Backlash: Cancel Culture as a double-edged sword

Part Three

BY MA. KRISTINE BUENAFE

Braving the storm: Reclaiming yourself and Choosing Happiness

Atty. Christopher Lao recounts his experience of being the first Filipino “cancelled" on social media more than 10 years ago.

His name, #ChristopherLao, became one of the first trending hashtags on the platform that earned him his unwarranted fame.

For Lao, this was the stuff of nightmares. Instead of garnering fans, hate and ridicule came his way on social media after the footage was seen on GMA7, especially on Twitter.

"I was not informed!"

Hate speech was thrown at him, with people calling him "the most stupid person in the Philippines” for being “uninformed” at that time. To netizens, what had happened to him was because of a lack of common sense—driving a car in high floods would definitely not work. And so, he became the butt of many jokes.

Ten years later, as a professor of Law for DLSU and UP, Lao does his part as a responsible educator to combat cancel culture.

People created memes of him, mocked him, ridiculed him, and made fun of him online. Overnight, his name would be etched in what we now know as the early cases of cancel culture being present in the Philippines.

"Suddenly you wake up and feel worthless. It's hard to wake up and start again. One moment you're incredible and another moment you're a turd." reminisces Lao.

And so as a way of finding himself again, Lao set off to the province of Chiang Mai in Thailand. He learned that the people there valued two things—simplicity and detachment from the world.

In order for him to truly recover from the whole ordeal, he had decided that he needed to get away from everything before it pulled him back to all the negativity and hate. He needed to build himself back together, to rediscover who Christopher Lao really is, and not what the public perceives him to be.

At one point during the whole ordeal, Lao shares that he had slowly stopped eating and lost his appetite completely. His emotions as well were all over the place - one moment he would be fine and the next he would just burst into tears.

Lao likened it to "being mauled alive by tens and thousands of people." He explains that his brain felt like it was under attack, and so it didn't know how to react. Eventually, he had to seek professional and medical health for his severe depression and mental instability.

It even affected his drive and motivation to take the bar exam, draining him of the desire to continue practicing law. Lao recalls not being able to think about anything amidst the negativity he had absorbed from all the hateful comments and messages he had received.

But that wasn’t enough.

Following the aftermath of the incident, Lao found it difficult to wake up and continue living as if nothing happened. He shared that this was the lowest point of his life, remembering how a part of him died during the process. Lao remembers reaching a point where the incident took a toll on his body in ways he couldn’t even imagine.

In a blink of an eye, everything was taken from him.

And finally, Lao was ready to go home.

Lao realized that in order to learn how to live again, he had to change.

And while once again he had isolated himself from society, he was able to converse with the monks of the temple to help him make sense of his crisis and to reflect on his philosophies in life.

This prompted him to be happier, freer, and more creative but most of all , this encouraged him to continue living and to seek a new purpose in his life.

"While there are now laws in place, education is more potent against cancel culture. It is the responsibility of educators to exercise critical thinking and to teach these to their students," said Lao.

While he is still very much active in social media despite what had transpired in his life thus far, he does his best to exercise restraint with every post he shares. Even to this day he still gets recognized online, but is met with more positivity from people, with some even sending apologies his way for how they acted years ago.

He emphasizes the importance of teaching the values of compassion and empathy to students, in light of the rise of mental health issues nowadays brought about by social media.

In terms of finding an alternative to Cancel Culture, for a private citizen like Lao, he mentions that there's no need to call them out in public. Privately messaging the person or using other legal channels is more appropriate than airing their dirty laundry out in public for everyone to scrutinize.

Similarly, Velasco highlighted the importance of criticism and its difference from cancellation. “I feel that in today’s highly divisive time, civil discourse is necessarily finding synergies in conflicting perspectives,” he observes.

Velasco firmly stated that we can address the root cause of issues through criticism because cancelling someone only silences the accused. He further explained that criticism is a “productive endeavor” that allows individuals and institutions to reflect on their behavior for them to become better social actors. On the other hand, cancellation is purely alienating a person and removing them from their respective social realities for their alleged actions.

More can be done to provide opportunities and time for individuals to rectify their mistakes. If Lao is given the same opportunity and time to change for the better, then everyone should be given the same chance to do so.

At the end of the day, all we desire in ourselves and in others is to change for the better. For individuals like Lao and many others who were cancelled in the past few years, change was pushed into them in ways they couldn't have imagined.

Cancel culture has been weaponized and utilized for various things. It has allowed victims to seek justice. It has also become a way to demand social change and immediate action—it has done good for people who are unsatisfied with current systems, and brought more light to issues that are being swept under the rug.

But after all is said and done, cancel culture makes no room for sinners. Once one is caught and condemned, they are permanently exiled. People have nowhere to go to be accepted once they are deemed unworthy of redemption.

As a private citizen, he shares what he's learned and experienced with those around him, in hopes of educating and inspiring change among the younger generation.

His journey in Thailand came to an end when he finally realized what he needed to do. In his TedX talk held in Ateneo back in 2013, he described this moment as an epiphany, if you will, when the realization struck him.

So if cancel culture’s goal is to call out and correct wrong behaviors, does it really achieve it?

We invite you to share your thoughts with us online
using the hashtag #ProjectBacklash

And cliche as it sounds, this realization spurred a newfound sense of joy and relief in him. That happiness in life is something he has to choose for himself, and that no one, especially not strangers on the internet, could ever take control of in his life.

His dignity, his academic achievements, meant nothing in the face of public scrutiny and ridicule, after one simple mistake caught on camera.

"I didn't want to be hated," he admits.

Happiness is a choice.

For him, cancel culture is still an "evil'' that we have to address, especially to young children.

“You are worthy," he adds.

Moving Forward

Christopher Lao was still a UP Law student, when he got "cancelled" back in 2011. News reports that day were capturing the waist-high floods due to Typhoon Kabayan, and Lao was seen complaining. The footage quickly brought in thousands and thousands of views from individuals all over the country and the world through national television and social media platforms such as Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter. And while to a regular person this moment of fame would make anyone feel like they're on cloud nine, the same could not be said for him.

“There is no court of law. You don’t talk about evidence here. You don’t talk about proper channels or a proper process,” says political scientist Dr. Joseph Velasco, pertaining to the practice of cancelling someone. With cancel culture, an individual exposes another person through a social media thread or post. Other people would chime in and contribute to the discussion without acknowledging or looking at the facts and evidence.

The cancelled is left with no path to redemption. Velasco added that other people will always have a level of doubt about the individual who was cancelled. The accusations and labels will always be attached to them.

“Once you’re cancelled, at least in my understanding, I haven’t seen someone who was successfully rehabilitated to their level of influence that they had once before,” Velasco shares.

There is no due process and clear-cut parameters to cancellation. The saying “innocent until proven guilty” is not applicable anymore. Instead, we now follow the principle of “guilty until proven innocent.” The alleged oppressor is spared no chance to explain their side of the story.

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Atty. Christopher Lao recounts his experience when he was cancelled in 2011.

Atty. Christopher Lao believes education is an alternative
to cancel culture.

Atty. Christopher Lao compares calling out private individuals versus politicians and influential people.

Dr. Joseph Velasco on the importance of compromise
in civil discourse.