A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - Amber Heard & The Myth of the Perfect Victim

Episode Date: September 26, 2023

One year later, we revisit the trial that metastasized through society, leaving a culture of brutal misogyny in its wake. NBC journalist Kat Tenbarge helps us navigate a story not just about Amber Heard, but about our misunderstanding of abuse, tabloid spectacles, influencers, and money. It is also a story about Amber Heard. Find Kat’s work here. Watch the video of this episode on YouTube. Find more of A Bit Fruity. Find more of Matt. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We pick a woman to hate. We find a reason why it's morally justified to hurl any amount of abuse at her. And then we do it. And then a bunch of years later, we're like, hmm, guess we were wrong. And then like two weeks later, we do it again. Hello, hello. I'm Matt Bernstein. And welcome to A BitFruity, the weekly podcast where we're joined by celebrities, journalists, thought leaders, and experts. And we really dig into the cultural and political moments that are shaping our lives. Really quick before we start, if you like the podcast and want to be notified when we release new episodes every week, you can follow us on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're also on Instagram at A BitFruity Pod and on YouTube, etc. All of those links will be in the episode description.

Today we are kind of jumping straight into the deep end and talking about something that really gripped the nation and the world about a year of which was the Amber Heard and Johnny Depp case. And I don't just want to sit here and relive the case. So that's not what we're going to do, but we are going to look at it from the standpoint of how the public's reaction to it and how we as a collective kind of failed not only Amber Heard, but women, how we failed victims of abuse, how we misunderstood what it means to be a victim of abuse, and how we failed ourselves as a kind of post-me-to society that, thinks of itself as one that supports and believes victims when clearly it doesn't. Today we're

joined by my friend and someone whose work I admire so deeply, Kat Tanbarge is a tech and culture journalist at NBC News. She's covered influencer culture as well as domestic abuse and celebrity abuse trials and the way that we talk about them. She was one of the very early and more prominent voices to support Amber Heard and kind of see the trial for what it was from the beginning and she got no shortage of backlash for that. So I'm so excited to be sitting down with you. I couldn't think of a better person to cover this with. Thank you for being here, Kat. Thank you so much for having me. And I just want to say from the beginning of this episode, you can probably tell that we are going to take the position of supporting Amber Heard because

we do. And we're going to get into the nuances of what that means. and supporting victims of abuse, even when you don't think that they are perfect people, supporting victims of abuse, even if you might not like them, supporting victims of abuse who are difficult, because that's what supporting victims of abuse means. And we're going to get into all of that, but I just want to say heads up. That's where this is going. Obviously, also, we're going to be talking about domestic abuse. So if that is something that makes you uncomfortable or is triggering, just proceed with that warning.

Again, I don't want to get bogged down in an hour of talking about, you know, in reliving this trial. But I do think it's important for us to have a conversation about Johnny Depp, Amber Heard, supporting victims of views, the online backlash, the people who profit off of this. I think it is important to lay a little bit of groundwork. So could you, Kat, tell us about how this trial came to be? Yes. So, you know, from my perspective, I did not know very much about Johnny Depp and Amber Heard's relationship. relationship until the defamation trial in the United States kicked off. Because that wasn't the first trial.

Right. Yes. It's like. With regard to their abuse. In the history of their relationship and also everything that happened after their relationship, the U.S. defamation trial came along very late in the process. There was so much that happened before then. And so from the get-go, people tend to hyperfixate on the verdict of this trial and the public

opinion during this trial. But in order to accurately assess what happened here, you have to go back to the beginning. And I think that by looking at just the messiness that was presented last May, it was easy for people to get confused because they were seeing the most volatile sides of both of these figures at the worst points of their lives. When it wasn't always like that. Exactly. There was obviously a time before. And when you examine that time before, it becomes really, really clear what actually happened. And, you know, for me as a journalist, I've had people say, like, why do you take a position here? Like, why are you choosing to support Amber or defend her? Shouldn't you be unbiased? And so I think my position on it is, as a journalist, you are supposed to be

the one looking at all the evidence, looking at the full timeline, and coming to a conclusion. And another thing that's important for journalists to do is to hold systems of power accountable. And so people will be like, oh, how can you disagree with the verdict? And it's like, well, first of all, which one? Because there was one before. Because there was one before that did not take Johnny Depp's side. Exactly. And so it's like even just looking at the legal thing.

And also it's not like you have to uncritically accept the verdict of that comes from a criminal justice system that is historically broken and does not often say. or favor victims of abuse. But sorry, let me continue. Exactly. I mean, for me, one of the very first connections I made as the trial was actually happening was going back to O.J. Simpson, we saw a lot of the same attitudes and media consumption habits on display. The difference is we're in the TikTok era. And so when OJ Simpson's trial was being televised, people had a way into the courtroom for the first time in a really big way where it felt like the entire country was watching these events unfold. But the difference in the Depp Heard trial is people were actually creating content alongside it, that people were consuming the trial mainly through viral content.

Right. Like it felt like very quickly, I mean, if you were on any part of the internet during spring of 2022, you came across Johnny Depp, Amber Heard content. And like, Oftentimes it was parody. Like, I remember SNL did a skit where they were like, I mean, S&L is in nature. It's comedy. And they were making a comedy routine out of this trial about domestic abuse that was ongoing. And all of the stuff. I mean, it became, like, these were not two human beings on the stand discussing domestic abuse.

It was like a TV show that came to life that we could all participate in in our own ways. And yeah, it was totally an escape. Yeah. And Amber Hurd was presented to people as a caricature of just like the worst woman who you can imagine. Because as she became a global obsession, it was 99% hatred. And so when you're aiming all of that hatred at somebody, they cease to become a human in the public eye. Like the dehumanization of Amber Hurd was completely, you know, it transformed her public perception and her public image. And so when we talk about, you know, who lives? lost in terms of everything. It was Amber, who her public image is going to be forever tied to this. And also, she met Johnny Depp when she was like 22 years old. So her entire life from that point has been completely consumed by this man. When did they meet?

How did their relationship form? How old were they at the time? Because I believe he was twice her age. Yes. Yeah. So in 2009, Johnny Debt. is already one of the most famous people on the planet. Kind of a pillar of American entertainment.

Exactly. One of the most iconic actors ever, just flat out. And he was 46, and he was starting to work on a passion project of his, which was The Rum Diary. It's a 2009 movie based on a book by Hunter S. Thompson, who was a personal hero and a personal friend of Johnny Deppes. Because he's old. Like, he knows. Yes, like Johnny Depp is not a young person. Like, this is not a flourishing romance where they were both in their 20s.

Exactly. He's 46 years old. He has all this money. Like, he could have been her dad. A hundred percent. And he also had a very well publicized history of both aggression and having a temper and sometimes a violent temper. Even if it was, like, destroying hotel rooms.

