By. Charlotte Roberts

If you caught the Rolling Loud Music Festival this past month you may have seen DaBaby’s set. His performance at the festival caused quite an uproar when he made some disparaging remarks about the LGBTQIA+ community. Many people spoke out against the remarks he made concerning this community. With swift backlash, DaBaby was removed from the Lollapalooza festival set to start a mere 4 days after Rolling Loud.

Some social media commentators have raised the important point that when it comes to certain topics, the outrage is selective. While DaBaby’s comments were so incendiary that they captured national attention, why was he the most inflammatory? Many of the artists performing that very same night at Rolling Loud have music that boasts of criminal activity, misogyny, and violence. None of these things, however, ever seem to outrage anyone enough to see a change. It is so commonplace that no one bats an eye at it. Not that long ago ‘WAP’ was the most popular song in the nation.

Is that not outrageous too? In 1985, the Recording Industry Association of America introduced a Parental Advisory Warning Label to identify music too explicit for children. Fast-forward just 36 years later and you can find parents twerking in front of their kids on TikTok to ‘Buss It.’ Adult and inappropriate messages are everywhere now. This constant barrage of explicit material is desensitizing people. The longer our society practices selective outrage, the further we will see society delve deeper into immorality and unlawful behaviors and ideals.