Online shaming and cancel culture: how people take social media too far and how we can combat it

The digital age has arguably been the most influential shift in communication ever. Social media has become a vital part of everyone’s day to day life. People live vicariously through their devices, consuming content and looking for the next thing to like, comment or share. It has allowed for healthy discussion around sensitive topics, given marginalised communities a voice, given us the ability to share news instantly, and has started ground-breaking movements such as #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo. It’s allowed for people to see what’s going on all over the globe and raise awareness.

However, it has also become a breeding ground for hate, entitlement, miseducation and shaming. Shaming is one of the internets major issues and comes in many forms, many of them discreet. Users are now able to share their opinions with a few clicks, but hiding behind a screen means they seldom think that their words have consequences or repercussions. Celebrities such as Meghan Markle are subjected to heavy amounts of abuse online, from the general public and the media; which is also seen as one of the reasons why former Love Island presenter Caroline Flack tragically committed suicide.

The death of Caroline Flack sparked the hashtag #BeKind, which was shown on screen before and after winter Love Island episodes from this year after Flack’s passing. Movements like these are one of the ways people show their support online. Many
movements and trends that circulate social media tend to be positive with positive effects.

The #MeToo movement was originally founded in 2006 but became increasingly
popular after sexual assault allegations were made against big time Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein in 2017. This led to several women coming forward and speaking up about their own experiences with the mogul, and other people. Amid the coronavirus pandemic, #ClapForCarers trends on Twitter every Thursday in the UK as people show solidarity and support for our frontline healthcare workers.

However, freedom of speech still applies - in fact, Twitter’s rules and policies states: “defending and respecting the user’s voice is one of our core values at Twitter. This value is a two-part commitment to freedom of expression and privacy.” So most
of the time, accounts that are bullying and shaming are not shut down.

An interesting trend and form of shaming that circulates the web, Twitter particularly, is cancel culture and it often comes in hashtag form as well.

A recent example is the hashtag ‘#kimkardashianisoverparty’ after Taylor Swift had revealed she was lied to by Kardashian and her husband, Kanye West about a lyric in one of West’s songs. It is the idea that anyone who does or says something offensive, or that is deemed immoral, is effectively “cancelled”, meaning all support for this person should be ceased. This normally applies to celebrities and people in the public eye. The examples are endless: Jussie Smollett for supposedly lying about a homophobia-driven attack and Chris Brown for his very public abusive relationship with Rihanna. This applies
to the digital world and internet stars too - James Charles was said to have tricked straight men into thinking they are gay and Logan Paul filmed the corpse of a man who had hung himself and posted his amused reaction. The most infamous may be R.Kelly, who was revealed to have led a paedophilic sex ring and a skin-crawling documentary details stories from survivors of his abuse.

But time has proved over and over that “cancelled” is a throwaway term and it rarely works. Kevin Spacey was a hot topic for a couple of weeks and was removed from the cast of Netflix show House of Cards, after it was revealed that he had made sexual advances to actor Anthony Rapp when Rapp was 14. This triggered a surge in allegations as more than 30 men came forward against the actor. Spacey attempted to deflect the situation by coming out as gay. Although the damage to Spacey’s career has been permanent, people eventually found a new thing to talk about or another celebrity to “cancel”.

Similarly, Kanye West was supposedly “cancelled” in 2018 for telling an interviewer that 400 years of slavery seemed like a choice on the part of black people and was also deemed problematic for quite overtly supporting US President Donald Trump, sporting a MAGA hat. Yet, his most recent album Jesus Is King racked up almost 200 million streams and he remains one of rap’s most beloved artists.

So, the fact of the matter is, people still listen to Kanye West and Chris Brown and they still watch movies starring Kevin Spacey and still watch Louis C.K.’s stand-ups, a comedian who too had sexual assault allegations against him. R. Kelly is still named the King of R’n’B by many. So does merely saying someone is “cancelled” actually mean
people will stop supporting? How do you cancel a person?

The thing about trends is that it is difficult to not participate. You get sucked into the mob mentality, like when you realised the whole world was watching Tiger King
and tweeting about it, and you feel FOMO - fear of missing out. You want to get involved when you see a trend circulating social media, especially if you agree with the fact that said celebrity should be “cancelled”. Why would you want to listen to music by a paedophile or watch a movie starring a sexual assailant? I too am guilty of doing this - I once reprimanded some bartenders at my student union for playing R. Kelly’s ‘Ignition’.

This trend is definitely interesting and raises the question as to whether it is possible to separate the art from the artist and what cancel culture says about us.

Ayishat Akanbi’s piece for Huck magazine titled ‘Cancel culture: when celebrity worship goes wrong’ highlights that it reflects our entitlement and that we put “talent on a moral purity pedestal.” “What I meant by that is that we act like being talented and virtuous are synonymous,” Akanbi explains, “I don’t assume that liking someone’s art means the creator is inherently likeable. We seem to think personal flaws are eradicated by fame.”

