The more I read from Monica Lewinsky, the more I'm convinced that she's one of the best critics/commenters on mass media in general. I find myself agreeing with her at almost every turn whenever...
Exemplary
The more I read from Monica Lewinsky, the more I'm convinced that she's one of the best critics/commenters on mass media in general. I find myself agreeing with her at almost every turn whenever she's pointing out how mass consumed media is turning public narrative, subconsciously or otherwise.
Something else pointed out about this trial (I cannot for the life of me remember who) is that all the hubbub around this trial feels like the proto-GamerGate sentiments, where there was an ugly mass of kneejerk sentiments being guided by meme pathways into forcing certain conclusions. There's clearly a misogynistic angle to it that is going unrecognized in favour of the fun and joy of participating on the "right" (i.e. bigger) side of a public stoning. Truth and evenhanded justice isn't the goal, it's dopamine via righteousness via temerity.
Even if Amber Heard is the devil incarnate, that's not really been what a lot of the memes or news has been trying to establish. Instead there's a clear goal of making her irredeemable regardless of what comes out at trial and creating a repeatable method to point at anyone in a similar upcoming situation. She's been prejudged by public perception and the trial decision won't do anything to change it because it's too late. We might see this exact same thing happen at the next big domestic abuse dispute and there will be memes and jokes thrown at one side before it starts, and all perception will be skewed no matter what. Small wonder that Monica Lewinsky can point out that this is happened, and I'm sure many other women who got their turn at the stake could point to it as easily too.
Maybe Amber Heard was obviously the aggressor and the wrong one in this situation (I don't know), and maybe herself and her legal team made cartoons of themselves, but I can't help but feel that that's being used to give credence to this method that we'll see applied again in a future trial, a tenuous version of guilt by association. This is how GamerGate ensnared many people at the start who now feel embarrassed or ashamed that they ever fell for it. It starts with something that takes advantage of reasonable mixed feelings, and purposefully amplifies the more kneejerk and emotional ones in order to create a sort of simmering furor that eats away at rationality and maximizes immediate reactions. It exploits valid concerns to turn them into irrational responses. Imagine if after a couple of rounds of this, we have Tucker Carlson vs. his ex-wife at trial. If it continues like this, I would fully expect this machine would be used to point at the ex-wife the same way it pointed at Amber Heard here in a targeted way to protect Carlson from justice.
And I know it will be the women that this is first pointed to because it always is pointed at them in everything but the most clearest cut cases. GamerGate was about "games journalism" in theory but in practice was always pointed at women or men who supported feminism because that was prejudged as the one factor that was making video games worse according to a certain type of Gamer. All the memes, jokes, shareables, etc. that came out at the start of GamerGate were forcing that conclusion. It was never really pointed at the various "journalism" outlets for doing a bad job journalistically or ethically (which was pretty much all of the GG-friendly outlets, not ironically or coincidentally) beyond a few easy and simple targets at the start to establish the credibility of the method. It took years for the commonly touted GG sentiments to stop being part of the zeitgeist because it took many people a long time to realize that they were poison pill statements to begin with.
With all the rhetoric included in the memes and jokes around this trial, I pessimistically expect that we'll only see this kind of resurgence of rhetoric and viewpoints. But instead of being about something as stupid as video game news, it'll be about domestic dispute cases that are actually at trial, where the situation almost certainly going to be many various shades of grey (or even black, which seems to be the case with this particular trial). This manufactured expectation of clear heroes and villains in trials like this is going to continue unless we take care to not let memes and pithy soundbites be the main method of communication and consideration for things that are way too complex, muddled, or nuanced to be summarized in two panels next to Pikachu's face.
I hate the Gamergate mob with a glowing passion, but I'd rather compare it to the Jussie Smollett case than Zoë Quinn. There's some horrible people involved in the drama (and I don't fully get why...
I hate the Gamergate mob with a glowing passion, but I'd rather compare it to the Jussie Smollett case than Zoë Quinn.
There's some horrible people involved in the drama (and I don't fully get why the whole thing had to be televised) but ultimately, this forces men's rights types to respect court justice, which could be a win long term. We now know what a case looks like in which a female accuser is, at the very least, suspicious enough of not telling the truth to lose a libel lawsuit. If, next time, we get a Tucker Carlson type's wife show up in court with a medical attest, a recording of being threatened and a dozen witnesses, it might actually be harder to claim she's lying.
It was only a matter of time for a case of someone abusing the #metoo momentum for an unjustified, personal vendetta in public. Considering that, this was a rather civilized way for that to happen.
The verdict itself is a message that if you spread baseless accusations about someone in public, you can actually get sued and lose. That's a win, IMO, especially for social media in the US. To bring it back to gamergate: This is essentially the equivalent of Zoë Quinn suing her harassers over destroying her career.
I didn't really mention Quinn because that's not the part of GamerGate that really relates here. I specifically mentioned proto-GamerGate because there were things in motion that allowed GamerGate...
I didn't really mention Quinn because that's not the part of GamerGate that really relates here. I specifically mentioned proto-GamerGate because there were things in motion that allowed GamerGate to take off running. That doesn't happen from zero. Quinn's ordeal was a important event to GG becoming a thing to be sure, but the other parts around it are what are more relevant i.e. the methodology of discourse, and the inciting of passions towards set directions. Quinn's events weren't actually the inciting flashpoint that allowed things to bubble over either, but when things did bubble over, those methods were laser focused on her and we got to see what happens when the weapons that were accidentally built get used with a purpose. All the memery around this case reminds me of that part of GamerGate, and nothing here really reminds me of Zoe Quinn.
