A friend recently told me that I seemed like a different person each time we had caught up recently. And in essence, she was right- 2020, the year of finding oneself, has led me to test drive different personalities and outlooks. There was calm me, confident me, and a brash experiment where I attempted to incorporate a Dave Chappelle style of comedy into my daily interactions. The latter was harder than it looked on Netflix for sure.

Not much needs to be said to give context for 2020. The ‘year from hell’ or however you wish to describe it in your fireplace (“hey Siri, activate AI fire simulator”) chats to your grandkids, has brought a lot the bubbling anger within society to the surface. An effect of the months of global lockdown has been millions of people given the time to step back and ‘find themselves’. An overused turn of phrase indeed. But let’s talk about another much overused phrase…”cancel culture”.

Sometimes it seems like every man, woman and their dog watches Brooklyn 99. And if you watch Brooklyn 99 you also love Terry Crews, who is as affable in the public eye as his character is on the show. But now Crews supporting Chance the Rapper ended with Chance distancing himself from him faster than he pulled out of Splendour. Here’s the offending tweet to save you the time “If you are a child of God, you are my brother and sister. I have family of every race, creed and ideology. We must ensure #blacklivesmatter doesn’t morph into #blacklivesbetter.” Yes the ‘blacklivesbetter’ hashtag is tacky, but in the context of his overall point I can understand that he is still supporting the crux of the movement. It feels surreal that a tweet containing these words appears alongside articles titled “backlash” “enraged” and “condemned”. It shouldn’t either be a case of ‘it is the wrong time to express opinions.’ Because if not now, then when? We risk losing our brightest, most eloquent voices in society for fear of the impending backlash.

How does this relate to my changing personalities you ask? Because the pleasure of ‘finding youself’ is peaceful introspection, maybe listening to some relaxing tunes like The Isley Brothers (how on earth did I, a Jimi Hendrix fanatic, take so long to properly get into them?!). However nowadays the aftermath of finding yourself seems to be a need to hold up a sign saying that you have become ‘woke’, and anyone not holding up a sign which looks similar needs to be cancelled. Case in point the ‘black square’ that swept the feeds of facebook and instagram alike. For sure a worthy initiative, as it gave everyone a chance to pause and reflect on what was happening, at least in the social media space. What was concerning however was the detective mob mentality searching and condemning celebrities who hadn’t joined in.

I’ll admit in this safe space that I stuck with Riverdale all the way until the current season, when it all got too much. Anyway, KJ Apa plays one of the main characters, and was lambasted for his twitter and instagram feeds being silent. “I don’t need to post about my opinions and beliefs in order for them to be real to me. I support Black lives – but I don’t feel it necessary to prove to people I do by posting my attendance at these protests,” was his response, and whilst he does have a platform, it should not be compulsory for everyone with one to speak on every issue. This mob mentality of prosecuting the ‘less vocal’ has hurt the movement. Because when you create what feels like an insular bubble, those on the outside feel the compulsion to create a bubble too- and hence we have ‘white lives matter’, and counter protests from people who otherwise may have been happy to support BLM, albeit silently from the sidelines.

So next time people are itching to jump aboard the next cancelling bandwagon, I hope that they think of Terry Crews, and think that maybe this is all going too far. Because whatever personality my 2020 dice ends up rolling, I just can’t cancel Terry.