EDINBURGH 2019: Review: LOYISO GOLA: POP CULTURE, Pleasance Dome

Cancel Culture: When someone is called out on social media for something they did, or for an opinion, in the present or past that turns society against them and it goes viral, ruining that person's career or online popularity.

You may not always agree with Loyiso Gola - he's a pretty strongly opinionated kind of guy - but his arguments are always so logical and annoyingly backed by sound rationale that you've got to hear him out. Unless you're the third row of the audience, stage right - oh boy were they not having any of it, arms folded and everything.

Gola is exploring the monumental effect that pop culture has on our life decisions - particularly our current obsession with cancel culture. Gola believes it's warping our ability to deliberate and weigh up all the information we have on a particular topic. And if we've lost that, what does it mean for society?

It does feel a little like you're being reprimanded by Gola. I'm definitely a culprit of cancelling celebs when they've behaved poorly*, so it was a bit on the nose. But really I think Gola just wants us to be better, functioning adults. God damn his reasonable behaviour calling out our millennial flaws.

Gola is brash, so he's going to rub some people up the wrong way, but actually it's a pleasure to listen to all of the intelligent points he makes. If nothing else it will make you better at constructing an argument, hopefully one that's peppered with as many laugh-out-loud jokes as Gola throws out.

So I'm going to try to be better at deliberating, and weigh up options before cancelling people - we'll see how it goes...

*See 16-year-old Jo turning the radio off whenever LeAnn Rimes' "Can't stop the Moonlight" came on, after her affair with Eddie Cibrian

https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/loyiso-gola-pop-culture

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