"... but that’s not what’s happening here. The online commentary about the trial quickly advanced from a he-said she-said drama script to an internet-wide smear campaign against Heard.... Seemingly harmless YouTube channels and TikTok accounts dedicated to legal commentary or body-language analysis have pivoted to pro-Depp content en masse.... The pool camera system, which is operated by Court TV, films the proceedings from multiple angles... The sheer amount of material recorded each day enables viewers to examine every inch of the courtroom with a conspiratorial zeal, as empty gestures and meaningless asides are whipped into dubious case clues, spliced into humiliating Heard reaction GIFs or leveraged to build a charmingly unbothered bad-boy court presence for Depp.... [M]any TikToks are soundtracked with the circuslike theme from 'Curb Your Enthusiasm,' trapping Heard in the role of sad clown... [L]ike Gamergate, which took an obscure gaming-community controversy and inflated it into an internet-wide anti-feminist harassment campaign and a broader right-wing movement, this nihilistic circus is a potentially radicalizing event. When the trial ends this week, the elaborate grassroots campaign to smear a woman will remain, now with a plugged-in support base and a field-tested harassment playbook...."
Writes Amanda Hess in "TikTok’s Amber Heard Hate Machine/Television turned the celebrity trial into a 24-hour tabloid spectacle. Social media made it into a sport" (NYT).
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Is it really a "smear" when the evidence and testimony revealed that Heard is a lying, abusive psycho?
[L]ike Gamergate, which took an obscure gaming-community controversy and inflated it into an internet-wide anti-feminist harassment campaign..
Like spouting off on the 3/5ths Clause, it's useful when people signal it's safe to ignore them.
The Left frames this as anti-woman, but maybe it's just anti-upstart. I know Heard from one project, Aquaman, and she sucked in it. Depp is part of American culture. He's Jack Sparrow. He owned the Viper when River Phoenix died there. He's aging as we age, and not so gracefully, but he's us. Of course we're going to side with one of our own.
OMFG, everything isn't Gamergate.
This looks a lot like sour grapes that Heard isn't the one coming out on top here. It's like she expected a phalanx of White Knights to come to Heard's defense (much like Gamergate and Zoe Quinn, actually) instead of people actually watching and making up their own minds.
It's almost like she expected people to run to the girl's defense out of tradition or something.
He's a deeply damaged person, but she's almost sociopathic, and it shows.
I have been following the trail, mostly to watch the lawyers cross examine expert witnesses.
It's a tossup whether Amber Heard's obvious lying or her incompetent lawyers and expert witnesses are to blame for the disdain people hold for that woman. She is not being smeared. She is showing what a sad borderline personality disorder does to relationships.
The irony of accusing people of smearing a woman who is on trial for smearing a man. People aren't stupid. Those people actually watching the trial know that it is beyond doubt that Heard is a psychotic liar. Heard is being roasted by court watches because she's a bad witness, her lawyers are Keystone Cops, and Heard actually did the things she's being accused of.
Set up blackmail for money works in today’s always believe the woman madness, but even good trial lawyers have evidence that beats the nasty scumbag. Oh how terrible.
Now what can seductive young women do for a living.
“…obscure gaming-community controversy and inflated it into an internet-wide anti-feminist harassment campaign”
What a barely recognizable description of another episode where dishonest reporting is called out and the reporters join together to smear the people who had the temerity to call out the media’s dishonesty.
Recall, Gamergaters warned that soon every inch of popular culture and work life would be infected WOKEism. Gamergate warned that if gamers weren't to be left alone to enjoy their games, then it was unlikely moviegoers and TV watchers would be left alone to simply enjoy their entertainments. Gamergate was a peak into the future and the Gamergaters were 100% right.
The analogy to Gamergate seems off to me. I haven’t been following the trial closely, but as far as I can tell, Depp, who as the plaintiff has the burden of proof, hasn’t met it.
Would be interesting to have had video in the federal court where Ghislaine Maxwell was tried (I understand video/cameras generally prohibited). But guess that would be too much exposure. Some things we don’t need to know.
Now have Amanda Hess do a retrospective on Judge Kavanaugh’s ordeal. Until then, I understand that anything the NYT prints is a slanted screed of no journalistic value.
Gamergate!
