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Is it time to say enough? Whether you’ve canceled other people or have been canceled by other people, I think there needs to be a limit.
Personally, I don’t agree with the cancel culture. Now before you cancel me, hear me out.
I do think that cancel culture, if done with limits and good intentions, has the potential to bring good things.
It’s ok to disagree with someone, it’s also ok to disagree and also not like someone’s opinions or actions. It’s also ok to even be angry about it and to even dismiss them too. You’re completely entitled to feel however you want to feel.
However, cancel culture takes things to quite a different level. Some people would go out of their way to dig deep into the background/personal life of those whom they disagree with and post it on Twitter.
People can be the nicest in real life but once they go online behind their anonymous accounts, for some reason, they turn into wild animals ready to hunt.
Social media just makes it so easy for people to express themselves and be very loud with very little to no consequence.
Recently, Thai actor Mario Maurer and his manager were having conversations about various things and accidentally sparked an internet mob by making a joke about Lalisa “Lisa Blackpink” Manoban. It was a joke, a very silly, but also very harmless, nothing-kind-of joke.
Mario faced so much online pushback, he had to come out and make a public apology.
Broaden your horizon
I’m a firm believer that you can’t keep hanging around with people who share the same opinions as you all the time because you’re not going to learn something new.
Whenever I meet someone who shares different views to mine, I always want to know more, I always want to ask them questions, to understand their thought-process on how, what happened in their lives to bring them to their current opinion.
Cancel culture makes people, sometimes, too scared to speak. All that is left is an echo chamber with participants in online witch-hunts intellectually worst off for it.
It’s important to be able to have a conversation, discuss, debate. That’s one of the ways in life you get to learn about new things and grow.
It’s also very important to keep in mind that not everyone is out there to be your enemy.
Recently, I went to see a stand-up comedy show at CentralWorld Live. Before the show started, they had to play the royal anthem like they do in the cinema, and more than half remained seated while the other stood up.
However, there was no tension. People were just letting other people do their things, without trying to cancel each other (in real life). And that’s how I want to see our society. Where we don’t have to agree with each other on everything, but a disagreement does not equal an enemy.