OK so reverse order timeline of events like this that I’m aware of
- Laura Bailey being harassed for something a character she voiced in The Last of Us Part 2 did
- Anna Gunn being harassed because people misguidedly and misogynistically didn’t like Skyler White (taking this back to 2008)
- Ahmed Best and the kid who played young Anakin being harassed by Star Wars fans after the Phantom Menace came out, taking us back to 1999. You could argue that these two weren’t about the character’s actions but rather the quality of the performances/product so its a bit difference but its still the same overall problem.
- I just happened to get curious about what TV Tropes had to say about All in the Family because my roomate was watching it. By weird coincidence, because I had commented about the first three when this news was posted in a discord server already, I learned it goes back to the 70s because an actor who appears in one episode and does something incredibly evil got hate mail over it. So yeah, this shit has been going on forever
But like. WHAT the fuck is going on with that. What is going on in brains that can’t separate actor from character? Is it just needing an outlet.
I think there’s some discussion to be had about this shit getting worse because of increased atomization, COVID, social media giving people easy access to celebrities, and a more media obsessed population in general. But it apparently goes all the way back to All in the Family so what is going on?
And I don’t think that its a minor problem either! Ahmed Best and the small child that played Anakin have shared some pretty harrowing stuff. And like, this was a reality show but I’ve discussed before how upset the story of Hana Kimura is to me as a fan (if you look her up, suicide cw).
My best guess is that people with very little emotional intelligence have emotions over the media they consume and need to let it out on someone as an outlet? Combined with just, poor education leading to poor media literacy?
But yeah this has always confused me lmao. I truly wish to understand the confusing actions of humans.
The Skyler White thing is just completely based on misogyny, the whole time Skyler was trying to save her husband from being an absolute piece of shit and killing himself and possibly even his whole family in the process. Men see past all that and go “aaah woman annoying, probably on her period the whole time
”
Honestly I never understood the hate she got; Walter was working with literal psychopaths and she had (two?) children to keep safe. Did people really just see themselves in Walter to this extent and considered her a nag? She was the most sane person in the family and the only thing she did wrong was not cutting Walter out completely.
Also all this aside, it’s unbelievable that people are seriously getting upset with an actress over the events in a TV show.
her scenes were boring family shit for a long time instead of cool drug guy shit. Similar happened with iris west on that flash show, but the hate was 100% magnified because women were getting in the way of the cool part.
But the boring parts is what made the cool drug guy shit interesting
This is why AI-powered slop machines that make content will never be as interesting or compelling as things written by writers and performed by actors: people think they want nonstop action, but storytelling that’s like that is flat and uninteresting.
a challenging concept for the hogs harassing actors