It's nice that they've fully embraced Gamergate as a default descriptor for any time the popular narrative diverges from the Media-approved narrative; you weren't supposed to side with Depp!
You'd think by now that the people in charge of these intermediary institutions (Media outlets, corporate-approved pundits, etc) would be a little better at hiding their fear and disgust when the commoners successfully resist the official narrative, but it really seems to freak them out every time.
Bigger threat to democracy: January 6th Insurrection or Gamergate? Trick question; Gamergate is partially responsible for all bad things, including Jan 6th, in the minds of these Media big brains. Ya gotta laugh.
People love the bad boy, and love the charming wastrel with his endearing helplessness, and love to hate the ballsy, tough bad girl, but even there it's a complicated love/hate relationship. It's the bitch goddess thing. It's what Brie Larson taps into in her obnoxious car commercials. You kind of hate her, but don't you kind of love her scrappy, take-no-bullshit toughness, too? The bad girl and the bad boy are assholes, but people envy their freedom from external constraints, at least until they have to deal with them in real life.
This blog is the only place where I see anything about this trial - I don't even go to the source material because I'm just not sufficiently interested in it, only in our host's take on one part or another of it. So all I can possibly say about this particular take is that Amanda Hess has clearly made up her mind and is following the postmodern journalist's handbook: determine the narrative, then write the story to support it.
Why does she assume that in a trial between two celebrities, we should expect that each side would be equally represented by "debased memes"? Is she honestly trying to make a disparate impact argument in writing about two individuals? Is everyone really only a Type in this kind of "journalism"?
And we're back to Gamergate. I did look into that some years ago, and it certainly seemed to me then that the "anti-feminist" angle was just about as overblown as the comment on one of the other posts on this blog a couple of days ago that we right-leaning Althousians were doing poor job of articulating the positions of the Left. Just as, there, I reminded the commenter that we're not here to articulate the positions of the Left (even though I'm sure most of us can) but to articulate our own positions, it seemed to me with regard to Gamergate that gamers were not at all focused on feminism, so accusations of anti-feminism were just silly.
Like "defund the police", "believe all women" was bound to hurt the people it was designed to help.
There can be no justice brought about by totalitarian movements.
Jamie said “ Why does she assume that in a trial between two celebrities, we should expect that each side would be equally represented by "debased memes"? “
We need to strive for “memequity”.
Gotta say, Amanda Hess sounds as if she lost her anti-paranoia meds and is trying to BS her way through a sociology midterm question that asks for an in-character essay on Most Deranged Conspiracy Theories Ever.
Who thought that one of the greatest actors of our time was going to come out on the short end of public opinion?
Besides, she is a woman who actually shit in his bed.
That's a tough thing to look past...
"You might expect a defamation trial pitting one movie star against another"
I call BS. One is a star, the other is not.
"The online commentary about the trial quickly advanced from a he-said she-said drama script to an internet-wide smear campaign against Heard"
Translation: the crowd recognized a lying female liar for the liar she is. But since women are special and nothing bad can be said about them, even truth = smear. Biggest loser: #MeToo.
But I have no personal opinion on the merits of the case.
The writer of the column must have never watched Curb Your Enthusiasm.
A Facebook friend posted a link to a story about the earlier civil trial which found that Depp had abused/assaulted Heard on 12 occasions from 2014 to 2017(?). Let us stipulate that the judge's findings are correct.
Heard had a moderately successful movie career before she started dating Depp - not a superstar, but making more than most office drones or college professors.
Two of those incidents occurred in 2014. Depp and Heard married in 2015. Heard knew what sage was getting into, and had options - she didn't need to stay with Depp or marry him. That she did so after at least two serious incidents says that she was willing to take the abuse for her own reasons.
Amanda Hess is the most remarkable prodigy in history. At the tender age of three and a half, she's got a byline job at the infamous New York Times, that Eighth Avenue sweatshop and notorious serial violator of child labor laws. I was a pretty bright toddler myself, but at 3.5 years I had hardly mastered the common spoon, let alone the typewriter, but this Amanda Hess, she just boggles the mind...what? Repeat that. Hess isn't a child? And she's nearly thirty-five? Then that means she probably remembers the Brett Kavanaugh hearings. What? She covered them?? No way, she'd have to be a remorseless liar to claim the public perception of the Depp/Heard defamation trial is some sort of monstrous evil when much worse was done to Kavanaugh. What? Speak up. Did you say poetic justice? It's poetic justice that the defamer is herself defamed? Well, yeah, it looks that way.
