Young Not Stupid: The Unintended Consequence of Cancel Culture
The following is the part of a weekly series of commentary articles by Cameron Arcand, founder of the conservative commentary website Young Not Stupid and a contributor to The Western Journal.
The cancel culture crusade finds new victims each day, with some becoming major stories, while others severely impact the average American.
Every time a negative piece of someone’s past becomes public, or unsavory social media posts come back to haunt, apologies will not do for the mob. Cancel culture, to put it simply, is to force someone out of a group for views that they find abhorrent. Typically it ends up costing people their jobs, but could severely damage someone’s reputation and future.
Cancel culture does not necessarily have a political leaning by nature, but ostracism in liberal environments is a frequent occurrence.
More recently, however, a counterproductive aspect of cancel culture is coming to fruition — the fact that the “cancelee” usually becomes more famous following the incident if they play their cards right.
Look no further than ‘Mandalorian’ actress Gina Carano. After her firing by Disney for political social media posts, one of which making an inappropriate Nazi Germany comparison, conservatives rallied around her in support, despite the controversy.
She eventually landed a gig producing and starring for an upcoming film with Ben Shapiro’s company, The Daily Wire, which will likely be a more pleasurable experience for Carano than dealing with the hostile culture within the liberal-dominated entertainment industry. A lot of people, including myself, never heard of Carano until she was fired, turning her negative situation into a somewhat positive one for her image.
Then there is late children’s author Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss.
For “National Read Across America Day,” the Biden administration did not mention Dr. Seuss by name as was done by previous presidents. This was done in part as a result of a 2019 study that revealed racial bias and undertones in some of Seuss’s books.
Dr. Seuss Enterprises later announced they were going to stop publishing six books with the offensive imagery, and eBay said they were pulling those books from their listings as well.
It’s understandable that the publishing company may want to revise the imagery that was considered offensive (although halting publishing altogether is a bit much), but the decision by eBay is much more concerning, and better aids the “cancellation” argument.
While eBay does have the right to pull the book listings off their website, the issue has to do with a fair standard. Why can someone purchase a copy of Hitler’s autobiography “Mein Kampf” off eBay but not the six Dr. Seuss titles? Either delist all the books that are morally questionable or delist none of them, eBay.
Conservatives have viewed the situation as attempted erasure for someone already in the grave, and are now celebrating the books that have gotten newfound attention.
Cancel culture might not be of much concern to those who are not actively online or are working in left-wing spaces, but many young people who have grown up with social media and starting their careers are absolutely terrified.
Generation Zers and Millennials who have chosen to express their opinions or have done questionable things in the past are fearing a kick to the societal curb.
The goalposts of what the mob considers “problematic” is constantly changing, and Americans young and old must not scare themselves into silence.
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