The “cancel culture” is a form of boycott, involving an individual, usually a celebrity, who is deemed to have had problematic behavior or who has said something controversial/ questionable.  There have been numerous blogs, and videos to suggest why the cancel culture itself is becoming difficult. We judge an entire, flawed, growing human being by a one-moment-in-time thing, taking it out of that time's social context to social media or on the internet. Ironically enough, the cancel culture's origins come from a misogynistic joke. The first reference to canceling someone is possibly from the film “New Jack City”. In one scene, Nino Brown, played by Wesley Snipes, dumps his girlfriend saying, “Cancel that bitch. I’ll buy another one.” Then, several decades later, it gained massive popularity. Of course, certain people deserve to be stripped of their power and made to pay the consequences of their actions eg serial rapists, abusers, convicted pedophiles, murderers, etc. Now to add to the cancel culture conversation, I am going to talk about three things: 1) How the cancel culture is weaponized against others? 2) How do we weaponize cancel vulture for ourselves? 3) How we can fix this monster that we have created? 

Though the cancel culture started with good intentions and undeniably has brought predators into light, we are now witnessing the intentional weaponization of cancel culture against others. Some people use it to their advantage, hurling accusations to get revenge for personal matters. For eg the Tati Westbrook and James Charles drama. Tati Westbrook used her video to call out James Charles and used language to insinuate that James Charles was a sexual predator. This happened because Westbrook thought that this was the only way she could get Charles the help he needed and not because she was upset that he promoted vitamins that weren't hers. Now, this weaponization of cancel culture is not only limited to an individual against an individual. Fandoms rally against properties they are not satisfied with  (in the case of the movie trailer of Sonic in 2019) and we see outrage mobs in other contexts like academics. And these mobs have often succeeded in silencing professors, philosophers, and journalists. For example, let's take the case of Rebecca Tuvel, who in 2017 published an article addressing the question of trans racialism which was relevant at the time due to the news of Rachel Dolezal, a white woman who famously claimed a black identity. The negative internet response to Tuvel’s response was huge, and an open letter was signed with 500 signatures (which was mostly signed by non-academics) and sent to the publication demanding that the article be retracted. And it was retracted, an unprecedented move. Now the academic side was on Tuvel’s side and claimed that most of the assertions in the open letter were out of context with Tuvel’s arguments. The level of outrage and personal; attack that Tuvel faced was unwarranted for an academic article rooted in philosophical thought and examination. Because this is what philosophy is for, to examine why we think the things we think and bring different viewpoints to the discussion to debate. But we live in is changing at such a rapid speed, what is socially acceptable or not changes incredibly quickly. The norms around gender and identity are in flux and philosophy, needs to examine a lot, if we find fault in one of these assertions we should make sure to know that the context is within academic speculation and addressed accordingly; not by threatening one’s family when they are doing the job they are supposed to do. Now the weaponization of cancel culture against a myriad of others seems like a no-brainer but the second and the most harmful of it is that we weaponize it for ourselves. We weaponize cancel cultures so that we feel better about ourselves. Calling someone out makes us feel great and automatically makes us feel superior, placing ourselves above the person that has wronged us. This circle of righteousness, banishment and moral superiority is not feasible. Because if we dont have room for people to make mistakes, learn from them and then do better what the hell do we think the cancel culture is promoting? Real Growth or just getting high on someone’s low? Now if we had to choose the goal of the cancel culture, we would choose change so that they can stop perpetuating problematic behaviors that hurt others. But right now we dont give them any acceptance or room or grace to do so. We just point our fingers and watch them burn and feel good about ourselves.