The question is: will those types actually respect court justice because of this outcome? Or will they overlook it when convenient in order to force the continued argument that the courts always rule against men? As we saw from GG methods that eventually turned into Republican and alt right methods, the lack of consistency and the overlooking of facts in favour of feelings is actually a feature, not a bug. Theoretically, maybe we believe Tucker's ex-wife when she comes to court with all that. But we know there are entire groups out there that will look at 2+2 and insist it's 5 just because they want it to be. All it takes is a few memes and misinformation in the right place and suddenly the conversation is about how she illegally wiretapped Tucker so the evidence is fraudulent and inadmissible and therefore she's a bad person and therefore Tucker Carlson must be a hero because he is standing up to illegal liars.
There have already been a number of cases of #metoo momentum being misused. Aziz Ansari was probably the first major instance in what (IIRC, correct me if I am wrong) seemed to be someone complaining he was a bad date. There have been a few more out there, a lot of people got accused, falsely or not, and it played out as it did in various ways. This wasn't really the first big test of fraudulent accusations around #MeToo and I (maybe luckily) have not seen anyone trying to pivot it to #MeToo since the American trial started. This was purely a case of domestic dispute and violence.
I'd put "respect" in quotes. It's more... if chasing after an event like this defines you as a person, what do you do if you finally get to experience one making it all over mainstream news? You...
The question is: will those types actually respect court justice because of this outcome?
I'd put "respect" in quotes. It's more... if chasing after an event like this defines you as a person, what do you do if you finally get to experience one making it all over mainstream news? You might get bored and look for a new hobby. The voices online who bank on telling you the "truth" now have a mainstream event that's louder than them, there's no mystery anymore. There's no longer 27 different angles to frame it as a conspiracy against men.
Making national headlines is a great way to understand how people behave in response to news. I have a friend who pulled it off, and seeing the reports and comments and whatnot was disturbing, but...
The more I read from Monica Lewinsky, the more I'm convinced that she's one of the best critics/commenters on mass media in general.
Making national headlines is a great way to understand how people behave in response to news. I have a friend who pulled it off, and seeing the reports and comments and whatnot was disturbing, but also enlightening. He was simultaneously a libtard beta cuck and a conservative racist nutjob, but the reality is he was a man with a few too many problems that got pushed a bit too far in a stupid situation. Ultimately, he was everybody's villain for a few minutes, but public the details of his case, particularly in the court of public opinion, played out just like the Depp/Heard trial.
I looked at reports about my friend over a few hours across a few days days and learned a lot, but am definitely not an expert here. Lewinsky lives it every day. My point is, though, if you've got the truth (or at least some version very close to it), the reality of social media exists in the distortions of it that emerge through a weird game of telephone.
The problem with the Heard/Depp trial is nobody knows the truth. My parents had a messed up relationship that affected me, and if I ask either of them about their side I get some distortion of it filtered through trauma and anger. They're both experts on their perspective, and maybe one of them is a more reliable narrator than the other, but if their story were public the same exact thing would happen. Even with the clear facts at the trial, Depp and Heard can only report their reality.
[gamergate] exploits valid concerns to turn them into irrational responses.
I've seen this a lot. Slight edit, but I hope I keep your point intact.
I guess I can go into my personal opinion on the trial, only to explain a point. When I saw the trial, I saw Depp as a victim. I'm not sure if it was that I succumbed to spin, but I've seen my dad and a couple other men go through several abusive relationships as the victim, and the markers were there, at least to me. Heard's behavior, as much as I'd seen, pointed to it, because I've lived it several times from something akin to Depp's perspective (at least as presented). I stop there, as I have the opinion that an abuser is just that: one abuser, like any of my dad's single abusers, but I have seen victims, and people who even just heard about them, take the next step and accuse the entire group the victim belonged to of being abusers. Hell, I've got experience doing it myself.
This manufactured expectation of clear heroes and villains in trials like this is going to continue unless we take care to not let memes and pithy soundbites be the main method of communication and consideration for things that are way too complex, muddled, or nuanced to be summarized in two panels next to Pikachu's face.
You've pointed to the center of the problem. These complex situations get explained in little bits and pieces, and our quest for villains to resist causes us to invent them where either they don't exist, or they don't exist as conveniently as we would prefer them to. This is yet another thing I've done myself. The other part is most people (myself included) want to watch hours of trial footage to get the full story. That probably means we've got no business discussing it, at least those of us that are uninformed about the situation (which is likely most people memeing on it). It's also why I'm using so much qualified language in this comment.
Depp v. Heard isn't by far the first time this happened, it is simply the most prominent one in recent times due to the high profile of the people involved and the perceived irredeemability of the...
Depp v. Heard isn't by far the first time this happened, it is simply the most prominent one in recent times due to the high profile of the people involved and the perceived irredeemability of the "bad party" (before the court actually decided who was liable).
