This Online Tool Combats Cancel Culture by Letting Us 'Recycle' Past Behaviour

In honour of Pride month, innovation studio Connector has teamed up with Greyhound Recycling and technology company GetUserTo, to launch a new online tool.

Named the ‘Bin of Old Behaviours’, the tool to help people recycle themselves, own up to their past behaviour, and move on to making the internet a less toxic place.

The recent growing trend of ‘Call-out culture’ or more specifically, ‘Cancel Culture’ has taken the internet by storm. Cancel Culture refers to a collective moment of “cancelling” or boycotting an offending person for problematic behaviour. Around the world, celebrities like Stormzy, Jack Maynard and Zoella made headlines due to tweets they wrote in the past. Some, over ten years ago. These tweets, containing controversial terms and slurs, resurfaced recently and were widely criticised in the Twittersphere for the racist, sexist and homophobic content.

Developed to combat this trend which promotes an unhealthy witch hunt by holding people accountable for ideas that don't reflect who they are anymore, the tool allows people to review their old and problematic tweets. In order to delete the shameful post and move forward, people have to share a personalised image owning up their previous thoughts and a link promoting healthy information sources to combat prejudice.  

Connector has a history of designing and supporting projects that have made substantial positive impacts on the LGBTQ+ community in Ireland. With a majority of the team being part of the LGBTQ+ community, the company believes in creating work to support the cause.

“Connector is a proud supporter of the LGBTQ+ community and we believe that we need to create work that open people for conversations and learning,” said Ivan Adriel, digital head at Connector. “Advertising is one of the strongest forces to challenge perceptions and we want this research this tool to enable people to be proud of recycling their thoughts”.

In 2018, Connector came up with #LoveWins, a Google Chrome extension, to filter out the hate against the LGBTQ+ community on the internet. The extension replaces any homophobic or transphobic slurs online with positive words. Connector also conducted a study on gender and sexuality in advertising to help Ireland move forward with representation.

You can visit the 'Bin of Old Behaviours' site here.