If anyone has a Twitter, they have probably seen the recent news about Kelvin Peña, more famously known as Brother Nature. Usually, Peña is in the Twitter spotlight for his funny and endearing videos with his local deer who he has named. But this past week, a Twitter user searched through his old tweets and found a series of racist, misogynistic, and anti-Semitic tweets. There were many different reactions across the board on Twitter that prompted an apologetic response from Peña, but this type of thing isn't new especially for Twitter.
The slang word "canceled" refers to when a person or people decide to stop supporting a public figure, marking them irrelevant to the rest of their audience. This word plays into the larger idea of "cancel culture," where once a public figure has made some kind of social error, usually in terms of social media use, members of their audience and fan base cut them off and deem them as something close to evil.
Before I continue, I want to make a disclaimer that I am not discussing issues like sexual assault or acts of violence against others since these things have never been socially acceptable and those who partake in such deserve to be held accountable to the highest scrutiny of the public. I'm not saying that holding people accountable for their action and words is what is problematic; I think that should be encouraged. What is wrong is holding people accountable for making social errors as the person they were nearly a decade ago.
In the case of Brother Nature, he sent out those in 2012. Let's be honest, the internet was a different time back then, not to mention he was a young and impressionable teenager. I don't mean to take away what he said because what he said was wrong. But also, when I was around that age, I thought it was okay to casually use the R-word. I don't say that anymore because I learned how my words can negatively affect the disabled community. I'm not the same person I was six years ago, thank god.
People are ever-changing. We are allowed that. I'm not the same person I was even last year and hopefully the same goes for everyone. There is nothing wrong with admitting that your past-self was in the wrong and that you are not that person anymore. We need to stop vilifying young public figures and applying our current social and political stances on things people said years ago. We can't doom people to live and suffer in their past shames when that's not who they are anymore. So I forgive Brother Nature, and I wish he continues to grow and prosper as everyone else should.
