2020 has driven us into a realm of ambiguity; a dark room with no walls, no corners and no exit sign leading us back to the comfort of normality. Like many of us, I occasionally catch myself dwelling in the despair of it all; indulging in the negativity and choosing to lounge in the darkness as I wait for the lights to flicker again. A lot of the time I illuminate the pitch black with my phone screen, accessing the rest of the world with the press of my thumb and neglecting to consider that there are other people in the room sitting alongside me.
Cancel culture seems to be the theme of the year; a seasonal collection of mindless finger-pointing and a lack of self-accountability is so in right now.
This year’s pandemic has provoked our normal modes of interaction, pushing us to employ new ways of connecting online and voice our thoughts with temporary Instagram stories and shared Facebook posts. We’re all bored. I get it. Although I’m finding it harder to ignore how ludicrous our attention has become as we all retreat to our phones like some sort of toxic safe haven. Every time I attend to social media, I’m confronted with the familiarity of another protest, another hashtag, another targeted villain, another waste of time. We are being fed diets of propaganda and persuasion, convincing us that our engagement in this senseless data will deem us noble and “woke”. Now I’m not saying that the bottomless accounts, allegations and testimonies of the content we see aren’t true but seeking clarity through the fog of media is merely impossible.
This moral pursuit of “staying woke” is nothing but a hollow trait that has liquidated the life in us and has turned us against one another through this time. We need to stop cancelling each other in an attempt to earn our badge. We need to stop calling out others flaws and start rectifying our own. Cancel culture is an artificial tool for self-validation and honestly, I’m sick of seeing it. We are using shame as a weapon; a stepping-stone for us to climb this aimless ladder to nobility but are kicking each other down on the way. That’s not righteous, it’s not moral, it’s not staying woke - it’s nourishing the negativity of the world right now.
Don’t get me wrong, protesting for justice is imperative but when the subject matter for justice is consistently changing with every momentary hashtag, it begins to lose its spirit. #stayathome, #savethechildren, #blm, #wearamask, #coronatesting, #whiteprivilige, and the list goes on. Instead of unconsciously jumping onto the next “hot trend” of what is right and wrong, I urge you to think critically and deliberate how you can really commit to your protests. Simply sharing a 24hr post or denouncing someone without any viable information doesn’t clean any of the mess that has already been made, it simply just kicks it around in hopes of “spreading awareness”.
Another thing to note is that cancel culture prohibits the opportunity for growth and change. I mean… what ever happened to the notion of forgiveness? We need to communicate effectively and offer information and tools to help one another. Forbidding someone’s potential to be a better person is stumping our own prospect for self-growth and chips away at our own morality. It’s time for us all to grow up.
To end a negative year on a positive note, let’s all make a conscious effort to put our phones down, put our egos aside and seek real solutions in the real world. Let’s attend to the conspiracies of our own minds, fight for justice in our own communities and effectively voice our thoughts, not mindlessly share them. It’s time we stop tearing each other down in an attempt to form a better world. It’s not working. Only light can drive out this darkness and it’s about time that we start generating some.
Image: @spooky_soda