Chappell Roan has been cancelled again for her boundaries with fans. Zara Larsson has been cancelled twice in a row for her promotion of artificial intelligence [AI] media and her lighthearted comments about abortion. TikTok is flooded with people airing out their grievances about celebrities’ wrongdoings, mindlessly spewing the opinions of others without bothering to do any investigative research into the reality of what they are confidently spouting. And while people seem to ferociously jump at any chance to cancel a celebrity, the fearful internet buzz around the heinous information in the Epstein files died down mere weeks after its release.
And sure, I think we should be holding public figures accountable for promoting AI media that is destroying the environment. But, I could not care less that Chappell Roan does not always want to be approached by fans in public, and I thought Zara Larsson’s comment on abortion was great in context. I do care that our president and topics related to him were mentioned 38,000 times in the Epstein Files. I do care that a thousand women and children were trafficked and raped for years, and the Supreme Court is throwing out their cases. But why would anyone talk about that when they could so easily keep cancelling Chappell Roan?
In the past few years, cancel culture has been incredibly rampant, and celebrities and influencers have been ‘cancelled’ for the slightest things. Though I do view some of these internet misdemeanors as offensive, cancellable, etc., I often find that people hiding behind usernames grasp at the slightest misdeeds to cancel instead of forming well-rounded opinions on important public topics. It is so much easier to confidently say ‘I think so-and-so influencer shouldn’t be doing this obscure thing’ than it is to express political opinions into the vast black hole that is the internet.
While I lay on my couch with my eyes glazed over, watching a TikTok conspiracy video about how the United Arab Emirates is using Dubai chocolate hype as propaganda, the back of my mind focuses on how, for one measly week in February, my algorithm was taken over by the Epstein Files. I watched hundreds of videos unpacking what each document meant, spent hours of my time combing through the files on the DOJ website and spent days trying to deeply educate myself on what was in the files and what it meant, because I wanted to have an opinion on it. But I strongly believe that people do not care to educate themselves anymore. Nobody wants to have opinions on difficult topics. Nobody wants to talk about the corruption that our government is filled with. People only want to regurgitate vapid, uneducated thoughts into the microcosm of social media.
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