I haven't really followed this trial at all in any detail, but my impression from others is that Depp's lawyers have made a persuasive case that Heard was, in fact, defaming Depp in that Op-Ed. So, the social media might well be responding to that evidence such as it is.
1. First, Depp come across as likable and truthful. Either he is the victim or he is a much better actor (probably both, but that is irrelevant, when Heard comes across as a hateful, vengeful, REALLY crazy woman.
2. Gamergate. If Zoe Quinn had ended up in a civil trial I expect she would have gotten the same treatment as Heard, for the same reason. The video I saw of her, and the interviews, left me feeling she was a no talent hack who got by on her looks as long as she could, and when called on it, cried SEXISM! as loud as she could.
3. As far as the burden of proof being on Depp, I think that is true, but isn't the standard only preponderance of the evidence in a civil trial? And I think he has done that running away.
"You might expect a defamation trial pitting one movie star against another to unleash a fire hose of debased memes in both directions..."
Sure, you might expect that. But is there any evidence that that is what typically happens?
People choose. Amanda Hess disagrees with the choice. Tough noogies, but that's life--people choose.
I guess Johnny unleashed a bigger fire hose than Amber's.
Ditto that. If I go to youtube I am bound to be presented with some anti-Heard video. I'll be glad when the trial is over and these two losers can stay out of my face.
Heard was put out as a standard bearer by the "Pussy hat" brigade as a weapon against Trump, Weinstein, Epstein, Gates, Clinton, et al. But, by a screaming, evil, and manipulative social media horde.
Hoisted on your own petard methinks. No pity here.
I have successfully avoided all coverage of this crapfest.
This is a great post on Gab from Heartiste re the trial and the female archetype. Some here may find his take a bit harsh, but he's not wrong.
https://gab.com/kingofallnads/posts/108357476778803166
Today a columnist is blaming Amber's PR troubles on the "alt-right." Why does everything have to be about political tribes? Can't the haters just be trolls, and can't Amber Heard just be unlikeable?
Believe all liars.
"You might expect a defamation trial pitting one movie star against another to unleash a fire hose of debased memes in both directions..."
Yes, but then the trial started, and it quickly became obvious that Heard was in the wrong, and Depp was in the right.
How pathetically wretched to you have to be to be upset that people are reacting to reality, and responding accordingly?
Jeff Weimer said...
OMFG, everything isn't Gamergate.
That's not true. in fact, every single left wing cultural jihad is JUST like Gamergate:
The let's position is completely contrary to reality, and the people they're attacking are the ones who are right
I suspect Depp will fail to persuade the jury but succeed in defaming Heard the same way she defamed him.
The Johnny Depp–Amber Heard Trial Is Not as Complicated as You May Think
“The entirety of the case rests on twelve words . . . ‘Then two years ago, I became a public figure representing domestic abuse.’”
Lawyerly.
Earnest Prole said...
I suspect Depp will fail to persuade the jury but succeed in defaming Heard the same way she defamed him.
The Johnny Depp–Amber Heard Trial Is Not as Complicated as You May Think
Well, EP, I ran across this while reading that New Yorker article:
The precise demographics of the pro-Depp coalition are diverse, if uncertain in their exact proportions: bots, shitposters, men’s-rights activists, women who were in middle school when “Edward Scissorhands” came out
Since Heard is an obvious and bad liar (see her "I donated all $7 million from my diverse to charity" bS), and the author is pretending that doesn't exist, I doubt there's going to be much of anything of value in the article.
yeah:
"It should be acknowledged that Heard, at times, has made questionable statements about her relationship with Depp and its aftermath. Both Depp’s legal team and the #JusticeforJohnny and #AmberTurd armies on social media have focussed on flawlessly gorgeous photographs taken of Heard after alleged severe beatings and, especially, on her claim that she appeared on James Corden’s late-night talk show with “two black eyes” and a nose that she suspected was broken."
I'll skim the rest. But I'm not going to take seriously something written so dishonestly
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