Cancel culture (or call-out culture) is a modern form of ostracism in which someone is thrust out of social or professional circles online on social media, in the real world, or both. Those who are subject to this ostracism are said to be “canceled.” As the use of social media increase in society, apps such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, Youtube provides a place where people can voice their opinions and gain followers and create content that they like for people to see. With this idea, it was not predicted that people would use social media as a place to bully and belittles people for what they think or believe and choose to let the public know. Social Media has become a dangerous place where people use freedom of speech as an opportunity to try to hurt others. 

In the article “10 Theses About Cancel Culture”, Ross Douthat explains that one form of canceling someone that can be seen on a normal day is  “Cancellation, properly understood, refers to an attack on someone’s employment and reputation by a determined collective of critics, based on an opinion or an action that is alleged to be disgraceful and disqualifying… if your critics are calling for you to be de-platformed or fired or put out of business, and especially if the call is coming from inside the house — from within your professional community, from co-workers or employees or potential customers or colleagues, on a professional message board.” Someone can say or do something that can jeopardize their job reputation and the only way to defuse the situation is to fire them. There are things that should not be said or done that as a collective people can deem as unexpectable and out of hand. They say things along the line “ We can’t have that type of behavior at our company”. From there the person is considering you an outcast if others find out. As a normal person, you are able to move on from the situation and start over somewhere else, but being someone in the limelight, the situation would be different.   

Another way a person can get canceled is “You can be canceled for something you said in a crowd of complete strangers if one of them uploads the video, or for a joke that came out wrong if you happened to make it on social media, or for something you said or did a long time ago if the internet remembers. And you don’t have to be prominent or political to be publicly shamed and permanently marked: All you need to do is have a particularly bad day, and the consequences could endure as long as Google.” As a celebrity, these types of situation can determine whether your fan still follow you or not because celebrities have an image to uphold. One slip up or mistake can have people all in your business and ready to judge you. When it comes to the idea of the pick being rich or famous, I will always pick being rich because being famous comes with the media to watch each and every move and creating a story about it. People will always have something to say about the decision you make or have expectations. Your life is out in the public for people to follow and admire and be entertained by. 

For celebrities or someone made famous for an act, social media can become a dangerous place when you are caught doing something you should not be doing, like cheating or using racial slurs, or being accused of sexual assault. People all around the world find out about it and you are being attacked and criticized for your actions. People would take the act personally and use their freedom of speech to criticize you and even go to the extreme to send death threats. Imagine people you don’t know threatening to kill you for making mistake or doing something you wanted to do. I feel like it is not the place of people to judge someone for something they did without knowing the whole story or assuming. Sometimes the media makes up information just have something to say that would gain attention. In the case of Monica Lewinsky, who President Bill Clinton admitted to having had an affair with while she worked at the White House in 1995–1996, she was canceled before the term “canceled culture” was invented. Here is a Ted Talk of Monica Lewinsky coming forth talking about her experience with everything that happened with the president and the media and how it changed her life and why she is coming out now to talk about it after all these years. 

The situation Monica Lewinsky was in, put her life in danger becouse people in the media did not agree with her actions and she herself regretted doing what she did but there was no going back. With the support of her family, she decided that she would not end her life and would overcome this obstacle. An important line Monica said was “The more we click on these types of gossips the more we become numb to the human lives behind it and the more numb we get the more we click all the while someone is making money off someone’s shame”. This generation is losing its empathy and it is costing people well-being and ability to overcome mistakes and situations. People are willing to sell a story tearing someone’s life apart for a paycheck and not think about how that person would be affected by it. 

Having your own opinion on whether you would like to “cancel” someone should be a personal decision and not because people as a collective have decided to. The idea of distinguishing a creator from their art (such as music, art, movies and more) should be something people should consider. Music, art, movies and books are part of our lives and can create a nostalgic feeling that can’t just be dismissed. The creator himself or herself should have legal consequences if what was done was done was that extreme but punishing other people for continuing to support a creation is wrong. 

