On Cancel Culture and Jenna Marbles
It is time for us to mature. It’s time to confront our own either/or thinking and to acknowledge complexity. Cancel culture must grow up. Now is the time to cancel those that refuse to change while embracing those that work to listen, apologize, and change their harmful behavior.
At the time of writing, Jenna Marbles’ two-day old video, “A Message,” has over 7 million views and is trending No. 2 on YouTube. In the video, this YouTube legend with over 20 million subscribers and 3 billion views explains why she has made private most of the videos on her channel — specifically those from around 2010.
I want to hold myself accountable. And it’s painful to do it, and it’s not fun, and it hurts. And I’m ashamed of things I’ve done and said in my past. But it’s important. [10:25]
If you’ve ever wondered what the correct response should be when confronted with cancel culture, this is it. When someone brings to your attention the fact that your words or actions are harmful to others, you can either choose to continue doing what you are doing and accept the consequences (e.g. get canceled) or you can:
- LISTEN. Show that you care about others by listening to someone else’s experience. Listen to what they say about how your words or actions have impacted them. Allow yourself to feel empathy — to experience the hurt that they are experiencing — when they tell you that you are hurting them. Note: Do not dismiss someone’s feelings by attacking them: “You are being too sensitive” or, “You are misunderstanding” are not correct responses.
- APOLOGIZE (sincerely). Acknowledge the impact that your words or actions have had on others. Note: “I’m sorry you felt that way, that wasn’t my intention” is not an apology. While intention does matter, impact matters more. In her video, Jenna Marbles does state that it wasn’t her intention to do harm — but she doesn’t stop there. The key to her apology (and any good apology) is step three:
- CHANGE. A quality apology also includes, “I can see that the impact my actions have had are harmful and here is what I am doing to change.” Note: Trust takes time to rebuild, and changed behavior takes time to prove.
A Becky might say, “But those videos are from 10 years ago! People just need to let go of the past and get over themselves. Jenna Marbles didn’t do anything wrong!”
Yes, she did do something wrong. But you’re right, Becky: at the time those videos were published, popular culture celebrated her antics. Jenna Marbles’ videos were seen as funny, despite the harmful stereotypes they reinforced, despite the ways in which they normalized problematic behaviors and mindsets. In 2010, the voices that responded to her videos saying, “That’s not okay,” were too few and too quiet. Now, our 2020 technological infrastructure has established a sort of global, noospheric voice. Like neurons firing in a brain, those quiet neuronal voices explaining, “That is harmful and here’s why,” are getting picked up, amplified, and spread across the network.
We, as an interconnected network of minds, have begun to make it a habit to elevate voices that help us to understand, that help to generate empathy, that enable us to move toward solutions to the problems we see. In 2010, we did not have a habit of retweeting or sharing or up-voting the messages that help us to grow; we had a habit of perpetuating the harmful behaviors we have been taught. A decade ago, Jenna Marbles shared sexist, racist, or otherwise-problematic videos that made most of us 2010 viewers laugh — including me. Have you changed in ten years? I know I have. And so has our interconnected society.
Our 2020 culture is not “there yet” (by far), but we’ve recently experienced tremendous growth. The #OccupyWallStreet movement, the #MeToo movement, and the #BlackLivesMatter movement are just a handful of the shifts in awareness that have taken place in the last decade — all of which were amplified on social media. During each wave of awakening, massive push-back from those who refused to listen, empathize, apologize, or change has been a standard. But with each new wave, those resisting the shift have become fewer and fewer (if not louder and louder, thanks to a number of high-profile politicians and celebrities amplifying a willful refusal to grow up).
Cancel culture has arisen as a tool for us to excise those that do harm from our global consciousness. Thus far, cancel culture has not considered whether the person perpetuating problematic behavior is able to listen, apologize, or change. As newly nexused voices, we have not yet found the words to help us define the rules for how we should respond to those that harm; we want the harm to stop, so: #canceled.
But this response lacks nuance. It is the either/or thinking of white supremacist culture norms: either you are good and you can stay, or you are bad and you’re out. Real people are complex. They have been raised in a family or community or society that has perpetuated and encouraged (and laughed at and retweeted) problematic behaviors. These real people may have never been made aware of how they were harming others with their words or actions, or they may not know which steps to take in order to change. Someone can be both a perpetrator of problematic behavior and a person capable of change. Cancel culture oversimplifies the human capacity for growth. It says, “If you haven’t learned by now, then you’re out because you never will.”
Jenna Marbles is not perfect. In A Message, she is clearly grappling with the guilt (a good sign) and confusion (another good sign) of this moment as she reflects on her past actions and the ways in which they have been harmful. What makes her worth not canceling is the fact that she is actively working to change. She is listening, she is apologizing, and she is making those harmful videos private so that they can no longer be accessed on her channel. Should she (or anyone) get a free pass because they’ve said they are sorry? No. Does erasing past videos or posts exonerate them? No. But should a person be canceled for mistakes they’ve made in their past when they didn’t realize the impact their actions could have, or when they hadn’t yet learned what they needed to learn in order to empathize with those whom they’ve harmed? Should someone capable of change be permanently excised from our connected community? How many chances will I get when my past mistakes come to light? How many will you get? Cancel culture says, “None.”
Alternatively, if someone does the work to learn, to understand, and to help make things better moving forward, might we welcome them into our growing, global group of life-long learners?
Shouldn’t positive change be encouraged in our co-created, awakening global consciousness?
This post was edited on July 5, 2020 for clarification.
