North Texas Daily

How long are we going to keep giving people credit to where it’s not due? As media consumers, we continue to show support to people who don’t deserve it. Through a like, comment, or view, we add to the cesspool of out-of-pocket characters, racist tweets and terrible behavior on the internet.

Regardless of you being a fan or not, Bhad Bhabie’s climb to fame did not come from positive beginnings. The line “cash me outside, how bout that” stemmed from her cussing out audience members on the Dr. Phil show. Every time we repeated those words from our lips we might as well have been putting together another internet monster. From there she was able to launch a pretty successful rap career, but she has done some questionable things in the media. 

Since she became famous, Bhad Bhabie has been known for culturally appropriating Black American culture. From wearing box braids to comparing “growing up in the hood” to Tarzan being “raised by gorillas.” She has a pretty long track record of saying and doing things that disparage and stereotype the Black community, despite the fact that she’s not even Black.

Shane Dawson is next on the list of questionable characters that became celebrity packages. Dawson was a Youtube star for the bulk of the 2010s. Dawson was a massive influencer on Youtube and he amassed over 21 million subscribers on the video platform despite having multiple controversies throughout his youtube career. He did blackface, sexualized children and used racial slurs on his channel, and yet, no one blinked an eye. Dawson never really received much pushback and criticism until he was called out by Jada Pinkett Smith for an old video that surfaced of Dawson sexualizing Pinkett Smith’s daughter Willow. Even then he only lost 600,000 followers, which is small potatoes when you consider Dawson has 21.4M subscribers.

As I bring up the subject of consumers of media letting people be famous, why do we let every celebrity that has done something bad follow it with a half done apology and let it slide completely.

Apologies are not enough for certain situations because racial slurs, discriminatory comments and cultural appropriation cannot be undone and should’ve never been allowed to happen in the first place. It is more than a simple mistake and a Twitter apology does nothing to ease the pain that hurts a collective group of people. If they thought it was okay at any point in time, what other things do they think about on a daily basis? Who knows what kind of comments they are hiding in their Twitter drafts or edited videos?

Why are people able to do despicable things on the internet for so long before they are officially canceled? We let so many people keep their fame in its entirety. We dismiss certain actions and pick and choose who we want to cancel. We are too quick to forget and sometimes there are no repercussions, thus, letting the cycle of giving fame to people who do not deserve it continue. Even if you are a die-hard fan of someone, what lines need to be crossed before you will stop supporting them? 

We should normalize giving fame to people who are pillars of communities. We give so much power to certain celebrities that at this point they control our lives. We see what they want us to see, buy what they want us to buy and believe what they want us to believe. I believe people deserve second chances but in the words of Maya Angelou, when people show you who they are, believe them the first time.

Featured Illustration by Austin Banzon