Celebrities as the Main Victims of Cancel Culture

The internet is an unpredictable beast; one can go from generally liked to vilified in a matter of minutes. Demi Lovato, a famous singer and Grammy award nominee is one of the latest victims to fall prey to cancel culture, which according to Merriam Webster (2019), is a form of boycott where a person gets called out on the internet for their problematic behavior and get cast out of social or professional circles because of it. Lovato is just one of many celebrities that have been 'canceled' in the past few years. Some of the most notorious examples would be Taylor Swift, Kanye West, and Logan Paul.

Demi Lovato recently posted a photo of herself on vacation in Israel and immediately received backlash from fans and critics alike. Lovato not mentioning Palestine in any of her captions, or the ongoing conflict between Palestine and Israel, was seen as her choosing a stance on the conflict. As a reply to the backlash, she stated: “This was meant to be a spiritual experience for me not a political statement and now I realize it hurt people and for that I’m sorry.” (Bicks, 2019). The effects of this post were immediate, she got bombarded with hate comments all over Twitter and Instagram, resulting in her turning off the comments on the post.

The short time it took for various people to criticize Lovato and describe her as “canceled” is an example of social media’s attempt at taking matters into their own hands. The same people that 'canceled' her had her placed her on a politically aware and socially ‘woke’ pedestal. This was not because of her work or her continued advocacy, but because politicizing celebrities is trendy nowadays. Doing this proves to be extremely dangerous. The demand to over-intellectualize celebrities demeans them and turns them into political props. They become flawless models for political awareness and as soon as the limits of their knowledge become apparent, we rid ourselves of them. When the person in the middle of all that praise falls victim to cancel culture, which is usually inevitable, there is no room for growth or forgiveness, just disposal. We push these real-life human beings onto a political pedestal and we watch them fall while peeking through our finger and not acknowledging how complicit we are in their failings.

The overall outcome of this is that when these critiques take place, they usually get ignored. If the celebrities apologize, it is not sincere. If they do not apologize, they are considered to be horrible people. It’s sort of like damned if they do, damned if they don’t. If these attacks on social media aim to raise awareness in other people, maybe it’s time to consider a better approach to giving critique. The question is, are we interested in getting mad at celebrities on the internet just to seem socially woke, or are we interested in raising awareness in other human beings through real-life pedagogical ways? Do we want to be self-righteous or do we want to be productive?

Only once we stop using celebrities as marketing and branding tools can we begin to see them as humans. Problematic and flawed humans, just like anyone else. Lovato may have seemed ignorant with the way she handled the situation, but did she deserve all the backlash that she got? Perhaps, instead of attacking her, we could’ve calmly informed her of our opinions and why what she did could be considered problematic. As former President Barack Obama recently said during an interview about youth activism at the Obama Foundation summit: “This idea of purity and you’re never compromised and you’re always politically ‘woke’ and all that stuff. You should get over that quickly.” I completely agree with the statement; instead of spending all that negative energy looking down on people for being less ‘woke’ than us, we should use it to raise awareness about important causes instead.