Tag Archives: Process Blog

Process Post #12: Today’s Cancel Culture

As we talked about in lecture and tutorials this week, we came to a consensus that the cancel culture of today is far different than it ever has been. Although the press, prior to social media, has long been full of gossip and rumours (see: The Crown on Netflix), social media has fuelled a whole new league of directed harassment, rumour feeding, disinformation spread, and more. 

The example brought up in class about the recent “cancelling” of Chris Pratt is telling of the situation. Chris was dutifully being held accountable for his partaking in a openly homophobic church and the fact he likely voted for Trump in 2016 and likely did so again in 2020. While at the same time, this discourse was met with the “you can only have 3 Hollywood Chrises tweet” where Pine, Hemsworth and Evans beat out Pratt (by a lot) in a series of threads and quote tweets. 

While this “battle of the Chrises” has long been a joke online and in the media and press junkets, many celebrities took this “cyberbullying” of Pratt to heart. 

Sure, I can get on board with the fact that pitting anyone against each other just because they have the same first name is a bit ridiculous and no one should get bullied for it; HOWEVER, when you’re also being held accountable for homophobic actions of your church and not actively not supporting a racist xenophobe, then the criticism you face might be a little more valid. 

I found it very disheartening and frustrating to see some of my favourite actors come out in droves to support Pratt. Robert Downey Junior and Mark Ruffalo being just two to name. I like to think that RDJ and Ruffalo simply didn’t know what Chris was actually being “cancelled” for, but we’ll never know. Either way, it doesn’t matter. When you have anything over a couple thousand followers, you have a platform. They very well know that their fanbase ranges from young children to full adults. Going online and making big shiny statements about a friend of yours when they’re in hot steaming water should be pre-empted with some good ol’ research. 

If Chris was being bullied for his name, sure you can call him a class act. But, should Chris be fairly called out for his church and political associations when it involves human rights? Yes. Should you defend him for that publicly when you have millions of followers criticizing Pratt for homophobia? Probably not.

Had people like RDJ and Ruffalo done their research prior to tweeting and instagramming, this situation would have likely just blown over and their public profiles not been harmed. There really was no need for them to publicly defend Pratt for a little Twitter joke and then get mistaken for being homophobe defenders. It’s times like these where I seriously question if those guys have anyone helping them with social media, because when you have nearly 50 million followers you really should have a second opinion on everything you post… 

Now let’s talk about why this was a short, 24 hour news cycle cancel event that will never provoke real change. 

Will Chris lose his millions of dollars being raked in every time he steps foot onto a Marvel set? No. Maybe one day but certainly not because of this cancel event. In fact, most influencers who actually should have their platforms taken away never do. I could list 10+ people who have more than 10 million followers or subscribers on various platforms who have done illegal and/or highly immoral things. Have they had their name thrown into a  #__isoverparty trend on Twitter? Yes. Did that change anything? Maybe a few people stopped supporting them but a few out of 10+ million only results in a few less pennies in their paycheque next month. 

Nearly everyday some celebrity or influencer is in hot water. In most situations, accountability is necessary and not something I think we should shy away from. However, at the same time, I believe the only thing social media cancel culture really does right now is severely cyberbully the individual being cancelled but never really takes away their platform, the thing that gives them the power and influence they have in the world. Which in some cases, is the thing they can do the most harm with.

Process Post #11: The Future of Let’s Talk What I Watch

We’re on the home stretch now for publishing 101 and I’ve been thinking lots about where this site is going to go afterwards. 

Before taking this class I had wanted to start writing more in my free time anyway, particularly about things I love like movies, so this class ultimately just kick-started that goal. In saying that, the last thing I want to do is fully abandon this site when the semester ends, but I might take a few weeks off after a continuous stream of 12 weeks of posting. 