Work Cited

Douthat, Ross. “10 Theses About Cancel Culture.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 14 July 2020,www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/opinion/cancel-culture-.html. Lewinsky, Monica.

“The Price of Shame.” TED, http://www.ted.com/talks/monica_lewinsky_the_price_of_shame?language=en.

The social dilemma had people working from the most used social media site like Google Facebook and Pinterest talk about how dangerous the computer algorithm for making us use our phone more can have a negative effect on us. These people worked for these companies for years and realized that the development of these social media is becoming more and more addictive and that we are the product. They themselves work for the company and know the tactic and they themselves are falling for it when they leave to go home. This movie installed fear in me and because we talk about how technology is taking over and it is happening before our eyes.  

We were assigned to watch an episode of Silicon Valley and in the episode, this tech guy had this technology that is very valuable, and rich tech people wanted to buy it off of him and he just couldn’t believe it. He was about to be rich but didn’t know what decision he would make and the deal he would take. Silicon valley just showed me how much money people in the tech field could make and how greedy people are for new and improved technology. They don’t think of how it can and would negatively affect society but they like the profit they would make from being the one that gets the technology to the public. The Silicon Valley connects with the movie Social dilemma because those tech guys were once the naive silicon valley members but are now, Years later, seeing and speaking out about the effects of social media on our generation. They want to warn us if we are even willing to listen and actually care. The problem is that the Social dilemma is on Netflix but to get people to watch it another thing. For example, If this movie was not assigned to the class, I would not have watched it, unless it was recommended to me by someone that I have a common interest with and has a strong case as to why I should watch this movie. 

In the article “Why The kids are not alright”, we read about the effects technology has on our generation. He states that “We’re the first generation that cannot escape our problems at all”. Young people are having depression and anxiety. The idea of knowing a lot of information and not knowing what to do with it can affect your daily functions and create fear. The rise of children inflicting pain and self-harm on themselves is scary and continues to rise. Challenges on TikTok and on youtube have been going around targeting the younger generation. They would create challenges like The Outlet Challenge, Fire Challenge, Salt and Ice challenge, Tide-pod challenge, The Pass-out Challenge or the Choking Game, and the Benadryl challenge. Most of these challenges lead to death and made it to the news outlets to warn people about these challenges. 

 Five positive and five negative things about my generation 

Positive 

1. People are more aware of what is going on in the world. 
2. Personal memories (pictures, video) can be saved and live on forever. 
3. Communication is a lot quicker and easier. 
4. We are entertained beyond imagined by just having a phone. 
5. The increase of entrepreneurship. People are learning how to create and do a thing for themselves instead of working your way to the top. 

Negative

1. The government invades our privacy. 
2. We are provided with so much information in the palms of our hands and we don’t know what to do with it. 
3. It’s hard to distinguish fake news from real news. 
4. Our ability to communicate in a social setting is decreasing. 
5. People are in everyone’s business on social media and everywhere else. The lack of privacy. 

Weekly News: will you take the vaccine if or when it is approved?

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-54986208

In the Black Mirror Episode “White Christmas”, we follow the characters Mathew and Joe who are stuck in a cabin with nothing to do but talk to each other about how they messed up in the real world. We start off with the story of   mathew who has a side job of helping men get the women that they cant get on their own. In this particular situation Mathew witness a murder of the guy he was helping but failed to report it. The women who killed the guy was hearing voices in her head and thought the guy was also hearing voices in his head when in reality he was really talking to Mathew. Mathews real job was talking to people about the technology cookie. Which is the same technology that Mathew uses to get into Joe’s head to make him confess to the murder of his ex girlfriend Beth’s father and child.  We learn that Jo killed Beth’s father after learning that Beth died and was able to see is child which we learn was not his child. He didnt know weather the child was his because Beth blocked Joe so he could not see her or hear her which blocks offsprings too. When Joe killed Beth’s father he left the scene leaving Beths daughter to die in a blizzard looking for help. We learn at the end that Mathew help get a confession out of Joe to get a lessened sentence for failing to report a murder. MAthews punishmwnt is that is he blocked for the world leaving him with no one to talk to or see which is a harsh punishment.  This eposide showed a socity where yourt thought are not your own because it could extracted from your body without you knowing and used against you and that you can black people from your life. 