I remember watching a video by Sarah Z(it's about a different subject but couch guy is a big part of it, starts at around 24min) a couple weeks back about "Couch guy", a dude who was pushed into the limelight on tiktok due to a post on the platform, where his (long-distance?) girlfriend surprised him with a visit as he was watching a movie with friends. Due to his supposedly mild reaction to such a kind surprise, the rumour mill fucking exploded on the platform with everyone's hot takes where some people had the the gall to assume the guy was cheating or a psychopath based on a video that was a couple of seconds long. I am not joking.
In a lot of cases, those hot-takes came from teenagers and I'm ready to cut them some slack because teenagers are allowed to be stupid. They always were, they always will be, just today unfortunately it's all saved forever and ready to be reurgitated by some fucking recommendation engine 10 years later when you want to forget all the stupid shit you've said when you were 16. A lot of those hot takes also came from adults who, to put it midly and summarize it, cause this tangent is too long, should go touch some grass.
Depp v. Heard has the potential for much harsher consequences, especially now that Heard has been confirmed to be the guilty party in this specific case. But you're right, it was like that already before the decision by the court was announced, I don't know if it's due to the circles I move in, but the public opinion seemed to be on Depp's side throughout the trial, and I honestly can't say if it's because he's a man, because he was the legitimately aggrieved party in this case, or because he's just more sympathetic. My best guess is that's a mix of all three.
In the court of public opinion, sympathy weighs more than proof, and making it entertaining is more important than making it just. I don't think that Depp is innocent. They both did bad things to each other, though it seems that Heard was worse. As (Depp's, I think) psychologist put it, Depp can't solve conflicts (hence; drug abuse) and Heard can't walk away from them. Together, that's a volatile fucking combination, and it's gonna explode. Has exploded.
We're almost at the point where we need to come up with our own version of IANAL but specifically for the Depp/Heard trial drama since almost every comment in every post about it starts with...
Exemplary
We're almost at the point where we need to come up with our own version of IANAL but specifically for the Depp/Heard trial drama since almost every comment in every post about it starts with something along the lines of, "I didn't follow the case, but..."
I personally did not follow the trial very closely, either, but one of my favorite youtube channels, Matt Orchard - Crime and Society, did (what appears to be) a pretty solid breakdown of the major incidents that were disputed in the trial. You can find that video here if you feel inclined to have a basic understanding of the toxic shithole that relationship was. The video came out right before the trial exploded on twitch and youtube, so it is less caught up in The Discourse.
As for the discourse and Monica Lewinsky's take, I find myself mostly in agreement. Collectively, we're caught up in the most shallow elements of the case when deep down there is an important discussion to be had about abuse, the many different forms it can take, and how misogyny and patriarchy influence the way we treat both male and female victims of abuse. But after three decades of "punditry = news", a social media environment where everyone's role is to be the pundit, and the almighty algorithm's desire for chaos, we're left with this freakshow sideshow at the shitshow where Incel-MRA freaks and RadFems are duking it out over who the real victim is while bystanders get sucked in and pick sides.
What we have now, arguably, is a “cultural miasma.” We are drenched in the taint of the dirt and aggression of the social media wars. The obsessive chatter around the Depp–Heard trial is just one small example of the ever-expanding, ever-demanding search for schadenfreude and titillation.
Unfortunately, it's hard - if not impossible - to find any issue or story that doesn't fit as substitute for "Depp-Heard trial" in that quote. There is hardly any room for nuance, and it's nearly impossible to approach a story/issue without having a take on it first. I always appreciate Lewinsky's reminders that, underneath all of these massive stories that are litigated in the press and on social media, there is a human being catching tons and tons of shit. I'm not sure where that particular issue ranks in the problem we're facing. It's kind of a chicken and the egg situation. Are we so caught up in the punditry and hot takes of infotainment and social media that we forget there is a person we still need to have empathy for? Or did we forget how to empathize first, which is what allowed this "cultural miasma" to flourish in the first place? Hell, was there ever a point in which we (the public) had empathy?
i had managed to stay mostly away from any of the discourse over this trial (having fully zero interest in the affairs of celebrities) until my daughter's mother started talking to me about it and...
i had managed to stay mostly away from any of the discourse over this trial (having fully zero interest in the affairs of celebrities) until my daughter's mother started talking to me about it and showing me all the various takes and memes and tiktoks. the whole thing made me profoundly uncomfortable. so many random "body language experts" and "psychologists" and "abuse victims" weighing in to mock Amber Heard and support Depp's case.
the thing that scared me the most was that my ex---herself a survivor of abuse and someone who struggles with mental health difficulties to this day---was fully willing to believe the awful takes that AH was a liar and a fraud, and was only pretending to have been abused, off the back of all this online commentary. and i get that, to some extent. we assume that our lived experience is the same as that of others', and incongruity to that experience can seem suspect. but the whole thing, trial, judgement, and rampant punditry just reeks of a complete and total lack of empathy, and it makes me sick.
Wether Amber Heard is a fraud or not is not truly relevant for the point made by the article. Lots of people are liable on civil cases every day, but the wave of public scrutiny and hate was way...
Wether Amber Heard is a fraud or not is not truly relevant for the point made by the article. Lots of people are liable on civil cases every day, but the wave of public scrutiny and hate was way beyond measure and clearly misogynistic.
To reference another situation, pretty much everyone that knows something about comedy agrees that Amy Schumer is not funny, but the avalanche of hate she received was disproportionate, and, yes, very misogynistic. I mean, Kevin Hart is just as unfunny (if not more...), and most people will just say that he's not funny and stop there.
