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Over the weekend, “Old Town Road” crooner Lil Nas X released his major label debut EP, 7. Judging from its enthusiastic reception on social media, it appears he’ll be fine, despite a lukewarm critical reception and industry hand-wringing about his potential one-hit wonder status. However, it wasn’t all clear skies for the 20-year-old breakout star. Within two days of 7’s release, some fans threw a “Lil Nas X Is Over Party,” proclaiming the rapper “canceled” over old tweets that painted the then-17-year-old in a negative light.
While the timing was ironic, the actual cancelation was unsurprising; if you live by viral fame, you will almost certainly be taken to task by it once fans uncover old missteps. The Milkshake Duck effect is, much like Father Time, thus far undefeated. Lil Nas’ old tweets came back to haunt him at the culmination of success, but fortunately for Lil Nas — and just about anyone else who gets “canceled” by the Twitter masses for bad behavior — it doesn’t look much like it’ll have an overly detrimental effect on his continued success.
Although the provenance of the #LilNasIsOverParty hashtag is somewhat murky, Lil Nas’ dilemma is one that is not only instructive of how Stan culture works, but how also of quickly the mob can turn on one of its own — and, strangely, how artists can handle such moments with grace and transform them into wins. Mostly though, it highlights how our priorities aren’t quite in the right place when it comes to “cancel culture” and celebrity. Taking 20-year-old artists to task over tasteless tweets is misplaced energy — especially when powerful people are even now exercising their authority to harm some of the most helpless victims.
While the tweet in question, coming from Nas’ old @nasmaraj handle, was very offensive, there is evidence that not only did he delete the offending tweet, he’s also spent many of his interviews and more than a few tweets apologizing for a pattern of toxic behavior as a member of “Stan Twitter.” Meanwhile, paid pundits are actually debating the definition of a concentration camp as children of immigrants — however unlawful that status may be — are being held in what are, in practice, concentration camps amid nightmarish, unsanitary, unsafe, and universally inhumane conditions, despite public outcry.
It is true that Lil Nas X’s old tweet, in which he demeans Islam as a religion of violence and even questions its legitimacy as a religion (see the quotation marks), propagates dangerous and damaging prejudices. Those prejudices affect how Americans perceive and interact with their neighbors and have been used to justify atrocious acts of terrorism against those neighbors, motivated by false views of their race, religion, and sexual orientation. The New York Times recently published a story about Somali refugees in Minnesota facing backlash from bigoted fellow residents and after nearly every major mass shooting, a manifesto from the shooter has surfaced professing the same hateful views.
However, the reach of a tweet is limited. Only Twitter users might see those tweets, and then, perhaps only those who followed @nasmaraj or others who retweeted him. There’s evidence Lil Nas faced a backlash and deleted the tweet even before the handle was suspended for gaming Twitter’s policy loopholes. For what it’s worth, his takeoff proper didn’t even begin in earnest until long after he’d changed the handle, scrubbed the offensive tweets, and even reconfigured his entire musical persona with “Old Town Road.”
There are numerous theories about the culprits behind the #LilNasIsOverParty tag. While there was plenty of noise about K-Pop stans creating the tag to promote favorite bands like BTS, it seems far more likely that opportunistic members of the fanbase latched on after it trended — a favored tactic that has sometimes trod on the line of good taste. The theory that seems most credible — because I scrolled all the way to the first tweet mentioning the tag — posits that Nicki Minaj Stans, feeling betrayed by one of their own for working with Cardi B on the 7 collaboration “Rodeo,” instigated the cancelation in revenge for his perceived disloyalty to the Queen Barb. Some of the first handful of tweets were indeed from Nicki fan accounts posting angrily about making Nas thank her, with one of the earliest ones mentioning the comments in question linking to an account called @onikasbodyguard.
#LilNasXIsOverParty https://t.co/0si9NA8MSO enjoy luvs
— G A G A • LG6 (@TheScarlixAct) June 23, 2019
Meanwhile, Lil Nas has seemingly taken the tag in stride, viewing it as a speed bump as much as an obstacle. He used the opportunity to once again plug his new single “Panini” with a tongue-in-cheek reference to the “Party,” showing that he’s not sweating the wrath of social media; despite its power in pushing him to the top of the charts, he’s since transcended its reach becoming a real-world star to folks who view him as a commodity more than a curio of meme culture.
When I recently spoke with Lil Nas for a previous feature, we briefly touched on the old Twitter handle during our conversation. It was clear that he was reticent to answer questions from that pre-fame period — and reporting by Intelligencer makes it clear that it’s something his label prefers is something neither he nor other outlets discuss — but it was equally clear he’d done some introspection since then.
“I used to be in that same place,” he admitted. “You convince yourself that you’re not being a hater, but you’re being a hater. It’s like, ‘Why is this person getting this and I’m not?’ So, I understand it. I don’t get angry, or if I do, it’s not for too long, because it’s how we are as human beings.” It’s not quite an apology, but it looks a lot like growth. In the end, that’s all we can truly ask of our idols, isn’t it?
Look, social media call-outs can be a way to hold public figures accountable for bad behavior and offensive or harmful statements online. In some very real ways, they can promote change, both on a sweeping social scale and on a personal one. Because of social media, we now use words like “woke” in common parlance and formerly marginalized communities receive consideration in all kinds of places they previously wouldn’t. Lil Nas’ growth is also proof that more personal change is possible; had @nasmaraj not been called out for his Islamophobic “joke,” perhaps he never would have been granted the insight to consider how his words and actions affected others.
But trawling old tweets hoping to catch a previous instance of bad behavior is counterproductive and a waste of time. It doesn’t change what already happened or prompt introspection on issues the artist may have already grown from. It’s often fueled by disingenuous motivations, to gain clout for the self-proclaimed “whistleblower” or undermine a successful person out of spite and jealousy. And worst of all, it can sometimes hold 17-year-old knuckleheads to a higher standard of accountability than the leaders and policymakers we could be calling out instead. Lil Nas may only ever be able to apologize for his tweets. There are others who have the power to protect oppressed groups and make a positive difference in the world — but only if we start holding them accountable to do so, not rappers in cowboy cosplay.
June 23, 2019 at 11:31PM via ThePurpleSnakeEra