In the article “Breaking Up Isn’t as Hard as It Used to Be (on Facebook)” you learn how easy it is to berak up with someone on facebook. I learned about how  facebook has procedure to help you get over a relationship. It asks you “Would you like to untag all photos of you and your ex? Would you like to receive fewer prompts about tagging them in a photo or a post? And, finally, would you like to never see your former partner—both their name and photos of them—in your News Feed?”. That is very interesting because people use social media differently and I was never the type to put my personal business like who I am in a relationship with on the internet. Facebook actually will help you get rid of your ex, that is funny. Susan Blackmore is someone that studies memes. She talks about Darwinian evolutionary theory which is survival of the fittest. She says Meme are something passed down form person to person. Useful information is copied and can be altered and still meaningful. Memes are an effective way to communicate on the internet and are fun to use like emojis. 

Weekly post: History in the making!!

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54875344

I would like to start off by saying that this week’s group presentation was really good. A question that was asked during the discussion was along the lines “ why was Facebook created or what is the use of Facebook” and I would like to answer that. Facebook was originally made for the social aspect but as time went on it is used to get information across to people through a mass. As time went on people tried to find a way to promote things and get people to believe things through the tactic of propaganda and it is effective because it is hard to distinguish fake news from real in a quick fashion. Mark originally didn’t want to add Ads to Facebook but it happened and people are going pay for it and are put up a lot of money so that they can get their ads to the public. 

Social Media is a place where people are the most and use it now for jobs and campaigns and more. With this information, terrorist groups are about to use this platform to recruit members of their groups and have people act out crazy and unexpected crimes and think that it is okay. 

While reading the articles provided for a week about ISIS, I remember reading an article a few years back about how this guy become an ISIS member through finding it on social media and making it his calling. This is very dangerous because people are reading propaganda ads and believe the message and think that’s the way of thinking. Propaganda is known for its way of taking a message and making it misleading bias and it is effective in messing with people’s minds and thought processes. 

In the article “The Humiliation of Katie Hill Offers a Warning” we learn about the Katie Hills’ private photos being legacies by her husband after it was revealed that she was having relations with staffers working on her campaign. Hill was so humiliated that she resigned and decided to divorce her abusive husband . Hill’s has promised to devote her time to fighting nonconsensual pornography: “I refuse to let this experience scare off other women,” she said on the House floor. This just shows how ugly politics can get and how a women’s body can be used as a weapon against her in a world that is run by powerful men. Women fight for rights every day whether small or big but any form of harassment should not be tolerated and should be taken seriously. It sucks that she had to resign but I understand why she did so. It is embarrassing and degrading for the public to see you in that light especially when she is or was a politician. Politics is just so messy and dangerous. 

Weekly News: As we wait for outcomes of the election, we wait for distraction to unleash.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/11/2/21546327/boarded-up-business-election-day-protests

The movie the Social Network is about how Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook while he was an undergrad at Havard. In the making of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg took an idea of people who he went to school with and made it his own. He was asked to help make a website but ended up making his own and not giving the other students their credit and also his best friend who ended up not being apart of Facebook because of a contract that he signed not knowing what it meant. Mark Zuckenberg had 617 people sign up for Facebook a day after releasing the website. Mark ended up expanding the website to different continents with the help of Sean Parker who was the creator of Napster. The movie takes us through both lawsuits that Mark was involved with. I understand why these people decided to sue Mark. Mark was only thinking about himself and how to advance Facebook. In the process, he hurt people and had to pay for it literally. Mark’s best friend got paid an unknown amount ( I bet it was a lot of money) and was named the co-founder of Facebook while the guys that Mark got the idea of creating Facebook Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss got 65 million dollars and had to sign a nondisclosure agreement.