That's still an aggressive streak. And he had talked about it at length. Like, he was very open about the fact that he was willing to engage in physical violence with people. He also had a very well-publicized history of substance abuse and drug and alcohol addiction. And so you have a very volatile and very powerful man who is at that point, really, I think, at the peak of his career, you know, he's done Jack Sparrow. And so that's Johnny Depp at the outset of this relationship. And then you have Amber Heard. And Amber at that point was relatively unknown. She had very, very small roles in movies that weren't that huge. And

And when they were casting for this movie initially, like I think Scarlett Johansson and Kate Winslet or, you know, Kieran Knightley, there were other women interested who were big actresses because this was a big role. But they cast Amber. They cast her when she was 22, turning 23. Which is the age of a college graduate. The age of a college graduate. You know, and I don't mean to infantilize her. Like she was an adult. Yeah.

But she was half his age and the age of a college graduate. Exactly. And part of the reason why they all. ultimately gave the role to Amber is because she was willing to do the level of nudity that the role required that some older actresses were a little scared off by. So I think that's really interesting because this is like a theme throughout their relationship is that like Depp is the only one who's allowed to sexualize her. Later in the relationship, he's telling her you can't do roles where you take your clothes off. Like I don't want other people to see you that way. This was a

golden opportunity for her because I've had some people say things like, Oh, well, she dated him because he was going to be great for her career. And it's like she took this movie because it was a golden opportunity, a once-in-a-lifetime chance. She would be crazy not to take it. So, you know, her getting into that situation, it's not even viewed as a bad thing at this point. It's like, this is a high note for her. And at the time, both she and Depp were in relationships. Right.

When they filmed the movie in 2009 and all the way through the beginning of their own relationship, Amber was, was in a relationship with her former wife, and Johnny Depp was also in a relationship with his then wife and the mother of his children. Amber's bisexual. Yes, Amber's bisexual. Which, like, I did not know. Yeah, she's bisexual.

Bisexual people are more likely to be victimized in relationships. And also, like, the topic of her sexuality is a recurring theme throughout the allegations of abuse. So it's really interesting that he set his sights on her as she was having her first serious relationship with a woman. Right. And I mean, in some of like the texts and audios and whatever, he kind of like weaponizes her bisexuality against her

and like kind of the image of her being a slut. Yeah. He calls her a lesbian camp counselor. Yeah. Yeah. He definitely weaponizes it. A lesbian camp counselor, which like why is this an insult? I know, right?

That's like if someone ever called me a lesbian, like adjacent to a lesbian camp counselor, I'd be like, fuck yeah. Yeah, I'd be like, I should have thought of it. that for myself. So they're both married, and how do they end up together? So at the time of filming the movie, they're filming, you know, as romantic dynamics opposite one of each other in the film. And then they go back to their lives after filming completes, and then they come back together to promote the film. And that's where both of them have said

the relationship really flourished was when they, like, rejoined to promote the film. And both of them ended up getting out of their relationships and they got together. And so this was 2012 at the beginning of their relationship. And so in the beginning, everything was amazing. Because that's how relationships always start. Exactly. They're the honeymoon phase. Right.

And like, I think one thing that really strikes me about the relationship between Johnny and Amber is from what you see online, you would get this impression that she's like very cynical and has always hated him. But when you actually look at the relationship and how she described it and how her friends described her and how they talked about each other, she was very, very in love with him. She was arguably in love with him to a fault because when these signs started to emerge, her first instinct was to defend him and to protect him and to try to get him help. Right, which I imagine will later be used against her as like, well, you know, if this was so bad, then why didn't she X, Y or C? Exactly. Because there's no right way to be a victim in a public's eye. Right. And what's what really is like so frustrating about it is from doing reporting about victims and about sexual assault and intimate partner violence, over time, the pattern that is established by all of these various perpetrators, it's like you're seeing the same things over and over again.

Like the concepts and the dynamics in the cycle of abuse are very well recognized. and they're very easy to spot if you know what to look for. And so I think the way that we publicly consumed this trial, you didn't have actual education about domestic violence being shared. Right. And you didn't actually have people who were championing Depp talking about, like, the misconceptions involved in domestic violence. Because if they had, it would have become clear that he wasn't a victim.

Right. At what point does the relationship become abusive? and then how long is it until they separate? And then because I know in 2018 is when we got this op-ed from Amber that then leads to everything else. Yes. So the relationship starts to deteriorate after Depp starts to use drugs and alcohol again. And this is not like disputed because as you look at how the case proceeded through the various court systems, both sides submitted just troves of evidence that had to be verified by both parties. So we have text message history, we have emails, we have transcripts of calls, we have recordings, we have all of this evidence to assess how this relationship progressed.

And there were 14, you know, examples of violence that Amber testified to in the UK. And by looking at those 14 incidents and how they were described, you can see that it was a very familiar cycle of abuse began to emerge. It started just completely out of the blue, as these types of dynamics often do. In a relationship, you have the honeymoon phase, so you're completely unsuspecting that this is going to happen. And the first thing that Amber alleged that Depp did was while they were just having a conversation, she made a joke about one of his tattoos that was actually referencing his relationship with Winona Ryder from a very long time ago. And he snapped and he hit her, Sheila. And so that was the very first moment that violence was introduced into the relationship.

And from that moment on, the pattern begins. And what you see is Depp immediately apologizes. And he ascribes the violence in the relationship to what he calls the monster, which is the side of him that comes out when he's abusing drugs and alcohol. Right. Like kind of distancing the person that he is from the person that he is when he's abusing her, but it's the same person. Exactly.

And the way that Johnny Depp describes himself as the monster, he was doing this well before he ever even started dating Amber. Because some of those things that were entered into court as evidence showed him emailing people talking about the monster before the relationship began. So, like, this was a part of his personal history. This was just the first time that she saw that side of him. And, you know, one thing that I come back to a lot that is a really good. resource for understanding the relationship is Amber and Johnny had a mutual friend named I.O. Tillet Right. And Iyo testified during the trial. So people are already familiar with him. But in 2016, he actually wrote an op-ed for Refinery 29, where he explains why he called 911 for Amber.

Oh. And in this op-ed, he talks about how everyone loved him. Like, they loved Johnny. Their group of friends, was really close. They lived in Johnny's penthouses. He had offered them to their group of friends to live in. They all had close relationships with him. So nobody jumped to accuse him of being an abuser. And especially Amber. Like that's what Ios says in the essay is like she wanted to defend him. She loved him more than anyone. She made excuses for him. She wanted him to get better. And so that's why she didn't leave because... Well, and like in getting ready for this episode, I was listening to podcasts that were released this time last year by people who were pretty uncritically covering this trial and very much from the, you know, hashtag Amber turd is a liar, L-O-L-O-L-O-L.

