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  • and the swift hand of social backlash in the harsh spotlight of social media has created a recent trend.

  • In an instant, you can be canceled.

  • It's a fate that comes with personal and financial cost.

  • Some say the cancel deserved it.

  • Others call it cyber bullying arcana.

  • Whitworth recently sat down with three people who were canceled and have been working to bounce back.

  • I've made a severe and continuous lapse in my judgment, raw and emotional, and that's what you do to address it.

  • To say that I'm sorry.

  • I'm disappointed in myself because it seems like I've learned nothing from all these past controversies.

  • Everybody in thes apologies posted on social media, stronger and a better person and a better friend.

  • Their alleged wrongs all different.

  • Their sentence the same cancellation.

  • Hey, guys.

  • And for those like Carson King, they don't even see it coming.

  • I am embarrassed and stunned to reflect on what I thought was funny when I was a 16 year old kid, and I want to sincerely apologize.

  • Do you remember this sign scribbled out Busch Light supply needs replenished with my Venmo account.

  • You know, we never thought we'd get on TV or anything, but people did see him by the time we left the game day taping and went back to our tailgate had phone reception, I had over $1600 in there.

  • Carson, quickly deciding all that money, would go to the Children's Hospital of his rival school.

  • That mode, joining the cause tweeting way.

  • See a lot of great stories.

  • But this is one of our faves, Venmo on Anheuser Busch, pledging to match donations made to Carson's account raising over a $1,000,000 in a matter of days, local station K.

  • C.

  • C.

  • I received a call Carson was about to give a press conference.

  • I am embarrassed and stunned to reflect on what I thought was funny when I was a 16 year old kid, and I want to sincerely apologize.

  • The Des Moines Register.

  • They were doing a article on me, and I guess one of their background checks they dio routine Thing is they go through your social media, the article's author, unearthing a pair of racially insensitive tweets from eight years ago.

  • Carson says they were of him quoting a comedian.

  • Amid outrage.

  • Anheuser Busch quickly cut ties with Carson.

  • I can't go back and improve and change what I posted when I was 16 years old.

  • But I can't apologize and work to improve myself every day and make a meaningful difference in people's lives.

  • Carson had fallen into a growing phenomenon called cancel culture when someone is cancelled that usually amounts to online followers rejecting someone in Mass for perceived wrong.

  • The New York Times once declared, Everyone is cancelled.

  • We've seen it from actors to comedians.

  • I'm sorry of these words.

  • Hurt.

  • I'm sorry if I tweet or hashtag about how you didn't do something right, man.

  • You see how woke I was?

  • I called you out.

  • That's not that's not activism.

  • My mentality is not discretionary.

  • It could be one of the biggest A list celebrities down to the local person That just happened to tweet, something inappropriate for people that think because cancel culture lives online, that it doesn't have any real life impacts.

  • What do you have to say that that is completely false?

  • It absolutely does have real life implications, especially for the person that is going through it.

  • You know the person that's cancelled.

  • Beauty blogger Manny Gutierrez was canceled, too.

  • I have brands that no longer semi PR brands that no longer supported me.

  • You know so many different things that happened.

  • And it was like crazy that a misunderstanding led to this.

  • Known to his fans is Manny.

  • Anyway, his rise began like so many on YouTube.

  • I started in my bedroom on the floor for my closet door locked.

  • So I'm just gonna make a video of how I do my carnation routine.

  • A soft box I bought from Amazon with my tip money that would big from when I was a waiter and my mom's camp.

  • The more many uploaded, the more people subscribe.

  • Enamored not only by his makeup tips and reviews, but by his open.

  • I've been wanting to make this video for such a long time.

  • I have been a lie.

  • Go have my little brother here.

  • Okay?

  • This is hard.

  • We knew he was He was different.

  • Like I said in the beginning, I wasn't always supportive of the LGBT community does get better.

  • And it does get easier for those who feel like they're in a row in 2017.

  • And Mandy became the first man to star in a Maybelline commercial and the only man that year on people's most beautiful list and then in Forbes, 30 under 30 for 2018 later forming his own makeup company, Lunar Beauty.

  • And so, at the peak, How many followers?

  • Oh my gosh.

  • Like I think I think was five million, Yeah, friends with other social media makeup stars.

  • And all it took was this simple picture of a group on a night out and a cryptic caption to ignite an all out beauty community feud.

  • Accused of being a social climber, the incident was given a name drama.

  • Again, fans chose sides digging up unsavory social media posts of those in that picture, and people started unfollowed wing.

  • And so when you're online life and business and passion started to come crashing down a little bit, what was that like?

  • Oh my gosh, really, The end of the world truly felt like I was like, Just not gonna make it.

  • It is like the weirdest feeling because you work for years and years and years and work so hard to accomplish these goals that you have and you and you create them and you make it happen.

  • And you know one thing can bring you down so fast and so quickly and you can plummet so much faster than you can rise.

  • And that's how the snow ball starts rolling.

  • One person leads to 10 leads to 10,000.

  • So if we were all standing in a room together, most likely most of these people would not be treating the cancel person in this manner, losing hundreds of thousands of followers, potentially meaning hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue.

  • Manny was also receiving unsettling message is it seemed like a lot of your followers may have been afraid to support you publicly because of what they deemed this mob mentality against you.

  • And this vitriol online was really getting out of control.

  • Absolutely.

  • I was getting thousands of messages a day saying, like how evil I was and how terrible person and I should kill myself and all these crazy, crazy messages based off of one situation that happened and have no idea what's actually going on behind closed doors.

  • They just know what was shown in one moment.

  • But you know, the mob mentality is so manic and so crazy, and it was because people that I that were my followers and care for me were turning against me, and I'm like, Oh, you're not who I thought you were And then it makes you think like maybe I do so for me, it's like, you know, jaywalking.