The article “Essena O’Neill quits Instagram claiming social media ‘is not real life’” talks about a woman named Essena O’Neill who felt that she was being consumed by being on social media and living up to the hype. She deleted her Instagram page that had over six hundred thousand followers. She got a lot of backlash and response to why she decided to delete her Instagram so she made a video explaining why she felt living for social media was not real life and what I think she really meant to say was that life should not be for social media, there is more to life. She was not eating most days and her days were consumed with creating content for social media accounts and youtube. She ended up creating a website where there were no likes and followers where she would post about things she wanted to post and if you looked at it, it was for your own enjoyment. You can tell that she was living her best life without the weight of likes and comments determining how she felt. This happened in 2015 which was 5 years ago but you can tell that not many people took her advice and maybe had to learn the hard way or maybe people don’t even realize that their lives on social media are toxic. People mainly do things like that becouse it is glorified on social media and thinks it is cool and also pays the bills. Being a social media influencer is considers a job nowaday and that is crazy but who am I to judge. This world is consumed by advertisements and new ways to get people to stay on their phones when real life is going on around them.

Weekly News: Cops kill a man in front of his mother

https://www.thecut.com/2020/10/philly-police-shooting-of-walter-wallace-jr-what-we-know.html

The presentation was very strong and Steve did a great job engaging the class to participate. We are in a time and age where social media impacts everyone’s lives differently and is a platform where you can be who you want to be whether you are like that in reality or not. The questions asked were very engaging and nostalgic because it made me think back to the times when I first started using social media. I had a friend that lived in the same apartment build as me but she was in the other building so our windows were facing each other so we would communicate by yelling out the window if we wanted to go outside together or if we were ready to walk to school together and once we had phones we would use Facebook to communicate. That transition was very dramatic but helpful. 

In my opinion, fake news came about when the media learned that people love news and it’s got to the point that fake news is created to entertain people and keep people talking. This is scary because news media and blog pages would rather feed people information than to fact check them the publish the information. They would bullish the fake news then the person related to the news or the news is about specks out about the news on whether it is true or not and that response becomes a whole new story. The news source I think about when it comes to fake news is the Instagram page “theshaderoom”. The shade room gained its popularity by posting information about celebrity lives or entertaining videos. The problem is that now they are so popular that they don’t care whether they are posting fake news or real news as long as they have evidence to back up their claim. The only information I fact check are the ones that interesting to me but what really bothers me is the fact that this page is making money off-putting peoples private information into the public or find joy in solving a mystery in someone life that would be just a good story that people would find entertaining.  

Fake news published in the media about politics or on a judgment of character is a form of defamation and can have serious consequences. In the article “ Goodbye to the Age of Newspapers (Hello to a New Era of Corruption)”, newspapers were the way people got news and information but now that we have social media the newspaper is out of date. Newspapers were credible because they had to fact check every information they put out and make sure that it was worth publishing and relevant. But now with social media and having the president uses Twitter to put out information it makes it harder to make sure that information is real or not. 

Weekly news: My weekly news is about what is happening in Nigeria as we speak. They are fighting against police brutality and just yesterday their police were shooting at the protester and not letting the ambulance pass so they could help the wounded. Many lifeless bodies were laying on the ground. 

https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/21/africa/nigeria-sars-protests-police-explainer-intl/index.html