And it was pretty gross to listen to the way that people trivialized what happened to her, but also people did talk about the fact that there were a lot of people in the kind of Amber Johnny Orbit who were benefiting from their proximity to Johnny Depp and how he was giving them places to live, these penthouses, these houses in the hills, yada, yada. But then somehow the conclusion that people were drawing when I was listening to these podcasts from a year ago were like, so obviously Amber wanted to stay because she had a lot to gain because she was mooching off of him. And I was like, wait, that's what you're taking from this? Like, and not the fact that this would obviously make it harder for anybody to come out against Johnny Depp. Like, it's a power

dynamic, but people were covering it as like basically like, well, she's a gold digger, so abuse is kind of the price that she pays. Whoops. Also, she wasn't a gold digger. And the idea that like people come forward, I mean, and I know this has been talked about, but it really does bear mentioning. Like the idea that people, and especially women, come forward to gain something, to gain fame, to gain money. Like, we don't live in a world where that works. And that is why this does not actually happen the way that people wanted to happen. Yeah. Like, we don't live in a world.

And this was showcased in this trial. We don't live in a world where women who come forward with abuse are values. are believed, are listened to, are much less rewarded. And so this like constant thing of like, well, Amber was planning this from the beginning so that she could then come forward and reap the benefits of coming forward about being an abuse victim. It's like, what benefits? I mean, we saw it.

We saw it last year. What benefits did she reap? She was abused and now she can't go in public without being, you know, every, every paparazzi saw being disseminated across the entire internet. Exactly. And she has no money. Exactly. And also, people say that Amber planned all of this or that she made it all up so that she could benefit from the Me Too movement.

But the Me Too movement didn't happen until after their relationship ended and she had already accused him of abuse. Right. So the Me Too, their relationship ended when? So they were married in 2015 and then they divorced in 2016. And the Me Too movement was the end of 2017. Yes. So they separate at the end, they separate in 2016. Yes. And then in 2018, Amber writes an op-ed in The Washington Post. That becomes the basis for this trial. Yes. And so at the time of the separation in 2016, it first made headlines because she got a temporary restraining order against him. And she went to court and she came out with a bruise on her face. And so these photographs immediately come out. And there's this revisionist history narrative that right from the get-go people supported Amber and denounced Johnny Depp.

But that did not happen. And that's what her op-ed was actually about was, you know, she came forward as a victim of domestic violence in a pre-Me-2 era. Right. The second she stepped out of that courthouse with that bruise on her face, there were people outside chanting at her calling her a liar. Right. So from the very minute she accused him of abuse, the whole world was against her. Right. And like we look back on her decision to come forward in a quote-unquote post-me-to era that we live in now and we're like, yeah, well, she was.

just riding the wave and, you know, into the sunset. And it's like, no, the wave didn't exist yet. There has never been a particularly empowered time for women to come forward about being victims of abuse. But like, if there ever was one where that did not exist at all, like this was that time. This was very much pre-me-to. Yes. And so after she got the temporary restraining order and things settled down a little bit, she in depth came out with a joint statement where they said that their relationship was volatile at times but was ultimately a loving relationship. And they said neither party had made false accusations for gain. So at that point in time, there's no argument on the table that there was some sort of violence in the relationship. And then things start to change.

Because Depp acquires new legal counsel and his new legal counsel has a strategy in place to flip the tables. And all of a sudden, Amber's not the victim. She's the abuser. And this is a really common strategy that abusers use called Darvo, which stands for deny, attack, reverse victim, and offender. So you're denying that you're the abuser, and then you're reversing the attack and saying, actually, you abused me. And so this is a very old tactic, but we've seen it used with great success in the Depp Heard trial because it's being reframed in the context of the Me Too movement. Well, and this is a kind of manipulation of the facts that Amber Heardt trial. will end up having hurled against her by everyone alive. Like Amber Hurd is a manipulative psychopath.

When it's actually like, no, Johnny Depp's lawyers were manipulative psychopaths. But like that couldn't be true because he's Jack Sparrow. Right. And like he has such a cool demeanor on the stand. Yes. Like that so. That is one of the things that drives me so crazy is people were like, he did such a good job in court and she did such a bad job.

And I'm like he's one of the greatest actors of all time. Right. And like, I mean, yeah. It was just people being like, how could he lie? He, you know, he talked like this. I'm like, we're watching a television show. Yeah. And we shouldn't be.

We all need to turn it off. Yeah. So in 2018, she publishes this op-ed in the Washington Post where she describes being, you know, the face of women who come forward with abuse and then facing society's wrath, which by all means of evidence that we have is true. Exactly. Yes. So she writes the 2018 op-ed, which, by the way, was. not even that big of a deal. Like, before the 2022 defamation trial, I don't think people were widely reading or widely sharing this op-ed. It wasn't that big of a deal. No, it was not a viral

essay by any means. No, but they saw an opportunity. And that is what is so vexing about all of this is like, people are like, she can't leave him alone. What are you talking about? She wrote an op-ed where she didn't name him. Right. And then his lawyers proceeded to sue her for defamation across multiple continents. First, they sue her in the UK and they lose. Then they sue her in the U.S. in a state where neither of them have ever lived where they never went in their relationship together. The only reason they were allowed to do it in Virginia is because that's where the Washington Post is published. And it's like, yeah, she's obviously the one in this situation who's like seeking attention and fame and money, which is why they are suing her across the globe. Yeah.

Like what? It's over over, over an essay that he was not named in. Yeah. And they also are building their case around the idea that her op-ed had damaged his career, which is really laughable. Right. I'm laughing. Right. We are like, well, and I mean, yeah, and look at their careers now also. Like, Johnny Depp is arguably more famous and loved than he's ever been in his life. Like, I'm frankly a little bit scared to put out this episode because I know that people who have Johnny Depp's Dan accounts are going.

to be in my DMs like, oh, I used to like you. He just like walked in Rihanna's Savage by Fenty show or he was there or something. And like she, like I said, like she can't really leave her home. Yeah. So the trial ensues. And Amber has a mountain of evidence that shows she was abused. And then Johnny Depp also has evidence that she at points fought back. Yes. And yes. And basically, so in 2020, Honey Depp's team leaked some recordings to the Daily Mail, notoriously anti-women tabloid, the Daily Mail, which was instrumental in Britney Spears' downfall, which was instrumental in Megan Markle.

In all of these attacks on prominent women, you know, these tabloids appear as these characters. But everyone accepted it uncritically and was like, no, this time it's legit because Amber Heard sucks. Right. And, you know, the audio that they released that I think I would argue is the overwhelming piece of evidence that people cite when they say that she abused her. Can I guess?

