Note: It's kind of late at night so this is a bit rushed & disorganized (especially regarding the points about Depp, Rowling, and DeLisle) so if anyone needs any clarification or more context or would like to hear more in depth about my personal feelings on each case, feel free to ask.

So this is inspired by a recent experience that I had with cancel culture or an attempt at it. I have always been against cancel culture mostly because I've had several bad experiences with it over stuff that was blown way out of proportion. It was used as a humiliation tactic and a means to try to kick me out of the fandom because of trivial disagreements. And I feel like this is generally how callout culture is.

I'll start by reposting my response to PrincesTale (in the unpopular opinions thread) and BlindBandit's question on the random club.

Unpopular Opinions Discussion

"Drawing from very recent personal experience which I am still very bitter about. Innocent people are treated as aggressors even if they didn't mean anything by x action or x statement. Sometimes people are just confused/uninformed/unsure/or used bad phrasing. Sometimes it isn't even their own fault; sometimes the accuser just literally misinterpreted their entire post! I feel like call out culture tends to attack people for just disagreeing with a person. And it's sometimes used to smear someone for no reason. Like with what recently happened to me; I outright said that I was unsure of my statement and didn't mind being corrected. And I STILL had someone opt NOT to correct me and jump right to calling me a transphobe (cue a cluster of angry anons). The person ended up deleting that call out post. But I am once again afraid to talk about trans stuff. she outright lied and omitted critical info, probably to virtue signal. Idk. But I feel like this is a common thing and one of may reasons why cancel culture is so dangerous. There are people who will just buy it. Most of my followers didn't but I lost two mutals that I really liked. :/"

Random Club Question + My Personal Story

Callout culture doesn't leave room for growth, change and mistakes. People are written off and blacklisted and not given a second chance.

This is detrimental to causes to imo. It almost makes a (for example) a homophobe feel justified in their hate. Like they got called out and cancelled and received a bunch of hate, now they feel more secure in hating gay people. They now have ammo.

Granted, stuff like homophobia and pedophilia and other stuff should be called out. However, the problem is that people are WAY too quick to toss out labels and innocent people get dragged under. I'm just gonna dig up my personal experience as an example of what I mean.
I absolutely fucking hate it, mostly because I've had several bad experiences with it over stuff that was blown way out of proportion. It was used as a humiliation tactic and a means to try to kick me out of the fandom because of trivial disagreements.

Callout culture doesn't leave room for growth, change and mistakes. People are written off and blacklisted and not given a second chance.

This is detrimental to causes to imo. It almost makes a (for example) a homophobe feel justified in their hate. Like they got called out and cancelled and received a bunch of hate, now they feel more secure in hating gay people. They now have ammo.

Granted, stuff like homophobia and pedophilia and other stuff should be called out. However, the problem is that people are WAY too quick to toss out labels and innocent people get dragged under. I'm just gonna dig up my personal experience as an example of what I mean.



Again, this person literally took what I said 100% out of context and actively demonized me for no reason??? They claimed that I was being transphobic because I tagged the fic wrong and they went out of their way to not add that I literally added an author's note inquiring about the correctness of my tagging. All this person had to do was @ or PM me and tell me why it wasn't tagged right and I would have fixed it. Instead they called me a transphobe and I was hit with a handful of anon hate messages, blocked by a few people, and unfollowed by two people I liked. This time the damage was minimal because I caught it right away. And I explained myself and people realized that I didn't mean anything by the wrong tagging. But this person very maliciously tossed a buzzword/label on me for the sake of getting me cancelled and to warn people that I'm a bad person. It was totally unwarranted. And I think that this person knows they were wrong because they deleted the call out. I'm still insanely mad because it put me in a really bad place.

New Additions

So the first point I'd like to get into is false accusations and the danger they pose. I feel like my personal experience is more common than you'd think. Taking a look at other tumblr users; I've seen people get called out as pedophiles for shipping the wrong things and homophobes for saying that they didn't ship other pairs that happened to be same sex. These users were rather viciously attacked via anon for an opinion that doesn't even truly apply to them.

I'm speaking mostly of the Voltron Klance fandom. I know of one author who was bullied in to taking down all of their Kacxa fics because they were accused of being homophobic for shipping Kacxa over Klance. People were calling this person a homophobe in an attempt to cancel them. And, after much bullying, it worked. They deleted their fics and left.

Another infamous example is the Zamii incident. I'll drop a link to that story because it's a lot to unpack. link But long story short; an artist on tumblr drew a Steven Universe character too skinny and a good portion of the fandom proceeded to call her out and cancel her. This lead to her getting harassed and bullied to the point where she actually attempted suicide.

And over what? A false accusation. Zamii isn't fatphobic and I doubt that she meant anything by drawing Rose Quartz skinnier. But these people went way overboard and ruined the reputation of a young artist. Not only that but she was harassed by users who dedicated time to stalking her social media, keeping tabs on all of her activity, and gathering 'receipts' to prove that she was a bad person. Cancel culture is dangerous! More on that in a bit.

Another good example is Johnny Depp. The man was accused of being abusive to his girlfriend Amber. And he was almost immediately cancelled. Eventually it came out that the abuser might actually be Amber link But because of the controversy, Depp's name was getting dragged through the mud.

This kind of thing can destroy a person's career. And it often does. The other huge problem with cancel culture is that people don't fact check. They just follow the mob and attack without putting any research in for themselves.

