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Why it will be the best thing when cancel culture is cancelled

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Three young women embracing.
Three young women embracing.

The way we hold conversations has progressed in so many ways. Using social media, we’ve become bolder and more fearless – calling out problematic behaviour and holding people accountable for their actions.

We’ve seen people face the consequences for their actions and we’re finally driving change in a way that makes people understand the damage their words and thoughtless deeds cause.

Except that while we've been confronting toxic behaviour, something just as ugly, if not worse has emerged. 

READ MORE: 3 terrible behaviours that social media endorses

Cancel culture. The art of writing someone off for making a genuine mistake and not giving that person a chance to learn from his/her error.

We’re not talking about cancelling people who have consistently behaved badly and shown no remorse, but rather someone who may in the heat of the moment, blurted out something and not realised what he or she has said is actually problematic.

But then we assign ourselves judge and jury, quick to rake offenders over the coals and often forgetting that we’re all imperfect human beings.

A thread on Twitter recently delved into this – and while it focuses on talking about the book community, the gist behind it reminds relevant to everyone.

The problem as the thread reveals is that it also creates a sense of superiority amongst those who are calling for specific people to be cancelled.

There’s an inherent us versus them that reveals that people would much rather focus on pointing out other people’s flaws instead of focusing on their own.

READ MORE: 4 celeb women who've made amazing career comebacks

Cancel culture, at its heart, could be a good thing if it focused not on the cancelling part but on educating instead of eradicating. 

I’ve made some massive mistakes in my life – and all those things would be coming back to haunt me if I didn’t have people around me to tell me why what I was doing is wrong and how it is hurtful to other people.

Educating people encourages empathy. We can’t dismiss people simply because it’s much more convenient to write them off. 

If we all want to be critical of people we need to understand that we as humans are constantly learning, evolving and that in the process we’re bound to slip up and unintentionally hurt someone.

Superiority politics is the last thing we need to further divide us in so many different ways. Bridging the gap and helping each other goes a long way to mend fences than icing someone out of the party. 

Let’s turn cancel culture into a more friendlier and forgiving culture where possible. No more - 'you can't sit with us'.

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