I liked the article and mostly agreed with its points, but unless I missed a part, it didn’t address the possibility that at least some fraction of the ire directed at AH is because she (almost...
I liked the article and mostly agreed with its points, but unless I missed a part, it didn’t address the possibility that at least some fraction of the ire directed at AH is because she (almost certainly) pulled a false flag - discrediting true victims of abuse.
That’s a major, valid reason for the backlash - one which has nothing to do with misogyny.
I honestly don't think that was the case, that consideration was simply not present, and I followed it so some extent. Most reactions had too much of a horde mentality for somethin like that to...
didn’t address the possibility that at least some fraction of the ire directed at AH is because she (almost certainly) pulled a false flag - discrediting true victims of abuse.
I honestly don't think that was the case, that consideration was simply not present, and I followed it so some extent. Most reactions had too much of a horde mentality for somethin like that to even make sense.
If someone thinks that AH was lying, they also think she is deliberately lying to try to ruin someone's life. That's something that understandably triggers a strong negative reaction in people....
If someone thinks that AH was lying, they also think she is deliberately lying to try to ruin someone's life. That's something that understandably triggers a strong negative reaction in people. That probably also includes the MGTOW and other misogynist crowds but I don't think that we can say on the whole that the outcry is misogynistic given the stake of the case. There are plenty of high profile males who have also seen widespread public attacks on their character because they were perceived to deserve it.
I'm skeptical of this. I'm skeptical of the notion that the directed hate was the result of a concern for Depp. Maybe I'm just a tad pessimistic in that regard.
I'm skeptical of this. I'm skeptical of the notion that the directed hate was the result of a concern for Depp. Maybe I'm just a tad pessimistic in that regard.
What happened to Aziz Ansari was surreal. To this day I can't understand what he supposedly did wrong, and I looked for it! He faced real consequences for what was essentially a date that didn't...
What happened to Aziz Ansari was surreal. To this day I can't understand what he supposedly did wrong, and I looked for it! He faced real consequences for what was essentially a date that didn't go very well. He even apologized, even though it was never clear why he should be apologizing in the first place. Maybe he shouldn't have done that. Then he "came back" with a comedy special directed by Spike Jonze that was actually quite touching. He clearly could use some self criticism (who doesn't?), but was never in abuser territory (as far as what was divulged).
The false accusation equivalent to vaporware.
I was a fan of CK, but now couldn't watch him even if I wanted. So gross. I did see the part of his new act where he address the issue, and it's downright evil. The cover is blown.
But to answer your question: Depp is a much bigger star and had the benefit of a televised trial that was very much in his favour up to the end.
My guess is that there's a mixture of reasons. I think some people really do get attached to celebrities in weird, parasocial ways. I also suspect there was a significant number of people...
My guess is that there's a mixture of reasons. I think some people really do get attached to celebrities in weird, parasocial ways. I also suspect there was a significant number of people motivated by misogyny or red-pill type nonsense, or by some reactionary impulse against the #metoo movement. And I suspect a not insignificant number of people were just pulled in by the circus of it all. From what I gathered the trial was pretty lurid. It honestly reminded me a bit of the reaction to Tiger King when it blew up. I found it baffling, but I had friends arguing about that show and whether Carole (don't remember if that's the right name) killed her husband. It seems to me that there's a bit of a Jerry Springer air around this whole Depp/Heard trial. I could also believe that someone might be righteously angry if they believed that Heard was using the #metoo movement as an opportunity to abuse or falsely accuse her husband, although I certainly haven't seen anybody articulate that. Mostly I've seen it used to disparage and discredit that movement in general.
But on the other hand, when these allegations came out against Johnny Depp and he was effectively blacklisted from his industry, couldn't you argue that response was misandristic?
but the wave of public scrutiny and hate was way beyond measure and clearly misogynistic
But on the other hand, when these allegations came out against Johnny Depp and he was effectively blacklisted from his industry, couldn't you argue that response was misandristic?
Getting a bit off topic of the trial but yeah the comparison of how Amy Schumer got treated for making unfunny jokes vs how Kevin Hart got treated for years while making homophobic jokes is...
I mean, Kevin Hart is just as unfunny (if not more...), and most people will just say that he's not funny and stop there.
Getting a bit off topic of the trial but yeah the comparison of how Amy Schumer got treated for making unfunny jokes vs how Kevin Hart got treated for years while making homophobic jokes is just... a bummer.
I was not aware of that. I'm really not a fan of his comedy, and his success as a stand up comedian is a mistery to me. He basically makes faces while being tiny. That's it. That's his whole act :P
I was not aware of that. I'm really not a fan of his comedy, and his success as a stand up comedian is a mistery to me. He basically makes faces while being tiny. That's it. That's his whole act :P
In 2020 a judge determined that there was enough evidence of Depp's abuse to support the use of the phrase "wife-beater" to describe him without it being libelous. Twelve of her fourteen claims of...
Am I to understand that "Believe Victims" means we should not trust the determinations of judge, jury, the legal system, experts, and people with lived experience if it's contrary to one person claiming to be a victim?
In 2020 a judge determined that there was enough evidence of Depp's abuse to support the use of the phrase "wife-beater" to describe him without it being libelous. Twelve of her fourteen claims of specific incidents of abuse were determined to have sufficient evidence to be considered true in the eyes of the law in the UK in that same trial.
certainly, although perhaps not very deeply. my views haven't evolved much beyond my gut reaction, so i would need to mull it over some. and absolutely, my ex will have insight that i do not into...
