Cancel Chaos | John Lee | TEDxPittsburgHigh
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1fWkHFr3Rw Video ID: P1fWkHFr3Rw ============================================================ [Music] what's up guys um this might seem this might seem a little familiar to you you might have seen this before but let's go ahead and get started anyway let's get one thing out there I love Kanye West what I hate is that nowadays I always have to clarify that I don't actually love everything about my glorious 5'8 King I just love the music that he creates now the source of this constant clarification that we have in our societ society today is the evolution of public shame and cancel culture more specifically the fact that the very nature of cancel culture exacerbates the idea that it's a canceled individual also corrupts the abstract ideals that individual might uphold what makes that scenario even worse is the perception we have that everyone most notably celebrities is tied to a scale of right or wrong where if you're not right you're wrong and vice versa with no in between pushing this polar determination on society only further drives Division and hostility between people however the very same power and the very same tool that allows us to cancel others is the one that allows us to band together as entire communities to help progress the world we live in especially with the modernization of society today right now that power is social media yet public shaming continues to be a universal and Timeless phenomenon regardless of technological advancement perhaps even more so now and so with there being points on either extremity we have to learn to compromise our power and control it properly so as to prevent the detriment of unassuming and innocent people that's not to say Kanye is Innocent but as Kanye once said he just wants to feel liberated and the first step in doing so is by recognizing the dma that's confining him in the first place before social media and even before the internet we as humans innately have found ways to shame others whether that's for the sake of saving our own Pride getting revenge or because of our bright neon outfit phase in the80s I know it's hard to look at regardless of the reason shaming has been a natural human process since the beginning of humanity in ancient times we had public stonings as a form of punishment and even just a couple years ago specifically 1,991 years ago biblical text outlines that Jesus's crucifixion can also be seen as public shaming as well okay so maybe social media relatively is not that bad however what is concrete is that not always necessarily always bad social media has given us a route to perform public shaming much more frequently and much more potently not only do we now have the ability to use our little thumbs to ferociously type away a onear yel reviews practically whenever we want to but we can also find people who share the same opinions as us and and create entire communities for the sole purpose of bringing one individual down and out of all 99 of igia zelia's problems the normalization of canceling individuals is at the very top of them because the concern nowadays is less of the effect of the cancel on the person who is actually being cancelled but rather the effect that it has On Their audience take for example again Kanye Kanye right now is most renowned for his outrageous statements ranging from his dislike of Taylor Swift in 2016 which in my opinion is actually not that outrageous at all to his anti-semitic comments which ended up cutting almost all of his brand deals and ruined his reputation as an intergenerational artist but instead of focusing on the repercussions Kanye faces because of his poor decisions the public is much more keen to criticizing the music he's made instead individuals who listen to his music are now either having to hide their appreciation for music made in the past or be heavily criticized for their appreciation of that said music when in truth we have to learn to separate the art from the artist and yes that hate has died down over the past couple of years but it still remains prevalent in today's society relative to before the great cancelling of 2022 additionally even if shaming is Justified the public needs to open their eyes to how massive shame can affect an individual as Keon Han writes in his research paper regarding the effects of Shame specifically in the decision-making process it becomes clear that extensive humiliation of an individual can affect their subconscious and how they respond to situ certain situations for the worse in other words the more identity we as a society push onto an individual the more likely the same individual will continue to make mistakes and fall into an endless cycle of corruption bak byr and Tang gen cause also tell us that the effects of guilt can not only affect the individual in a cyclical manner but can also affect the environment and the people around them as analyed to the mediating rules of Shame through parenting this is made even worse by the fact that as Pew Research Center expresses Americans in particular seem to demand Perfection from people with higher Prestige which only ends up making those negative effects worse for the people who are actually affected by them now although that seems like Common Sense the very fact that we continue to create pressure on canceled people long after they've been cancelled shows that we as a society either can't and haven't been able to put together those dots or we deliberately ignore them if it's the former our goal should be to raise awareness of the effects continuous shame can have and if it's the latter we as a collective need to change the way we think and completely re-evaluate our priorities it's also important to acknowledge that shame and cancel culture does not only pertain to celebrities to further Christine Ro writes to us that with the coming of the covid-19 pandemic the number of instances in which individuals were shamed increased dramatically as access to social media and the internet became much more ubiquitous and as stigma with the pandemic increased among Asian Americans as something that goes