“Cuties” and the Hidden Problem with Cancel Culture Nobody’s Talking About
By: Milton Black
Tags: Culture, Tech, Media, Society, Politics

“Cuties” and the Hidden Problem with Cancel Culture Nobody’s Talking About

How the ease of slacktivism distracts us from the activism we need to be doing

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

As the old saying goes, “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.” Every single day I spend on the Internet, this statement is proven to be truer and truer. The backlash was as swift as it was divided when it comes to the Netflix movie Cuties that’s been released to the dismay of viewers the world over.

The French movie that follows the life of young preteen girls seemed to draw the ire of Twitter users and Republican lawmakers alike as people suddenly found themselves repulsed by what they see as the sexualization of little girls.

This is an understandable thing to be upset by and I’d not try to argue that these feelings were somehow illegitimate, though it certainly can be argued that this is the viewer pushing their own feelings onto young girls who are simply existing — if preteen girls can’t exist without being sexualized, we have a serious problem on our hands and it isn’t the existence of preteen girls, it’s the person sexualization of them. That, however, is a discussion for another day.

But the Cuties controversy serves as the perfect demonstration for another problem that we’ve had in our culture since the rise of internet activism: everyone’s talking about problems and hardly anyone is doing anything.

From “raising awareness” to sharing online petitions that do nothing and carry no legal weight, absent any potent force that might effect real, genuine change, for the most part, all of our internet discourse is just hot air being expelled by people who’d rather talk about problems than fix them. Activism has become a consumable good, rather than a bona fide effort to right the cosmic wrongs of the universe.

We’d rather look like we’re doing something about the big, systemic problems we face than actually be doing something about them. On social media, activism is largely an activity that we engage in like a consumable good that makes us appear a certain way, as if it’s a fashion statement. This is the wrong way to look at the world’s problems.

It’s oftentimes narcissism of the highest order, facilitated by a memetic share-culture that allows us to display our holier-than-thou stances (whilst not lifting a finger to effect real-world change), and it’s alarming.

We’ve all been there, we’ve all done it, we’re all guilty of seeing something that resonates with us, something that’s politically-charged, something that stirs up our emotions and we almost reflexively retweet, share, and comment on it to express our contempt for the world to see. We’re made upset by the content that found its way into our feeds and we want to let the world know that we disapprove. Sounds perfectly understandable, right? Well, maybe…

Why do we actually do this? What are our motives when we cancel Netflix at a moment’s notice when we see they’ve done some horrible wrong? As someone who spent ten years working as an activist on the ground for real life causes, pushing every single day for political change, I can firmly say that this kind of internet activism — moral grandstanding so that everyone can see our ethical stances on every issue that crosses our paths — overwhelmingly hurts the causes it purports to be in support of, far more than it helps them.

Every single campaign I’ve ever worked to legalize marijuana in various states and localities was a battle against the loud, outrageous online activists who were giving sensible people every reason to be skeptical that legalization was a promising idea. Even people who felt passionately about how wrong it is to lock someone up in a cage for the possession of a substance so harmless (and beneficial) was always counterbalanced by the fraudsters claiming that marijuana was a cure for cancer and was going to bring down massive industries, etc., giving sensible people a very understandable sense of pause before backing such causes. On the one hand, voters wanted to legalize marijuana and stop the injustices carried out in the name of the war on drugs; on the other hand, it was scary thinking they might be giving a green-light to every peddler of fictitious nonsense and miracle snake-oil cures under the sun.

No cause should ever be advanced through lies. If an idea can’t win on its merits, it shouldn’t win.

Every single campaign I’ve worked for to raise minimum wage, similarly, the online far left who were talking about beheading billionaires were their own worst enemies, and as a real-world activists, it was my job to overcome these objections in the people I met with every day.

The online activists who believe that loudness equates to success more often than not hinder the political causes they claim to be about because they aren’t actually about the political causes, but instead, looking like they’re about the political causes. Quite the conundrum.

