The Currency in Cruelty: How Cancel Culture Risks Becoming Bullying
I have a small scar on my left eyelid that stretches up across my eyebrow. I’ve had this scar for most of my life, and for years, I was missing parts of my eyebrow hair as it healed, making it more clearly visible. By now, at 22 years old, its faded into something no one would notice without mention, and the hair has mostly grown back. As with anyone riddled with previously scraped knees and faint scar tissue tattoos would know, it became nothing more than a brief story in the small-talk repertoire.
You see, since almost the first day of elementary school, I was severely bullied, singled-out, and physically assaulted by my classmates. The stories are distant, yet seemingly endless. From being given fake birthday invitations, to having recess toys thrown at me, I was seemingly the easy target for many of my peers’ earliest cruelties. I often stayed friends with people who would abuse, harass, and physically assault me simply due to the fact that they would still talk to me. Desperate for interaction, and acceptance from anyone, led me to staying in these toxic relationships for years. This is something I have spent many years unlearning, working through the memories and experiences, and still do to this day.
Bullying In Connection To Cancel Culture
These troubles usually don’t escape people once they log onto their social media accounts, and often, can even grow more rampant. Behind the anonymity of a screen, folks more prone to bullying tactics are given an opportunity to exacerbate their cruelty to levels they would never reach while in person.
In a 2019 article with KQED by Lauren Farrar, this phenomenon was described as The Online Disinhibition Effect, a researched pattern of behavior that concludes that most people have lowered inhibitions while interacting online.
“When people act meaner online it can lead to hostile online environments. This is what researchers call ‘toxic disinhibition.’ Conversely, when people open up more freely online than in person– they can often feel more connected to online users, which creates a supportive online environment. Researchers call this ‘benign disinhibition.’” (Farrar). The spectrum of empathy can swing either way, as Farrar states, and often creates a polarizing and dizzying divide between “haters” and “fans”. This black-and-white thinking only further pushes these ideas of totality in intention while online, and with that totality, there comes the negative side of the spectrum: cruelty and harassment.
This isn’t to say that people are unaware of their behavior entirely, or simply blinded by their emotional reactions in the moment. This is true some of the time, as in all likelihood, we may all have been the overly-emotional debater online at one point or another. However, there is an existing and further emerging culture of viciousness, rooted in the pretense of “edgy humor”.
A kind of “cool kids club” of people named (more aptly) as “trolls” have been a part of internet culture for as long as the internet has been around. With the recent rise in cancel culture, the practice of essentially black-listing a celebrity or public figure due to an action or pattern of behavior that has been deemed “problematic” or inappropriate, the encouragement of trolling online has been immense. Cancel culture is, in theory, a practice that only improves the environment of being online to be more accepting, and removes unwarranted power from those who are using said power for nefarious or otherwise offensive reasons. This is great! Ideally, this practice is a sort of vigilante justice, looking out for people that would otherwise have no ability to change something they find unjust on their own. Yet, as the guidelines and limitations for what is “cancel”-worthy have become more subjective (and prone to that black-and-white divide in moral perspectives), the practice has ultimately resulted in a blameless outlet for harassment.
Whereas certain social issues, such as racism, sexism, and homophobia have become seen as more clearly and commonly immoral ideals, lesser known conflicts are still up to a person-by-person subjectivity. It is within these more niche controversies where there lies the misuse of the assumed moral impunity of cancel culture. Harassment, belittlement, or ferocity is made immune to ridicule or offense towards the person spewing hate, given they have the excuse that they find something the recipient did or said to be “worthy of cancellation”.
I bring you back to my personal example at the start of this post, where I stood as a child in the face of the constant wrath of blacktop bullies. Looking back at the possible intentions of all those children, I find it hard to believe they didn’t find their harassment justified, given I was “cancelled” for being too strange, or too naive. They likely saw their actions as the necessary punishment I deserved on the grounds of my offense: being different. Obviously, as adults, we can understand that those justifications are unfit for our societal standards. Yet, I ask how this is any different to the subjective and often fleeting nature of cancel culture online? This is of course speaking only to subjects that are less concretely seen as immoral or “wrong”, but are often still the basis of trolling someone for months or even years.
For example, say someone buys a shirt online and shows it off in a video they post to social media, only to get “cancelled” for supporting a company that has been said to use child labor in the making of their products. This person claims to have “had no idea” about the company’s practices, but the damage has been done, and for months afterwards, they continue to be harassed, criticized, and insulted for their ignorance. They lose thousands of followers, and hundreds of memes, inside jokes, and negative assumptions become plastered alongside their name.
As ridiculous as this may sound, it’s not far off from many people’s lived experiences online. One mistake, as defined by a group of strangers, has now marred this person’s image and possible livelihood, all in the name of vigilante justice. I would argue that this is not the intention of cancel culture as it began it’s spread, however, it has become where many people’s cruelty lies under the guise of personal moral exemption. We’ve essential created a witch hunt, where if someone says you’re practicing black magic all because you happen to have a black cat, you’re heading to that social stake no matter what you say.
A Short Conclusion…
There is no controlling people, or how they behave online. That is clear. However, I would ask anyone reading to take a step back from themselves every now and then and assess just how much of your online policing is actually bullying. I advocate for the belief of “if you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all”, but understand that it’s simply unrealistic given the current state of online culture. So, if I were to give any advice, as a likely vain attempt at social change, it would be this:
Pick the wars worth fighting online, and leave the petty battles to their infinite corners. And the next time you may find yourself criticizing someone in a comment section or message board, ask yourself if your words ring true to those of a blacktop bully. You never know who you could leave with a permanent scar.
