impact.