Is Cancel Culture A Result Of The Social Media Fallacy Of Mass Produced "Individuality"?

In the Twitter kangaroo court system, getting canceled, which is probably the gravest of all judgments, comes fast and swift. All that is needed to deliver this judgment is an old screenshot of the defendant saying something considered offensive in the current times and the case is a closed one without consideration for the context of the offensive tweet or any other logical explanation. Cancel culture is unforgiving. 

Despite its constantly exposed and rebuked absurdity, cancel culture is widely popular on the social media site. Celebrities make up the majority of the victims. One mishap from the past retweeted or screenshot back into the timeline is grounds for an entire career or livelihood down the drain. But what makes cancel culture so popular though?

The answer might lie in the way Twitter algorithms works. Because of the groupthink side effect of the functionality of the algorithms,  mob mentality to shame supposedly "problematic" characters always gathers momentum quite fast. The consensus between the cancellers to cancel the canceled is swift because they are all in one filter bubble.

What is tricky is that the cancelers do not realize that they are in a filter bubble. Although they know that their behavior which in this case is deciding to "cancel" someone is influenced in some way by the mob mentality afforded by the presence of other cancelers, what they do not know is that it is not just influenced by other cancellers in some way but in totality.

Most people, as individuals, see and understand that cancel culture is illogical most of the time but put the same people into a mob and you have all that sense diminished. They convince themselves that they are making a conscious decision to embark on that canceling when they are actually just following the herd, in a sort of mass-produced "individuality" phenomenon.

Human beings are social creatures. We strive off of knowing that we have the backing of a group and cancel culture provides exactly this environment which further leads to its normalization. When you have algorithms ill-informing users into thinking that they are taking conscious individual decisions when they are not, that is a problem.

It is difficult to convince someone to change their ways when they don't even see the error of their ways in the first place. In that case, it is on the social media companies themselves to create an environment for users to not fall victim to groupthink but that will be complex because these filter bubbles are what keeps users flocking to and spending insane amounts of time on these sites bringing them billions so the incentives for these companies to change things are non-existent.

Although cancel culture can sometimes help in calling out unsavory characters, it has turned into a vile and illogical way of addressing supposedly "problematic" characters. It has become a form of internet bullying where even one mistake from teenagehood is grounds for getting an entire life ruined.

Instead of always jumping to canceling, diatribes should instead be had to address "problematic" past behaviors. Individuals shouldn't immediately get sent to the guillotine before having the chance to explain and possibly denounce their heinous ways of the past. That does not help anyone.