Madison Beer bashes cancel culture for not treating influencers like humans

TikTok star, singer and just overall influencer Madison Beer has delivered a nuanced rebuttal against cancel culture, claiming that the behavior prevents constructive criticism and doesn’t treat celebrities like humans.

Cancel culture has many proponents and many critics. Among the latter group, Madison Beer is a surprise addition. Typically, denizens of the internet expect cancel culture’s opponents to represent the groups that are most subject to cancelation — namely those who represent majorities and hold anti-progressive views.

Beer, a 21-year-old woman, doesn’t neatly fit into those stereotypes but, nevertheless, she has posted a firm Instagram story bashing the tenets of cancel culture and, instead, vaguely promoting the values of empathy and compassion.

People in the public eye have been subject to cancelation in recent years as progressive values push social media to enact its own version of accountability. Influencers have, unsurprisingly, not been spared and Beer has some criticisms for how that accountability is enforced.

Beer essentially breaks her sentiments into three main points. 

First, she argues that “celebrities, influencers or anyone of the sort are, for some reason, deemed not as human as everyone else.” Following on, she contends that the assumption that people’s “favorite celeb, artist or influencer is perfect” is a “pure societal error.” 

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The conclusion of this point is that cancel culture is flawed because it unfairly criticizes people, who have been raised “on a pedestal,” for their “human mistakes.” So, in her eyes, the initial problem is that celebrities are held to too high of a standard.

Beer’s second point, or “second layer,” is that the mechanisms of cancel culture prevent meaningful, solution-oriented discourse. By receiving “thousands of tweets telling you to kill yourself,” critics crowd a space that could, instead, be filled with “real productive conversation or resolutions or lessons.”

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While she agrees that there should be “100% accountability and consequences,” the influencer argues that, “in most cases,” cancel culture simply equates to bullying someone with a platform.

Some remain unconvinced by Beer’s message, with one user offering a simple rebuke: “Why is she talking? She has pretty-girl privilege.”

Which leads directly into the influencer’s third point, that “kindness, compassion and empathy are really cool” and that “people should just practice these simple things a bit more.”

While we won’t dive into the structural integrity of Beer’s argument, it’s clear that the young social media star is thinking deeply about the relationship between influencer and the influenced.