- The power of the people is illustrating itself online.
Social media posts hold more weight than ever in getting powerful people to take accountability.- Fans expect more from the celebrities they look up to, and will call them out when they fall short.
Everyday people have been exerting extraordinary power online in the last year, with "accountability culture" sweeping across social
Figures ranging from high-profile superstars to
Perhaps the starkest example of this has been seen in
But comedian and podcaster Kevin T. Porter wasn't really thinking about any of that when he tweeted that Ellen DeGeneres preached kindness but was "notoriously one of the meanest people alive" in March 2020.
"The amount of premeditation, I can't under-emphasize enough," Porter told Insider. "I literally rolled out of bed and thought it'd be funny."
Almost everyone he knew in LA had a story about DeGeneres, he said, although he didn't imagine the tweet would go further than his comedy
Degeneres' reckoning had already begun with her awkward interview with Dakota Johnson, and her continued alliance with George Bush. But the mega-thread sparked what would become a larger cultural backlash against DeGeneres, and is representative of a social media movement that's just begun to hold powerful people to standards being set online.
Targeting the rich and powerful can feel like leveling the playing field
Four months after the viral thread was published, BuzzFeed News built on its momentum, painting a picture of a toxic work environment at "The Ellen DeGeneres Show," which former employees said was rife with "racism, fear, and intimidation." The story stated there had been "rumors for years about DeGeneres being difficult."
Executive producers told BuzzFeed in a statement that they took the stories of the employees "very seriously."
"It's not who we are and not who we strive to be, and not the mission Ellen has set for us," they said.
On May 12, DeGeneres said she was ending her show after 19 years because "it's just not a challenge anymore."
Porter said he thinks the online takedown of celebrities resonates so much with the public at the moment because "we're so mad at rich people right now."
"Affluence is gauche and really tacky now to most of us," he said. "So whether it's Ellen or whatever celebrity, it's always gonna feel like punching up to a degree. The takedown is less about conquering or colonizing something, and more about trying in vain to level the playing field a little bit."
Social media takedowns were not always taken seriously, but things are changing
Early on in its genesis, social media figureheads promised that it would democratize our world. Anybody's complaints or desire for justice can go viral. Data collection practices, misinformation, and the increasing power of big tech dashed those dreams for many.
The Pew Research Center canvassed experts on democracy in the digital age in February 2020, before much of the pandemic. One of the respondents was Ian O'Byrne, assistant professor of education at the College of Charleston, who had a pessimistic view of the power of social media to hold people to account.
"Nothing may ultimately change," he said. "The existing power-holders will continue to exert their influence, and citizens will be left to continue to voice their opinions by shouting into the cyberverse."
At the time, this may have been an accurate representation, but now, something seems to have shifted in the pandemic era.
In the past year and a half, DeGeneres and numerous powerful figures in business and media have faced reckonings that were started online.
In June 2020, Insider's Rachel Premack reported on allegations of a "toxic" workplace at Conde Nast's Bon Appetit, after a photo of editor-in-chief Adam Rapoport dressed as a Puerto Rican stereotype for a Halloween party circulated online. 14 current and former contributors to
Later, when
On April 29, "Reply All" co-host Emmanuel Dzotsi discussed the problems that led to this decision in a new episode.
Several YouTubers also faced their own personal downfalls via social media, such as James Charles and Shane Dawson. Charles for allegations posted to TikTok that he was sexting with minors, and Dawson over resurfaced videos where he appeared in blackface and made sexually inappropriate jokes about children. Near-constant social media pressure applied to the influencers had major effects on their reputations and careers.
Most are living a more online life , which can make us more reactive
The reasons social media whistleblowers are holding more power than ever may be partly due to the pandemic and our adaptation to a more online life.
Şirin Atçeken, an in-house psychologist at healthcare consultancy WeCure with expertise in social media behavior and how it affects mental health, told Insider that in the last 12 months, people have tended to become more enthralled in online criticism than we would usually be.
"We want to follow the story through, and it brings people together online, which in a time when we are isolated, this connection and conversation is good for our mental health," she said. "They break up the monotony of our current situation,"
She added that more of us are in a "reactive mode" and thus are quicker to respond when we see injustices and problems.
"This has almost created a vigilante approach on social media," she said. "So when someone is criticized, people are less likely to hold back on their opinions."
This era of accountability was, in part, furthered by the death of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement last summer. BLM has seen uprisings before, but the response in 2020 far out-shadowed any previous effort.
Atçeken said this is partly due to an increase in online and social media activism since the beginning of lockdown.
"Lockdown has everyone questioning the value of their lives, and their place in the world," she said. "People want to feel that they are a part of something bigger, and more meaningful, so they're turning to the internet to give them a voice and something to stand for."
Timing is everything when accountability leads to action
A striking feature of the BLM movement was its use of online activism. Social media users criticized people and companies that did not meet the standard of being clearly anti-racist.
The Dixie Chicks and Lady Antebellum both changed their names to The Chicks and Lady A due to the words' associations with the Confederate States of America during the Civil War. Pancake brand Aunt Jemima moved away from its racially insensitive packaging in June 2020, after Twitter users said that the name and logo had roots in racism and minstrelsy.
Former Google employee April Christina Curley spoke out against the company in a Twitter thread in December 2020, saying she'd been fired from her role as a diversity recruiter after six years of being denied promotions and leadership opportunities, and being told her Baltimore accent was a "disability."
"Ultimately my last manager, his manager, and HR decided that the best way to shut me up was to fire me," Curley, who is a Black woman, told Insider.
Curley's original tweet has received over 150,000 likes. A Google spokesperson told Business Insider at the time: "We don't agree with the way April describes her termination, but it's not appropriate for us to provide a commentary about her claims."
Curley believes timing is everything, and that is partly why her story was spread so far.
"Being in such an awful 2020, people were looking for things that were going to keep them engaged or give them something to have their attention on," she said. "And I think that the timing of it all, the universe sort of made it work together."
The digital 'accountability' movement is only going to grow
Curley said social media can be the ideal first step in sparking conversations about abuses of power or implicit problems at a company.
"It's the perfect way and the perfect platform for someone who's experiencing really, really hard things to be able to express those really hard things," she said.
According to Atçeken, the digital "accountability" movement will be hard to slow even when things slowly return to normal.
"The most important factor is we know that when we talk, there are people listening," she said. "There isn't any more hiding, and I believe it will create better businesses, and people will make better decisions, and if they don't, the audience won't stay quiet."
Brandon Relph, the CEO of digital media company Studio BE who has worked with companies and government bodies to expand their knowledge of Gen Z's social media habits and behavior, told Insider there's been a cultural shift in what people expect from powerful people in the past couple of years.
A report based on 630 responses from research platform Quantilope this year found that 76% of Gen Z and 72% of millennials want brands to address representation, diversity, and inclusion, compared to 63% of Gen Xers and 46% of baby boomers.
"Young people have much higher expectations of the workplace they are working in, and they have a higher expectation of how they should be treated," Relph said.
Relph thinks the trend of speaking out about alleged injustices on Twitter is only going to continue.
"There's a culture of support on the ground of people that care about these issues," he said. "I don't think it's necessarily always the best way, but sometimes it's the only way."