Time and time again, we aren’t allowed to love or support our favorite celebrities due to a phenomenon known as cancel culture.
A celebrity gets canceled when their recent or old controversial clips or Tweets resurface, and people call them out. Once the clip is out and more people see it and get offended by it, they start bullying and ridiculing these celebrities, resulting in these public figures losing their platforms.
This idea of canceling celebrities over one mistake and not allowing them to grow is harmful to their careers and their wellbeing. Instead of canceling these celebrities, we, as a society, need to come up with other alternatives for a constructive consequence.
Recently, country singer Morgan Wallen was caught saying a racial slur towards one of his friends after a night out at a bar. Wallen’s neighbors caught the incident on video and leaked it to TMZ.
Once the video was out, my social media was filled with people’s comments on the situation. The comments ranged from simply calling him a racist to straight up death threats and many of the people out there hating on him weren’t familiar with him or his views. All they knew of him was this one clip, and without seeing him for who he really was, they went straight to canceling him.
This is also the case for many other celebrities who get canceled, like Vanessa Hudgens. Hudgens was upset about the cancellation of Coachella last year, so, like most other people, she went on to social media to rant.
She posted a video on her Instagram saying, “Even if everybody gets it, like yeah, people are going to die, which is terrible… but inevitable?” Needless to say fans were not happy about this. Hudgens then went on to later apologize for the incident saying how inappropriate it was of her to say.
The case with Hudgens is just another example of cancel culture hurting someone, even if the mistake is as small as saying something in bad taste. These celebrities make one mistake, and people hop on the bandwagon of hate without even getting a better idea of the person.
Therefore, they have to apologize for their actions time and time again, even when it’s obvious that their one mistake no longer reflects their character. It’s just emotionally draining.
I do understand that when a celebrity has such a big audience, they need to put out good content and set a good example for their fans, but the hate the public puts out isn’t any better. There are better actions we could take to make sure these celebrities deal with the consequences of their actions.
Some things we could do to help these celebrities instead of hating on them is recommending correct actions that need to be taken. We could post and give out positive and encouraging comments for them to give them more motivation to change. Recommending them links to help them understand their mistakes. Giving them organization to get involved with could really help to better themselves.
At the end of the day, celebrities are human just like us. Their whole lives shouldn’t be ruined because of one mistake. We all need to become more forgiving and understanding towards these celebrities and give them a chance to genuinely change.