Is it the one where she's like, tell them I hit you? Yeah. See if they believe you. Yeah. Because I mean, I wasn't even paying close attention to the trial, but like I, at the time, like that was like one you could not escape because what did she say in the audio? So in the audio, they're having an argument and Johnny brings forward the idea that he's going to accuse her of abuse. And she laughs.

And she's like, tell the world, Johnny that I. abused you. Like, man, I'm a victim of abuse too. And she's laughing because it's so ridiculous because to her, at this point, she's lived through multiple years of this man beating her up. Right. And like there are witnesses. I feel so comfortable saying that Johnny Depp beat her up because A, it was proven in court in the UK. And B, I O Tillett Wright, witnessed a bloody pillow. He witnessed clumps of hair on the floor. People witnessed Depp pushing her. her, shoving her, hitting her. One of her friends testified that she wrapped herself around Amber's body during one of Johnny's

angry, violent outrages to protect her because it was so common in their relationship by that point that he would be beating on her. And so when she said that... Right. It's like shocking, like, woman who's endured years of abuse responds to abuse in a way that isn't like super PC. Exactly. And like, it is worth saying that on its face, if you look at it.

that audio, if you listen to that audio, as we all did, clipped out of context, out of the context of their years long, horrible relationship of him abusing her. Yeah, like, it's a bad thing to say. Like, it's a bad thing to trivialize male victims of abuse. It's a bad thing to trivialize anyone's abuse. And it's a bad thing to threaten the way that society does not care about abuse victims and, like, weaponize that against someone who you're in an argument with. Like, but I'm not here. And I don't think you're here to argue that, like, that was a good thing to say. Right. It's just also not the point. Yeah.

Because it's just like, by the time you get to that stage of the abusive relationship, this is extremely common victim behavior because it's like when you've been in a relationship with someone for years that has been abusive, they've built an entire fake reality around you through manipulation and coercion and gaslighting. They've literally driven you insane. You've gone crazy because you've been abused for years. And so we see victims behave in ways that are being mischaracterized in the post-me-2 era. Because it's very common for victims to do things like tell their abuser, hey, like don't leave, like screaming at them. Like, don't leave, don't leave, don't leave. Because something abusers do is they give their victims the silent treatment and they stonewall them and they leave them feeling trapped. And so the behaviors that victims often engage in toward the end of the relationship, when you're

just looking at them out of context and you have an untrained sort of mind when you're looking at the abusive dynamics, you might be like, that person must be the abuser. Right. And I think something that the, you know, one of perhaps the shortcomings of the Me Too movement and why it maybe didn't prepare us for this moment to believe Amber Heard is that it framed the victim versus abuser dynamic as something where, like, in order to be a victim, you must lie down and let yourself be abused. And that is sometimes the case, you know, especially when we're talking about children who are abused, you know, people who are entirely powerless. But it didn't really set us up for this moment to look at Amber Hurd who is being abused.

And at points, fought back, you know, verbally, emotionally, physically. Like, Amber Hurd behaved in ways that I'm sure she regrets at certain points. and that were unsavory and that were cruel. Yes. But that doesn't make her not a victim of abuse. Right. And that's the heart of this. Yes.

We're not arguing whether or not everything she said was good and right. We're arguing that she was a victim of abuse. And she was. And there's mountains of evidence to support that. But everything became so messy and everyone became so obsessed with dissecting every detail of everything she said on the stand, which is understandable because it's a court of law. there became these moments where like the poop on the bed and like the donation stuff and the Malani cosmetics palette where people found ways to find what they considered to be a lie in her

testimony. And that proved that not only was she lying about whether or not she pooped on the bed or whether or not this was the exact color corrector palette she used. And we'll get into those in a second. Yeah. Because those are the few details that I do want to just like debunk. quickly. But not only did she lie about those things, but she must be lying about everything, she must be lying about being abused at all. And therefore, anything that we the public say or tweet

or any way that we abuse her is justified because she is an insane, nasty woman who is trying to ruin the life of Jack Sparrow. Yes, exactly. And what is so hypocritical about that is when people point out the very obviously abusive things that Johnny Depp says and does, his defenders will say he's a victim so he's allowed to do that. Like, for example, he texts his group chat and says, I want global humiliation for Amber. He plots it all out. And that's exactly what he got. Of course. It was global. Did he say he wanted to like rape her dead body or something? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you bring up those text messages and you're like, hey, is it appropriate for someone to talk about their partner this way? And people will, with a straight face, be like, he was being abused so that makes it okay. Right, where the logic, the same logic cannot be applied to Amber who, like, at one point, made an off-color remark about, you know, how the world wouldn't believe Johnny. Yeah. Because she was actually being abused for years on end. And of course, she was in a moment of desperation.

And I'm not saying what she said was right. But she said it. And we're like, yeah, she was a victim of abuse. That's how she was behaving. And people were like, nope, nope, but Jack Sparrow. Sorry, I got to stop calling him Jack Sparrow. But, like, let's get into the three. not the three, but three of, I feel like, the big moments that people turned into like internet

sensations in order to harass and abuse her because apparently she was a manipulative lying psychopath. So the first one is Amber Tird. Yes. Do you want to catch us up on Amber Tard? Yes. And I had to. This is actually so interesting because like so many people knew about the trial but didn't know all the details. And one of my friends didn't realize that Amber Turd was supposed to refer to her actually shitting in his bed. Right. I just thought it was a nasty nickname that people gave to her. It's like, ha, ha, turd rhymes with herd. I did not realize there was a detail about shit in a bed. Yes. I was actually, I was like really thrown off when I heard about this because it is bizarre. Like, let me say that up front. Like, this is a bizarre detail. Yes. Which is why it made for such

great content. Yes. And it's so bizarre that I think people were just like, it has to be true. Right. So do you want to explain what... Let's get into it. Let's get into Amber's. Let's get into it because let's examine this allegation that Amber heard pooped in Johnny Depp's bed. Right. And we'll start with Johnny Depp and what he has had to say about this very topic. Because well before the trial, Johnny Depp once texted his assistant and asked him to shit in the doorway of Amber's room so that she would come across a giant turd. Oh, so he tried to do this one.

He tried to do this. He wanted to shit. Okay, he wanted to shit. Okay, but. In the same way that, like, so much of what he says and does is projection. The Amber Turd thing is entirely projection because it was initially his idea. Oh. I didn't know about this. Yeah.

Yeah. No, it's nuts. And, like, again, this is a text message that was entered into the court as evidence, so it had to be approved by both sides. Like, there's no denying that he once texted his assistant and asked him to do that. And he asked his assistant. And he was like, shit in Amber Hurd's doorway. I want her to encounter human fecese. Yeah, he was like, this will be so funny.