And the Cuties controversy reminds me of an internet persona that you can almost set your watch to, the guy who’s vocally and vehemently against pedophiles, but when it’s time to offer support to stop the sex trafficking of minors, be it pooling money for the cause or even free things like signing a legitimate state-level petition, he’s absent and can’t be bothered. He shares things constantly to remind you that he’s against child sex trafficking, he’s constantly wearing his outrage with statements like, “We should just put a bullet in pedophiles’ heads and call it a day!” but when it comes time to actually combat sex traffickers, he bawls up and can’t be bothered, and he certainly can’t spare any donation money, even if it’s just a few dollars.

It’s the perfect microcosm to illustrate a larger problem. What this kind of person really wants isn’t a better world without the sex trafficking of children, what he really wants is just to not have to see it. So long as it’s out of sight, everything’s quite fine because it doesn’t affect him. Cuties is a fictitious movie with actors, meanwhile there are very real and brutal instances of child sex trafficking happening right now that need to be stopped, but we attack the illusion of child sex rather than the real-world child sex that’s happening, cancelling Netflix but ignoring the wider problem that’s taking place right this moment.

“Slacktivism,” as it’s been called, is the kind of activism that takes place online only, a process where we share, comment, and “like” things online that express a certain political value that we hold, but the “activism” part of the equation never begins. All effort stops the moment any heavy lifting becomes involved, like getting out into the field and organizing events, like gathering petition signatures or collecting donations, or even donating to a particular cause ourselves. In other words, people who engage in slacktivism like to talk a big game, but when it comes time to put money, effort, resources, or energy into the mix, they’re nowhere to be found.

In fact, this is an issue that I know intimately as my first political cause I ever worked as an independent contractor after leaving Greenpeace was in California when we petitioned for Proposition 35, the Ban on Sex Trafficking and Human Slavery. Following that I worked for protections in nursing homes, education funding for schools K-12 and community college, criminal justice deferment programs for non-violent offenders, and much more.

The thing is, it’s easy to talk out of our asses online and pretend we’re hyper moral beings who are ultra-woke and genuinely care about these issues. But take it from someone whose job it was to gather passionate people who want to change the world for a living, it’s often the most vocal people who are nowhere to be found when the work needs to be done.

Remember that guy I mentioned who’s vehemently against pedophilia and child sex trafficking? Ask him if he’s ever donated to National Center on Sexual Exploitation, Shared Hope, or ECPAT, and the answer you’ll get is almost invariably no. Why is that?

This makes me wonder, are most people more concerned with looking like they care about causes and not at all concerned about the causes themselves, stealing all the credit but putting in none of the work?

And this is the thing about cancel culture that bothers me (on top of the fact that it’s silencing speech that a certain small demographic finds insulting or in poor taste, usually on grounds that prove to be dead wrong), the fact that so many people seem to think that if they just speak out online, their work is done. A “like” here, a share there, a comment or retweet over here, and they’re full-fledged activists! Unfortunately, the world doesn’t work that way because change doesn’t work that way.

The truth is, change takes time, it takes millions of volunteer hours, it takes money, donations, contributions, effort, and, as I can tell you first hand, long twelve and fourteen hour days sweating in the sun, and grueling nights in offices with one eye open as you work through the night half-awake to meet the deadlines given. It’s these incalculable hours that go on behind the scenes that actually win us small victories, victories that never seem to be good enough for the online activist who instantly moves onto the next thing — because their existence is one that’s predicated upon generating as much outrage as possible. The online activist’s goal is to raise awareness and leave all the hard work to others. But what happens when we reach the point where everyone looks like they’re doing something but nobody’s actually doing anything? Well, then nothing gets done.

So, what can be done about it? If you care about a cause, I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to actually get involved. To donate time, money, and resources, or at the very least, the absolute bare minimum, listen more than you speak about issues if you’re just now discovering them, listen to the activists on the ground, listen to those who are dealing with these issues every single day, because those are the people who know what it takes to create the kind of change we need.

If all you can possibly do online is spread the message, please make sure it’s informed and not something you’re expressing off-the-cuff as if it’s something you’re knowledgeable about. Too many times well-intended people shoot the hardworking activists of the world (in the field) in the foot by popularizing messages which run counter to the goals of the various organizations and causes trying to affect change. Everyone’s entitled to an opinion and nobody cares if their opinion accurately reflects the real-world or not.

True narcissism is believing that we’re entitled to ignorant beliefs we don’t much care about, even when us expressing those beliefs hinders the work of hundreds of thousands of passionate people who care very much about them.