An Audience With Media Expert, Cielo Solis on cancel culture and social media

Maricielo Solis has done it all as far as working in the media is concerned. From humble beginnings, she started working in the media at The Today Show, and then moved onto helping with news at CNN and even working on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. Now, she is a journalist turned entrepreneur, and has established her own media company, BLENDtw Media, (blend the world), aimed at creating content for lots of different voices, specifically Generation-Z and millennials.

Photo: Editorial Photo of Cielo. Credit: https://maricielosolis.com/

On her own company's content, Cielo, as she likes to be called, says that BLENDtw stays away from topics of controversy. Not because of cancel culture, but because of how toxic it can generally be. Upon reading some of the articles on BLENDtw, it is clear that Cielo is passionate about empowering college students - the audience whom make up a large percentage of the site's 1 million readers a month. The content consists of 'how to' features at college and other guidance on moving out for the first time, saving money at college among other things.

As a Latino woman born in Peru, Cielo's provides a voice for women of colour. She tells me that cancel culture has impacted the minority community greatly and disparaged their voices across all marginalised groups.

"When someone else says something that does not align with their values or something that is critcising the way they view things, it is so much easier for the other person to judge and cancel them than to listen. People need to be more empathetic on social media, specifically, and people need to learn to listen what others have to say and having a sense of how different groups of people navigate their experiences."

She echoes an early argument found in a study I read: that without listening to different viewpoints, there would be no room to debate or to challenge them. What Cielo says makes a world of sense, no matter where you stand on a topic, if you cannot listen to an alternate view, there is no room to educate yourself, or expand your world view. How, without debate, would cancel culture even exist, if there is no logical way to decide what is a cancellable offence and what is not?

As a US-citizen, Cielo's idea and experience to cancel culture is different to mine. Whilst here in the UK we have our own media commentators and figures, they certainly do not have the reach that those media personalities and companies do in the USA. In 2022, Statisa reported that "the United States reached over 302 million social media users in 2022", a stark contrast to the UK population of around 67 million.

She also tells me that in her experience interviewing successful people on her popular podcast, My Voice, Our Story, the likelihood of successful people and celebrities being cancelled depends on their fanbase and target audience.

As far as social media is concerned, she believes it depends on the values and political standing of the publication or media platform you are on, a fact previously confirmed by those I interviewed who work in the UK media business. It seems that this does not differ per country, at least in the comparison of the UK versus the American media industry.

"If you go and say something that is not aligned with the values of a specific demographic, then you can get in trouble and get cancelled, especially on social media. I think celebrities and notable figures need to be very careful on that. These days in America, it is so easy to get cancelled because people are very sensitive. But it depends on the demographic and the audience that you are targeting," she says.

As an expert, Cielo is no stranger to cancel culture. Her frequent features across American media showed me that. But the question I couldn't answer is why is it needed? What is the reason people are so quick to cancel somebody? As a member of Gen-Z, I could certainly give you my own theory,but that has no merit against that of an expert like Cielo.

Whilst we know it is now trendy to cancel someone in the same way we know that cargo trousers are back in style, Cielo points out a key motivation for pro-cancel culture: money. The media, after all, is a business and that business needs money to survive, which means it needs consumer engagement.

"People like gossiping, people like to know the tea, they like to know why did she get cancelled today. It's a lucrative trend and it is always going to exist."

Moving forward, Cielo predicts that cancel culture will only increase in its popularity. After all, social media shows no signs of slowing down, and those pop culture TikTokers reporting on celebrity news like Hannah Kosh and many more.

However, when I asked her for her general opinion on the phenomenon she said she does not believe it to be useful or helpful in the media space, purely because it can lead to online bullying and harassment. Cielo's mission is focusing on 'grassroots journalism', as she defines it and finding ways to talk about hard topics. At BlendTW, they do this by letting the person tell their own story rather than writing a feature on the subject.

As our conversation ended, Cielo stressed it has taken her brand years to get to the engagement they are at now. Whilst cancel culture hasn't necessarily impacted their readership, Cielo highlights that staying away from controversy and creating a consistent brand has helped her immensely to maintain BlendTW and make her into the success story she is today.