The recent feud between YouTubers Tati Westbrook and James Charles sparked a lot of discussion about cancel culture on the internet. Beauty guru Tati Westbrook called out James Charles, one of her close friends, for his inappropriate behavior in a 43-minute long video titled "Bye Sister." After Tati's video went viral, a lot of hatred was spewed at James Charles and he lost nearly 3 million subscribers on YouTube, becoming the first YouTuber to lose that many subscribers in a short amount of time. It didn't take long for everyone to "cancel" James Charles immediately. Hashtags #JamesCharlesIsOverParty and #CancelJamesCharles started trending on Twitter.
"Canceling" someone means eradicating them permanently. Recently, people have been "canceling" YouTubers for the silliest reasons, which is completely wrong. Here's why cancel culture is unhealthy and toxic:
When you cancel someone, you assume that people CANNOT change
Everyone makes mistakes and should be given a chance to rectify them. When you cancel someone, you assume that their life is over and they have reached a dead end and there is nothing they can do to change themselves. Being in the public eye is difficult and when millions of people are spreading hate and canceling you, recovery and healing become much more difficult.
Cancel culture promotes a bandwagon mentality
People who did not even know either Tati or James were spewing hate and canceling James just because others were doing so. Most of the people had no clue what was happening and were relying on popular opinions without actually doing any research about the situation. What is ironic is that when James made a video defending himself, everyone immediately started supporting him and shaming Tati. The next time you are exposed to popular opinion, stop, think, do your research, form your own opinion and then act.
Cancel culture is pure evil
People find pleasure in seeing someone else's downfall and it is toxic. There were so many videos titled "James vs. Tati" showing the live subscriber count of James' decreasing subscribers and Tati's increasing subscribers. Hundreds of people were taking advantage of the situation by creating drama videos claiming to "spill the tea." There was even a fake story being circulated about James Charles sexually abusing boys in his high school which caught tremendous media attention. It is evil and sick to find someone else's downfall enjoyable and adding fake fuel to the drama. From being called a danger to the society to receiving death threats, the hate for James Charles just wouldn't stop until he justified himself in a new video.
This by no way means that we should stay silent if someone is doing horrible things. But if we call out people and they are getting "canceled" for it, there is no outcome coming out from calling out people. Our aim for calling out people should be to do it in a way that makes them realize their mistake and improve upon themselves. We shouldn't be calling out people publicly on the internet for petty issues that could be solved personally.
It is high time we cancel the cancel culture.
