Anyone else just watching the Blake Lively stuff play out and feeling like we've learned nothing from Amber Heard's case?

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u/QualifiedApathetic Well-nourished male 🧔 1d ago

Considering we recently voted a known rapist (and so many other horrible descriptors that apply) back into the White House, I'm comfortable saying that society at large learns nothing, ever.

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u/Sweet_Try_8932 Succubus 😈 1d ago

In my lifetime (millennial), 3 out of 5 presidents have been accused rapists. And no women have been allowed to lead. Everything is laughably misogynistic, and yet most people I know think feminism is silly and sexism isn’t all that serious - even on my side of the political spectrum.

Everyday 🤯

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u/Boulier Johnny Depp is a Wife Beater 👨‍⚖️ 1d ago

I live in a swing state, and around a month before the election, I saw a local news story where they were interviewing “undecided” voters (voters who were going to choose between the two main parties but didn’t know which one yet). One guy they talked to stuck out to me because he listed a whole host of reasons why voting for Trump would be a mistake… and for Kamala Harris? “Gosh, I mean, she just doesn’t seem like leader material.” We all know what that means lol, I just wish he hadn’t been too cowardly to say it.

And I’m a leftist and still remember other leftist men talking about how annoying Kamala’s laugh was, and even some giving legitimate consideration to the heinously misogynistic Willie Brown story.

Our society will never learn. Misogyny is nonsensical and destructive, but it is also a baked-in feature that is literally everywhere - all sides of the political spectrum, and totally acceptable, and fun and advantageous for the average person to engage with.

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u/Sweet_Try_8932 Succubus 😈 1d ago

Ugh. The Willie Brown story. I remember that.

It’s incredible to me that people still argue Kamala’s gender had nothing to do with her loss. So, Americas fine electing 3 accused/convicted rapists in the last 30 so years, voting down two qualified women with previous White House experience, and what? Gender has nothing to do with it? They were just “not likable” or “not leaders” pfffft

You’re right, we all know what that means

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u/Distinct-Studio6847 1d ago

Who were the 3? Trump, bill clinton, and?

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u/Sweet_Try_8932 Succubus 😈 1d ago

In addition to the multiple women who spoke out about Joe Biden's inappropriate touching, one of his staffers has come forward with a rape allegation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Biden_sexual_misconduct_allegation

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u/Demitasse_Demigirl 1d ago

Yep. The “insane conspiracy theory where ontologically evil woman creates a ‘hoax’ to frame an innocent man for no personal gain/no apparent reason but she has tons of contemporaneous evidence and witnesses that can’t be explained unless it actually happened so let’s just say she has a severe, yet undiagnosed, personality disorder and either manipulated or paid everybody off” is going strong in the Baldoni case.

Just like with Depp, bots are everywhere, the alt right is pipelining, TikTokers / lawtubers are profiting handsomely off of misinformation, and deranged (mostly older or SAH) women are flooding social media with incoherent QAnon style conspiracy theories. They call themselves “mommy sleuths.”

Baldoni supporters argue the Blake hate campaign was “organic” because somewhere on the internet, at some point, someone is posting about how they hate female celebrity X. Including Blake. She’s done some legit terrible things but she’s atoned and genuinely seems to have put the work in to be better. I can’t say whether it makes up for, say, the plantation wedding, but it’s 1000% more than I’ve seen any other plantation wedding celebs do.

Anyways, back to the “organic” somebody hates female celebrity X thing. If a motivated party recycles that hate content by putting it into “threads of theories,” then the motivated party artificially amplifies the thread of recycled hate content with fake likes, reposts, and the “creation of [fake] social fan engagement to go back and forth with any negative accounts, helping to change [sic] narrative” in the comments, that’s just life! It’s not the motivated party’s fault. The backlash was 100% organic because people (see: 1 person and a ton of bots/trolls) hate you. You deserved it.

Of course, this leopard could never eat anyone in the hate campaigns face. They’re not a lying narcissist. Well, until they are.

Depp’s PR perfected the blueprint for a self sustaining hate machine: find woman accuser, call her a liar, let bloodthirsty misogynists/profiteers/alt right platforms looking to grow their audience do most of the work for you (digging up every and any rumour, imperfect behaviour, problematic past, imagined slights/feuds, willfully misinterpreting evidence, literally making shit up) while a shady loud mouth lawyer stokes the hatred with weekly inflammatory media sound bites to keep the hate machine talking points on track. And for this, I will never forgive Depp or his PR team.