Akanbi says cancel culture has been apart of humanity for thousands of years. “It’s the modern day witch hunt, public hanging, and public shaming,” she says. We have long used these methods to try and keep people in order. Cancel culture is simply the digital way of keeping people in check.

Evidently, Akanbi believes it is possible to separate the art from the artist - she does not have to like a person in order to like what they create. We do seem to think that
celebrities have to be good people because we do not actually see them as our equals and we place them at a higher level than ourselves due to money, status and power. We see them as representatives for the general public, expect them to share our views and expect them to use their platform and voices to do good. But it is well-known that expectation often leads to disappointment. And who are we to tell them how to use their status and influence and what to do?

“If we saw them as real people, then ignorant opinions or questionable conduct wouldn’t be so surprising,” she says. Personally, when someone posts an opinion that I disagree with, I tend to unfollow and move on with my day. An old school friend was being chauvinistic about their raging homophobia on Snapchat, so I simply removed them as a friend. But this can hit celebrities particularly hard because people believe that a stranger’s words would not affect them and people rarely forget what they have done or said. “We have an unhealthy relationship with celebrities precisely because we do not see them as human, but a manifestation of our ideals,” says Akanbi.

Nowadays, thanks to the internet, we know more about anyone than we have ever known and we have the means and tools to stalk people’s lives. Ammunition to cancel someone can often be buried in their old tweets and unearthing them has also caught on as a trend. An example is Kevin Hart’s old homophobic tweets from 2011; they resurfaced after news that he would be hosting last year’s Oscars and consequently cost him the job.

As well as homophobic insults, many of these tweets contain racial slurs and are from the early 2010’s. Akanbi describes this trend as “miserable” and says it is “inspired by the need to humiliate more than it’s about informing the public of something potentially dangerous.” It is almost as if people feel they get to decide whether someone is worthy of having a platform or reaching fame because we as the consumer will get them paid - a sense of entitlement. Often when these tweets resurface, the person in question issues out an apology but it is never good enough. What it does is eradicate any idea that a person has grown, changed or feels remorse about saying those things when the world
was less PC and they were less mature.

Entitlement is exactly what Akanbi believes it creates in people. “Having ‘access’ to some of their thoughts and images seemingly makes us think we have some stake in their lives,” she says, “We don’t of course. And famous people aren’t obligated to share our views.”

Akanbi says people are so quick to cancel because the act of cancelling is not about the celebrity. “It’s an advertisement of one’s morality,” she says, “it is letting strangers know what you will and won’t stand for. A display of one’s commitment to justice perhaps.” People have never been shy of sharing an opinion so when it is considered morally correct and they are praised for being “woke”, it just makes them share more. “Cancel culture is not perhaps us trying to reduce what is wrong in general, but what is wrong to us - it seems to be more personal."

The spiral of silence theory is also interesting to consider here. Starting in Germany by
Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann, pioneer of public opinion research, the spiral of silence theory highlights that people are pressured to have a certain opinion to fit in with the status quo and stay silent on unpopular or controversial opinions out of fear of being isolated. So do celebrities get cancelled because they don’t stay silent on certain issues and are therefore isolated? The social climate on the internet is ever changing, so one never actually knows what is acceptable and what is not. Akanbi says that although there is a pressure upon celebrities to always say and do the right thing, that pressure is now put upon “anyone who dares to have an opinion online.” Following on from this, people may not want to stick up for those they do not agree with the “cancellation” of, in fear
that they might be next.

However, cancel culture goes farther than the realms of Twitter. Vine’s successor and
younger sibling is popular app TikTok, which has seen a surge in users since the world has
been on lockdown, but for young teens, this has been their social media platform of choice for a while. What used to be musical.ly, TikTok allows users to create and share videos that are up to a minute long and as with any other platform, users have the capacity to gain a large following. 15-year-old Coco Blossom is a regular user and watcher of TikTok and tells me that people get cancelled on TikTok too, primarily for using racial slurs. Users she mentioned include @emmuhlu, whose real name in unknown and Chase Hudson who goes by @lilhuddy. “@Emmuhlu was super popular and then a video was found from her past of her shouting the n-word at other drivers and she got a lot of hate,” Blossom says, “Chase also said it but got way less hate and is still quite popular and more of a joke now.”

When I asked her why Hudson got less hate, she told me she thinks it might have something to do with the fact that he was dating another very famous TikToker at the time, highlighting that status may give you some sort of leverage.

Blossom however does say that cancelling someone on TikTok does actually work and “definitely stops people from being supported most of the time” but believes it can be harmful if one has changed and regrets their words.

Shayoon Mendeluk is 33-year-old transformational facilitator, mother, philanthropist and health and wellbeing influencer, meaning she’s extremely passionate about spreading positivity. Her son, now two-years-old, was delivered at home in a natural birth and Mendeluk likes to share her journey as well as images of her breastfeeding. This, paired with her South Asian background which is traditionally conservative, means she is subjected to lots of shaming online.