Okay. So, but then, but that's not what we actually talked about with Amber Tirt. Right. Yes. So the. The Amber Tert allegations. The Amber Tert allegations. So the other, so, okay, there was shit in the bed.

We've talked about this. Like, there's a photo of the shit in the bed. The bed that Johnny and Amber slept in together, there was fecal matter. Yes. I feel so ridiculous trying to talk about this. I know. There was shit in the bed. Yeah.

One morning. Yes. And the housekeeper found it. And the housekeeper found it. Yes. And so Johnny accuses this of being Amber or one of her friends. Okay. And so that's where it started.

It was after a night where they had been fighting. Yes. And he wasn't there because that's like a key detail. Okay. And the judge in the UK case brought this up because he was like, why would Amber or one of her friends do this if Johnny. if Johnny wasn't even going to be there. Right. So Johnny and his team claim, you know, Johnny and Amber had a really bad fight the night before.

Johnny stormed out. He was going to sleep at one of his other mansions that night. And Amber was so pissed at him that she shit in his bed. Yeah. And the housekeeper found it in the morning. And this was framed as like Amber Heard is insane. Yes. And she shit in his bed to get back at him after they fought.

Yeah. Which like I have questions about it. I mean, I've seen a picture of the shit. Like, I'm not, you know, a forensic expert in, like, examining where shit comes from. And whether, because they had a dog and people said that it was the dog. Or was it the dog or was it Amber. But, like, there was shit in the bed. The thing that doesn't make sense to me is that if Johnny wasn't going to be there, then why would Amber do this as some act of revenge?

Yes. If you're going to shit in someone's bed to make their life miserable, shouldn't you shit in the bed that they're sleeping in? Like, Johnny wasn't there. Exactly. And, like, the most important context. I'm just saying if I were to shit in someone's bed, you know, which like, you know, who's to say? The cherry on the top is they have this dog who has a long track record of shitting on the bed. But people are like, no, it couldn't have been a dog.

It's definitely Amber because she's crazy. Right. There's literally a text message that Amber had sent to one of Johnny's employees after one night where they woke up and Amber texts him and is like, boo, shit all over Johnny. I'm not even kidding. She's shit all over him in the middle of the night. These are the details that people really sunk their teeth into when they were, you know, when influencers, podcasters, everyday people on Twitter, whatever, people in the news, when they were painting her as this like manipulative insane woman who could never have been abused. Like these are the details that they used to paint her as that. And understandably so because like it is comically ridiculous, like the idea of someone shitting in their partner's bed.

Yeah. Like it's like out of a movie. Yes. And I guess on this detail, we don't know ultimately if it was the dog. or if it was Amber or one of Amber's friends. But worst case scenario, like, if it was Amber who shit in the bed, an unsavory act, sure. But, like, does it matter? No.

Doesn't matter. Does it tell us anything about her being a liar, about being abused? Like, that's the thing that doesn't really make sense to me. No. It's just a way to, I think, further dehumanize her. And it also strips away, I think, a quality that could have been used to her advantage, which is that she's a really beautiful woman. And so this is something that's really interesting

because people actually are slightly prejudiced against beautiful women. This is a real thing. Like there are real studies that show, you know, whether it's because of intimidation or jealousy or sexualization, whatever it is, people are less likely to view a beautiful woman as credible or a victim.

Oh. And so this is already something that is a dynamic with Amber. But I think that calling her Amber Turd and creating this image of her, like, doing something so disgusting, was a way to further dehumanize her and also strip away that idea of having beauty or elegance or tastefulness. Like, it was a way to immediately present her as immature, childish, disgusting, and animalistic. Right. And so it was very successful, but it was all part of the smear campaign. Right. And it was, it was like cartoonish.

And something that I return to a lot when I think about this trial is all of the people who the second they're, you know, because people were just being so extremely abusive towards Amber Online. And like I feel like it's really hard for anyone of any belief with regard to this case to look back on the things that were said to and about Amber Heard in the media and be like, yeah, that was all justified. I mean, actually, there definitely are a lot of people who believe that. But like, but like, but I think normal people with human empathy, might I say, would look back and be like, that was really fucking wild the way that we treated her. And like the photoshop pictures of her like the shit. I mean, it's just, it was just crazy. And I think a lot of people go, well, you know, it's so important to recognize that men can be victims of domestic abuse. And it is bad that oftentimes we overlook that as a society.

But that's not really what anyone's arguing. And at the time, relentless campaigns and jokes. and videos about Amber Tird isn't exactly doing anything for male victims of abuse. No. And we saw some of those very same creators who made the Amber Heard hate propaganda in cases where there are male abuse victims, with the leading example being Anthony Rapp and Kevin Spacey. Did those people support Anthony Rapp? No. No.

They actually undermined Anthony Rapp because when Anthony... Which Anthony Rapp is an actor. Yes. And he was in rent, among a lot of other things. He's wonderful. I love Anthony. Yeah, he's amazing. But he was the one who, for context, he was the accuser who came forward accusing Kevin Spacey of sexual assault and kind of, you know, that was the end of Kevin Spacey. Yes. Yeah. And at the time, I mean, there are obviously like there are many other allegations against Kevin Spacey, too. When Anthony Rap most recently was in court testifying about this, the jury did not side with him. Yeah, he lost. He lost. Yeah.

And so all of the people who were making noise about male victims in support of Johnny Depp were nowhere to be found. Nowhere to be found. Yeah. If, you know, people want to talk about what this was really about. Like, I don't think it was about supporting male victims of abuse. No. I think maybe it was about supporting Johnny Depp to an extent because they love Johnny Depp. But it was people behaved in ways that were so abusive to like an animalistic point.

Yes. And then the second any of it was questioned, we just immediately go to this morally superior grandstand place of like, Well, this is about what Amber Heard represent. Amber Heard is going to undermine future victims of assault. You know, this is giving them a bad look and we're, you know, it was all and we're defending male victims of abuse. It was like, no, you're just having fun harassing a woman. Yeah. You're just enjoying the savagery of this.

And like at the very least, admit that. Yeah. This is not about changing society for the better. Like, I mean, it's laughable. It's laughable. This is not about any of that. This is just about you having fun dancing on a woman who's been abused. Exactly.

And because you see her as more powerful than yourself. You're just someone on Twitter. She's a rich and famous beautiful woman. And our culture loves to do this. We do this over and over and over again. And occasionally people stop and are like, why do we keep doing this? Right. And then we do it again.

