The internet phenomenon known as “call-out” or “cancel culture” is when a large group of people reacts to some piece of information–accurate or not–about a person, often a person with some influence or stature, with moral indignation. Then a kind of mass hysteria ensues in which people convert their outrage into action both online and out in the real world.
An example of cancel culture includes when the athletic apparel company Nike used Colin Kaepernick for an ad.
Kaepernick, an activist and American football quarterback, became known for kneeling during the National Anthem at football games to protest police brutality in the US. He was widely criticized by the president, and many others, as being unpatriotic.
When Nike featured Kaepernick in a commercial with the tag line “believe in something, even if it costs you everything” the Internet reacted. The cancel began. Individuals set their Nike products on fire and posted pictures of the acts on social media. People blasted Nike and Kaepernick with incendiary tweets and messages and urged a boycott of the company.
The cancel initially caused Nike’s stock price to drop 3.2 percent, but then it bounced back and is currently up more than 13 percent compared to the previous year according to Edison Trends a commerce report website. The commercial from 2018 went on to win an Emmy.
Nike’s gamble of using such a controversial person to advertise its products paid off, but most cancels are not productive.
Cancel culture goes too far. It can start when people react to misinformation or only partial information about something. By the time it’s in motion, even if someone being canceled apologizes, they won’t be let off the hook. The public will not allow forgiveness.
One local example of cancel culture’s impact happened to Cafe 72 in Ewing, New Jersey. It started when an employee wanted to take a day off to attend the funeral of Micheal Sot, a TCNJ student, who was killed in a suspected DWI crash on December 2, 2018. The employee posted texts between herself and one of the owners onto a closed Ewing community Facebook group. The emails showed the owner telling the employee she would be fired if she went to the funeral instead of showing up to work.
And then the canceling began.
With only partial information, people felt the employee was being treated unfairly. They shared and reshared the texts. Then they headed to Google and Yelp and began posting hate-filled negative reviews for Cafe 72.
Certainly the texts suggested the owner was not polite to the employee, but he was following the restaurant’s policy. Under the Bereavement Leave Policy according to the Society of Human Resource Management, an employee can only take off for the immediate death of a family member which includes attending the funeral.
Should the owner have cut the employee some slack? Maybe. But did his response warrant hundreds of negative reviews of the restaurant’s food and service? Definitely not.
Cancel culture makes it impossible for apologies to mean anything.
Growing up, we are always told that nobody is perfect. Cancel culture is a constant loop of pinpointing humans’ mistakes and turning them into a giant mess.
This is why cancel culture should be canceled.
