Stepping Away from Cancel Culture

I think that Cancel Culture is bad, and we need to stop it.

That’s out there now.

It has become increasingly more trendy to “cancel” someone, or some brand, as soon as they make a mistake. Don’t get me wrong here, if someone has a long track record of being terrible, they are just a shit human being. But we’ve taken it farther than that. In some ways, this is so great. We are noticing troubling, inappropriate behaviors and calling them out. Unfortunately, this outrage often doesn’t come from a place a love. When calling people out on whatever shitty thing they did, the outcome should be improvement. But from my time on twitter, that’s not what’s happening. Instead it’s JOHN DOE IS CANCELLED and not much else.

I’ve seen this a lot with regard to makeup brands.

The Balm.

Beauty Blender.

Tarte.

Too Faced.

Benefit.

Physician’s Formula.

MAC.

Maybelline.

L’Oreal.

It’s a big list, and these are big companies. There will be mistakes, there will be missteps. But we don’t learn fro being Cancelled. We learn from discussion and listening. I also feel especially sympathetic for people having their first misstep, or those whose missteps are less frequent. It starts to paint us all as good or bad, when we (and companies) are all on the spectrum between those. If I make a mistake, I would rather people behave with kindness. Tell me my mistake. Give me a chance to make it right. Then, after it’s been made right, let it go. If you had a coworker who popped up to tell you about that mistake you made two years ago, you would hate them, and think really hard about leaving that job.

All this to say that my goal for this year is to stop assuming the worst, and to start giving people the option for grace to recover from their mistakes. Life is a rich tapestry, and we all bring different things to the table. It would be a mistake to assume that we’re all coming into every situation with the same wisdom.

As far as cancel culture is concerned, I’m just happy that social media wasn’t (as big) a thing when I was a dumbass teenager.

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