“I’ve experienced all kinds of online shaming because of the way that I choose to show my breastfeeding journey,” she explains, “I get a lot of hate from certain religious groups and also from mothers who think I’m just posting posing with my child as if it’s a stunt.” Mendeluk says she has received comments saying she is just looking for likes, has been named a “slut” or “hoe” and has people saying she just wants to be naked. “It’s also linked back to people that think breastfeeding is shameful, feeding your baby in public is shameful, and that anyone that shows their breasts is a slut.”

At first, it bothered Mendeluk as she was a new mum and so she was still getting used to the ropes, but she has now learnt how to deal with the negativity. “I think that people who shame have a lot of interior work that has not been done and a lot of women who shame me don’t even have children or haven’t breastfed,” she says. She is not quite sure of the reasoning behind the shaming and speculates it could be jealousy or guilt that these women weren’t able to breastfeed themselves. “I never really know what it is - I don’t know what people confidently carry around, but I know it’s because they haven’t dealt with something that’s going on with themselves.”

What she has noticed though, is that her response to the comments can dissipate the negativity people feel towards her. “I’ve noticed if I reply with love instead of attacking the person, it goes a long way and I usually get an apology at the end, because I really try to understand the other person,” she explains. Before, she would be upset and her team, fans and friends would attack whoever was shaming her, but she never felt satisfied with that response because there would be no resolution. She has now decided to help these people, break them down and “get to the core of why they’re an asshole.”

“I really think that bullies and people who shame online also hide behind a profile which has no following and is private,” Mendeluk says, “they have nothing else going on in their lives.”

She believes in order to move forward, people need to step up for each other, especially women and people from her culture. “Use your voice because no one speaks up and I think it’s the same thing,” she explains, “if you don’t say anything, they’re going to
continue to do it and it needs to get shut down.”

“We live in a new earth now,” says Mendeluk, “if we don’t evolve, we will actually die.” She believes it is time for people speak about what is important, what needs to change and go ahead and make that change. The people that do not cooperate do not matter because “they will get left behind.” “We’re in a new earth of transforming, healing and changing the old systems, old patterns and old conditioning. None of that will exist if you have a pure heart and pure intentions - if you hit everything with compassion and love.”

Kineta Kelsall is Global Social Trainer at Jellyfish agency and too believes in Mendeluk’s point that people who shame online have issues. “Ridiculing someone isn’t going to achieve anything and that person does have feelings,” she explains, “I think the people
partaking have mental health problems, are lonely or have low self esteem and that’s why they’re actively participating in this mob culture.” Kelsall says the act of shaming celebrities is a way for people to feel better about themselves and describes sharing negative content as a “dopamine hit.”

“Social media activity does have that similar feeling, that rush,” she says. Like Akanbi,
she too believes social media has created a sense of entitlement. “People feel like they
can say whatever they want to whoever they want,” says Kelsall, “which I think is
quite scary and is almost free speech being abused.” She uses Caroline Flack’s passing
as an example to explain that there is a mob mentality on the internet and therefore
people are not conscious of the impact of their words, because there are thousands
of others who share their opinion. She too believes that what Flack read online contributed to her suicide. Kelsall says that she thinks cancel culture works depending on
the amount of influence the person has, similar to Blossom’s point above. Chase
Hudson did not suffer too much criticism perhaps because of his high profile TikTok
relationship but on the other hand, following Little Mix’s Perrie Edwards and ex One
Directioner Zayn Malik’s breakup, Edwards’ fans ridiculed Malik a lot.

“Back in the day, if you had an opinion you had nowhere to put it,” she says, “I think
where cancel culture has come from and how it’s grown is because social media is
more accessible.” She goes on to explain that although cancel culture has derived
from celebrity culture, it goes further than that. “I think there’s a form of shaming that
exists on a more granular level,” Kelsall says, “amongst peers and the general public.
I think that’s the most damaging.”

 It is important to consider how the culture of shaming celebrities online can have knock-on effects on social media culture in general, and so on to ‘ordinary people’. Blossom tells me that TikTok user @dnjsjsjwnwnskjs, formerly @420bandobaby, is Beatrice Gove, daughter of Cabinet Minister Michael Gove. Blossom explains that Gove is subject to a lot of hate due to her father being a Conservative party member.

While Blossom no longer supports TikTokers @emmuhlu and @lilhuddy, she believes Gove does not deserve to be “cancelled”. “Although I don’t agree with her father’s views, it doesn’t mean she has the same as his,” she says. The thing is, she also cannot help that her father is a disliked politician yet people believe she’s responsible and ridicule her.

Kelsall says you can keep things positive if you approach them well and accept that not everyone is going to be like you and this is proven by Mendeluk deciding to help the people who shame her, which she says leads to her getting an apology 99% of the time. “If you approach it in an open-minded, educational way, you’re going to get a better response and following,” says Kelsall.

Sharing opinions and free speech on social media does have its positives. But online shaming is something we created; and now have the responsibility to shut it down and encourage positive conversation. Social media is a positive place to be, provided it is used positively. We must understand behaviour that could be deemed too aggressive in face-to-face encounters has similar effects online. The digital world is not that far from the real world.