Cancel culture has become more of a clickbait title rather than a true issue, yet it ruins careers everyday. This idea of taking a person’s past and using it against them has began to seep into the everyday social media of people all around the world. But it seems as though people now do not seem to see both sides of a situation.

Is this clearly a valid way in which people judge characters? Most of the time people can change in society, or at least say that they have, so should people believe them? Usually, the word of a person now is more valuable than their word from a decade ago. This spiral of “cancel culture” feeds off the tweets of celebrities from ten years ago perhaps stating something not politically correct. Many of these statements have been insensitive and should be brought into light and they result in the staining on the career of the one who said it.

In many cases it is a situational circumstance, for example Youtuber Shane Dawson, who had been called out for certain racist comments in his past videos. Yet, during the time these had clearly been jokes and socially acceptable. As society changes and alters their social standards, so do the jokes it accepts into it. Multiple times he has vouged and genuinely apologized for his actions as he has grown as a person. The question is whether or not to believe his word, but many have.

Laura Lee, another Youtuber had a similar situation, but her circumstances had not been in her favor. These racially biased statements by her originally resurfaced after she had bashed another loved social media influencer. This was not helped by her exaggerated apology in which many had accused her of fake crying and giving an disingenuine apology as well.

In both these cases, similar situations arise, how the influencers had handled it was the true difference between the success or the destruction of a career. Those who give genuine apologies usually are forgiven and seen as having character growth as opposed to those who seem more sad that they got caught in the act.

Still, the stigma and influence of cancel culture based off a tweet from the past should not affect the overall career of a person if they truly have changed. Whether their apologies are valid or not, if they simply do not believe in the issues they supported in the past, those people should be allowed to change and correct their mistakes. It is as if a person was exposed for everything they stated in their middle school life, times change and with it so do the minds of people. As a society we should give them the ability to grow and change with it.