Dissemination of data has become easier for people given the innovative advancement of our time.
It is much easier to raise awareness, advertise, and even, hopefully, educate. We can call a meeting with people from different time zones with the click of a button and we can let our feelings be known with an audience in the Twittersphere.
This can be seen as an advantage but it can also be a disadvantage.
The internet has improved since application developers devised a way to detect content that is not suitable for public viewing, but detection from software will always lack the component of the complexity of human reasoning.
Evidently, the internet is a multifaceted platform, and some of those parts are as chaotic as can be. The situation where the louder voice is more acknowledged than that of an educated person often applies in said parts.
Social media is riddled with rowdy people who always have something to say with whatever issue they come across— and when an untamed voice begins to garner sympathizers for the wrong reasons, the situation usually goes out of hand and the other end of the issue becomes yet another victim of an uninformed condemnation.
There is a phenomenon more prominent to those who hover from application to application, and it is called “Cancel Culture”.
The said issue has created a way for a united voice for people to express disdain towards a certain person or topic. In a way, despite how pessimistic it sounds, it has shown promise in the beginning.
A reliable source may bring to light the fact that a person may not deserve the positive recognition that they have and through that source, a large number of protesters who could back the allegation.
It is a marvel that people from the internet could unite to condemn a person to infamy. I have lost count of how many corrupt, homophobic, racist, supremacist and generally just despicable people have been brought down because an assembly of people have agreed that they are not to be tolerated nor celebrated for their true nature.
Sadly, this has given people an opportunity to castigate someone with selfish intent. It does not help that people are quick to judge despite the lack of information presented on both sides.
For some, it is credible as long as enough people believe it even without factual evidence in the matter. With this, careers built in years have crumbled in a matter of days, if not hours.
Beyond a doubt, there have been instances when people have been made pariahs undeservingly. Unwarranted abhorrence asserted over one mistake. A mistake that shouldn’t have outweighed all the good they have done beforehand.
Most of the time, it’s an overstep that ruins a good thing. A crucial element in judgement is knowing all the facts before coming to a conclusion. It is not enough to just jump on the bandwagon thinking that if enough people believe it, then it must be true.
A little fact checking could be the determinant of whether the person will get what he or she deserves or not. It would be a grave injustice to sentence someone with an awful reputation just because the situation has been misconstrued over false or unproven statements.