Although I won’t be needing to run a PUB101 portion of this site anymore, I think re-jigging the site so I can have a space to post writing that doesn’t necessarily fall under the “Let’s Talk What I Watch” category will be good. For instance, there’s been many occasions where I got to write an academic research paper and I have more to say about it than I can fit into the paper or that should be in a university paper. So I want a place for those tangents. 

In terms of the Let’s Talk What I Watch portion, I also have recently started watching some new TV shows and documentaries and will probably finish them over my holiday break, afterwhich I’m sure I’ll have plenty to say. I don’t think I’ll ever run out of things to say abou the stuff I watch and I definitely don’t want to lose this domain name! 

Also as I work my way through the second half of my degree, I definitely want to find a place online to display some writing and design samples as a sort of portfolio. Three months ago I would’ve sworn against the complexity of wordpress and tell anyone that I’d never abandon squarespace. Although I never thought I’d say this, but, I might actually use wordpress as my personal site host too… After all, I don’t want to lose my genevievecheng.com domain! It’s far too perfect. 

That being said, I want to link my two sites together quite significantly, which is definitely why I have serious plans to revamp the home page and contact pages of this site while I’m also rebuilding my personal site from scratch. Just writing those words out makes me dread it but in the end I think the more practice I get with wordpress the easier it’ll get right? I sure hope it does. 


Although I never really thought of myself as a blogger, I think as someone with even the smallest interest in fields like journalism, starting an online presence as a writer is not something I should shy away from. Even if I don’t have a big audience for my blog, I’d like to continue to see it as a creative outlet where I can continue to work on my writing skills while talking about something I actually enjoy and am not being forced to write about.

All this being said, I’m very glad I took PUB101. Although I could have started a blog on my own time, actually taking the time each week to focus on it creatively and get other peers eyes on it was really enjoyable and motivational.

Process Post #10: Reacting to My Third Peer Review

For this week’s process post I’ll be looking back on the helpful constructive criticism I got from Victoria over at The Procrastireader. She gave me some really helpful critiques that I’ll be working on incorporating into my site going forward! 

Let’s talk about a few. 

Technical 

As far as running a new website goes, the technical issues are the hardest for me by far; however, this correction is going to be an easy fix going forward: making sure my links open in new tabs. 

We went over this a little bit in the past few weeks in lecture and now I’m definitely aware of the positive sides to making sure readers can easily navigate to and from your site. I honestly wasn’t really thinking about it too much as my mind was preoccupied with getting all of the links embedded into the post in the first place, but going forward I’ll defiitely be making the time! 

Design + Content

I always appreciate good comments about the ‘vibe’ or tone of my site! Hearing that the graphics and colours give off the impression I wanted them to is always lovely. 

One thing she pointed out was to add more pictures to my blog posts which I’ll definitely be doing! I might even go back to some of my old posts and add them when I have time near the end of the year after finals are over. After all, this is a film blog and not showing anything from the films is definitely a missing asset. 

In terms of content, I’m very glad to hear that my posts are an appropriate length that explain films without going into too much detailing and completely spoiling them! It’s a hard balance to strike. I also would love to respond to the comment about my media remix post where I combined Harry Styles with Harry Potter. Yes, I did see this tiktok, and I loved it. 

Another pointer she gave me about page design and content is directed at my About page. If I’m being honest, I basically made that page back in September and barely looked back, so I’m definitely open to critique on it. In the next few weeks I have plans to revamp it and going forward past PUB101 I think I’m going to continue to work on this site and make myself more of a “part of this blog”, if that makes sense. TLDR: I’ll work on my About page, I promise. 

Monetization 

As far as monetization goes we are definitely on the same page. My Youtube ads are lately almost 80% Netflix, which is weird considering I do have an account with them already but we all make mistakes. I think incorporating relevant ads into my site could definitely be an asset that I look into in the future for sure. 


Long story short, this third and final peer review was super beneficial and helpful! I want to give special thanks to Victoria for her tips and compliments. 
You can check out her full peer review on my site here!