Cancel Culture Central

This project has been full of learning moments and constant reframing. Let’s look at what occurred throughout the development of our digital artefact surrounding the notion of cancel culture and how our team used online media and tangible media to convey our idea.

During the beginning of our group’s ideation process, we knew we wanted our project to be based on modern societies’ perception of cancel culture. However, it took us a while to frame our purpose. It wasn’t until our group worked individually for a week and rejoined (with the addition of a new team member) that we realised the purpose of our project was to showcase how social media spreads gossip and ultimately amplifies cancel culture. This project aims to examine the dynamics of cancel culture and encourage people to utilise critical thinking to make informed decisions in their online interactions as our project is about opening up conversations. We also show how cancel culture extends beyond social media and has consequences that impact people’s lives and careers.

It is important to note that cancel culture is not a new phenomenon. It can be seen all throughout history specifically when people disregard others’ opinions and want to see immediate action. This is because “in times of chaos people seek order” – (Travis Wall 2023).  For example, Ancient Greeks practised ostracism where they would hold elections to exile people from the city of Athens. This shows that cancel culture has always occurred; it simply happens in different ways because of the media available to us.

Our idea to explore cancel culture was to use social media as it is a popular tool people use to voice their opinions. We wanted to use our Instagram posts to show how cancel culture can cause mob mentality which leads to online communities of like-minded individuals wanting justice for wrongdoing without allowing for justification or reasoning. 

Our Instagram posts are carousels with pictures of celebrities who have been cancelled, why they were cancelled and what they are doing after receiving backlash to explore how being shunned out of a group has impacted their lives. On our Instagram page, we also post fake celebrities and influencers generated by AI technology who have been ‘cancelled’ to see if the public will consume this false information without fact-checking or doing their own research. This has already worked on one of our fake posts about an NFL player. However, an issue we have found is that it is difficult to find recent cancellations of influencers and celebrities and we do not want to publish old news. 

An additional platform we have is our website called Cancel Culture Central. I created this website to ensure our project is sustainable. On the site, there is a chat platform that allows people to discuss celebrities and influencers who have been cancelled as well as upload their own false information to observe who interacts and believes it. The website also ‘sells’ our merch t-shirts that represent cancel culture. People can also download our merch designs for free to create their own art.

 The tangible aspect of our project is our merch. Our merch aims to bring cancel culture conversations from the online sphere into the physical community. To create our merch, Payton and I created some designs with the word cancel culture, and then Laura used the sublimation printer and heat press to print our designs onto t-shirts. Our goal with the merch is to bring discussions that are currently saturating the online sphere into the ‘real world’.

For the future of this project, we aim to create items that are controversial such as tote bags with our designs on them. We also hope to incorporate images of cancelled celebrities and influencers on our merch to create more conversation and controversy, however, we have to consider defamation and copyright. For the future of this project, I would like to improve the quality of our merchandise and upload them to my website. 

Based on the feedback from our presentation I also would like to explore how cancel culture occurred throughout history and compare it to modern media. This will help explain the purpose of our project and put it into perspective for our audience. For the future of the project, we should look into using algorithms, hashtags and other social media platforms to cause more traction for our project. 

Overall, my biggest takeaway from this project is to constantly reframe and think outside the box as this allows for creative iteration and effective development. Another takeaway is the importance of communication especially when you are communicating with group members online. Our constant communication allowed for efficient project progression and a harmonious team.