Humans are emotional beings, our ability to feel and respond to specific emotions defers based on our level of self-discipline. The most common type of emotion known by every human on earth is fear, it is like a living organism whose life span is eternal. For minds touched by fear it makes you do what you never thought possible. It is capable of changing the psychological orientation of any human, it is a plague with no definite cure.
Humans exhibits all kind of emotional traits when we are in scared such as paranoia, anger, hatred e.t.c these emotions makes a human being fixates, clingy on something for relieve. Sadly one of the many ways in which average people do this is to find something or someone to blame for the pain they are experiencing. Anything they could wage their war against, it doesn't really matter if the object of their hatred is innocent or not as long as they could feel sense of relief or closure.
When you think about it, one of the things that most humans result to, when we are experiencing fear or hatred towards something, is to cancel it from the society. In the old days people find ways to eradicate the object of their hatred or fear, even if it is a human being. But in recent times, when there are laws to restrict us from specific actions such as jungle justice. Our ability to take our anger out on a thing or a person has been caged by law. Humans will always find ways to experience their emotions and the internet just happens to be the right tool for it.
There is a term widely known among social media users which is known as Cancel culture. The act of intentionally shunning a group of people or a person on social media which was birthed as a result of the outstanding capabilities of social media in influencing the decision of the masses.
Over the years social media has been used as a tool to target selected individuals. There are times when social media was used to fight against societal ills or atrocities committed by governmental agencies but then it also does the opposite for instance there was a video that circulated recently involving a social media Influencer named Saida. In this video she shared her opinion about what it takes for a man to be in a relationship with her and how such man could prove his love to her. Though are perspective was more about materialism, I guess that is what she believes in but what comes next was surprising.
It turns out that a lot of social media users ranging from TikTok, Instagram, twitter{x} disagreed with are perspective which led to her account being banned from TikTok, Instagram e.t.c I also watched the video and to an extent I disagreed with everything she said but then that didn't prompt me to take any actions against her like reporting her account or engaging in hate speech.
It is not as if I'm condoning her attitude but I believe we are all entitled to our opinion. The rate at which she was targeted makes you wonder, not everyone that get cancelled are criminals and even those that commit a crime, do they deserve to be completely shunned on social media platforms?
I have witnessed individuals who were shunned on social media for speaking the truth, because crime and justice is subjective to humans perspective and translation on social media. From my experience, I consider this act of cancel culture to be social media bullying because I strongly believe that people should not be gunned down from social media just because they said something that doesn't conform with the perspective of others.
This write-up was inspired by weekly featured content titled Cancel culture in hive learners community.
Cover image generated using chatgpt