Social media should I stay off it?

The trouble with social media is that very few people treat it as a public forum, by that I mean that most people either don't know or can't be bothered to debate or argue with the author of a posting that they disagree with. Instead the preference is to reply as you have stated, which in my eyes says much more about them than it does you in this instance. There is also usually a kind of mob mentality involved which doesn't help. The best response is just to ignore people like that I think, though I know how upsetting it can be sometimes.

I don't know what the answer is other than that, apart from educating 90% of the world's population though that won't happen of course. It's how we've ended up with a cancel culture in this country I think, and people generally don't realise what the end result of such a culture/policy would be. Maybe that's why it's allowed to flourish!?

I don't doubt that your intentions were good, though as others have said, it's just words and people can interpret them in different ways.

I don't think "cancel culture" is a  thing, it doesn't really exist because if it existed then certain celebrities would just stop being celebrities and that simply hasn't happened. Flame wars, bullying, doxxing, and dog-piling* is what happens to every day people when they get "cancelled" (they deactivate their own accounts of their own violition**) and are not new. The following isn't an accusation as I'm sure people are using it unknowing of it's origin but...
Calling it "cancel culture" is just a buzzword tool of conservative ideologues who yell about "free speach" but then try to silence people who use their free speech to tell them they are being horrible when they are being  horrible to others regardless of whether the call out of their bad behaviour is actually done in an abusive way or not.
If you've been around since the start of the internet you know it used to be way worse for being verbally abused when the internet was like a digital wild west with lax mods. The internet troll didn't go exist, it was just found to have never existed because saying cruel things and threatening strangers and their families with d__th and r__e was never funny.
If you typed a paragraph of every slur known to humanity on here you would be shown out of this forum faster than you can say disrespectful. Back in the day not so much.
It's not that the internet is nastier, but we're now older and run out of energy for it's negative behaviour***, IMO the kids coming online now just think it's all a shock to the system but that's because they don't have the knowledge of what it was like when it was worse to compare it against. Because I'm even more of an outspoken "g-bsh-te" now than I've ever been but I haven't received a death threat since 2011.

* Rebranding online bullying as cancel culture was unnecessary politicising since we already know bullying is bad.

** That was normal back in 2005: Big drama = whatever = delete account + put middle finger up to the bullies and just remake account under a new name. Nobody even made that big of a deal of it.

** And good thing too. Nobody should have been expected to put up with it in the first place. "If you can't take the heat keep off the 'net" was always a horrible and toxic mentality.

(Wow reading this back it's quite meaty for a reply that's just a casual observation. Sorry if that's a bit TLDR.)

I don't think "cancel culture" is a  thing, it doesn't really exist because if it existed then certain celebrities would just stop being celebrities and that simply hasn't happened. Flame wars, bullying, doxxing, and dog-piling* is what happens to every day people when they get "cancelled" (they deactivate their own accounts of their own violition**) and are not new. The following isn't an accusation as I'm sure people are using it unknowing of it's origin but...
Calling it "cancel culture" is just a buzzword tool of conservative ideologues who yell about "free speach" but then try to silence people who use their free speech to tell them they are being horrible when they are being  horrible to others regardless of whether the call out of their bad behaviour is actually done in an abusive way or not.
If you've been around since the start of the internet you know it used to be way worse for being verbally abused when the internet was like a digital wild west with lax mods. The internet troll didn't go exist, it was just found to have never existed because saying cruel things and threatening strangers and their families with d__th and r__e was never funny.
If you typed a paragraph of every slur known to humanity on here you would be shown out of this forum faster than you can say disrespectful. Back in the day not so much.
It's not that the internet is nastier, but we're now older and run out of energy for it's negative behaviour***, IMO the kids coming online now just think it's all a shock to the system but that's because they don't have the knowledge of what it was like when it was worse to compare it against. Because I'm even more of an outspoken "g-bsh-te" now than I've ever been but I haven't received a death threat since 2011.

* Rebranding online bullying as cancel culture was unnecessary politicising since we already know bullying is bad.

** That was normal back in 2005: Big drama = whatever = delete account + put middle finger up to the bullies and just remake account under a new name. Nobody even made that big of a deal of it.

** And good thing too. Nobody should have been expected to put up with it in the first place. "If you can't take the heat keep off the 'net" was always a horrible and toxic mentality.

(Wow reading this back it's quite meaty for a reply that's just a casual observation. Sorry if that's a bit TLDR.)

Actually I don't think anyone who at least initially responded to my reply took it as anything beyond the observation it was meant as, I realise my obserations can feel weighed because they sometimes address serious topics, but it really wasn't meant as criticism, at most maybe a polite caution in that observation, but it certainly wasn't meant to be accusatory to anyone in particular. But I do see where replies to those replies may have started to spin off into a more heated direction.

frenz said:

David Bowie said in an interview way back in 1999 (I think) that the internet was the best and worst thing that could have been invented (to paraphrase). He was right! 

Haha so true! :D

It seems I may have upset some people with my reply which definitely wasn't my intention. Maybe this perfectly demonstrates the problem with social media, in that you have interpreted a phrase which is in general use nowadays as being political, which is not what I said at all! Maybe I have misinterpreted what you have said!? The fact that you have responded without hurling abuse and it can then be debated/discussed is what should happen - but it normally doesn't. That was the point really.

Anyway, as you also said, and I agree, I didn't wish to hijack this topic out of respect to the original poster. I was merely stating an opinion which clearly turned out to be not that helpful.

David Bowie said in an interview way back in 1999 (I think) that the internet was the best and worst thing that could have been invented (to paraphrase). He was right!