Cancel culture getting out of hand: End of creative careers?

Image Source - Vox

Cancel culture, a term thats getting quite frequently implemented upon this days. 

Be it a new book or authors, blogs, movie/series or part of it, stand-up comedy or anything form of art or expression, cancel culture always comes to show its ugly face to boycott or censor something.

Even if the art or content piece is not offensive or spreading any kind of hate in any way, people get offended at slightest of things and ask for boycotts. This makes me wonder- if this continues, will this bring a end to creative careers? No professional in creative careers will want to be threatened of their or their family's safety, abuses, or threats of boycott over something that doesn't even spread hate.

In season 3 of Amazon Prime's Comicstaan, during the topical comedy round, Kusha Kapila had asked standup comedian Sapan Verma that can you perform a topical comedy set without getting an FIR (filed against you) to which Sapan Verma awkwardly laughed, indicating a big no. For the unknown people here to the genres of comedy, topical comedy refers to making jokes on subject of immediate relevance, interest or importance owing to its relation to current events. Current affairs mostly consist of politics, government, religion and current state of economy and the country. Well, we cannot write/speak about either as it may offend the government (Freedom of Speech, whats that!?) and you will be inside the jail or have a FIR filed against you👀.

Ofcourse I do not support any content that is aggressive, shaming, mockery or insulting to anyone or any community/profession. But now-a-days, people get offended at literally anything. Jokes, piece of art ot content, or a scene from movie/series, even if it hasn't been offensive or spreading hate. Some have even got offended with my blogs or a music video edit I once shared on my Instagram story cause it contained a few seconds of kissing scene🤦‍♀️. I blocked them from my IG account, undoubtedly.

People have lost their patience now-a-days. But what is one of the major reason behind it? Well, the answer may feel ironical as its something I am currently typing from, but access to smart phones and internet are one of the culprits here. But ofcourse, it depends on how we use the resources we have. We have access to everything over our smartphones with help of the internet. When we can get items or food delivered to us over a few clicks on our phones, cozily sitting on our beds in pyjamas, we expect item to get delivered to us ASAP. No doubt there has been new startups of delivering groceries and so within 10-15mins, no matter it might be hectic for the delivery person out.

As much as we can support someone by commenting or sharing their art/content on our stories/status, posts, etc, we can even pull them back by commenting something rash, abusive and insensitive over someone's posts whenever they share a new content on any of the social medias or internet platforms. Afterall, its just typing a little bit, right? Some seconds/minutes of typing and a long existing mental stress to someone else🙂.

If this cancel culture continues, artists will be scared to share their arts and content. Everyone needs money to sustain their lives and wants to protect themselves and their families from any harm. People will have to take up a career that will give them security of mind from any threats of safety, which I doubt will be happening. Cancel culture has penetrated creative field, it might even soon penetrate other career options- to the extent when there is none left. 

Very recent example of cancel culture, to the extent of harming the artist's life- stabbing Salman Rushdie publically. And this is not just one case, but there are so many else that doesn't come to our everyday notice.

Artists and content creators get threats to take down/censor their content or upcoming releases, threats about their family's security and also unfortunately, rape/acid attacks and murder threats. Sometimes even a woman's unconventional dressing sense is offensive to people. This gets to the extent of slut-shaming and threatening her with rape/acid attack and murder under her comments.

Often it's not just getting offended over what art/content is shared, many times, the cancel culture comes from the place of jealousy. One gets jealous when another artist/content creator reaches great heights in their career, that they plan to bring others down rather than trying to improve themselves. Sometimes even to the extent of threatening about another's or their families' safety. Jealousy is ofcourse a two-sided sword, affecting both the jealous person and the other.

Creative careers is something that may not get very much automated. Artificial intelligence isn't very much provided with emotions. As emotions, often like love and grief, also brings out the creativity and stories, it is not something that is yet given to the artificial intelligence and robots, and we cannot provide them with it either. Artificial intelligence, very much phone itself, has been ruling our lives; we wouldn't wish for a life-size robots to rule our lives and professions either, and throw us into the unemployment arena. 

Social medias take major place in our lives, sometimes, often more than the real world itself. With cheaper internet and access to social media, we have access to almost everything. As the saying goes- we become the content we consume. We will have to first change the content we consume if we want to attain more patience, which unfortunately our generation is seeming to lack now. If you think you are consuming content that that is always sensational, very much against your value system that you find yourself commenting under every another post about how wrong it is, make you feel insecure (that you take it off on others, trying to bring them down as well) etc, unfollow and block those accounts. Social medias have a block option, use it! Or unsubscribe to YouTube channels or blogs that do the same to you. It will surely give you a lot of mental peace and time on your hands to do something productive with your own life and not trying to cancel or boycott everyone, every now and then.

We need creative careers to keep us sane. And yes, also sports. The books, poetry, funny contents on Instagram, movies/series that entertain us but also makes us think on deeper levels sometimes, standup comedy to make us laugh when the life or circumstances gets serious, etc.

From- Dead Poets Society
Image Source - Pinterest 

Yes, the artists and content creators also need to be mindful with their art/content that it is not intentionally offensive to anyone, any community/profession or not spreading hatred in any ways- subtly or openly. But as a audience, we have a lot to work on our own patience too, as to not overreact on every another thing.

Related blogposts-

1. Losing patience at the cost of other's life?

2. Is it right to suppress an artist?