- [Reporter] As cancel culture
is infiltrating everywhere.
And it doesn't even. - The way of me making change
- And this cancel culture. - Is be as judgemental as
possible about other people. - Cancel culture in a nutshell
Cancel culture actually. - Cancel culture.
- Freedom of speech. - Cancel culture.
(dramatic music)
- Let's talk about cancel culture.
I'm gonna assume you know that cancel culture is a form
of a boycott involving an individual.
Usually a celebrity, who is deemed to have
had problematic behavior
or who has said something questionable and controversial.
There have been countless videos and numerous takes
on why cancel culture itself has become problematic.
The way that we judge an entire flawed growing human being
by one moment in time taken out of that time
social context, thanks to social media and the internet.
Ironically enough, cancel cultures origins apparently come
from a misogynistic joke.
Possibly the first reference to canceling someone comes
with the 1991 film, "New Jack City".
In which Wesley Snipes plays a gangster named Nino Brown.
In one scene after his girlfriend breaks
down because of all the violence he's causing.
He dumps her by saying,
"Cancel that bitch, I'll buy another one."
Jump to 2010 when Lil Wayne referenced the film
and a line from his song, "I'm single".
"Yeah. I'm single, had to cancel that bitch like Nino."
This callback to the earlier sexist cancel joke
probably helped the phrase percolate for a while.
And then several decades later gained massive popularity
in 2018 and 2019 as evidenced by this Google trends data.
Of course, there are certain cancel people
who absolutely deserve to be stripped of their power
and made to pay the consequences of their actions.
If you're a serial rapist,
abuser, convicted pedophile, murderer
or someone who likes fucking cantaloupe
then you deserve to be canceled.
And more importantly, probably serve jail time.
'Cause if you actually enjoy cantaloupe
you should not be free to walk the streets
and there's something incredibly wrong with you.
What I do wanna add
to the cancel culture conversation are three things.
One, how cancel culture is weaponized against others.
Two, how we weaponize cancel culture for ourselves
and three, how we can actually fix
this monster that we have created.
Though cancel culture began with good intentions
and undeniably has brought some predators to light.
We're now witnessing the intentional weaponization
of cancel culture against others.
Some people use this
to their own advantage, hurling accusations
in order to get revenge for personal matters.
If you're not familiar
with the Tati Westbrook and James Charles drama,
Westbrook insists her video calling James Charles
out a video that used language to insinuate
that he was a sexual predator,
was because Westbrook thought this was the only way
to get Charles the help he needed
and not because she was upset
that he promoted vitamins that weren't hers.
You can watch the hours
of videos if you want they'll dissect this topic to all hell
but I can tell you, it was about the vitamins.
This weaponization of cancel culture is not exclusive
to individual against individual.
(upbeat music)
Fandoms rally against properties they aren't satisfied with.
Most notably the "Sonic the Hedgehog" film.
Now, when the trailer came out in April of 2019
it was heavily roasted online
and had a nearly 50% dislike ratio.
And I mean, yeah, he looks horrifying.
The reaction of the internet was not wrong here.
I mean, he had a human freaking teeth for crying out loud
this a creepy boy, but the Twitter outrage mob
on Sonic was according to the Hollywood reporter.
So immediate and loud that Paramount pushed the release date
and had the VFX team redesign Sonic
with an appearance that matched the Sega games.
It's hard to argue that this weaponization
and power of the internet of Fandom was necessarily wrong
because when you compare the two designs
one is clearly way less creepy.
I think we can all agree that the redesign is cuter
and more approachable and feels less
like a creature who eats and enjoys cantaloupe.
But nonetheless, this is still weaponization.
And in this case, things came seemingly all
out for the better
given that it set the record for the biggest opening weekend
for a video game film in the United States
and Canada hauling an estimated 57 million.
I mean, Sonic ultimately ended
up grossing over 319 million worldwide.
And even with the redesign, the budget was about 95 million.
So this entire debacle had a happy ending
but I would argue that it sets a pretty dangerous precedent.
I mean, how much
of a say should audiences have over creative choices?
How many times have we seen movies canceled based
on their trailers, which by the way
most filmmakers have no control
over the way that their movie is marketed.
Usually, it's at the discretion of the film distributor
and we all know how misleading trailers can be
in order to get us to watch the movie.
And though this Sonic incident turned out well
we've seen outrage mobs in other contexts,
particularly academics.
And these mobs have often succeeded in silencing professors,
philosophers and journalists.
Take the case of Rebecca Tuvel
who in 2017, published an article, addressing the question
of transracialism, which was relevant at the time
because of the news coverage of Rachel Dolezal,
a white woman who claimed black identity.
In the paper, in defense of transracialism.
Tuvel examined the arguments
you use to defend a transgender identity
and applied these to the question of transracialism.
This is a very common technique among philosophers,
testing if reasoning used on one issue would apply equally
to a different issue that appeared to close parallel.
The negative social media response to Tuvel's article, huge.
An open letter with 500 signatures
which apparently was mostly signed by non-academics was sent
to the publication, demanding that the article be retracted
and it was, an unprecedented move.
Now the academic community itself largely supported Tuvel.
Pointing out how several statements
in the open letter were false and misleading
and did not reflect the actual content of Tuvel's paper.
The Intelligencer has a great breakdown
of Tuvel's paper that debunks most
of the assertions in the open letter
and I'll link it if you wanna read it.
Tuvel herself went on the record to say
that she had written the article from a place
of support for those with non-normative identities
because she saw transphobic logic lay
at the heart of the attacks against Dolezal.
