CHARLOTTE – Have you recently heard the term cancel culture going around? It’s pretty much everywhere, so if you haven’t, great job on curating your own content and setting boundaries!

Cancel culture is a term used to describe when a brand, person, or organization is pretty much boycotted completely, usually due to some discretion that has upset many people or at least a group of people.

This includes not buying products, unfollowing on social media, and in general not saying anything good about the person, brand, or organization.

The idea is to make not cool to support those that do unsavory things.

Like all things humans do though, it gets abused and overused. So many are now demonizing what’s being called “cancel culture” because anything that offends anyone seems to be getting canceled.

The catchy name is sort of new, but the concept of canceling those we are offended by is not. We’ve been doing it for a long time. However, now each person has the potential to reach a much wider audience thanks to the internet and social media.

So should you worry about participating in or being a victim of cancel culture? Probably not. It’s a buzzword that gains a lot of attention but generally doesn’t stick unless there’s a good reason.

Be honest, authentic, and kind and cancel culture will likely not affect you. If you do find yourself in its crosshairs, my advice is to listen and not be defensive, but that’s probably another column for another day.