Cancel Culture and Idolizing Needs to Tone Down

Nowadays with readily available media, there to tell you all the dirty truths and realities of the world, it can seem like it's impossible to find a celebrity out there you can truly enjoy. When someone becomes the next big thing there is little they can do to keep their private life or personal views out of the public eye. Because of this, the amount of hateful and immature posts toward celebrities have grown exponentially. Then again, so has our tolerance.

Don’t get me wrong. I am the last person to try to defend someone when they have done something truly wrong. I am no little girl trying to keep up fan pages of known abusers or pedophiles. I have been told that I judge harshly, and don’t know how to take jokes, or forgive. Perhaps that is now true, but I wasn’t always this way.

I, like most my age, grew up with social media being a huge part of my life. From this I’ve noticed that people are quick to spread the horrible things celebrities have done, and will stop at nothing to keep trying to prove their view is the right one. The only issue with this is when we forget that our idols and celebrities are human, and therefore they make mistakes.

Now, in saying this, I don’t mean it to excuse the actions of anyone. I mean it to show that perhaps it is time that we stop idolizing everyone. As a child I fell in love with Johnny Depp; I felt like he was an amazing actor, and therefore, an amazing person. Once the news headlines and magazines started to show his true nature, I completely ignored them.

The same would happen with Gal Gadot, whose story is too controversial to even dive into, and Scarlett Johansson, who was one of the first female superheroes I fell in love with. Eventually I got tired of running into all the callout posts canceling all these celebrities, and all the defending that went with it, and decided that I would read all the things they had to say, get angry, and then sometimes joined in what they were saying.

Then recently all these new stories came to light and celebrities like Depp ended up being innocent, and I, like many others, were left feeling dumb and immature for believing the allegations. Though this story isn’t about that specific issue; simply about how people are constantly going back and forth with their views on people, and it is just exhausting.

I’ve realized that although there are some very problematic issues with people, there is no use in wasting your time with them. Plus, most issues people take up with celebrities are quite ridiculous, and tend to set back any real change people try to make.

It’s almost like a certain switch is flipped, and all of a sudden everyone is ready to attack certain people. We are so quick to judge others, or to turn the other way when the realities of our world become a bit too much to handle. I am not saying to toss away your idols, or to monitor their every move in hopes of finding some sort of mistake. People just need to realize that those people we see onscreen aren’t always so great off of it. Perhaps if we would learn to tone down our high expectations and face reality, our lives would be better off. In the end, we just have to show that we will idolize and support all we can, but that we simply know how to draw the line when it is needed.