Sticks and stones break bones, but words break hearts.
By Ruxuan, Alexander and Ryan
Caption: Singaporeans Nur Afiqah Bte Eunos (left), and Axel Lew Huai Qing (right) were cancelled and participated in cancelling others on social media respectively in the past few years.
Often, we encounter people who may appear rational and polite on the surface when discussing the controversy.
However, when some of them enter the world of social media, they transform into the very same netizens who shame and reject those they oppose for good or ill; They become participants of “Cancel Culture”.
Being cancelled at only 16
At the tender age of 16, ITE East student and Singaporean cosplayer Nur Afiqah Bte Eunos,17, came on the receiving end of the “Cancel Culture” trend.
The encounter came on Nov 13, 2020, when she uploaded a video on TikTok of herself holding a thumbs up of approval in an MRT train along with a post that read "Neopronouns are valid", in support of the LGBTQ+ community.
In response and within hours of her posting the video, she had received a flurry of negative comments from offended Singaporean TikTok users. Some of them told her “shut up”, mocked her opinion and others called her a “retard”.
Caption: Screenshots of comments made by netizens on social media app, TikTok, in regards to the video posted on Nov 13, 2020.
“I got death threats. My TikTok video had about 13,000 views and over 250 hate comments. Someone threatened to come to my house and burn it down. There was someone who said they will skin my cat alive,” she recounted.
She added that “I’ve experienced it before so I was half-expecting the hate. But, some of the commenters were really quite mean and threatening… I was really angry at that.”
Caption: The Hanayo cosplay in question, which is the White Day cosplay of the character Hanayo Koizumi from the anime Love Live! White Day is on March 14, one month after Valentine's Day, and originated from Japan. People would reciprocate the gifts given to them on Valentine’s. ( Image Taken from @k0k0.m0chii ‘s Instagram)
She had also experienced ‘cancellation’ in her secondary school and explained as a cosplayer, she too has faced discrimination.
According to Afiqah, her friends at school had criticised her Hanayo cosplay because her outfit involved showing cleavage. Allegedly, they labelled her outfit as “gross”, while ignoring other girls from the same cohort who had posted similar kinds of pictures but who are not in cosplay.
“I sent her (the perpetrator) a screenshot of her hyping up another girl in our cohort who was topless and wearing a thong. It was her comment that said “OMG BABE HOTTIEEE”. She went silent and left me on the read,” Nur Afiqah recounted.
According to her, the girl also had posted hurtful comments to her public Instagram story. As her Instagram had more than 3,000 followers at that time, the incident was the start of an avalanche of hate being thrown her way by fellow students as the incident spread around the school.
“Some made TikToks about me, with my information and all. One of the girls threatened to beat me up in school,” Nur Afiqah explained.
Fortunately, for her, she was not greatly impacted by the incident herself as she said to had become ‘desensitised’ to such an occurrence.
“Honestly I wasn’t that affected because secondary and primary school bully desensitised me.”
“Besides that, I was more worried that someone would go out of their way to harass my family,” She added.
Nur Afiqah is just one of many who had personally experienced ‘Cancel Culture’ which lexicon Dictionary.com defines as the trend of withdrawing support for public people and brands following something objectionable or offensive they have said or done.
The dictionary added that the practice is often discussed as involving group shaming on social media.
A former warrior’s point of view
On the other side of the coin, we have the “cancellers” themselves.
In 2020, Trend research company BlackBox published the results of a survey on ‘Cancel Culture’, which indicated that one in five Singaporeans had shamed someone online at least once.
Caption: 19-year-old Axel Lew poses for a picture over Zoom on Nov 16, 2021. He is holding up a phone showing his Twitter page, which was once his go-to platform for “cancelling celebrities”. (Photo by: Alexander Kyle Thirumaran)
One such self-confessed former ‘canceller’ is a student from Republic Polytechnic, Axel Lew Huai Qing, 19, who shared: “I probably cancelled more than 10 people when I was younger”.
The 19-year old recalled the time when his favourite pop star Taylor Swift was feuding with Kanye West over the latter’s alleged claims that he made her famous by sleeping with her, according to his rap song, ‘Famous’.
At one point in 2018, the ardent Taylor Swift fan posted a series of Tweets using the hashtag #kanyewestisoverparty intended to shame Kanye and get “justice for Taylor”.
“I was young and joined the bandwagon with the other fans. I called Kanye a liar on Twitter and think I even said not to buy his music,” recounted Axel, as he shook his head. “But my actions did have any good impact, it was just like toxic echoing”.
When asked why he was once active in cancelling others, the Mass Communications student replied, “I thought I was doing the right thing like helping celebs against those who did bad things to them”.
However, Axel has since given up ‘cancelling’ others and has taken down all of his “more nasty” posts. “I was actually just playing the villain by picking one angry group over another,” he said.
He revealed he came to the realisation that he was “young, unaware back then and was just following what thousands of others were doing”.
“I stopped doing it even when it was popular because by drowning their voice and subjecting people to cancelling, we are already stopping them from making amends. There are some people who kind of deserve it but we should not always jump the gun because you weren't actually there” Axel explained.
What has led to ‘Cancel Culture’
Though people like Axel have given up on the practice, it is still going strong.
According to the New York Post, the trend of boycotting and shaming public people for what they have done or said is not new but has only gained popularity in recent years with ‘Cancel Culture’ as its new name.
