Way back in the day, celebrities and popular people were treated as mini gods on earth for different reasons. These individuals were seen as nigh perfect beings that can do no wrong in the eyes of the fans/supporters and did not even care going to extreme lengths to protect the image of their idol. However not all popular people were loved for the right reasons, even those celebrities that are loved by fans were actually disliked by others. But back then being disliked simply meant just that "being disliked. They avoided everything about you regardless of status and took absolute care to get you off your radar just to limit contact to the barest minimum.
All these changed with the birth of the Internet space and just like that standing on the opposite side of being adored stood on the same level as being lynched in public by an angry mob. All it takes is for one person to make one silly mistake or the discovery of an old controversial tweet on X( formerly known as twitter) to ruin a person's image. Social media has become a huge part of today's society. The moment a content that is tagged provocative or debatable goes viral and people begin agitating for the destruction of that person's career, reputation or whatever he/she holds dear, just know that it is only beginning of a never ending battle spelling doom. It only takes one negative comment to destroy a person's livelihood as it can only take hours for the "Internet warriors" to make anybody public enemy including celebrities. This ladies and gentlemen is what we call CANCEL CULTURE.
Cancel culture is just a weapon which the masses who don't have the power to fight use to defend what they believe is right. It is not rocket science so it is very easy to understand. Let's say a person does something wrong and the appropriate authorities are unable to hold them accountable for their actions or even if they do, the punishment does not match the offense, ordinary can just choose to blacklist that person and everything he should stands sometimes even after the person has paid for it. Cancel culture is very popular in the western world especially in America where people are being critizied for something as simple as having a different opinion. I have seen celebrities completely broken by hateful comments and all forms of attack even from people who once supported them publicly an example of this being the recent case of Ed Sheeran who was bullied online to the point he cried at his public performance. This tool is soo powerful and for the longest time I always believed it was a culture non-existent in Nigeria until the case surrounding Mohbad's death completely proved otherwise.
Mohbad was a Nigerian Afrobeats artist signed to Marlians Record label in 2019 headed by Naira Marley. The lad gained national recognition as a singer with a fan base that seemed to be on a global rise. In 2021, mohbad began to have issues with the record label concerning his record label and wanted to terminate his contract by any means. It got so bad that at one point he was being harassed by the label making numerous videos where he said that if anything happened to him the entire record was to blame for it. A fews later, Mohbad died from unknown cases and the entire record label was blamed for it. Naira Marley and his associate Sammy Larry were put under investigation for this and while this was going on thousands of Nigerians decided to cancel the entire record label and everything along with it.
The label was blacklisted, some radio station stopped playing their songs going as far as banning them completely from their studio. Even Zinoleesky who was actually at the peak of his actually suffered from this and it took its tool on him. Hateful comments filled their social media accounts, even when they dropped music Nigerians outrightly told them they would not listen to it and encouraged others to do the same. This was like a nightmare to them and even when it was proven that they had nothing to do with this death after the investigation, many Nigerians still chose to disassociate with them till this very day crushing the momentum this popular label once had.
Now this is the power of Cancel Culture and although it actually serves a very important purpose I don't remember know how to feel about if an individual is still being cancelled after paying for their crimes. I believe that if a person is sorry enough and continues to put in work with time the public will definitely ease up and let it go. An example would be the case of Chris Brown and his scandal with Rihanna. The artist went through a lot of backlash from the online community but as time went by people started forgiving him and he slowly gained their love little by little (some people still hate him to this day though). This is my opinion about the whole issue though because we can never control how people feel but at least we can try to make them see reason concerning this very issue....
Thank you.
Ps:All images were generated by CHATGBT AI