Copyright is a thing people of this generation has to deal with and it is so annoying. Imaging being on youtube and people can use audio or vidoe that they dont own just for entertainment purposes. It would make thing a lot less serious and fun.  If you watch youtube the way I do, you would constantly hear some say something along the lines “ let me turn this off I dont want to get copyrighted”. What I find suprizing about Napster Documentary ‘Downloaded’ is that you see teens in college find a problem and try to make it easier for more people like him get access to music and it came with consequence that landed them with a lawsuit. Napster was close to destroying the music industry becosue people were getting access to music and downloading them for free. Music has a place in everyones heart but  being about to access without having to pay for it was a luxury. Their was process to downloading the music but it was worth it. All the Seans wanted to do was help people get access to music but it was affecting the artist who make the music because they get to listen to the music for free instead of paying for it and the artist its self gets profit from it because making music is a job in a way. Once Napster closed, people found new ways to get free music. Napster was a start to something new until they found a way to stop people from getting free music and I think the change in the technology made it easier for people pay for music instead of for free. The first itunes to come out was very similar to the foundation of Napster even if they would not admit it. The Napster lawsuit was a eye opener for people. It was unfortunate. 

  The article “Yes, Copyright’s Sole Purpose Is To Benefit The Public“ states that “when originally written, the “science” part was directed at copyright, and it really meant “learning.” Going back to the original intent, it most certainly was not created to cover all kinds of creativity — but certainly the law has changed over time.” This sucks because now most creative platforms are targeted because of the rules of copyright. They have people that jobs are to sit down and track down people that don’t have using audio or footage they don’t own. Its annoying but I understand because you should make profit off your creations you took time to make and invent. 

On a more serious note…………………

Weekly news: People are in need of help as the pandemic is still happening. Not everyone is able to go back to work and make money.  People needed help to make ends meet as the prices of thing increase due to profit they have lost while we were in quarantine. The country that everyone dreams to come to is struggling the most to help its citizens.

https://www.newsweek.com/progressive-democrats-demand-stimulus-relief-now-after-pelosi-rejects-wh-deal-gop-focuses-1539205

Digital activism is all this generation knows. A better term is “Internet activism which is the use of electronic communication technologies such as social media, e-mail, and podcasts for various forms of activism to enable faster and more effective communication by citizen movements, the delivery of particular information to large and specific audiences as well as coordination.”While Martin Luther king gathered his audience by word and building an organization that was fighting for the same cause, We use the internet to find people interested in supporting a cause. Only genuine believes and supporters stay and fight for the cause for however long they have to. With Digital activism, only causes that go viral and have a strong support system around it will get news media attention for the time being, and then it’s is on to the next viral cause that people are fighting for on the internet. For example, The black lives matter movement protest that erupted due to the death of Geroge Floyd. He died May 25, 2020, and the news only broadcasted that protest was happening but they didn’t really explain the cause to the fullest extent until the protest for Ahmaud Arbery who was killed February 23, 2020, and Breonna Taylor who was killed by cops on March 13, 2020. This brought cities together in a way because they knew they were fighting for the same cause which was police brutality and how cops were getting away with it. Videos of George Floyd’s death surfaced right when the incident was happening. But Ahmaud Arbery’s death video surfaced around the same time and that has people angry because not only is coronavirus killing a lot of people but now cops are doing so too. Not only two and half weeks from when Geroge Floyd was killed by cops, Rayshard Brook was also killed by cops on June 12, 2020, at a Wendy’s drive-through.

As people are trying to quarantine, people felt the urge and need to protest which was the only way that they felt they could fight for change. Social Media was the way people communicated to know when and where to meet up for the protest but the thing is social media is public so anyone such as cops can interfere and that is when protesters were met with violence. The sad part is that news outlets were not telling or showing people how violent the protest actually was. People were seeing how violent police were from social media of people that were at the once peaceful protest. People lost eyes due to rubber bullets that were designed to be aimed at the floor first but were being directly aimed at protesters’ faces. I feel like we need to find a way other than protesting to make a change because the government does not care. It wasn’t until weeks after the news outlets decided to cover what was really happening at the protests and even reporters were being targetted. But that media coverage didn’t last long as it should which is the point sociologist Zeynep Tufekci was making in her TED talk.

