Life and Death in the Era of the Digital Guillotine
Let the execution bells ring. Another star has fallen.
Funny enough, I started writing this one about a month ago when TikTok talking head Leo Skepi was canceled after a declaration of a fatphobic hot take: that brands reserve the right to make sizing for who they feel should buy their clothing. Overnight, the internet mob arrived at his doorstep with pitchforks and torches ablaze, ready to take him away to his fate of digital death. But just before the digital guillotine dropped down onto Leo’s neck, he published an apology video that was able to garner just enough approval to save him. Mostly. For now.
Will Haley Kalil (@hayleebaylee) be so lucky?
FYI, this will be an essay for those chronically online. I work in influencer marketing. Believe me, there is a huge part of me that would love to live somewhere deep in Big Sur and not have any clue what the youths are chattering about online, but alas, I don’t.
So let’s discuss.
Cancel culture may be annoying, but it is the backbone of the internet. Like a game of influencer roulette, once every new moon, some yapping content creator is pushed off a cliff into the internet abyss following whatever internet faux pas they made. It could be a classic racist tweet from 2012. Or in recent target Haley Kalil’s case, an extremely tone-deaf choice of a song to accompany her Marie Antoinette-esque Met Gala ensemble. To be an influencer publicist in this day and age is equal to being a modern firefighter of sorts, I bet.
Literally Marie Antoinettes’s execution
The digital guillotine was officially erected five days ago by TikTok user @ladyfromtheoutside, though influencers have long been digitally executed for their crimes. She declares the “digitine” a movement to block celebrities and influencers who aren’t using their platforms to “help those in dire need.” Haley was the first to go; albeit, her eight-minute-long apology video was a valiant attempt to declare her innocence.
“We gave them their platforms; it’s time to take it back,” this internet stranger proclaims. Over two million views and hundreds of engagements later, the internet mob agrees.
The social media landscape heading into summer 2024 is no doubt volcanic, whereas it usually sits at a tolerable boil.
The last few weeks have marked Israel’s besiege of Rafah, a Palestinian city that sits on the border between Gaza and Egypt. Rafah is considered to be the last refuge for the millions of Gazan civilians whose homes, families, and lives have been destroyed by Israel in the nation’s attempt to combat terrorist organization Hamas. Israel’s Rafah offensive proved to be the final breaking point for longtime Israel ally, Egypt, as the nation has now joined South Africa in a lawsuit against Israel at the International Court of Justice, which accuses Israel of violating its obligations under the Genocide Convention. It is both hard to look away yet hard to look directly at the evolving Palestinian genocide happening in Gaza as a direct result of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s reckless refusal to end a war.
At the same time we watch a global crisis unfold in the Middle East, millions of people here at home are struggling to put food on the table. Nearly over 60% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. No matter how aloof and optimistic Forbes and Wall Street Journal headlines are about an economic comeback, the reality is that for millions of Americans, the “American Dream” their predecessors once had is out of the question. Bearing children and owning a home is a distant fantasy to those drowning in the debt of their student loans or medical bills well into their thirties.
And yet, last Monday, society’s elite ascended the stairs of the Met during one of the most extravagant evenings of the year. Many, myself included, gawked at the garments adorned by movie stars, moguls, nepo babies, and musicians. Most of the gowns that made it to The Met Gala took hundreds of hours to sew by hand. And at the intersection of it all was an American social media influencer and swimsuit model known for making comedy skits and makeup tutorials who chose the most unfortunate way to parade her connection to the affair. By mimicking a queen once beheaded for supposedly saying “let them eat cake” as millions of her constituents starved without bread.
As the digitine descends onto Haley, I yearn to stop the executioner and ask for a more fair trial. Because the question of the hour: Should we entrust our modern idols—pop stars, influencers, athletes, and models—to be navigators of complex humanitarian and economic crises and issues?
Cancel culture exists at the intersection of selective outrage and misinformation.
Haley wasn’t invited to The Met Gala. She whines about this in said apology video where she professes, “I’m not elite!” into a ring light situated in a corner of her $17,000-a-month New York City apartment. Indeed, Haley is on the lowest rung of the celebrity spectrum. Rather than attend the ball, she stood outside to interview those actually in attendance. She could be closer to them than most, but never one of them. Because deep inside the Met that evening were not influencers with social media followers, but people with real money and real power. The kind of influence that moves domestic and international policies rather than fashion trends.
Why aren’t they the ones to save us? Where’s our outrage for them? Where’s our outrage for our favorite billionaire pop superstar and carbon emission connoisseur who just kicked off the European leg of the highest-grossing tour of all time? Why couldn’t she stop her show on Mother’s Day to dedicate a few minutes to the thousands of mothers who’ve died in Gaza? Where’s our outrage for Cowgirl Carter? Tens of millions of views on whatever she posts to her hundreds of millions of followers online. Where is her declaration of solidarity?
Is it their job to save us? To save them?
I ask this genuinely because I don’t think it’s that simple. I think the billionaires and the policy influencers, yes. One would think there would be a moral contract that comes with owning a large percentage of a nation’s total wealth. Rather, one would hope.
Hot Take: Rather than digitally executing Haley, maybe we should thank her. There we were, eyes glazed over commenting on how out of place Kim Kardashian’s Margiela cardigan felt on the red carpet. It didn’t make any sense with her outfit! As if we were snapped out of a trance, the same constituents who created influence by simply curtseying to internet strangers who appeared out of thin air to do a “GRWM” are the same to realize that influence is nothing without a congregation.
We can unite together, online and IRL, but if we want to be effective, we can’t take the bait society’s real influencers are feeding us. As another TikToker, @clios_world, puts it, ‘Celebrities are the infantry of the upper classes.”
All to say, I am a fan of the digitine. But if we’re going to go to all the trouble of sharpening its blade, perhaps we can do better than digitally executing an influencer for a foolish oversight. If we want to hold the rich accountable, we’ll have to do better than protesting caramel macchiatos and blocking Jennifer Lopez.
Although, I think it’s fine to block JLo regardless.
