This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.

This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.

So there's something interesting I’ve been seeing on social media, and was wondering if anyone here might have any insight into this.

I’m assuming you all know the story, but I’ll sum it up. 2016 Depp and Heard divorce. It’s implied that Depp was abusive of Heard and then TMZ obtains video of Depp yelling and throwing cabinet doors around. Depp is still in good standing with the industry, but a year later MeToo happens and the Depp stuff is now evaluated with that climate.

Depp seems to be still getting work, including Fantastic Beasts, but then Heard publishes an op-ed in the Washington Post claiming to be a victim of domestic abuse by Depp, who she only refers to as a former husband.

The internet largely backs Heard, that mixed with Aquaman being released around the same time as the op-ed, becomes a launching pad for her career into the mainstream.

Then in early 2019 new evidence comes out that Heard was abusive towards Depp. A shift on the internet becomes prominent. People start to side with Depp and in early 2020 (still pre-pandemic) phone recordings of Heard admitting to hitting Depp were released.

Suddenly the “woke” standpoint, in terms of the online culture war, became to believe Depp. At least for the most part, there were still some corners of the internet and personalities who were still calling Depp an abuser. But still, things tilted in favor of Depp. Even when the UK trial against The Sun didn’t go his way, the stance was largely pro-Depp.

Then the U.S trial happens. And things shift again. Suddenly we get articles begging people to believe Heard.

Even when progressive news outlets and journalists defended Depp they would get dog-pilled by other left-of-center people. This included Shure getting called a fake feminist and a Republican.

So what happened here. Why did Depp’s position in the online culture war change, or was it ever changed to begin with?

This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.

This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.

Drama:

1. The Fabelmans
2. Empire of Light
3. Avatar: The Way of Water
4. The Whale
5. Women Talking

Musical/Comedy:

1. Babylon
2. Bardo
3. Everything Everywhere All At Once
4. Elvis
5. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

Director:

1. Steven Spielberg - The Fabelmans
2. Damien Chazelle - Babylon
3. Sam Mendes - Empire of Light
4. James Cameron - Avatar: The Way of Water
5. Baz Luhrmann - Elvis

Actor - Drama:

1. Brendan Fraser - The Whale
2. Hugh Jackman - The Son
3. Adam Driver - White Noise
4. Bill Nighy - Living
5. Tom Cruise - Top Gun: Maverick

Actress - Drama:

1. Naomie Ackie - I Wanna Dance With Somebody
2. Olivia Colman - Empire of Light
3. Cate Blanchett - TAR
4. Frances McDormand - Women Talking
5. Danielle Deadwyle - Till

Actor - Musical/Comedy:

1. Austin Butler - Elvis
2. Daniel Cacho - Bardo
3. Christian Bale - Amsterdam
4. Daniel Craig - Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
5. Billy Eichner - Bros

Actress - Musical/Comedy:

1. Margot Robbie - Babylon
2. Michelle Yeoh - Everything Everywhere All At Once
3. Margot Robbie - Amsterdam
4. Janelle Monae - Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
5. Sandra Bullock - The Lost City

Supporting Actor:

1. Paul Dano - The Fabelmans
2. Ke Huy Quan - Everything Everywhere All At Once
3. Tom Hanks - Elvis
4. Colin Firth - Empire of Light
5. Brad Pitt - Babylon

Supporting Actress:

1. Michelle Williams - The Fabelmans
2. Jessie Buckley - Women Talking
3. Sadie Sink - The Whale
4. Greta Gerwig - White Noise
5. Laura Dern - The Son

Screenplay:

1. Babylon
2. The Fabelmans
3. Bardo
4. Everything Everywhere All At Once
5. Women Talking

Original Score:

1. The Fabelmans
2. Empire of Light
3. Babylon
4. Women Talking
5. Avatar: The Way of Water

This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.

This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.

This might just be because of the change I’ve made in my online behavior, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while.

I’ve talked many many times about my long stint on Twitter. Specifically the brief stint where I was highly active on leftist twitter from early to mid 2020 (where I managed to get around two thousand followers which seems crazy to me now considering I’m just a random guy). Back then tensions were high. People were getting laid off, high profile civil rights protests were happening, and there was nothing much to do but to be online. Personally my internship I had lined up during the summer (since I was just about to graduate college) ended up getting cancelled which led me to a period of depression. It’s also the reason I started spending so much time on Twitter and what led me to drink heavily and gain a bunch of weight. I imagine a lot of people who became extremely online during this period were in similar boats.

Anyways, I made a couple of online friends during this time period. It initially started as “Bernie” or “Rose” twitter. We were all pretty normal social democrats supporting Sanders for the presidency (which before Super Tuesday seemed like a big possibility). And then when it became clear that Biden would be the democratic nominee, a lot of people ended up going to the dark side. They started using hammer and sickle emojis on their display name. Started talking about how they were going to read Marx and Lenin (but they never did). They started making memes about how awesome Castro and Mao were. Bios went from “BernieOrBust” to “Marixst-Leninist-Maoist.”

A lot of talk started happening of “grow your own garden the end of the world is near” and also “arm yourselves comrades the class war is among us.” Somehow everyone became very fond of the second amendment. There were twitter accounts LARPing about joining the Socialist Rifle Association, e-girls were taking provocative pictures of themselves posing with automatic rifles in front of a Soviet flag. It became a whole thing. Some of this online behavior was covered in articles like The Cut's Before We Make Out, Wanna Dismantle Capitalism?

I ended up disconnecting from all this around September/October of 2020. I actually ended up voting for Biden in November which I wasn’t planning on when I was addicted to Twitter. I go a little bit into this detox here.

Fast forward to this year. A wave of mass shootings happen. Something that used to be a normal thing pre-pandemic but which stopped/slowed down thanks to lockdowns and schools remaining closed. With all of this in the news again, I start thinking back to the friends I used to have. And their gun loving, revolutionary wanting, “libs get the bullet too” type of tweets that they were writing back in 2020. I don’t remember most of them let alone their names. But I do remember a few.

I look them up. And there are dozens of tweets about the need for gun control. They’re talking about how nobody actually needs guns, and all of the typical liberal arguments in favor of gun control. A stark contrast to what they were saying before. They still have “socialist” in their display names and bios, though from the retweets I saw of them they were no longer following the “Mao is cool” type of people. For lack of a better term, they calmed down. They don’t long for a revolution to happen. They don’t want blood on the streets.

I think what had happened is that they all forgot what mass shootings were. How destructive they were. And now that society is mostly back to normal, including mass shootings, they remembered what that was like.

Now this is too niche of a corner on twitter to talk about in terms of larger online behavior. But back in 2020, I did predict that when Biden became president a lot of these online socialists would retreat into the liberals that they used to be. And it seems like that has happened, at least to some extent.

I mean, I’m glad for them. They seem more balanced, and it’s good that they eventually found themselves like I did (even if I did it a little quicker than they did). But it is still an interesting progression that a lot of my former online friends took.