Making mistakes is part of human nature. Yet celebrities are held to a much higher and harsher standard regarding what kinds of mistakes they’re allowed to make.
Billie Eilish and Fletcher both announced relationships with men during Pride month, which upset fans who previously believed the stars identified as lesbians. Videos circulated on social media of fans invalidating both artists’ sexuality, and fans who felt wronged by these relationships flooded their post with hateful comments. Not only were Eilish and Fletcher doing nothing wrong, but this fan reaction was punitive and outsized.
Fans seem to forget that they don’t truly know celebrities on a personal level. Being famous doesn’t automatically give them insider knowledge on how to live a perfect life. Celebrities aren’t allowed to exist and make mistakes without being executed in the court of public opinion. Instead of cancelling celebrities who make mistakes, consumers and fans should focus on accountability and correction.
The way someone handles their mistakes and the repercussions that follow determines their character. But today’s cancel culture doesn’t allow people to redeem themselves or reconcile when they’ve caused harm.
Christine Cleaver, an event and entertainment management professor, believes cancel culture is making a recent shift toward “consequence culture” — in which people allow celebrities to take accountability before resorting to cancellation.
“If you cancel [celebrities], there’s no application to what they’ve learned,” Cleaver said. “But celebrities using their power negatively is different. Causing harm such as sexual misconduct or assault needs to be addressed in regard to the law, not just public opinion.”
Celebrities usually experience cancel culture on a large scale, with widespread attention from social media and news outlets. Even though fans don’t know them personally, they often put celebrities on a pedestal and idolize the idea of them, instead of who they truly are. This blind support is why people often feel disproportionately betrayed when something surfaces that contradicts their perception of celebrities.
Cancel culture focuses solely on accountability. It requires the wrongdoer to grovel and admit they did wrong but doesn’t allow people to attempt to do better in the future. People can be held accountable and seek redemption simultaneously, without having to pick only one.
Forty-five percent of people believe that cancel culture unjustly punishes people. Adults aged 18-29 are most likely to have heard about cancel culture compared to older adults, according to a June 2022 survey by the Pew Research Center.
It’s valid to no longer support and follow someone who inflicts harm, but there is no need to punish them if they are actively trying to correct their mistakes. Nowadays, with constant surveillance and social media, mob mentality demands those who make mistakes to be punished. Then after a celebrity has been “cancelled,” it becomes taboo to support them.
Asha Paul believes consumers idolize celebrities very quickly and that hyper-consumerism trends make people shut down in the face of conflict instead of engaging in productive conversations.
“With social media, there’s never a proper way to see the whole picture and see who the person really is. We get a highlight reel of their best moments,” said Paul, a sophomore biology major. “How are you going to cancel someone you don’t know?”
Another issue with cancel culture is that it seems to disproportionately target and affect women in the public sphere compared to other demographics. Social media companies, like TikTok and X have approved and advertised misogynistic content on their platforms, according to a December 2023 investigation by Global Witness, a nonprofit human rights organization.
Cancel culture gives misogynistic users an easier target to direct their prejudice towards, but this doesn’t affect men in the same way. Male professional athletes and musicians alike tend to be the epicenter of domestic violence cases and still go on to have successful careers, like Chris Brown and Marcell Ozuna. Meanwhile, women face more ridicule and long-lasting damage when under public scrutiny.
Men seem to make forgivable mistakes while women must conduct themselves with precision and perfectionism to avoid persecution. In this context of gender, cancel culture loses its footing in regards to accountability and becomes more about being penalized based on gender.
Kymberlee Norsworthy, a public relations professor, has experienced the repercussions of cancel culture firsthand, managing cases where information has been taken out of context to create false narratives.
“There are instances where there’s double standards, that’s society,” Norsworthy said. “We give men a slap on the wrist and multiple additional chances more so than women. Women kind of have to get it right all the time or opportunities are taken away from them.”
For example, Brown has faced public backlash since the early aughts due to domestic violence against several girlfriends. Although Brown issued a public apology, similar behaviors continued and resulted in at least one restraining order. Comparatively, fans were outraged by Fletcher’s release of a song about a boy during Pride month and, even though she didn’t commit a crime, she still issued an almost five-minute-long apology video.
Putting people on blast on social media as a form of retribution can be harmful because it doesn’t allow them to learn from their mistakes. Hateful comments create toxicity that fails to offer a productive solution for celebrity recourse.
Oftentimes, social media users don’t even get the full picture of the act that calls for cancellation, but that doesn’t stop them from leaving horrible comments, sending death threats or even showing up to celebrity’s houses. Opinions are quickly conflated with facts which can have dangerous consequences.
“Lies are salacious and entertaining, lies spread faster than the truth. We, as a society, do not fact check. We don’t know how to discern a credible source from any random person,” Norsworthy said. “The combination of disregarding fact checking with cancel culture is ruining reputations for public figures.”
Cancel culture doesn’t allow space for redemption, growth and sometimes even the truth. This high threshold of accountability negatively affects women’s careers more than men’s. Consumers hold so much power when it comes to who is given a platform in society. But with cancel culture, people are no longer engaging in critical conversations; instead, people are getting exiled for simply being human.