TikTok, Cancel Culture and social media: Two friends discuss

Thinking about who I wanted to discuss this subject with, I realised my friend pool was limited. With the friends I do have, it is rare that I can discuss a whole-lot-of-nothing with them, but with Sidrah Afzal that is not the case.

Photo: Sidrah in an editorial shoot Credit: Chris Powe

Sidrah and I have been friends for two years, and when I asked her to do this, I thought she might agree. Though she does not work in social media, she has a keen eye for all things digital, studying Fashion Photography at London Metropolitan University, and we constantly send TikToks to each other about the things that annoy us.

On this never-ending list, is the emergence of cancel-culture on TikTok comments, where users tend to blindly agree with a certain narrative about a person or a subject pushed by

the video it is on.

Sidrah highlights this problem when she tags me in a restaurant review TikTok posted by user @simplyrasha, who visited the halal food spot NAC Mayfair. Innocent, enough, right? Well, the comments say otherwise.

"Someone commented: 'Don't go there, the food isn't fresh, they just reheat food because they don't have a license.' I asked the girl that said that 'what is your source', because I hadn't heard anything like that. That's the thing with cancel culture, the girl went and told everyone this, but nobody took the time to find out their own information," says Sidrah.

Sidrah claimed the girl who made the comment responded to her and told her to go and ask the restaurant work there regarding the claim of having no license. We also talked about how comments like this one can be detrimental to businesses, especially where social negative media posts are concerned.

When we compared celebrities being cancelled versus businesses/we agreed that the cancelling of a celebrity has a greater impact because they have a greater outreach. In comparison to a normal person, a celebrity is more likely to be ostracised because they are well-known, whereas a regular person's actions and words are not cared about in the same way.

Sidrah identifies a common theme in referring to another TikTok where the user went to Manco restaurant in Paris, and claimed they faced racism when the security guard turned them away.

"The woman was pointing out their outfits in the group. These girls were not dressed. The context there is that they wanted to say it was racism, but they're telling you that you can't get in because of jeans. You're not following the dress code."

And to that I say: yes! Context is key. The problem on TikTok is because videos on there are tailored to your algorithm, those viral videos that appear on your homepage slagging off X Y and Z tend to reach a similar audience.

Particularly in this generation, we love to make things controversial, and social media networking sites give anybody ammunition to do that.

However, Sidrah laughs and states that people just want a reason to be angry, they don't necessarily have to be.

Take, influencer Elle Darby for example, who was called out in January when her old racist and insensitive tweets were exposed online. At this point we disagree: The freedom of speech argument here does not apply. Elle Darby was fourteen to fifteen when she made those tweets, old enough to know that the words she used were racist and discriminatory.

I circle the conversation back to Sidrah, and ask her she herself has had a bad experience with being cancelled or cancel culture.

I don't actually say anything. Every time you say something that's different from the mob mentality,

people don't like it.

Sadly, with a roll of her eyes, Sidrah says she does not comment on TikTok videos anymore because of her negative experiences with other users. For this reason, when I ask her about the future of cancel culture, she stares back at me with a bleak look on her face.

"TikTok is just short, seconds-long videos. People just form an opinion so quickly. With younger people and social media, they don't want to be patient and recieve information. Their attention spans because of TikTok are getting lower and lower, so I don't think it will get any better."