Taking Down Takedown Culture

Last summer, I went on an amazing journey in a camper van to the outskirts of Iceland with my family. There are so many incredible sights I never get to see in the city, including magnificent waterfalls and tremendous glaciers. But one thing that stood out to me were the (what seemed like) wild sheep, roaming around the sides of highways and in the middle of roads. We could be driving for two hours, not having encountered any other cars, yet we’d pass by lone sheep every 20 to 30 minutes.
When we arrived home from our trip, my mom and I searched up Icelandic sheep to learn more about them. It turns out that every sheep we saw belonged to a farmer, and at the beginning of the spring, they are let out to run around Iceland. In early September, the Icelandic farmers gather to round up all of their sheep in a réttir, which means a coral. Sheep are rounded up in a sheepfold, which has an inner and outer circle with several compartments between the two. If you visit Iceland around this time, you can be sure to see farmers from all over coming together to gather and find their sheep by sorting them into their compartments from the circle. “This would never happen in a big city,” my mom said. “People are so concerned with their own needs, we would be focused on the idea of ‘What can I do to put myself ahead?’”
That’s when the phrase ‘takedown culture’ came into my mind. From what I understand, takedown culture is the action of putting others down, or twisting things about others to make them appear in a negative light. We live in a culture where people are constantly trying to get ahead of others. There are plenty of articles written about how factors such as social media promote the idea of takedown culture both within our community and in the outside world. For example, actress Jennifer Aniston once wrote an essay for the Huffington Post arguing that paparazzi coverage contributes to a “dehumanizing view of females, focused solely on one’s physical appearance.” Other celebrities, such as Melissa McCarthy, state their agreement with Aniston. McCarthy states, “I just hope it gets to the point where it’s embarrassing for people to have such a shallow thought.”

But not all examples of takedown culture have to come from widespread media or tabloids. Examples of takedown culture are all around us; they happen day to day and we don’t even recognize it. I’ve seen and heard of many situations at Havergal where drama and rumours start to spread between friend groups. In most instances, the people caught up in the drama don’t even remember how it started in the first place. It can be the most trivial thing, yet we as a culture feed into it. This isn’t to say that any single person is to blame; we all get caught up in this idea and this concept.

So what can we do about this? It’s not like drama is going to stop; we’re all teenagers and I think it’s only natural that we encounter some bumps in the road and face certain hardships. We also can’t expect the media to stop spreading rumours or releasing scandals about various celebrities. But as much as we can’t stop it, we should be aware of the problem and try to minimize it as much as we can. We should be focusing on ourselves, and thinking for ourselves, rather than outwardly believing and feeding into the drama of takedown culture.