Have you considered the possibility that Amber Heard is indeed a fraud? And that your child's mother with her past history may have the experience to discern that?
certainly, although perhaps not very deeply. my views haven't evolved much beyond my gut reaction, so i would need to mull it over some. and absolutely, my ex will have insight that i do not into this whole situation. but i am a moderate sort of person, and her unwillingness to entertain the possibility that trauma manifests differently in different people came across very unempathetically. not to say that she is wrong, and maybe viewing this with a dispassionate eye can help judge the situation better. but i got the impression that she (and others, judging by the media i was shown) felt that acknowledging any trauma on AH's part might invalidate her own.
I had to ask myself at some point...just how bored are we all that this trial became so unbelievably televised and memed? Good god, just today I saw an article about it in a gaming magazine of all...
I had to ask myself at some point...just how bored are we all that this trial became so unbelievably televised and memed? Good god, just today I saw an article about it in a gaming magazine of all places...although I know gaming websites have been struggling and making editorial compromises in search of continued relevance and clicks for a long time. Heck, Destructoid once allegedly posted an article titled, Ding, Dong, Saddam is Dead, Now Play A Game Or Something. I guess they're just giving the public what they want, and it turns out we're all the monster again. Shit.
The only thing making me more uncomfortable was what a bastard the Ukrainian genocide was turning me into.
For me, this. I did not follow the trial, and I mostly have not followed the media feeding frenzy that has followed the verdict. My main source of info is occasionally skim-reading threads like...
For me, this. I did not follow the trial, and I mostly have not followed the media feeding frenzy that has followed the verdict. My main source of info is occasionally skim-reading threads like this one, just to figure out if I have perhaps missed something significant, and should go educate myself about the case.
But there's nothing there. It's all so meta-, everyone is talking about how everyone is talking about it. I just don't see the significance of any of it, beyond everyone chanting about how significant this is going to be, on feminism or legal precedent or how the media handles future cases (that I, doubtless, will also not care about).
I like his movies and I hope he gets to keep making them. I haven't seen any of hers, but if she's any good, I hope she gets to make something I may one day care to see, too. That's pretty much where my interest ends.
The more I read from Monica Lewinsky, the more I'm convinced that she's one of the best critics/commenters on mass media in general. I find myself agreeing with her at almost every turn whenever she's pointing out how mass consumed media is turning public narrative, subconsciously or otherwise.
Something else pointed out about this trial (I cannot for the life of me remember who) is that all the hubbub around this trial feels like the proto-GamerGate sentiments, where there was an ugly mass of kneejerk sentiments being guided by meme pathways into forcing certain conclusions. There's clearly a misogynistic angle to it that is going unrecognized in favour of the fun and joy of participating on the "right" (i.e. bigger) side of a public stoning. Truth and evenhanded justice isn't the goal, it's dopamine via righteousness via temerity.
Even if Amber Heard is the devil incarnate, that's not really been what a lot of the memes or news has been trying to establish. Instead there's a clear goal of making her irredeemable regardless of what comes out at trial and creating a repeatable method to point at anyone in a similar upcoming situation. She's been prejudged by public perception and the trial decision won't do anything to change it because it's too late. We might see this exact same thing happen at the next big domestic abuse dispute and there will be memes and jokes thrown at one side before it starts, and all perception will be skewed no matter what. Small wonder that Monica Lewinsky can point out that this is happened, and I'm sure many other women who got their turn at the stake could point to it as easily too.
Maybe Amber Heard was obviously the aggressor and the wrong one in this situation (I don't know), and maybe herself and her legal team made cartoons of themselves, but I can't help but feel that that's being used to give credence to this method that we'll see applied again in a future trial, a tenuous version of guilt by association. This is how GamerGate ensnared many people at the start who now feel embarrassed or ashamed that they ever fell for it. It starts with something that takes advantage of reasonable mixed feelings, and purposefully amplifies the more kneejerk and emotional ones in order to create a sort of simmering furor that eats away at rationality and maximizes immediate reactions. It exploits valid concerns to turn them into irrational responses. Imagine if after a couple of rounds of this, we have Tucker Carlson vs. his ex-wife at trial. If it continues like this, I would fully expect this machine would be used to point at the ex-wife the same way it pointed at Amber Heard here in a targeted way to protect Carlson from justice.
And I know it will be the women that this is first pointed to because it always is pointed at them in everything but the most clearest cut cases. GamerGate was about "games journalism" in theory but in practice was always pointed at women or men who supported feminism because that was prejudged as the one factor that was making video games worse according to a certain type of Gamer. All the memes, jokes, shareables, etc. that came out at the start of GamerGate were forcing that conclusion. It was never really pointed at the various "journalism" outlets for doing a bad job journalistically or ethically (which was pretty much all of the GG-friendly outlets, not ironically or coincidentally) beyond a few easy and simple targets at the start to establish the credibility of the method. It took years for the commonly touted GG sentiments to stop being part of the zeitgeist because it took many people a long time to realize that they were poison pill statements to begin with.
