Hello, everyone.
I welcome you to my blog and another wonderful edition of the Hive Learners Featured Post. Sometimes I am glad that we have the online space and people no longer have to pay for their crimes offline only. Those days, once they have paid for their crimes offline, then they are okay and can get back to their activities and their lives like nothing at all happened. And sometimes, there are grievous crimes that only offline legal punishment does not feel like enough. It is not enough payment for such crimes. There are crimes that one should definitely still be cancelled online while they still pay the price offline and legally.
Some people will say they have already paid the legal price and tampering with their online reputation is going to the extreme, but like the title says, there are crimes that require that we go to the extreme just to make sure those who commit those crimes understand the weight of their crimes. Letting them pay the legal price only might not be enough, but if other measures are taken to let them understand the weight of their crime, maybe they will get the clear picture. There are people who want to only serve the legal punishment and then have their reputation online not tampered with, and if we give them that, then they might never change and might even go back to committing the same crime while still painting the picture of a saint to the general public.
Some people have an online reputation and have many followers and people who live by their opinions, and if we only let them deal with the legal punishment offline and not cancel them online, then we are only letting them lead more people in the path that they have walked, which makes online cancellation for certain crimes, if not all of them, very important. Online cancellation for every crime might be considered doing too much, which is why I am saying we should do it for certain crimes and not for all, even though all crimes cause pain and hurt someone. I still feel not every crime demands online cancellation.
Once cancelled online, it takes time for one to rebuild their reputation, and one thing about the online space is the famous saying that "the internet never forgets." You can be cancelled offline and pay the legal price offline, and three months later, everyone has forgotten and moved on with their lives. But online, it is not like that. Even after four years, the things that were said online about you or the things you said online can come back to haunt you, and that makes online cancellation very dangerous and bad for an individual.
In my opinion, I think online cancellation should only happen when the crime is grievous, and if not grievous, then they can be allowed to just suffer the legal punishment. To a point online punishment is even a worse punishment than the legal punishment because once cancelled online, anything you are part of crumbles and if that company or business refuses to let you go then customers will threaten not to patronise them again. We have seen a lot of people lose something they built from the ground just because they were cancelled online and I am sure that cuts and hurts really deep.
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