Charli & Dixie D'Amelio

If you’re like me and you spend a severely unhealthy amount of time each day scrolling mindlessly through TikTok, then you probably know the names Charli and Dixie D’Amelio. Notoriously referred to as the queens of the app, combined, the D’Amelio sisters have amassed over 150 million TikTok followers — which means a lot of eyes watching and analyzing their every move and also… a lot of opportunities to get “cancelled.”

In November, the duo posted a YouTube video to their shared family channel in which they and their parents invite makeup influencer James Charles over to their house to chat and share a meal cooked by their personal chef (#normalpeoplethings). For dinner, the chef prepared a traditional Spanish paella, which, to Dixie’s surprise, contained escargots — also known as snails. And just like that comes “cancellable” offense number one, as Dixie is dared to eat the snail, immediately rushes from the table into the backyard to vomit, and proceeds to complain and question the chef for choosing to make that dish. Then, just a little while later within the same video, as Charli reflects on her journey so far as a TikTok creator, she makes a comment where she expresses how cool it would be to reach 100 million followers on the anniversary of hitting her first one million. It was that line, then, that social media users warped into “cancellable” offense number two for the sisters, as James jokingly responds to that wish with a “Was the 95 million not enough for you?”

From there, a deluge of outrage and all around hate against the D’Amelios ensued. The video went viral for exposing Charli and Dixie’s “spoiled” and “entitled” nature. It’s most popular YouTube comments made hugely negative judgement calls about the girls’ personalities, humility, and upbringing. Other teenagers cut arguably the worst moments from the video together and reposted them to TikTok with their own shocked facial expressions and disappointed reactions edited in on the side. And, overnight, Charli lost more than one million followers. But, hey, at least it was a nice even number?

Now, I remember seeing this whole “cancelled” scandal unfold on social media. It seemed as if in the blink of an eye, the Internet went from adoring the D’Amelios teens to truly “hating” them. Or, at least now, millions of people, hiding behind the comfort and pseudo-anonymity of their phone and computer screens, felt that they now had the license and agency, through this “perfect storm” of “bratty” remarks, to justify projecting hatred onto the girls over TikTok and Twitter.

But, let’s be real here. While the supercuts of the video’s most unfavorable moments don’t necessarily look great (or make the girls look great, for that matter), nothing the sisters did or said in that video was really all that out of the ordinary for a 16 and 19 year old girl to do or say amongst family and friends. These two have been thrust into the spotlight, and are surely going to make mistakes as they grow up. Though I’m not here to contribute my outsider two cents about whether or not the D’Amelios are “spoiled” or “bratty” or “bad people'' (because that, frankly, would be feeding into exactly the kind of toxic, unwarranted critiques and criticism that so often make up “cancellations”), I think it’s important to understand the somewhat scary real-life impact that this scandal had on the girls and analyze how it got taken that far.

Just a couple days later, Charli appeared on Instagram Live to tearfully apologize to her followers and explain that moments in the video were being misunderstood. “Don’t tell people to kill themselves. I feel like it’s not that hard. You can say whatever. You can say I’m disrespectful. You can say I don’t have basic human decency, but at the end of the day, I’m still a person no matter how many followers I have,” she said, sharing how her inboxes had been filled with violent messages and death threats.

Dixie also made a public apology video in the aftermath of her “cancellation” and posted it to TikTok, though hers was noticeably shorter and more scripted — which more seamlessly fits the mold of the genre of influencer apology videos these days. More so than a “real” apology, though, it appears that this video was more of a message to her followers (especially the extremely young ones) to stop taking 15-second clips out of context and dramatically misconstruing situations. Dixie attempted to explain the “full story” behind the video, noting how their personal chef is a good family friend and explaining the power of planning and editing YouTube content to gain more views.

So, how did this incident get blown out of proportion to the point that abusive messages and crying-filled apologies emerged? I think much of that is owed to Gen Z — the generation of those 25 and under who have grown up online, love to hate, and have found power in cancel culture. Positively, this generation is particularly motivated to be a part of social change, eager to call out those who act unethically in pursuit of a better, more just society, which could be beneficial when it comes to “cancelling” those who have actually committed terrible deeds. But, also, somewhat negatively, this generation is the most technically-savvy and also developmentally harbors greater feelings of jealousy than others, which can lead them to unjustifiably go after wealthy influencers or those with big platforms online.

In the case of the D’Amelios, it appears that it was primarily this group attacking the sisters online, jumping on the bandwagon to feel a part of something, becoming validated in the amplification of a shared loathing, and feeling a boost in their own social status and self-esteem as they posted their thoughts. And there are even psychological studies to back up this kind of behavior from so-called “keyboard warriors,” which reveal that “their way of coping with crisis or inner turmoil is to belittle others, which gives them a self-satisfied feeling of justification, that their lives mean something more than their own poor image of themselves.”

So, was taking part in this “cancellation” only just a bunch of psychological projections? Did other teenagers feel so envious of the D’Amelios sudden rise to fame and fortune that they used a couple of cringey video clips to try and take down their empire? Could they really have been that upset over a 19 year old (overdramatically, yes) trying a snail?

Because I, for one, think that this case also reveals just how much herd mentality and groupthink play into modern cancel culture. So many other young people used this video to take part in a trend — joining in on a public shaming that was popular, and trying to achieve their own five seconds of fame by filming and uploading their personal reactions. Here, it's clear that the gratification of participating in cancel culture is often immediate. It takes just one Tweet, one post, or one reaction TikTok.

And those posts can all be aimed at “cancelling” even the most trivial of acts and the (seemingly) most innocent of people. Instead of rallying together to stand up against perpetuators of discrimination or the harm of people who have been systemically silenced or oppressed, here millions of people online stood together to… come for the influencer careers of a couple of teenage girls?

Perhaps, more than anything, the cancellation of the D’Amelios acts as more of a cautionary tale about what happens when we all become isolated, spend way too much time on social media, and are desperate for some good gossip or social movement to take up our time and energy. Though cancel culture has been around for ages now, I think this case most strikingly shows the way it manifested in a more aggressive, elevated way during the height of the pandemic.

Because, today, almost four months later, things are much different. The D’Amelio sisters remain some of the most popular creators on the TikTok app. They still have millions of loyal supporters, influential brand deals and opportunities, and are, seemingly, thriving business-wise. Cancel culture did not “succeed” in taking them down. It was immediate and short-lived, and obviously not that serious. People moved on, they forgave and forgot.

At least this time.