somewhat unnoticed although heavily present we also learned that the number of active social media users has increased by around 1.3 billion from 3.7 billion in 2020 to almost 5 billion in the year of 2024 exacerbating the issue even further now if you're at all like Justin Bieber and you are yearning to be someone else maybe probably don't do that because if Society cves for the downfall of people who stand at a higher Prestige or even people at their own level then naturally we need to learn to be inent with the actions already made for the benefit of the most people possible but as bad as shaming can get for my love of Rihanna I do have to swallow my own Pride because it has also been an integral part of progressing socially and societally as I mentioned before shame has been used since the beginning of humanity and although often times it can be used for the benefit of certain individuals and for the detriment of others it can also be used for the benefit of an entire Community just as frequently the novel so you've been publicly shamed by John Ronson explores the societal implications of public shame he writes empirical uses of Shame specifically through social media one of the most notable examples is an instance where a community of people banding together LED major companies such as Ellie Fitness to donate £39,000 or $50,000 to European Charities as a way to make up for the misconduct towards their customers social media is a massively powerful tool whenever you need to manipulate a certain situation a certain person or entire Industries the true power of social media in is uh excuse me the true power of social media in itself is not okay sorry the TR power of social media and influencing large figure heads is not the innate nature of social media itself but rather the collection of hundreds or thousands of people all working together to achieve a common goal if the act of resilience was made by a single individual against LA Fitness as Ronson points out we would never have seen the larger effect it had regardless of societal reform social media grants us we now have to raise the question is shame in today's society exclusive to social media and the resounding answer is no absolutely not it's also not just a tool used by civilians as it's open to practically anyone in the world most notably it's also open to law enforcement Susie Kim outlines that recently law enforcement has opened themselves up to the use of Shame through the internet as a means to deter crime by targeting individuals they've already caught and shaming them online they aspire to drive away criminals from acting in the same way as their predecessors so as to prevent their own individual shaming at the same time law enforcement also uses the collective power of people with information on the internet to gather clues or hints about perpetrators to keep their streets without harm tldr assuming that the moral implications of each instance are sound Shane can be used as a method to serve the community both in comfort and in safety so then if we have two massive polarities of benefits and detriment how can they possibly both coexist in one phenomenon well that answer is also pretty simple the answer is social media is not inherently harmful what determines social media is used is not its nature but rather the intentions projected by the users of social media so in truth the harm of cancel culture does not stem from cancelling itself but rather the societal evolution of specif specific incidents involving shame and the actors behind it themselves and even though Taylor can make her bad guys good for the weekend our solution has to last a lot longer than just 2 days because with there being both beneficial and harmful effects of shame we can't possibly just settle for leaving the status quo the way it is right now or outlawing shame completely like what we can't do that anyway and so we need to find a compromise we have to collectively determine a way to harmonize the good and the bad and find a good middle ground to protect Rel ly innocent people while also formulating a sense of justice we have to as Lorie peny writes to us differentiate between outrage and Justified Behavior specifically by regulating our response to certain situations of course there's no law that can make shame situational nor is there a way for a supreme deity to change our Unwritten moral code however it Still Remains a necessity to prevent the mental repercussions of constant shaming and protect the people who fall victim to it in which case what we can do is raise awareness by either bringing out the implications of shame in conversation or in instances where you get to talk at people for 12 minutes at a time it sounds stupid but in doing so we can continue to use social media and see its benefits while also decreasing the negative effects tied to it I'm not some helicopter parent I'm not saying we should Outlaw all social media and keep you from playing Roblox in school but what I do recommend is that maybe we should just take a step back and consider that maybe the sense of Pride we feel when we destroy a person's Creator maybe perhaps probably isn't so great for the person who just had their life ruined in which case we also need to find a middle ground naturally there will be instances where we think that shaming a person or a whole industry is necessary but extensive humiliation is not beneficial to the shamer or the person being shamed it's like trying to bring down the entire School District after miss rry misgraded your assignment JK she's a good teacher she doesn't do that all in all shame is something we can all harness and use to the benefit of society but it's also something that we shouldn't abuse in which case we need to come to consensus on how exactly we can manage our own desires and balance them with the negative effects they can have on individuals our impulses should not corrupt the lives of others if we want to have moral ground we need to have a common understanding I'll continue to tell people that I love Kanye West music but I hope that someday there won't be repercussions to loving him as a person as well thank you [Applause]