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Students are experiencing an uncontrolled version of what had been “cancel culture” as of early 2020 following the development of social media. Its spoilage started when people began to abuse cancellation by shaming or rejecting anyone and everyone for their differing opinions.

With time, cancel culture has earned itself two clear definitions, the first is a complete withdrawal of support from a public figure because of some act they committed. In other words, Cancel Culture also refers to the public shaming of someone for an opinion they made at some point in time. Sophomore Hester Gavin provided his take on the second definition.  

“Trying to make everyone hate what you hate,” Gavin said. “Just because you don’t like a person’s statement and you don’t like the person.”  

TikTok is a platform that’s been constantly brought up by many students for the disputes users have on the app. Junior Ava Smith had decided on a few apps that present the most cancellations among users. 

“TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat would be the top three”, Smith said.

Junior Tanner Daniels has seen this problem, from users’ comments on his posts, on apps like TikTok and Instagram. 

“If you posted online there’s always someone to disagree with you”, Daniels said. “I was talking about my car online and I got hundreds of people that loved it and hundreds of people that hated it so it completely depends on the person.” 

Cancel Culture used to have better motives. Daniels is aware of its previous viability for groups. 

“It was a really good thing,” Daniels said. “It was people trying to bring light to stuff that certain people had said.” 

There existed this one women’s movement called #MeToo, which used Cancel Culture to crack down on those who had abused women. #MeToo provided support for women and a sense of connection toward harassment victims.

However, Cancel Culture has always appeared to have some strong negatives to its practice. Smith considers the idea to be harsh. Because of this, cancel culture doesn’t allow the suspects to defend themselves and eliminates the possibility of redemption for the accused.

 “There’s more of a sense of hate behind it and putting other people down,” Ava said. “I feel like that’s the main purpose of it, just for someone having a different opinion than someone else.”  

Cancel culture makes it all the more difficult to share opinions and ideas, given the chance of excessive backlash from another user. Daniels believes the strong retaliation toward different viewpoints could result from other users’ egos. Therefore, many users will view any form of attack on their opinion, as an attack on them.

“People identify and associate their identity with their own opinion,” Daniels said. “So they get offended when people disagree.”  

The arguments normally stem from what’s popular among users. Smith listed the three topics that tend to bring out stubbornness in people. 

“I feel like most of it would be political opinions, or over musical artists or sports players,” Smith said.