Another person who has come under fire very recently is J.K Rowling. At the moment, she is getting called a transphobe for having a serial killer dress up in women's clothes to do a killing. Now I know that Blaire White is kind of controversial but I think that her POV is worth checking out. link
Granted I have not read Rowling's new book so I can't really say on a personal level, whether I think her writing was transphobic or not. But that's the problem; a lot of people who are calling her transphobic haven't even read the books. And from the sound of it, it's one passage of the book and it's a very brief moment.

A third example would be what happened with Grey DeLisle & Dante Basco. With Avatar coming to Netflix there has been an influx of new fans that don't have the years context for inside jokes. Starting with Dante; he ships and has always shipped Zutara. The new Zukka fans attempted to cancel him for being homophobic because simply because he ships Zutara over Zukka.

Grey's story is a bit more complicated and layered. Basically she got called out for this tweet



Now for those who aren't in the fandom/are new to the fandom it does look kind of bad. But this has been a running joke in the fandom for 10+ years. And her initial joke was actually dialogue requested by a fan who had been following the jokes for years. Grey goes on to explain the joke and context a bit



Granted I think that it would have helped if she was less sarcastic. But at the same time she had mobs of people coming at her. And it's really hard to keep your cool in a situation like that.
Eventually she was kind of coerced into reveling some deeply personal info.



In other words the jokes likely stemmed from a place of using dark humor to cope. It's kind of the twitter equivalent to trauma art and fics. Now whether or not trauma art is okay or not is another debate entirely so I won't get into that here.

The point is she was getting called a pedophile and an abuser and people were trying to cancel her over a joke. One that they didn't even have the full context and story for. And accusing someone of being a pedophile is a very serious accusation that shouldn't just be thrown around! That not only can ruin a person but makes it that much harder for victims. So many false accusations makes it harder to find legit cases of pedophilia that need investigation. This is probably another different debate entirely, but sexualizing a fictional character is not on the same level as going after a real person and cases of real pedophilia should be looked at first.
I digress, attempting to cancel someone by calling a pedophile is scary. Especially when people have been called pedophiles for shipping the wrong things. I'm talking about how I've seen people who ship a 25 year old with a 45 year old. Again, it's all fiction and both characters are adults. But the user is still called a pedophile for the age gap. And they are subsequently blacklisted (unfairly) by the fandom.

"This ship is x problematic thing" is the new way to describe ships that people don't like and that's where the problem lies.

Cancel culture will be dangerous until people stop throwing baseless accusations about. People are weaponizing cancel culture to eliminate ships and characters they don't like and the fans of said ships. It's an abuse of power disguised under a good cause.

"I don't like xyz person or thing, so I'm going to get rid of them." Is hidden under, "I'm fighting against homophobia, aphobia, etc."

Which leads to my next point; callout and cancel culture is actually detrimental to the causes they claim to defend.

I've already mentioned that false accusations make it harder for the real thing to be spotted. People are more likely to dismiss sexism, pedophilia, and homophobia with the buzzwords being thrown around so much.

But also consider how cancel culture makes actual homophobes feel justified. The anon hate and general hate that follows in the wake of getting cancelled will only solidify in a person's mind that xyz group is evil and hateable. Granted this person is probably well into their views, but giving them more ammo is never a good thing.

Finally and most importantly; cancel culture doesn't leave room for growth, mistakes, and change. These days it is so hostile that there is almost no room for mistakes. If you say one wrong thing (innocent or not) you're pretty much done. That's it, game over, everyone hates you and there's no going back.

Which is very dangerous because it's in human nature to make mistakes. Everyone has said something stupid, ignorant, or unkind. Cancel culture aims to find those things and bring them to the surface. And even if you apologize, people aren't quick to forgive.

I have seen people pull 'receipts' on people form years ago. They've used dated opinions that have since changed to drag a person's name through the mud. And again, they don't account for the person's opinion having changed.

That's kind of how opinions are, that's why people debate and discuss; you start out with one opinion, you have discussion, you acquire new facts, information, and points of view, and (ideally) you assess these and come out with an altered or entirely new opinion. People learn, people grow, people change. A mean person can become nicer. A racist can realize that they were wrong and change. Cancel culture doesn't account for this, nor does it accept it. With cancel culture, once you're seen as bad, you're seen as bad.

This in itself can push a person back into old habits and ways of thinking. It's the whole, 'if I'm seen as the bad guy still, I might as well go back to being the bad guy.' mentality.

And finally the structure of cancel culture in itself is terrifying. Cancel culture works using mob mentality. "Mob mentality, also called as herd mentality, describes how humans adopt behaviors, buy merchandise, and follow trends based on their circle of influence. It explains how one’s point of view can be easily altered by those around them." - Kristen Polito.

Mob mentality has been called scary time and time again. A lot of the time with cancel and callout culture, people just follow the pack. They don't question the accusations for themselves they just take it and run with it. Sometimes they follow the pack to gain social points or just to escape being cancelled themselves. Mobs are often viscous and dreadful to face.

Now I'm not saying that cancel culture is always bad 100% of the time. What I am saying is that people should be careful when engaging; make sure that you have all of the facts and that you aren't just following the herd.

I think that cancel culture can have it's uses in outing people who are actually dangerous. But I think that these days it is horrifically abused and misused and a lot of innocent people get hurt.

As always, thanks for reading and feel free to discuss.