And then we do it again. And that's the really insidious underlining of all of this is that what happened to Amber Hurd contributed to a post-Me2 backlash that seeks to undermine all victims. Right. You know, another thing that people really got a thrill out of, and I want to talk about this because when this was all on TV last year, I was not like touching it with a 10-foot pole. I really, it didn't feel like any of my business and also just watching the way people were behaving online around. It felt really gross to me. And I also have never watched Pirates of the Caribbean. But one of the things that caught my eye was the Malani Cosmetics makeup palette thing. And this was

something that people really used to like, again, smear Amber Heard as like a psychopathic liar. Yeah. So my understanding of it is Amber Heard, you know, because she was being physically abused regularly. She, as many people who are abused too, they cover up their bruises with makeup. Yes. And so her lawyer held up in court a color corrector slash concealer palette by the brand Melani Cosmetics and was like this is like the palette that she used to hide her bruises. Obviously that is not the exact palette. Like the physically exact palette that Amber was using. But people immediately on social media were like, wait a minute, that's not the palette she was using.

That's a newer palette. When all that they meant was like this. And I think she ended up on the stand to be like, this is like the palette that I was using. It was a color correcting palette. It was a concealer palette. Similar to this one. Melani cosmetics on TikTok, they, you know what I'm going to say. Yep.

They, the brand made a TikTok where they had some, some corporate employees from Malani showing, you know, a screenshot of the palette, the Malani color correcting palette that was held up in court. And then to the tune in the background of like, we're international super spies, like, you know that song. Yep. They basically did this like kind of spy movie reenactment where they looked back and they said, they showed that the exact palette that was held up in court came out in 2017. You know, that model of that concealer palette came out in 2017. So therefore, it couldn't have been the one that Amber was using to cover up the bruises she got from her abusive partner. Which, like, first of all, even if they were claiming that was the exact palette, which they weren't,

why the fuck is a brand cashing in on this moment? Like, while, again, while the trial is still going on, because that TikTok, got millions of views and thousands and thousands and thousands of comments being like, oh my God, Melani, you ate her up. Like, like, going to go by Melani now. And I'm like, truly fuck this cosmetics corporation for viewing the seriousness of this moment and being like, you know what? Content.

Yeah. That drove me insane. It was really, really wild. I think the examples that we saw of companies and entities trying to use this moment to their advantage, and profit off of it. And at the end of the day, it's just like, like you said, this became a huge moment in the trial and how the public consumed it rather than Amber had witnesses who testified to covering up her bruises. Amber had witnesses testifying to I literally saw him abuse her. Right. But that was far less interesting than like a Malani super spies TikTok. And that's what I mean.

Like this wasn't a trial in a court. This was. It was a trial by TikTok. It was. And we all suffered because of it. Yeah. Like collectively. Yeah. And then the last one, fuck Malani cosmetics.

Like, can I just say like fuck Malani Cosmetic? I've never bought it again since then. And I used to buy it. I don't know if I ever did. They're way better drugstore brands. There are. Yeah. Maybelline is kind of.

I'm a babyling girl. You go to. And then the third, the third kind of thing that I just, we need to debunk because it was a huge part of this was the donation. Scandal. So do you want to explain that? Yes. So again, and like this is a common theme is people seizing on details that are extremely unrelated to the claims. So initially, when she first got that temporary restraining order, you saw Depp's side indicate like, oh, Amber is just making salacious claims to try to get a bigger divorce settlement. And so because of that, like many women who are abused, Amber asked to not get spousal support. So she actually was entitled to a lot of money and she declined it. When they got divorced. When they got divorced, yes. However, in the divorce proceedings, she was supposed to get a $7 million settlement, which would be paid, this is key, which would be paid in installments. So Depp didn't have to give her a $7 million lump sum. He had to pay it over time. Right.

And so her public statement was that she would be giving it to charity. Right. Because she, she, she, wanted to show from the beginning, like, this is not about money. I'm not trying to get rich off this. Yeah. And also in the divorce, all she kept were the dogs. He kept the vehicles, the houses, the private island. And again, she's literally entitled. And they didn't have a pre-up. So she was entitled to a lot more than she was entitled to all of this. She could take it all of it. Right. She's the, she's the worst gold digger in the world. Right. Well, and that's the thing. I mean, so much of Johnny, of Johnny Depp's fan base, that was like, this was all predicated on the notion that she wanted money. And the reason that she had lied and the reason that she did all it is because

like she is a gold digger. We're like if she was a gold digger, I mean, like she's she did not do a good job of gold digging. Exactly. So she does make a payment to the children's hospital. I think it's the children's hospital in LA, which is part of the emotional propaganda against Amber Hurd is like she withheld this money from sick and dying children. Right. And they're saying that she lied and what's the difference between donation and pledging? Right. Because she's, pledged to give them the installments of her divorce settlement as they came in. Right. And people were like, oh, but the check she wrote wasn't for $7 million. It was only for like, the total came out to like one something million dollars. Yeah. And it's like, well, yeah, that's all the money that she had received at that point.

Right. And then people were saying that because she did not send them $7 million, that this was evidence that she was fraudulent. She was trying to, you know, by talking about that she was giving money to this money to charity, she was framing herself as this like philanthropic individual. who wasn't in it for the money, but that actually she was lying about all of that and she was going to give a little bit of money and then keep the rest. When in actuality, my understanding is that not only did she not have the rest because it was being paid to her in installments, but also at this point, like Johnny Depp's legal team is now hounding her. Yes. And so a lot of the money that she is receiving has to go to her own legal counsel to defend herself, which she did not foresee, and correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't she reach out to the children's hospital

or wherever else she was supposed to give money to and be like, hey, yes, my finances aren't looking the way that I thought they were going to look because now I need to defend myself against all this legal bullshit. Yes. So, sorry, like, the money isn't going to come in as smoothly as I thought it was going to. Exactly. But that's not how the public received this. The public received this as she said she was going to give money to poor and sick and dying children.

She lied. She kept it for herself so she could go buy like 100 Chanel bags. Yeah. And Amber Heard is a liar and insane. And it's like, what? That's not what happened. It's not what happened. and it's just so twisted and, like, part of the manipulation from Depp himself, because it's like, his abusive strategies include gaslighting.

And now the entire public has joined in on the gaslighting because it's his, he's the reason why she couldn't make this donation in full. Right. And they're blaming her. Because he was suing the fuck out of her. Exactly. And, like, that's what. And, and to be clear, if she had withheld money that she said she was going to donate, because she wanted to buy a bunch of handbags and houses and cars and get rich,

do I think it would have been a pretty awful thing to do? Like, yeah, I do. That would be really shitty. Does it have anything to do with the fact that she was abused? Does it make her a liar about the abuse? No. Right. It has nothing to do with that.