  • And I received the death penalty for jaywalking and all too familiar feeling for Natasha Times, the communications specialist who was working on a novel, I was really excited mere weeks before the book was about to be released, something she did during her morning commute on the D.

  • C.

  • Metro changed everything.

  • While on the trend, I saw one thing, please in your reform eating Natasha ignited a firestorm after she snapped a photo of a black D.

  • C.

  • Metro worker minding her business and eating on the train, which is against Metro rules and tweeted it to the workers employer, saying This is unacceptable, she says after People Online suggested she delete the tweet she did.

  • It had been up for less than an hour, but someone took a screenshot of it.

  • My phone just mention I received the threads.

  • They made fun of the way I look.

  • They called the fact they called me.

  • You know, the B word.

  • They they made fun of my Children.

  • They called me a bad mother.

  • They made fun of my house.

  • Eight months later, the trauma clearly still fresh for Natasha.

  • It wasn't long before her publisher canceled their agreement.

  • I had a complete nervous breakdown, and I had to be hospitalized that they now I get house up.

  • People kill themselves over cyberbullying.

  • What happened to Natasha Online was upending not just her life, but her family, too.

  • I mean, even like the Google results.

  • When you Google lining, you know that's the first thing that pops up that should not define me, she says.

  • Part of forgiving herself meant talking to D.

  • C.

  • Metro to make sure nothing.

  • What happened to that employee she tweeted about?

  • I sent them in a GM via Twitter, and I told them I'd like to talk to someone.

  • I made an error in judgment by posting that tweet on mine, and they they caught me and they assured me over the phone that nothing is gonna happen to the woman in terms of her job security, Natasha says another company has agreed to publish her book.

  • For Manny, recovering from cancellation meant taking a social media time out while you are online personality.

  • You are a really person going through something very real.

  • I left social media for two months and I didn't log on.

  • I didn't check it.

  • I believe that's off my phone.

  • And I just really needed my only personal break up that thing be for six months after just a, really, you know, strengthen up myself because I feel like, you know, when you think about it, when you're going through this online drama, it's happening online and it sucks and it's crazy.

  • But you're not dying, you know, You're not like there's so much worse things in the world.

  • And I was having a hard time putting my life in perspective at the time.

  • Having built himself back up, Manny was ready to rebuild his following, too.

  • This is where you learn.

  • This is what I get it.

  • So what does it mean for you to see this dream come to life like that?

  • You know, I'm very proud of it.

  • I'm very proud of the brand.

  • I'm very proud of his hard work that he puts his heart and soul into everything.

  • But I'm more proud of him.

  • His mom Dad and brother, a key part of the business releasing new products, right?

  • That's why I love, like this wasn't regarded.

  • Clutches my moods.

  • Paige, Phoebe, Prue Piper from Charmed.

  • My mom, that passion still alive.

  • Do you feel that Because he went through this, that you're sort of stripped down almost a more vulnerable to your followers and that they might actually know a more really version of yourself Now, after this, You know, when you go through something like this, it just, like, breaks you and when you're kind of new skin all over again and so I think it's more so.

  • I learned different lessons that I went to this and I still am very guarded in my own way, like I'm still very like in real life.

  • I'm guarded, like when it comes to things.

  • I don't want to get hurt again like I was before.

  • But when it comes to my online presence, I feel like I'm a lot happier.

  • I feel like I'm a lot more open with my following because they've seen me at my most raw guys.

  • Why are you making this for my people that are still with me riding or dying for me, for Carson reckoning with his own cancellation.

  • An apology, he wondered, How would people respond?

  • I think in the end of that, most people realized, Yeah, he was a kid.

  • He was 16.

  • He's not a public figure.

  • Local businesses pledged to donate to an ice cream parlor, creating a Busch light flavor in his honor.

  • But not everyone came out unscathed.

  • Remember that article from The Des Moines Register?

  • Carson supporters also did some digging.

  • They dug through, you know, the reporters tweets, and he had a lot of a lot of unsavory tweets from his past that we're a lot more recently, mind The Register was forced to defend its editorial practices, later firing that article's author for his own offensive tweets.

  • The author later told Buzzfeed the tweets were frankly embarrassing, adding, This event basically set my life on fire.

  • I mean, I didn't think we could get anything to start with.

  • So three million's pretty cool.

  • One funny sign.

  • One man with a great heart.

  • Carson, now devoting all his time to fundraising while cautioning kids to watch what they post online.

  • There is no question that these people that have been canceled by social media have done something wrong.

  • They have harmed either an individual or group of individuals, and we cannot condone that behavior.

  • But the aftermath of being cancelled can also ruin these people's lives.

  • Cancellation Ah, harsh sentence for some, a timeout for others and whether an accidental celebrity or someone whose livelihood is dependent on followers, perhaps all anyone could do is log off and wait.

  • Remember that you're talking to a real human on the other side of it being human.

  • You grow when you learn and your mind sets change and all kinds of different things.

  • Everyone makes mistakes.

  • Were all humans.

  • We all bleed red.

  • You know, it's it's not that I am a terrible human because I made a mistake.

  • It's because I am human that I made a mistake in Los Angeles.

  • Que no Whitworth, ABC News Live our thanks to Canaan for that report.

  • Hi, everyone.

  • George Stephanopoulos here.

  • Thanks for checking out the ABC News YouTube channel.

  • If you'd like to get more video show highlights and watch live event coverage, click on the right over here to subscribe to our channel.

  • And don't forget to download the ABC News after breaking news alerts.

and the swift hand of social backlash in the harsh spotlight of social media has created a recent trend.

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