Cancel culture is something that has become a very common event due to the rise of the social media age. Photos, quotes, and videos that have resurfaced from the past and are causing present-day opportunities to be canceled due to that past mistake.
This issue for me is very dependant on the situation. It depends on what the circumstances are and whether or not cancel culture is appropriate for that situation. I think people nowadays have a platform they can openly fire their opinions while remaining anonymous if they choose to do so, which causes people to be shunned from the society in a span of 2 days.
On the spectrum of empathy continuum, I am mainly sympathetic. As mentioned earlier, it depends on the circumstances. If it was a mistake that was made 20 years ago, that they openly apologize for, and they don’t have a record of making many unacceptable mistakes, I would argue that I am sympathetic towards them, for making an accidental mistake. I would understand that people all make mistakes and it is the repetition of those mistakes that change my view from sympathetic to apathetic. In the case of Sarah Silverman, she claims to be a liberal standing citizen with her job causing her to blackface. Now that the photo has resurfaced, it has caused her to lose opportunities for something that happened several years ago. I take the stand that it is not fair for cancel culture to be applied in this situation, due to the fact that she was acting, she was told to do so, and that she strongly disagrees with the meaning behind it.
People nowadays are constantly judging people in the media, when most of those same people who are criticizing almost anyone have made past mistakes as well.
However, at the same time, often when that mistake was made, you don’t think much of it at the time, but the thought that it is wrong should come up in your head, and it often fuels the backlash that comes with the criticism.
The ability to ruin someone’s life through cancel culture is extremely frightening. People need to consider everything they do in order not to be offensive to cause an eruption of criticism. I know that I may have said things in the past that is offensive, but so has everyone else. The idea of aggressively attacking someone based on a mistake is extremely unfair, and social media is the platform where the majority of this happens.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/danidiplacido/2019/08/13/sarah-silverman-and-the-complexity-of-cancel-culture/#5fa19dd3ee7a
