Cancel culture solves nothing

Cancel culture — where celebrities and public figures are “canceled” for things they have done or said — has been a hot topic in the 21st century. 

Once headlines start coming out that a celebrity has said or done something worthy of cancellation, the public follows close behind. Hashtags pop up, and people begin to spew hatred for a figure that they were just praising days before.

For example, in 2016, singer Taylor Swift faced a massive cancellation where the hashtag #TaylorSwiftIsOverParty was trending nationwide. 

When Kanye West released the song “Famous,” he included a lyric calling Swift “that b***h.” Swift made a statement that she did not consent to West calling her this. Kim Kardashian then swooped in on the situation and posted an illegally recorded video of a phone call between West and Swift, showing that Swift was supposedly in the wrong.

Swift’s feud with West and Kardashian led her to shut herself away from the public eye for almost nine months. Just months before, she had won Album of the Year at the Grammys for her album “1989.” She had never been more popular and was celebrated by millions of fans.

In March 2020, the full phone call between the two was leaked to the press. It was revealed that Kardashian altered the phone call to make Swift look as if she were lying.

The public turned against Swift for a period of time until she released her album “Reputation,” which at the time was not as well-received as some of Swift’s previous releases but still debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 chart.

Today, Swift remains one of the most successful pop stars in the world, and her popularity continues to do nothing but grow. She still finds success even after she was canceled.

At its core, cancel culture seems to try to punish a public figure with unnecessary and hateful comments from the general public that fuel the fire. 

Cancellations are also typically based on unfounded and misguided information due to the public relying on mob rule as opposed to actual fact. Words and actions can be skewed through social media — case in point, the call between West and Swift — where the perpetrator will do anything to make the other person look bad.

Ironically, Kardashian was also canceled when the phone call was leaked in 2020. The roles had flipped between the two of them, and Swift was now being praised in the public eye. This just proves my point that the general public will hop onto a hate train and ride it until someone else has done wrong.

Both stars are still immensely popular and have enormous platforms. Neither cancellation was effective, and nothing about the incident was ever truly solved.

Cancel culture is essentially pointless when it comes to feuds between celebrities that are as big as Swift and Kardashian. The drama that is plastered all over the internet simply exists to entertain the general public.