If you spent any time on social media over the past week, you would be hard pressed to have missed the shiny, heavily curated world of Kia Buckley, the founder of the wildly popular local activewear brand Kikiva Collection, come crashing down.
During a routine livestream on social media, a casual racial slur was uttered by her sister in the background.
Buckley’s initial reflexive attempt to downplay the incident resulted in a tsunami of public outrage, cut brand partnerships and eventually, a tearful apology and a promise of cultural training.
The reaction online was ferocious.
Influencer agency contracts were shredded overnight, including Perth-born Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader Flexi Faith and Love Island Australia star Yana Marks publicly severing ties with the brand.
These announcements were met by a groundswell of support online.
Old videos of Buckley and her colleagues were dragged back into circulation, screenshots became evidence in the court of TikTok and strangers debated whether she deserves to lose everything she has spent years building.
Other creators uploaded videos destroying their Kikiva activewear — pouring bottle after bottle of acetone over seamless sets, taking scissors to matching sports bras and setting leggings ablaze in backyards before throwing the scorched remnants into bins.
There is something deeply uncomfortable about how entertaining another person’s downfall can appear to the online world.
But as the dust begins to settle and social media algorithms move on to the next outrage, it’s worth stepping back to ask, what did this week’s public execution actually achieve?
Have we become so obsessed with watching public figures fall from grace that we have forgotten what accountability is actually supposed to achieve?
Make no mistake — the language heard on that livestream was abhorrent, defenceless and deeply hurtful.
There is no room for casual racist slurs and her initial instincts to gloss over the moment and pretend it didn’t happen only compounded the harm.
Buckley’s subsequent apology was necessary and genuine accountability was entirely appropriate.
Influencers and business owners who build their livelihoods on public trust cannot expect their actions to be immune from criticism.
And when serious harm is involved, it is vital that the people affected are not pushed aside to protect somebody’s reputation.
When trust is broken, customers have every right to reconsider where their money goes.
Brands and creators are equally entitled to make decisions about their partnerships.
Yet, there is a fundamental difference between holding someone accountable and participating in the bloodsport of digital destruction.
Because quite frankly, treating another person’s humiliation as entertainment is just straight up online bullying.
The Kikiva drama laid bare two distinct problems in Western Australia today.
The first is the lingering persistence of casual racism which slips out when people think the camera is off.
Calling out casual racism is absolutely essential.
The internet has made it easier than ever to hold powerful people to account and that is something worth protecting.
The second problem, however, is the performative outrage encouraged on social media.
The pile-on that followed Buckley’s live stream didn’t appear to always stem purely from a collective desire for racial healing or education, for many, it looked more like an opportunity to take pleasure in her misfortune.
Clicking unfollow, typing a scathing comment and watching her business collapse appeared to offer some people a hit of dopamine masked as moral virtue.
In order to let public figures take real accountability for their actions, we ought to leave a door open for genuine redemption.
If every mistake — even the most serious ones — results in permanent exile, we strip away any incentive for people to sincerely do the work to change.
Instead, we teach public figures to hire better PR crisis teams, turn off their comment sections and hide their true selves behind even thicker layers of polish.
The Kikiva fallout should serve as a wake-up call for all influencers — building a business on social media isn’t just about aesthetic grid posts and never-done-before marketing campaigns, it carries real social responsibility.
But as a community, we also need to examine our own role in these digital courtrooms because when accountability is reduced to entertainment, we lose sight of the very principles it was built to protect.