And like, between the Malani thing and this and the shit, it's like people were looking at these details, particularly this one about the donations that had, this was about. her activities completely outside of whether or not she was abused. And yet people were like, well, if we make up some story about how she had a plan from the beginning to cash in on this whole thing, to cash in on the divorce, to cash in on the abuse, if that was true and that she lied about this and that she lied about giving money to the children's hospital, then she lied about everything. Yeah. When like she could have lied. I don't think she did lie about the money and the charity situation, but she could have lied about it. And it would have made her like a reasonably

shitty person, but it would not have made her any less of a victim of abuse. Absolutely. I want people to really think about it and like think to yourself, put yourself in the shoes of a predator. If you are a predator and you are seeking out someone to abuse, you are going to seek out vulnerabilities, different types of vulnerabilities. You're going to seek out ways that will make someone easy to be manipulated. And you'll also seek out ways to discredit people after the fact. Abusers specifically seek out. people who they know aren't going to be believed. It's all part of the cycle of abuse. And just because somebody is a criminal, a liar, mentally ill, an abuser themselves, none of that disqualifies you

from being a victim. In fact, people who are mentally ill are more likely to be victimized because of this reason. And I think this brings us to the myth of the perfect victim because Amber heard after enduring years of abuse behaved in ways, you know, emotionally, verbally, physically, in ways that I think most people would disagree with in ways that were cruel, in ways that I'm sure she regrets. But that's also like the case for a surprising amount of domestic abuse victims. And it's, that's not a reality that I think we're willing to accept. Like, we want victims to be to be completely like docile and have a clean,

slate and be, you know, this quote-unquote perfect victim who has never done anything wrong. And if you claim to be, and this is what I kind of feel when I look at the way the internet behaved and the public behaved, you know, a lot of people who say that they support victims but did not support Amber Heard because she was not the type of victim that they would like to support. If you're waiting for, if you're waiting for that person to support, you're never going to find them. Exactly.

And you don't support victims. Exactly. Yes. It is so frustrating to hear people espouse this view of survivor acceptance without actually accepting any survivors. Right. And that's what you get from the legions of people who identify as supporters of Johnny Depp and this men to movement. It's not about embracing a new kind of survivor. Alex Winter is a prominent survivor.

And he's talked about how in the Me Too movement, there was already space for male survivors. We don't need to have a backlash against the Me Too movement in order to make space for male survivors. What the backlash is doing is it is essentially a scaled up effort of Darvo in which we are actually going against the victims. And we're taking the abusers and we're falsely positioning them as. the true victims, which is extremely dangerous. Yeah. Obviously. Rain Fisher-Quinn, who is a writer and a feminist, who I think is just brilliant and also 21

years old, which is insane, she wrote in her substack essay about this, two quotes that I'm going to read. And again, this is not to say that Amber Hurd is perfect. She was cruel. She was callous. She's lied, just as Depp has. Most importantly, like many, many women trapped in long-term abusive relationships, she absolutely engaged in emotional toxicity and a degree of physical violence.

For anyone familiar with cycles of domestic abuse, this is nothing new. Reactive violence is an extremely common result of psychological degradation and fear responses that come with sustained abuse. Of course, violence is never okay, but the complete dehumanization of women who behave imperfectly in torturous circumstances is just one half of a catch-22, which conspires to keep all women silent. If you were abused and did nothing, they'll say you weren't abused at all, and so you're a liar and therefore an abuser. If you were abused and you fought back, it means you were an abuser to begin with.

And then the second quote, a little bit later in the essay, she says, much of popular discourse acts as though there are only two feasible options when it comes to Hurds and really any women's innocence. She's either an evil, psychotic manipulator who's guilty on all accounts, or she must have been a perfectly innocent angel who's never done anything wrong. I don't think Amber Hurd is a feminist hero. And I'm not saying this to make my support of her more palatable or to perform impartiality. I'm saying it because she shouldn't have to be. I think it's essential to a much larger point and in reality far more controversial

to believe Amber Hurd is a victim while also acknowledging her wrongdoings. Once you start pushing the idea that a woman has to be perfect in order to be believed, you head down a road that ends with a systemic exorcism of any woman too human to be a good victim. She ate. She said that better than I could have ever.

You know, we're getting to the end here, but Amber Heard did not make money off of this situation in the way that all of her critics seemed to believe was her goal. But I know you, Kat, as someone who has long covered influencer culture, there were some people who did make a lot of money off of this situation. Would you let's talk about that? I sure would. So, you know, when you look at the pro-Johnny Depp movement, it's a lot of.

started well before the 2022 trial. It started back in 2020, actually, and maybe even before, because he always had fans. And so we always had people who were willing to defend him. But you actually saw more of a campaign forming around the idea that Amber Hurd was the true abuser. And so for years, you've had various content creators on different platforms, mostly YouTube, starting to build this narrative and starting to build this framing. And the framing, I always refer to it as just Johnny Good, Amber Bad. Whatever happens in the case, they frame it through this narrative of Johnny Good, Amber Bad. And so the content that they're creating is ultimately biased.

Absolutely. And so by creating biased content in support of Johnny and against Amber, they're able to direct the general atmosphere online because they're priming people. Before the trial even begins, they're priming people to believe that he's the good guy and she's the bad guy and that's what we're going to see. And so even when you had, for example, there were many legal commentators who covered this and a lot of people were like, oh, I watched the trial every day. I watched it on YouTube as people were providing their legal commentary. And if you actually watch that commentary, they're doing it with this bias. They're doing it with this slant.

And they're doing it because they're making money directly from that. Right, because people weren't tuning into videos that supported Amber Hurder were, you know, at the least bit critical of Johnny Depp. Yeah. And the only reason that they would tune into those videos as they tuned into your tweets at the time, Kat, were to then get in your messages and DMs and comments to abuse you in the way that they were abusing Amber Heard. Yeah. Like they really only wanted to positively tune in to content that was supporting Johnny Depp. And tune in they did. I remember watching The Verdict, which was the only part of this that I watched live.

because at that point it was like, okay, this is the media event of the decade. I remember watching it on like the law and whatever channel on YouTube, and it was like four million people were watching the live stream app, like one single live stream on YouTube. I have never seen that many people watching. Like Charlie Demelio at the height of her 2020 COVID TikTok fame on her Instagram account, she would do lives. And I remember she hit like 250,000 people watching her live stream at once,

which was insane. That is a fucking. lot of people to like a quarter of a million people watching this one girl this had let me do 16 times that mad as hard it had 16 times that amount of people watching the verdict live like people were tuned the fuck in and every single comment on that live stream was like I mean the most abusive carceral just like you know hit her where it hurts you know people people wanted to see her fall yeah and there were so many YouTubers and and TikTokers and Instagrammers and people on Twitter who are making enormous amounts of money

and gaining these enormous followings by covering this with varying degrees of sincerity. Donald Trump Jr. was tweeting about hashtag Amber Turd. And like there was not, to be clear, the harassment of Amber Hurd did not have a left-wing, right-wing divide. It was basically everybody. Yes. And, you know, I think that sometimes you can have surprising agreements with people you might not otherwise agree with. But, like, I think in principle, if you see Donald Trump Jr. tweet something and you are tweeting a similar thing that you should probably stop and be like, hang on. You know, it's, I mean, it's like when like Anna Casparian a few weeks ago was like tweeting all the turf shit and then Ben Shapiro was retweeting her.

