Here’s a little thread on misinformation and social media bullying.
Kamilla’s We need to talk about the effect that misinformation had on a trial about domestic violence and sexual assault. Gen Z often makes fun of our boomer relatives for buying into right wing misinformation and propaganda, but this trial proved we need to worry about Gen Z as well.
There are millions of views for YouTube videos that just have blatant misinformation. People basically making money spreading shit that isn’t even true in the slightest. Imagine how many people went past these videos and just assumed they were true.
The majority of social media never questioned Depp’s story, not even once. Even with wild claims that Amber threw a vodka bottle at his hand with perfect precision to slice off his one finger. With none of his other fingers or the rest of his hand getting damaged in any way.
Teachers felt comfortable putting Amber’s picture on a trash can, businesses felt comfortable putting up signs mocking her. The public hate and mockery of a woman accusing a man of domestic violence was bigger than we’d ever seen for a man accused of domestic violence.
Now I don’t think people realize how many survivors of domestic violence had to stay off TikTok and social media in general during this trial. It was triggering seeing people spread the same old myths about domestic violence to question Amber’s story.
Not just domestic violence survivors, but survivors of rape and sexual assault as well. People were literally using her testimony of sexual assault on TikTok to say “what did he do wrong?” And “why would she not be into that?”
They made a tiktok sound of Amber talking about how he sexually assaulted her. There were tiktoks with millions of views saying “trying to understand what Johnny did wrong here” and no one batted an eye. They all thought it was funny and relatable.
And the right wing media absolutely loves this, they basically made Amber a scapegoat to say that all women are lying about allegations of domestic violence and rape. Calling every survivor whose brave enough to come out with their story “Amber Heard 2.0”.
Some people will only believe allegations of abuse or sexual violence if it benefits them or their beliefs in some way. Amber was smart to document years of evidence, other survivors did not have the chance to do so. If she’s not believed, what does that mean for others?
Right wing media really corrupted Gen Z into believing that bullying Amber was beneficial for male victims of domestic violence. It was all under the guise of wokeism, “we’re supporting a victim of domestic violence”. Most haven’t even seen a fraction of her evidence.
Most didn’t bother. And here’s the thing, because people have been so ignorant in doing their own research, right wing media now has the opportunity to launch even more smear campaigns on survivors.
I can bet that in a couple years, some big streaming service will release a “Framing Amber Heard” documentary and everyone will act surprised about what was really going on. They will act surprised about her evidence, when they didn’t even bother to look it up.
And when that big documentary comes out, none of the celebrities and fans that were a direct part of this will take responsibility. They will say something like “we were all fooled”. When they could have just simply done some research before jumping to conclusions.
I can already see leftist activists like @hasanabi talking about how crazy it was that we were all duped, never acknowledging the fact that he himself was on livestream dissecting her rape allegations. Using common victim blaming myths like “why didn’t she go to the hospital?”
Being someone who was in leftist spaces this doesn’t surprise me. They will talk about power imbalances all day and night, but fail to acknowledge the obvious power imbalance between Depp and Heard. It’s like saying that the workers that pushed back against a company are abusive.