With all the rhetoric included in the memes and jokes around this trial, I pessimistically expect that we'll only see this kind of resurgence of rhetoric and viewpoints. But instead of being about something as stupid as video game news, it'll be about domestic dispute cases that are actually at trial, where the situation almost certainly going to be many various shades of grey (or even black, which seems to be the case with this particular trial). This manufactured expectation of clear heroes and villains in trials like this is going to continue unless we take care to not let memes and pithy soundbites be the main method of communication and consideration for things that are way too complex, muddled, or nuanced to be summarized in two panels next to Pikachu's face.
I hate the Gamergate mob with a glowing passion, but I'd rather compare it to the Jussie Smollett case than Zoë Quinn.
There's some horrible people involved in the drama (and I don't fully get why the whole thing had to be televised) but ultimately, this forces men's rights types to respect court justice, which could be a win long term. We now know what a case looks like in which a female accuser is, at the very least, suspicious enough of not telling the truth to lose a libel lawsuit. If, next time, we get a Tucker Carlson type's wife show up in court with a medical attest, a recording of being threatened and a dozen witnesses, it might actually be harder to claim she's lying.
It was only a matter of time for a case of someone abusing the #metoo momentum for an unjustified, personal vendetta in public. Considering that, this was a rather civilized way for that to happen.
The verdict itself is a message that if you spread baseless accusations about someone in public, you can actually get sued and lose. That's a win, IMO, especially for social media in the US. To bring it back to gamergate: This is essentially the equivalent of Zoë Quinn suing her harassers over destroying her career.
I didn't really mention Quinn because that's not the part of GamerGate that really relates here. I specifically mentioned proto-GamerGate because there were things in motion that allowed GamerGate to take off running. That doesn't happen from zero. Quinn's ordeal was a important event to GG becoming a thing to be sure, but the other parts around it are what are more relevant i.e. the methodology of discourse, and the inciting of passions towards set directions. Quinn's events weren't actually the inciting flashpoint that allowed things to bubble over either, but when things did bubble over, those methods were laser focused on her and we got to see what happens when the weapons that were accidentally built get used with a purpose. All the memery around this case reminds me of that part of GamerGate, and nothing here really reminds me of Zoe Quinn.
The question is: will those types actually respect court justice because of this outcome? Or will they overlook it when convenient in order to force the continued argument that the courts always rule against men? As we saw from GG methods that eventually turned into Republican and alt right methods, the lack of consistency and the overlooking of facts in favour of feelings is actually a feature, not a bug. Theoretically, maybe we believe Tucker's ex-wife when she comes to court with all that. But we know there are entire groups out there that will look at 2+2 and insist it's 5 just because they want it to be. All it takes is a few memes and misinformation in the right place and suddenly the conversation is about how she illegally wiretapped Tucker so the evidence is fraudulent and inadmissible and therefore she's a bad person and therefore Tucker Carlson must be a hero because he is standing up to illegal liars.
There have already been a number of cases of #metoo momentum being misused. Aziz Ansari was probably the first major instance in what (IIRC, correct me if I am wrong) seemed to be someone complaining he was a bad date. There have been a few more out there, a lot of people got accused, falsely or not, and it played out as it did in various ways. This wasn't really the first big test of fraudulent accusations around #MeToo and I (maybe luckily) have not seen anyone trying to pivot it to #MeToo since the American trial started. This was purely a case of domestic dispute and violence.
I'd put "respect" in quotes. It's more... if chasing after an event like this defines you as a person, what do you do if you finally get to experience one making it all over mainstream news? You might get bored and look for a new hobby. The voices online who bank on telling you the "truth" now have a mainstream event that's louder than them, there's no mystery anymore. There's no longer 27 different angles to frame it as a conspiracy against men.
Making national headlines is a great way to understand how people behave in response to news. I have a friend who pulled it off, and seeing the reports and comments and whatnot was disturbing, but also enlightening. He was simultaneously a libtard beta cuck and a conservative racist nutjob, but the reality is he was a man with a few too many problems that got pushed a bit too far in a stupid situation. Ultimately, he was everybody's villain for a few minutes, but public the details of his case, particularly in the court of public opinion, played out just like the Depp/Heard trial.
I looked at reports about my friend over a few hours across a few days days and learned a lot, but am definitely not an expert here. Lewinsky lives it every day. My point is, though, if you've got the truth (or at least some version very close to it), the reality of social media exists in the distortions of it that emerge through a weird game of telephone.
The problem with the Heard/Depp trial is nobody knows the truth. My parents had a messed up relationship that affected me, and if I ask either of them about their side I get some distortion of it filtered through trauma and anger. They're both experts on their perspective, and maybe one of them is a more reliable narrator than the other, but if their story were public the same exact thing would happen. Even with the clear facts at the trial, Depp and Heard can only report their reality.
I've seen this a lot. Slight edit, but I hope I keep your point intact.
I guess I can go into my personal opinion on the trial, only to explain a point. When I saw the trial, I saw Depp as a victim. I'm not sure if it was that I succumbed to spin, but I've seen my dad and a couple other men go through several abusive relationships as the victim, and the markers were there, at least to me. Heard's behavior, as much as I'd seen, pointed to it, because I've lived it several times from something akin to Depp's perspective (at least as presented). I stop there, as I have the opinion that an abuser is just that: one abuser, like any of my dad's single abusers, but I have seen victims, and people who even just heard about them, take the next step and accuse the entire group the victim belonged to of being abusers. Hell, I've got experience doing it myself.
