Why Cancel Culture is Counterproductive to the Online Sustainability Movement

Social media has many benefits: global interconnectedness, mass communication, and increased accessibility to information. But most revolutionarily, it gives virtually anyone a platform to express their voice. Over the past five years, social media has become a key means of communication of the 2010s-2020s. 

One of several social media norms that have arisen is cancel culture. Unfortunately, what once started as a movement of accountability has overgrown into a mangled mess of self-censorship, perfectionism, and fear of speaking out. In this day and age, anyone with an opinion is subject to being “canceled.” Due to this dynamic, I’ve personally noticed an increase in inauthentic online activism in hopes of self-preservation, of being “on the right side,” even if the person doesn’t know anything about what they're posting. 

Ever since the release of Seaspiracy on Netflix in March of this year, reactions across social media have exploded. Celebrities and influencers like Kourtney Kardashian, Tom Brady, Paul McCartney, Harry Jowsey, Trisha Paytas, and many others have posted about how this documentary opened their eyes in a significant way. 

But how genuine is this wave of environmental accountability? Is this eagerness actually sustainable, or is this level of social consciousness just another trend? Could hopping onto the morally in-touch bandwagon be a way to gain followers in the name of progressivism? Or maybe out of fear of being “canceled” for not implementing drastic lifestyle changes for what the Internet considers to be ethically sound?

Now, do I think that these people are all phonies who don’t care about environmentalism at all? Absolutely not. Climate anxiety is becoming increasingly common, as the effects of climate change will affect us and our children in the future. However, if these documentaries truly made as big of an impact as they appeared on social media platforms, then everybody would be cutting fish out of their diet in some capacity. 

The trends in vegetarianism and veganism in the U.S. do not support a successful response rate to these social media movements. Faunalytics’ Study of Current and Former Vegetarians and Vegans reports a lack of consistency in vegetarianism and veganism. In 2014, 2% of the U.S. population over the age of 17 were vegetarian or vegan. Of those who were vegetarian or vegan at some point, 84% of them “abandoned their diet.” 34% of “lapsed vegetarians/vegans” were consistent with their diet for three months or less. 54% maintained their diets for less than a year. But have these trends changed in the past five years?

The nonprofit organization Veganuary hosts an annual campaign challenging people to go vegan for the month of January. Their goal is to push people out of their comfort zones and expose them to more plant-based foods. In 2021, over 500,000 people participated in the campaign, which is the most they’ve ever had thus far! Increasing rates of participation in such “events,” as well as increasing accessibility to plant-based products globally, could indicate an upward trend of veganism. 

There is no way to actually prove causation between the erratic news cycle of social media and failing to maintain a vegan or vegetarian diet; at least, not without a structured, controlled psychological experiment. There are a million potential reasons why someone may stop being vegetarian, from dieting, meat cravings, inaccessibility, to just plain boredom. They do reflect similar patterns though: inconsistency. 

Lack of consistency is, ironically, a consistently recurring human quality. In order to make and maintain ethical choices, one has to be consistent. In theory, cancel culture should breed consistency, as it promotes accountability for one’s actions. In practice, this is not the case. Cancel culture breeds fear, facades, and extremism. 

Cancel culture fosters an unattainable pressure to appear perfect, especially to those in the public eye. Holding others and yourself accountable is necessary for bettering society as a whole, but oftentimes, the extreme nature of cancel culture halts personal growth. There is no option other than to be perfect all the time, at every stage of your life, with no room to grow in any direction. Making mistakes and learning from them is a part of the human experience. 

For example, Billie Eilish, one of the most successful artists of our generation, has spread awareness on veganism countless times through Instagram, Twitter, and her interviews. This YouTube video does a great job summarizing Billie’s personal views and pro-veganism work, including selling vegan hotdogs at her concerts, performing a charity concert for a non-profit that delivers vegan food to hospitals, and even creating her own UberEats vegan “road trip map.”

But despite all of the free exposure that she’s done for the vegan movement, she still receives backlash on social media for eating Hot Cheetos, which contain dairy. I understand that people may feel that hypocrisy is coming into play here – but perfectionism on any scale is not sustainable for everyone. In my opinion, for someone with her platform (83 million Instagram followers!!!), she has done so much more for the vegan movement than the average public figure. She has not only used her massive online voice to express support for her values but also followed those up with actions increasing accessibility to vegan foods. Her proactivity should be applauded.

My personal conclusion is that as counterproductive as social media discourse may appear, seeing and understanding different perspectives helps society to become more empathetic. Distributing information regarding environmental degradation does not guarantee a strong response of devotion to the cause nor the level of consistency that is required of ethical change on a generational level. But maybe millions of people going vegan cold-turkey is not what we need. 

Just like everything else that requires consistent effort on a long-term scale, like working out, budgeting, studying, etc., moderation is key.

The secret to pursuing a consistently sustainable lifestyle is moderation. While it’s true that the animal agriculture industry is operating at drastically detrimental levels, it’s flat-out unrealistic to expect everyone to completely abandon their dietary preferences. This harsh method, pushed for decades by radical activists, has been exacerbated by cancel culture. 

We need to stop embracing an “all-or-nothing” mentality and stop canceling people for not making perfect choices 100% of the time. Instead, we should celebrate those who make the more environmentally friendly choice 50-75% of the time.