Never did I think that I would write an RCL post about Cardi B. My passion posts? Yes, but RCL? Never. Recently however Cardi B has been making waves in the political universe (at least on social media.) Last month the rapper posted a very politically charged video about the government shut down, and ever since she’s been involved in political drama.

Refinery29 posted an article defending both Cardi B’s political opinions and her using her platform to speak about issues she has deemed as important topics of national discussion.

While the comments section of this article clearly says “Start a discussion, not a fire. Post with kindness” people have been somewhat ignoring that aspect because the comment section is ablaze. While scrolling through the comments section of this article I found a very interesting thread (for reference I’m focusing on the comment thread started with hotshoe’s comment) discussing Cardi B’s ability to talk about the issues in America, what that means for her and celebrities, in general, using their platform for talking politics.

Surprisingly the comments thread is not as full of disrespectful debates as I initially expected it to be. The comment thread started off more like a conversation than a deliberation. Hotshoe stated their opinion on the matter saying that until Cardi B is an elected official they will not take her seriously and that she shouldn’t have any political power because that’s very undemocratic. Hotshoe made sure to specify that their opinion isn’t solely centered around Cardi B but it applies to all celebrities who get involved in politics as well. People began chiming in, to state their agreements but then others began giving their solutions to the celebrity having political power “issue” by stating that she could easily run for political office given that she is a US citizen. This unleashed a flood of comments saying that she should not and essentially the thread went from a civil conversation to a political debate.

Facts are not provided in this thread to back up any claims that people made. Everything is very opinionated and straightforward. There is no evidence that anyone changed their opinion or even considered the other side to their view. Everyone is extremely steadfast in their opinions and what they believe is true which is preventing a proper deliberation. This is actually very typical of comments thread because no one wants to appear to be wrong or see things from another perspective. I do have to say for the majority of the thread people respected each other differing views while simultaneously not budging on theirs.

I personally believe that this discussion was enlightening solely because many good points on either side of the argument were brought to light which made me consider my own view on celebrities getting involved in political matters.

Overall this thread, although not entirely a deliberation did have the groundwork of becoming a very good deliberation. What it lacked in deliberation it made up in conversation.