You've pointed to the center of the problem. These complex situations get explained in little bits and pieces, and our quest for villains to resist causes us to invent them where either they don't exist, or they don't exist as conveniently as we would prefer them to. This is yet another thing I've done myself. The other part is most people (myself included) want to watch hours of trial footage to get the full story. That probably means we've got no business discussing it, at least those of us that are uninformed about the situation (which is likely most people memeing on it). It's also why I'm using so much qualified language in this comment.
Depp v. Heard isn't by far the first time this happened, it is simply the most prominent one in recent times due to the high profile of the people involved and the perceived irredeemability of the "bad party" (before the court actually decided who was liable).
I remember watching a video by Sarah Z(it's about a different subject but couch guy is a big part of it, starts at around 24min) a couple weeks back about "Couch guy", a dude who was pushed into the limelight on tiktok due to a post on the platform, where his (long-distance?) girlfriend surprised him with a visit as he was watching a movie with friends. Due to his supposedly mild reaction to such a kind surprise, the rumour mill fucking exploded on the platform with everyone's hot takes where some people had the the gall to assume the guy was cheating or a psychopath based on a video that was a couple of seconds long. I am not joking.
In a lot of cases, those hot-takes came from teenagers and I'm ready to cut them some slack because teenagers are allowed to be stupid. They always were, they always will be, just today unfortunately it's all saved forever and ready to be reurgitated by some fucking recommendation engine 10 years later when you want to forget all the stupid shit you've said when you were 16. A lot of those hot takes also came from adults who, to put it midly and summarize it, cause this tangent is too long, should go touch some grass.
Depp v. Heard has the potential for much harsher consequences, especially now that Heard has been confirmed to be the guilty party in this specific case. But you're right, it was like that already before the decision by the court was announced, I don't know if it's due to the circles I move in, but the public opinion seemed to be on Depp's side throughout the trial, and I honestly can't say if it's because he's a man, because he was the legitimately aggrieved party in this case, or because he's just more sympathetic. My best guess is that's a mix of all three.
In the court of public opinion, sympathy weighs more than proof, and making it entertaining is more important than making it just. I don't think that Depp is innocent. They both did bad things to each other, though it seems that Heard was worse. As (Depp's, I think) psychologist put it, Depp can't solve conflicts (hence; drug abuse) and Heard can't walk away from them. Together, that's a volatile fucking combination, and it's gonna explode. Has exploded.
We're almost at the point where we need to come up with our own version of IANAL but specifically for the Depp/Heard trial drama since almost every comment in every post about it starts with something along the lines of, "I didn't follow the case, but..."
I personally did not follow the trial very closely, either, but one of my favorite youtube channels, Matt Orchard - Crime and Society, did (what appears to be) a pretty solid breakdown of the major incidents that were disputed in the trial. You can find that video here if you feel inclined to have a basic understanding of the toxic shithole that relationship was. The video came out right before the trial exploded on twitch and youtube, so it is less caught up in The Discourse.
As for the discourse and Monica Lewinsky's take, I find myself mostly in agreement. Collectively, we're caught up in the most shallow elements of the case when deep down there is an important discussion to be had about abuse, the many different forms it can take, and how misogyny and patriarchy influence the way we treat both male and female victims of abuse. But after three decades of "punditry = news", a social media environment where everyone's role is to be the pundit, and the almighty algorithm's desire for chaos, we're left with this freakshow sideshow at the shitshow where Incel-MRA freaks and RadFems are duking it out over who the real victim is while bystanders get sucked in and pick sides.
Unfortunately, it's hard - if not impossible - to find any issue or story that doesn't fit as substitute for "Depp-Heard trial" in that quote. There is hardly any room for nuance, and it's nearly impossible to approach a story/issue without having a take on it first. I always appreciate Lewinsky's reminders that, underneath all of these massive stories that are litigated in the press and on social media, there is a human being catching tons and tons of shit. I'm not sure where that particular issue ranks in the problem we're facing. It's kind of a chicken and the egg situation. Are we so caught up in the punditry and hot takes of infotainment and social media that we forget there is a person we still need to have empathy for? Or did we forget how to empathize first, which is what allowed this "cultural miasma" to flourish in the first place? Hell, was there ever a point in which we (the public) had empathy?
i had managed to stay mostly away from any of the discourse over this trial (having fully zero interest in the affairs of celebrities) until my daughter's mother started talking to me about it and showing me all the various takes and memes and tiktoks. the whole thing made me profoundly uncomfortable. so many random "body language experts" and "psychologists" and "abuse victims" weighing in to mock Amber Heard and support Depp's case.
the thing that scared me the most was that my ex---herself a survivor of abuse and someone who struggles with mental health difficulties to this day---was fully willing to believe the awful takes that AH was a liar and a fraud, and was only pretending to have been abused, off the back of all this online commentary. and i get that, to some extent. we assume that our lived experience is the same as that of others', and incongruity to that experience can seem suspect. but the whole thing, trial, judgement, and rampant punditry just reeks of a complete and total lack of empathy, and it makes me sick.
Wether Amber Heard is a fraud or not is not truly relevant for the point made by the article. Lots of people are liable on civil cases every day, but the wave of public scrutiny and hate was way beyond measure and clearly misogynistic.