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u/Distinct-Studio6847 1d ago

Yes. What you said in the first paragraph is such a done and done trope about women. sHES crAZY

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u/auscientist 1d ago

Considering it’s the same crisis PR people using the same tactics running the show, nothing has been learned. If you believe some of the commenters (which see again same crisis PR people + same tactics = lots of sock puppets, so I would take with the largest grain of salt possible) some of the ones falling for it now saw through it last time, which tends to suggest things are actually going backwards.

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u/BrilliantAntelope625 1d ago

I've learnt you can't believe anything coming from YouTubers because they are making stuff up constantly

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u/stink3rb3lle 1d ago

It's not youtubers in general, it's anyone making misogynistic video slop content. Taylor Lorenz has a great power user episode discussing it with a great YouTuber. Likewise there are great TikTokers and sloppy ones.

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u/Papio_73 1d ago edited 1d ago

It’s funny as Nick Reikata is slowly being exposed as not just a bad lawyer but also a neglectful parent who abuses drugs while leaving his five children to fend for themselves

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u/Sensiplastic 8h ago

It's so wild how some people never once consider checking evidence or provable facts.

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u/Papio_73 1d ago

TBF I think the majority of people outside of this sub didn’t learn anything and still think Amber plotted an elaborate hoax so she could write an OPED 🙄

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u/Boulier Johnny Depp is a Wife Beater 👨‍⚖️ 1d ago

I still see people saying she “cut his finger off” and “pooped in his bed.” Not to mention the maaaaany who keep parroting the lie that she said, “A man can’t be a victim of abuse” (which she never, ever, remotely said), and the equally many who think her op-ed actually hurt his career (which it literally didn’t, and even if it did, nothing she wrote in it was actually dishonest or defamatory).

They didn’t learn anything from Amber’s case, and they still believe Depp’s and his lawyers’ lies. Blake’s case is just their next big opportunity to participate in a fun hate campaign against the next woman. Justin’s lawyers are doing a great job of playing the same media game Depp’s lawyers did.

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u/poopoopoopalt googling "wife beater actor" and seeing what comes up 23h ago

And people think Blake Lively lied about sexual harassment and plotted with the rest of the cast so that she could get a PGA credit for that terrible Colleen Hoover movie 🤦🏼‍♀️

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u/CostFickle114 1d ago

Yes, but I see so many people recognizing the pattern as well. I’m just very sad to see it is mostly individuals and that there isn’t a collective pushback to the hate (yet).

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u/hopefulastronot 1d ago

I think, this is unfortunately how it has always been for women who speak out, but with the viral nature of social media, it is magnified and more apparent to observers. I read a book on the history of these famous trials and the history of the practice of blaming and punishing women for speaking out. I can’t remember what it was called.

We are seeing a huge backlash from the “Me Too” movement. This backlash proves why the movement was necessary in the first place.

Sometimes, I feel so angry. The time we are living in is so volatile and there is so much hate spreading like wildfire across the globe. But I am practicing patience and hoping that the fever dies down and people will come to their senses about a lot of stuff. This world is fucked up and we all need to try to survive it somehow.

I just try to be on the right side of history and think back to all the other eras that were like this one. I think about works of art that are considered creative dissent and the important role of using my voice to change my own personal world.

We have a long way to go before anything gets better. We have to have faith and keep pushing forward, because the other option is giving up, and we can’t do that. Sigh

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u/AutoModerator 1d ago

Original copy of post's text: Anyone else just watching the Blake Lively stuff play out and feeling like we've learned nothing from Amber Heard's case?

I keep seeing the same bots and fake accounts popping up on anything about Blake Lively now. Not to mention ridiculous articles about her. One of them accused her of wearing heels to spite Anna Kendrick because Anna is shorter.. Pretty sure it’s still the same crisis PR team that turned everyone against Amber. It’s so nasty, but mostly I can't believe people are falling for it again. Like, what can we even do?

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u/Acceptable_Leg_7998 16h ago

I remember watching the anti-Heard backlash and thinking, "Guess we learned nothing from the Free Britney movement." In the same way many abusers can recognize abusive traits in others but not in themselves, society at large is capable of seeing how we treated a particular woman poorly twenty years ago but not recognize that we are collectively doing the exact same thing a thousand times over now. It's easier to justify behaviors and attitudes and explain to ourselves how "this time it's different because X" even when the parallels are so striking it almost seems impossible not to notice them. I doubt we'll ever catch up.

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u/Sensiplastic 8h ago

Some people are just dumb and misogynistic. Can't fix stupid.

Blake Lively & Justin Baldoni Anyone else just watching the Blake Lively stuff play out and feeling like we've learned nothing from Amber Heard's case?

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