Weekly news: More information on BLM coverage

Snowden was a well-filmed movie and if you told me that the actor Lakeith Stanfield was in it, I would have watched it sooner. The movie “Snowden” tells of Edward Snowden’s journey to expose the United States government. He was in the military fighting the war against Iraq but due to an injury, he had to leave. That is when Snowden decided to work for the CIA. While working for the CIA, Snowden learned so much information about the United State government and he felt the need to expose it. He leaves his job at the National Security Agency and decides to leak this classified information. In order to do so, he had to leave the life he had. He had to leave his girlfriend and the United States. He goes to Hong Kong and stations himself in a hotel. He gets journalists that he trust and gets them to write the story that would be published in the United States exposing the government. In the movie, Snowden said “This is not about terrorism. Terrorism is an excuse. This is about economic control and social control and the only thing your really protecting is the supremacy of your government.” I agree with that line because the government is in a position to protect us and in the process that is spying on citizens is illegal. As the government that holds millions of people accountable for their actions should not be doing something as illegal as spying on people when they think they are in private. That use terrorism as an excuse to justify the illegal action they are doing.

Watching this movie help me confirm that the government is watching us because it all could have been fake news but knowing that someone can confirm it and seen it happen with their own eyes is proof. The only proof I had was new articles which could have been fake news to keep people on their toes, but this man Edward Snowden sacrificed his safety and well being to tell ME and citizens and the world that we don’t have privacy like we thought we did and that it is possible for the government to track us even when we don’t know that we are being tracked. Snowden said “The people being able to question our government and to hold it accountable. That’s the principle that the United States was founded on.” and that is messed up that is was happening behind our backs. The scene with the Muslim women talking off her burka was a great way to show the extreme of how invasive the government is being. Edward Snowden is a hero even though he is considered a whistleblower. He opens many people’s eyes to how we will never have privacy with our phones or with cameras around. I like how we could see how he really looks at he end.

Weekly news: Killer cop raising money to protect himself

https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/30/us/breonna-taylor-officer-retire-fundraiser-trnd/index.html

“Hate in a Nation” is a Black Mirror episode that was full of suspense. I know that each episode is filled with advanced technology that affects the society that they live in. In this case, someone hacked bees that were programmed to do the job of actual bees that are extinct and made them killing machines. That just shows how easy it is for someone that is advanced with computers can hack a system like the government and do crazy and extreme things. In this case, someone hacked the bees and started to kill people with it. He created a consequence game that had people use a hashtag to troll people on the internet. The person that was trolled the most would get killed by the bees. The game had consequences that nobody knew about. What started off as a game ended up killing 350,000 people. People that participated in the game and used the hashtag #deathto were killed by a swarm of bees. It only took one bee to kill the person but a swarm of them would arrive at the destination to make sure that the job was completed. The part that interested me more was the fact the government was using the bee to spy on people even though they only told the public that the bees were in place to do the job of an actual bee, which in this society was extinct. Blue was my favorite character. She was determined to put an end to the killing and even faked her own death so that she could find the man that created the game which resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of people. This just shows how powerful words are. 

I’ve learned this generation has found love in drama. Social media has created a platform for people to put other people’s business on the internet and anyone can respond to it. People even go to the extreme to threaten people’s lives. In the article “The ‘spiral of silence’: How Social Media Encourages Self-Censorship online.” shows that even as someone that is commenting on a situation, people fear to say the wrong thing because they can get backlash from a large audience of people they don’t know or even friends. The youtube video “The outrage Machine” talks briefly about how people started to love “trash Television”. Trash television is basically drama that is going on in someone’s life and shows like Jerry Springer show and Maury show were known for that. I think Social media is a way for people to get into other people’s business instead of worrying about their own problems. People should mind their business and do what they have to do instead of being nosy and talking about things that have not affected them personally. But yes people have the right to say what they want but threats and backlash and hateful comments that make someone not want to use the internet anymore is a bit extreme but we have no way of controlling it and that is basically what is happening today in society. 

Weekly Post: A trial long over due.

https://www.newsweek.com/brett-hankison-officer-who-shot-breonna-taylor-10-times-not-charged-her-death-indicted-1510995