To reference another situation, pretty much everyone that knows something about comedy agrees that Amy Schumer is not funny, but the avalanche of hate she received was disproportionate, and, yes, very misogynistic. I mean, Kevin Hart is just as unfunny (if not more...), and most people will just say that he's not funny and stop there.
I liked the article and mostly agreed with its points, but unless I missed a part, it didn’t address the possibility that at least some fraction of the ire directed at AH is because she (almost certainly) pulled a false flag - discrediting true victims of abuse.
That’s a major, valid reason for the backlash - one which has nothing to do with misogyny.
I honestly don't think that was the case, that consideration was simply not present, and I followed it so some extent. Most reactions had too much of a horde mentality for somethin like that to even make sense.
If someone thinks that AH was lying, they also think she is deliberately lying to try to ruin someone's life. That's something that understandably triggers a strong negative reaction in people. That probably also includes the MGTOW and other misogynist crowds but I don't think that we can say on the whole that the outcry is misogynistic given the stake of the case. There are plenty of high profile males who have also seen widespread public attacks on their character because they were perceived to deserve it.
I'm skeptical of this. I'm skeptical of the notion that the directed hate was the result of a concern for Depp. Maybe I'm just a tad pessimistic in that regard.
What happened to Aziz Ansari was surreal. To this day I can't understand what he supposedly did wrong, and I looked for it! He faced real consequences for what was essentially a date that didn't go very well. He even apologized, even though it was never clear why he should be apologizing in the first place. Maybe he shouldn't have done that. Then he "came back" with a comedy special directed by Spike Jonze that was actually quite touching. He clearly could use some self criticism (who doesn't?), but was never in abuser territory (as far as what was divulged).
The false accusation equivalent to vaporware.
I was a fan of CK, but now couldn't watch him even if I wanted. So gross. I did see the part of his new act where he address the issue, and it's downright evil. The cover is blown.
But to answer your question: Depp is a much bigger star and had the benefit of a televised trial that was very much in his favour up to the end.
My guess is that there's a mixture of reasons. I think some people really do get attached to celebrities in weird, parasocial ways. I also suspect there was a significant number of people motivated by misogyny or red-pill type nonsense, or by some reactionary impulse against the #metoo movement. And I suspect a not insignificant number of people were just pulled in by the circus of it all. From what I gathered the trial was pretty lurid. It honestly reminded me a bit of the reaction to Tiger King when it blew up. I found it baffling, but I had friends arguing about that show and whether Carole (don't remember if that's the right name) killed her husband. It seems to me that there's a bit of a Jerry Springer air around this whole Depp/Heard trial. I could also believe that someone might be righteously angry if they believed that Heard was using the #metoo movement as an opportunity to abuse or falsely accuse her husband, although I certainly haven't seen anybody articulate that. Mostly I've seen it used to disparage and discredit that movement in general.
But on the other hand, when these allegations came out against Johnny Depp and he was effectively blacklisted from his industry, couldn't you argue that response was misandristic?
I did not follow those events. However, he did get a favorable verdict, which I think was fair.
Getting a bit off topic of the trial but yeah the comparison of how Amy Schumer got treated for making unfunny jokes vs how Kevin Hart got treated for years while making homophobic jokes is just... a bummer.
I was not aware of that. I'm really not a fan of his comedy, and his success as a stand up comedian is a mistery to me. He basically makes faces while being tiny. That's it. That's his whole act :P
In 2020 a judge determined that there was enough evidence of Depp's abuse to support the use of the phrase "wife-beater" to describe him without it being libelous. Twelve of her fourteen claims of specific incidents of abuse were determined to have sufficient evidence to be considered true in the eyes of the law in the UK in that same trial.
certainly, although perhaps not very deeply. my views haven't evolved much beyond my gut reaction, so i would need to mull it over some. and absolutely, my ex will have insight that i do not into this whole situation. but i am a moderate sort of person, and her unwillingness to entertain the possibility that trauma manifests differently in different people came across very unempathetically. not to say that she is wrong, and maybe viewing this with a dispassionate eye can help judge the situation better. but i got the impression that she (and others, judging by the media i was shown) felt that acknowledging any trauma on AH's part might invalidate her own.
I had to ask myself at some point...just how bored are we all that this trial became so unbelievably televised and memed? Good god, just today I saw an article about it in a gaming magazine of all places...although I know gaming websites have been struggling and making editorial compromises in search of continued relevance and clicks for a long time. Heck, Destructoid once allegedly posted an article titled, Ding, Dong, Saddam is Dead, Now Play A Game Or Something. I guess they're just giving the public what they want, and it turns out we're all the monster again. Shit.
The only thing making me more uncomfortable was what a bastard the Ukrainian genocide was turning me into.
For me, this. I did not follow the trial, and I mostly have not followed the media feeding frenzy that has followed the verdict. My main source of info is occasionally skim-reading threads like this one, just to figure out if I have perhaps missed something significant, and should go educate myself about the case.
But there's nothing there. It's all so meta-, everyone is talking about how everyone is talking about it. I just don't see the significance of any of it, beyond everyone chanting about how significant this is going to be, on feminism or legal precedent or how the media handles future cases (that I, doubtless, will also not care about).
I like his movies and I hope he gets to keep making them. I haven't seen any of hers, but if she's any good, I hope she gets to make something I may one day care to see, too. That's pretty much where my interest ends.
Archived.