Never in history has celebrity status been so attainable for the everyday individual. Most of us will live our lives in relative obscurity. However, post the right video at the right time, and your average Joe is now a TikTok microcelebrity with thousands of followers. Yet his 15 minutes of fame may come at a price. One misstep and he could become the subject of internet discourse and pile ons. The internet can and should be used as a platform to call out problematic behavior. However, as the rich and powerful remain practically invulnerable to criticism, it’s everyday people who suffer the most when faced with an onslaught of abuse.
Most of us are tired of talking about cancel culture. But for those who prefer to stay off TikTok, Twitter and Reddit, cancel culture is a social phenomenon in which individuals call out, ostracize or withdraw support from a person for perceived wrongdoing. The term canceling gained popularity in 2017 with the rise of the #MeToo movement, operating as a mechanism for victims of sexual assault to call out their abusers. Marginalized people have also used social media to call out people for problematic behavior such as racism, misogyny, homophobia or transphobia.
In 2022, the phenomenon is a frequent talking point of Republican politicians who rant about the liberal media or comedians who whine about audiences who don’t find their jokes funny anymore. It may be tempting to roll our eyes at any critique of cancel culture or deny its existence entirely. The rich and the powerful are rarely held accountable for their behavior and generally maintain their platforms even after backlash. It’s hard to feel bad for a celebrity when his racist tweets are forgiven after he makes an Instagram post of a notes app apology his publicist wrote.
It’s clear that cancel culture doesn’t affect celebrities. Instead, those facing the brunt of social ostracization and hate tend to be everyday people. While some may be active users of social media platforms, others never consented to be discussed in the first place.
Recently, dozens of women on TikTok have shared their stories dating a man nicknamed West Elm Caleb who is now infamous online. The women describe similar experiences of having been strung along and ultimately ghosted by him. As the story gained traction and more and more women shared their stories, the allegations against West Elm Caleb have intensified. No longer does Caleb string women along. Instead, they describe these actions as “love bombing,” a term associated with the cycle of abuse. While it may feel hurtful for someone to display interest in you only to later ghost, it is not an example of love bombing or abuse. Now, the hashtag #WestElmCaleb has over 4.1 million views, and Caleb’s Hinge profile is plastered all over the internet. His personal social media accounts are flooded with negative comments. There are multiple petitions trying to get him fired and his full name and job title have been published on the internet.
This online abuse toward West Elm Caleb is only justifiable when we use words like “love bombing” or frame the discourse around him as having its basis in social justice. West Elm Caleb is an example of how cancel culture morphs into surveillance culture. Step out of line, even if it’s well within the realm of normal human behavior, and you risk punishment. Internet users cloak the human desire to gossip and humiliate under the guise of morality and social justice.
This is an extreme example of cancel culture in action. Harassment can happen even to people with a few thousand followers. I spoke with Allison Akiyama, a Eugene community member who experienced online hate after making a TikTok in which she joked about hating women.
“As a woman who is also a lesbian, I thought it was a funny and ironic take on the hardships that come with being attracted to women,” Akiyama said.
Her TikTok account had about 8000 followers, but her follower count dropped by about 500 during the week following her post, with the video garnering over a hundred comments. Akiyama recounted a comment that stood out to her, calling her a “misogynistic pig” and accusing her of having made the TikTok for male attention.
“This whole situation made me realize how much of an echo chamber TikTok and other social media platforms are,” she said. “It’s all just a bunch of people — majority teens — that have taken reasonable and logical concepts from ideologies like feminism and twisted them into something so far removed from reality that nobody can take them seriously anymore.”
Online spaces can be a useful venue to discuss social justice. It is because of Twitter, TikTok and Reddit that so many college students are informed on issues relating to activism and leftism. But we need to make sure not to use social justice to recreate the same systems we aim to critique. Cancel culture mimics a police state when we decide to punish those we believe have done wrong rather than help them to grow. We hurt the working class when we weaponize social media to try to get them fired from their jobs. Social media can be a mechanism through which we hold people accountable. Kindness is generally more effective than anger. Bigots and abusers should be taken down. But for minor infractions? Let’s not throw everyday people to the wolves.