Now I'm not here to comment on who was right
or who was wrong 'cause I'm not an academic
or a transgender person or a transracial person.
My only thought on the entire controversy
of this, is that if people found fault with it
they should have addressed it critically
with critical thought.
The level of outrage
and personal attacks that Tuvel faced was not warranted
for an academic article rooted in philosophical thought
and examination, because this is what philosophy is
for - to examine why we think the things we think
and bring different viewpoints to the discussion for debate.
But the culture we live in is moving at such a rapid speed.
What is socially acceptable
or not changes incredibly quickly.
The norms around gender
and identity are in flux and philosophy.
You know, they got a lot to examine right now.
And if we find fault with one of those assertions
we should make sure to note the context is
within academic speculation and address it accordingly
without threatening someone's life or family or employment
when they're doing the very thing
that they're employed to do.
Now, if Tuvel's article was like a hate piece
that attempted to invalidate trans identity
and was laid in with obscenities
like that's a different story, but it wasn't.
And I'm very curious how many people who signed
that open letter one, actually read Tuvel's article
and not just the provocative headline
and two, have the academic background
to even understand why the explorative article was written
as a parallel to trans racial identity
and the conclusions it made.
Now the weaponization of cancel culture
against a myriad of others seems like a no-brainer.
But the second, and I think more harmful effect is
that we weaponize it for ourselves.
We weaponize cancel cultures that we feel better
about ourselves, because feeling angry
and feeling superior and feeling outraged
feels fucking great.
- But I do get a sense sometimes now
among certain young people, and this is accelerated
by social media, there is this sense sometimes
of the way of me making change is to be as judgmental
as possible about other people.
And that's enough.
Like if I tweet or hashtag
about how you didn't do something right
or use the word wrong verb
or then I can sit back and feel pretty good about myself.
'Cause man, you see how woke I was?
I called you out
- Yeah. Calling someone out makes us feel real good.
It automatically places us above the person who did wrong.
The problem is, we forget
that we do wrong shit all the time.
- This idea of purity and you're never compromised
and you're always politically woke
and all that stuff you should get over that quickly.
(audience laughing) The world is messy.
There are ambiguities,
people who do really good stuff have flaws.
- There's a wonderful book it's called
"So You've Been Publicly Shamed" by Jon Ronson
and it examines the Twitter outrage mob
and the real life effects that this digital judge
jury and executioner have had.
Some of my favorite standout quotes are,
"The snowflake never needs to feel responsible
for the avalanche."
And, "We were creating a world where the smartest way
to survive is to be bland".
Cancel culture in its most extreme form
often forgets that we judge an entire person based
on one moment in time, out of context
of actually knowing that individual's background,
exposure, upbringing, and growth.
And if cancel culture's goal is to make people more aware
of their harmful behaviors.
Yeah. It's succeeding.
But if its ultimate goal is
for those harmful behaviors to be adjusted
so that people can move forward
in their lives and integrate that awareness and get rid
of that problematic behavior, then it's fucking failing.
I think Sarah Silverman put it the most eloquently
on an episode of her podcast.
- Christian Picciolini my friend,
who was a Neo-Nazi for years
since he was from 14 to, you know, into his twenties
late twenties maybe was the head
of a Neo Nazi, whatever KKK chapter, where he lived.
He has spent the last 30 years getting people
out of hate groups.
That's what he does.
But he went towards love.
He was 14, he was smoking a joint
and an older kid took the joint out of his hand
and threw it out and said, "You don't need that stuff, man."
And gave him a place where he was accepted
and cared for and loved.
And that was a hate group
a Neo Nazi group where he found family
and comradery and a place to be when both
of his parents worked all day.
In this cancel culture
and we all know what I'm talking about.
Whether you think there is one
or there isn't one or where you stand on it.
And there's a lot of gray matter there.
But without a path to redemption, when you take someone
you found a tweet, they wrote seven years ago
or a thing that they said, and you expose it and you say
this person should be no more, banish them forever.
They're gonna find someplace where they are accepted.
If we don't give these people a path to redemption
then they're gonna go where they are accepted
which is the motherfucking dark side.
I think there should be some kind of path.
Do we want people to be changed
or do we want them to stay the same
to freeze in a moment we found on the internet
from 12 years ago.
And so we can point to ourselves as right,
and them as wrong.
It's righteousness porn.
- I don't know about you,
but I'm very tired of this circle jerk of righteousness.
I want people, who don't like cantaloupe,
to have a way back to love
not banishment and irredeemability and moral superiority.
If we don't have a space
for white supremacists to go when they denounce the KKK
how do we ever expect them to leave?
If we don't have a path for misogynists to deprogram
and be reintegrated into society
how can we expect them to change?
If we don't have room for people to make mistakes,
learn from them and then do better,
what the hell do we think cancel culture
is actually promoting?
Real growth or just getting really high on someone's low.
And I'm sure we can all agree
that if we had to choose the goal of cancel culture
we'd say we want these people to change
to stop perpetuating problematic behavior that hurts others.
But right now we don't give them any acceptance
or room or grace to do so.
All we do is point the finger and watch them burn
and feel really fucking good about ourselves.
And if our goal, our true goal is to bring awareness
to injustices and prevent them in the future.
Then we need to humanize cancel culture.
And that starts with every single one of us,
every single time we're logged on.
I'm Annna Akana and thank you to the Patreons
who supported this video.
And thank you of course, to Daddy Squarespace
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Bye.