Similarly, in a conversation with Senior lecturer Leong Wee Keat from Republic Polytechnic’s School of Management and Communication, he said that: “Online vigilante groups have taken action into their own hands for some time.”
“This ‘mob’ mentality is not new. Perhaps why it has come to the forefront recently is because those ïnvolved have a more prominent online profile,” he promptly added.
VOX reports the earliest recorded usage of the word “cancel” (to cancel someone) came from a 1991 film, New Jack City when actor Wesley Snipes played a gangster named Nino Brown. There was a scene in the movie when his girlfriend broke down because of all the violence he had caused, which led to him brutally breaking up with her by saying, “Cancel that b*tch”.
As time went on, Insider reports that ”Cancel Culture” started to really become popular in the US around 2017, after the concept of publicly exposing and ridiculing celebrities for their problematic actions became glamorised.
Moreover, the #MeToo Instagram movement caused a huge surge in the usage of the term online. It is a movement that encouraged victims of sexual assault to speak up about their experience instead of suffering in silence.
One shocking celebrity revelation was David Copperfield, who allegedly drugged and sexually assaulted a woman when she was only 17, according to Vox.
However, even though this trend seems to have come from the USA, being in Singapore does not mean we are free from it. And, as we have seen neither celebrities nor the “Average Joe” is immune to Cancel Culture.
Cancelling brands and influencers
A BlackBox survey found that 47% of all Singaporeans over the age of 15 believe online shaming is acceptable in some cases. Furthermore, it concluded that 32% liked the trend because it allowed them to successfully challenge powerful people and brands.
From Singapore’s latest celebrity scandal, Cancel Culture led to regretful times for the Night Owl Cinematics (NOC) brand and its Chief Executive Officer, Sylvia Chan.
The online shaming against her began after an Instagram account called “sgcickenrice” released images of Whatsapp conversations where Sylvia had used vulgarities on staff. She had called them a “f**cking sh*t” for using the wrong fonts, and also “f**king ret*rded” for mixing up a call sheet and script.
Netizens also gave her flak for discriminating against a staff named Samantha. Sylvia had been caught saying things like “I f*cking hate her”, and calling her a “f*ck face”. She had also allegedly been plotting to remove Samantha from future NOC videos and asking the team how to make her quit.
Caption: Sylvia Chan after she had confessed to criticising Ryan's leadership skills under the guise that someone else said it instead, on the company’s virtual meeting. (Screenshot taken from @kawsbuildingblocks TikTok)
In one video, NOC’s Talents highlighted more issues that cultivated a toxic work culture, like Sylvia not approving their pay and hence not receiving their salary on time. They were also said to be made to work until 4 am at times, and Ryan in particular had an extraordinary amount of work piled onto him.
As the controversy continued to snowball, netizens called for Sylvia Chan to be cancelled. Some even demanded her to “step down” from her position and others encouraged unsubscribing from NOC’s Youtube channel.
Caption: Veteran influencer Xiaxue (left) interviews Sylvia Chan, CEO of Night Owl Cinematics who is speaking for the first time since she began being ‘cancelled’ online in October 2021.
In an interview with Xiaxue posted on Youtube, Sylvia said: “There is so much hate against me that I do question myself, what have I done that can make anybody hate me so much.”
The CEO also asked what was the end goal of those trying to cancel her and remarked: “You have already hurt me, my reputation is already down the drain.” She again goes on to question, “Why does this person keep wanting to completely destroy me?”
After the 1 hour and 40-minute interview was uploaded, some netizens argued that there were “two sides” to the story and that cancelling NOC would hurt the livelihoods of the companies’ employees.
What now for Cancel Culture?
Across “toxic” encounters like Nur Afiqah’s, instances of the bandwagon “cancelling” like Axel’s, and influencer sagas’ like Sylvia Chan’s, Cancel Culture does have its positives and negatives.
Mr Leong Wee Keat who has been teaching “Media and Society” for several semesters feels that Cancel Culture is generally meant to achieve accountability from personalities who have done something wrong.
However, he pointed out two issues with ‘Cancel Culture’ in Singapore.
First, he says when ‘cancellers’ “demand accountability, the demands may fall on deaf ears and this may lead some to agitate for more drastic action.”
Next, he explained: “We form groups and opinions about others, which may lead to misunderstandings as we form echo chambers around our opinions about an issue”.
Moreover, in an article published in academia.sg, Professor Cherian George writes that the punishment Cancel Culture dishes out is “often disproportionate and traumatising; I often wish the exercise could be less personal and more compassionate.”
The Associate Dean for research at Hongkong Baptists University's School of Communication goes on to explain that those who are blacklisted by Cancel Culture “may be shut out of employment in the public sector… If you or your spouse is a non-citizen, even your family’s right to continue to live in Singapore may be in jeopardy.”
Therefore, even though Cancel Culture achieves mass-disapproval for something someone supposedly did wrong, experts argue there needs to be “proportion.”
According to Ms Indranee Thurai Rajah, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office speaking at a panel discussion on Cancel Culture, “We need to have a sense of proportion… and to have a way to let the person find their way back and make it better."
The Second Minister of National Development also recommended being “critical in our thinking and discerning, which can be quite hard when it's an emotional trigger” and that a set of moral principles will "keep one in good stead".
Senior Lecturer Mr Leong concurred with this view. “I think learning to understand, hear one another out about our perspectives and accepting the differences and diversities are important qualities of a mature and educated population,” he concluded.
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