I’ve encountered countless gossipers having discourse pertaining to other people’s characters and how they are perceived as a person. For those who have been the subject of those conversations, it might have made their time away from the rumors feel fleeting. Regardless, I’ve learned that those words – true or false ‒ are as easily forgettable as remembering to finish last night’s homework. It is especially forgotten by those who said them.
On social media, a new influencer trends every day as does their history before fame. It’s as if having a background check while in the hiring process for a job, but rather than HR professionals doing background checks, it is the Cancel Culture vultures scavenging for scandals. It is known that Cancel Culture’s biggest priority is to deteriorate an influencer’s image permanently if they’ve ever made an offensive move, which would lead most to believe that that person’s career is done for.
Yet I am certain that after uploading one remotely funny video or one “groundbreaking” collaboration with someone who has a high following, his or her image would still be steadily standing if not thriving. All of the sudden, Cancel Culture isn’t doing its job.
In early spring this year, the trend of various “iconic” aesthetics flooded Tiktok feeds with the intention that it would reach a young female audience. In the midst of the resurging aesthetics, the famous YouTuber Trisha Paytas began to trend again with her old videos. The influencer has been known for her genuine and chaotic public image ranging from her cosplaying as Troy Bolton from “High School Musical” to her breaking down on the kitchen floor about her intense and public breakup.
However, beneath all of her unserious posts and the support she has received from viewers, her public image (that has been withstanding for years) has so many layers to it. Those layers have quietly disguised many of her controversies for viewers to intentionally or unintentionally forgive and forget. A few of those controversial layers are when she spoke recklessly on the war happening between Israel and Palestine without having prior knowledge on the topic or when she made racist comments on multiple different occasions — all of which she still owes formal apologies for up to this day.
In order to get inside the heads of those who Paytas’s influencing has reached, I interviewed students around Sage Creek high school. As it turned out, not many people didn’t recognize the name of the YouTube star.
Daphne Garcia is a sophomore at Sage Creek high school and has consumed enough of Paytas’s content to get a gist of her messy internet presence. Garcia’s depiction of Paytas was visibly indifferent while she described the YouTuber as “funky” for having a problematic digital footprint. When questioned if people should continue to support Paytas on her journey after all of her controversies, specifically her use of racial slurs, Garcia answered as if belaboring the obvious, “Bro, she got ‒ [draws finger up and down her entire arm] ‒ she got a list of them. No.”
Though Grace DeSimone, a first year student at Sage Creek, had been a supporter of Paytas since her memes began trending on the internet again. She had an interest in the influencer’s silly internet persona, following her funny cosplays and random songs such as the song titled, “I Love You, Jesus.”
According to DeSimone, “She has a really unhinged personality, and that makes her ‒ like, really funny.” Before informing Grace of Paytas’s sticky past, I asked her about her thoughts on the hate that the YouTube star has received.
She expressed her love for Paytas and that the woman didn’t deserve the hate, but to DeSimone, the hate derived from the unconventional names Paytas gave to her children. She was unaware of all the problematic layers Paytas has to her. After filling Grace in on the offensive incidents surrounding the influencer she once thought highly of, she was quick to change her fond perspective.
Taken aback, DeSimone went on to say, “I’ve never heard that she said racist [and] ‒ like, anti semitic things. I’m like, what the heck, Trisha?” DeSimone proceeded to account for her own oblivion to Trisha Paytas’s history with the view that there was too much news on the influencer and too few people, primarily Cancel Culture, holding her accountable for her actions.
Needless to say, it is not entirely up to the people to hold a celebrity accountable, but it is important that users do not take words so lightly and blatantly dismiss them all because they guiltily enjoy a certain type of content; it is not a pick and choose reality. Nonetheless, that is exactly Cancel Culture’s purpose: to hold someone accountable. Cancel Culture seemingly hasn’t upheld its duty of cancelling a person forever, seeing that someone who has had a majorly problematic past, having barely uttered an apology in all the years she has been influencing, still has a successful platform to this day.
It’s almost as if Cancel Culture vultures cancel people so often that they forget to keep their previous cancelled person cancelled. Since the intentions of the Cancel Culture concept are not succeeding, I believe it is safe to say that Cancel Culture vultures are mythical creatures and Cancel Culture itself is a myth created by those who use social media. Cancel Culture, Cancel Culture vultures… It is all not real.
