With the new year comes a new mindset, at least according to Lizzo.
The About Damn Time singer took to Twitter over the weekend to talk to her followers about cancel culture and why she thinks that phrase is being misused. According to Insider, the term became popular around 2017 and has been used to publicly shun particular “celebrities, brands, companies, and or concepts.”
In a tweet shared on Jan. 8, Lizzo explained that she feels people have lost sight of what “cancel culture” actually means because of how trendy has become.
Expressing the reason she’s bringing it up, she said it was something in her “heart.” The 34-year-old wrote, “This may be a random time to say this, but it’s on my heart.. cancel culture is appropriation. There was real outrage from truly marginalized people, and now it’s become trendy, misused, and misdirected.”
Lizzo wrapped up the tweet by stating she hoped that people could start focusing on real-life issues and place their outrage on things
that matter. She said, “I hope we can phase out of this & focus our outrage on the real problems.” As the vocalist’s followers viewed the post, opinions regarding the tweet were mixed.One social media user expressed that they aren’t for people getting canceled. However, they would like those parties that have done “bad actions” or “crimes” to be held accountable. The response read, “I don’t want people to be canceled. I want people to be *held accountable* and to receive consequences according to the bad action/crime that they did. Is this too much to ask?”
At the same time, another person agreed with Lizzo that the phrase cancel culture had lost its significance. They said, “That’s a really great take. I hadn’t thought to look at it like that. And it’s very, very true. The power has gone out of it, and that’s a real loss for marginalized peoples. Brings ‘triggered’ to mind. That’s a very real thing for people with trauma histories. Now it’s a joke.”
A third Twitter user shared that cancel culture is used to help hold people accountable, just like boycotting. The post read, “I don’t support anything I don’t agree with..period. Whether others feel the same or not is irrelevant. Cancel culture is just a popular term now, there has always been some form of folks attempting to hold others accountable..eg boycotting, etc.”
Since then, Lizzo has yet to follow up on the viral post.