And it was like, Anna, I don't know. Like if Ben Shapiro started retweeting me, I might be like, am I wrong? Yeah. You know? Exactly. Which like a surprisingly small amount of people were considering maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm adding to something. Yeah.

Maybe I'm piling on to something. That is bad. And in a year, we'll be discussed on a podcast as being bad. What was interesting to me was a lot of this content that was being generated. Right. Like it brought this incredibly serious thing, which was domestic abuse. And it used the details of the case, you know, the Malani palette, the cartoonishly ridiculous, like poop story. And it used those details to kind of turn this into like not a story

about real people being abused, not a real woman being abused, but like a TV show that we could like extract content out of. Yeah. And what was, what's interesting to me is like recently, so if you're listening, I don't, I don't know how many of you are consume beauty content heavily. But like I have, I have since the early odds. I have since like the early days of pre-buy sister Tati Westbrook. Like I'm tuned the fuck into that. And so recently there was Mascaragate who, if you didn't catch wind of it, it was Michaela Negera, who's the biggest beauty TikToker who allegedly, I mean, no, it was pretty obvious. She did an ad for a L'Oreal mascara where at the end of the ad, she had clearly applied false eyelashes to make it look

like the mascara was doing a little more work than it was actually doing. And for like two weeks, you didn't hear the end of this on the internet. People, it went from like, sister, I think you applied maybe a demiwispy in there. But then like, you know, after two weeks, it would been, it was like, Michaela Negara is literally breaking the law right now in false advertising practices. And like she needs to be widely condemned. And like we need to abuse her as much as possible so that we can be doing a morally good thing. And it was like, wait a minute.

Hold on. Like, okay. Yeah. Maybe she shouldn't have done. a false lash, but it was like, it was a pretty small thing. Yeah. Like, it was like, yeah, you shouldn't apply a false lash when you're advertising mascara, but like, she didn't fucking kill someone.

Right. But by the way that people reacted, you would think that she had. Yes. And it was people were taking that issue and watching the discourse around it. Like, it almost, it felt the same as the way that people were talking about. Amber Heard, it was like, which was an incredibly serious thing in real life. But people took it and kind of dumbed it down in the case of Depp versus Heard to a place where they could talk about it, like as a TV show, you know, or something or something that could be made that could make like, you know, content or fun viral TikToks about. And then in this Mascaragate situation, which was a comparatively like very small indiscretion on Michaela Nogera's behalf, like people took that and amplified the seriousness of it.

So it's like, no, it's not just that she put on a false lash, it's that she broke the law. And it was like all of these things that we decide to get mad about in the public, you know, in the court of TikTok, they all reach this middle ground of like commercially acceptable seriousness where, you know, if someone is abused by their husband and now they're in court for that, it's like we dumb that down. So it's not that serious where if we're adding to the abuse that she's facing in the public eye, we don't have to feel badly about it because it's not that serious. You know, she's a rich and famous celebrity. It was a funny. little poop drama, like she'll be okay, she'll be rich and famous no matter what. Then from the other end, we take things like the bi-sister vitamin drama of like, you know, or Michaela Negara applying a false lash and we're like, no, no, no, it's serious. It's not just that. It's seriousness enough that we have to make content about this for two weeks. Yes. Yeah. It's like a false equilibrium. Right. Totally. That treats, that treats every like public indiscretion as like an equally important debate that we must weigh in on. Yeah. And you see how it,

how we've reached this point of internet culture through the creation of careers that are based around commenting on cultural events, which is what we both do. Which is, right, which to be clear, is what you and I both do. And, like, I don't, that's always, like, commentary has always existed. Like, you know, news anchors do it and bloggers did it in the early 2010. And, like, now everybody does it. But the hard thing is that now that we're all commentators, there's no real guideline. of ethics involved. And that's when you have these people taking something like the Amber

Herd trial and turning it into a sleazy entertainment spectacle because like why not? Everything is commentary. Everything is consumable. Yeah. And we should all have an opinion on everything all the time. Yeah. And I think that in the Amber Heard trial, everybody failed here. Like, I'm a representative of the media and I think that the media failed drastically. What ended up happening is that the first media outlets to really dive into the details were tabloids. And they did it irresponsibly, and they did it in a biased way. And then the people who picked up on that were the content creators. And first of all, media was too slow to respond because we let all of this percolate and develop in sort of an underground way that when we got to the public desire to have nonstop information around this trial, we had already failed to educate the public.

We had already failed to deliver the news to them in a way that they could comprehend because we've already failed if the entire population only wants Johnny Good, Amber Bad content. And I think that after the trial ended, we started to see some people write think pieces about how we failed Amber and about how Amber really was the victim. And you started to see more of a journalistic shift toward looking at the consequences of this. But I think that where we failed as an industry and where we need to do better. And I think that this can be mainstream news. I also think it can be content creators or just people online, the consumers of all this information. We have to become better at actually covering these things fairly. Because what happened with Amber Heard is you couldn't actually find information that was accurate.

If you searched, if you Googled Amber Heard defense during the trial, you wouldn't get anything. Like there were people. You would get your tweets kind of tell me. Yeah. You get your tweets, which, like, by the way, you were one of the few, and in my eyes, one of the more prominent voices who, from the beginning was like, I stand with Amber Hurd. Yeah. Could you, like, quickly describe what you faced as a result? Yes.

Yes. And, like, when I, when the kids... Because they came the fuck after you. Yeah. They came after me because I was right. Period. Like, from the beginning. They were like, oh shit.

This is a real threat to. our narrative. Right. And not because you were like, I am an Amber Heard Stan and I loved her in X, Y, or Z movie. Yep. You were like, no, I'm a journalist who has no, you know, motive to take aside other than the one that is correct. Yeah. People and like, this is such a common misconception that has followed me throughout my career. And I think it's like very, very important is I don't have a monetary incentive to support Amber Heard. She's. not paying me, her PR team isn't paying me, NBC News pays me a salary, and that salary doesn't go up or down based on how popular my takes or my content are.

It actually has nothing to do with my tweets at all. That was all me, all original thought. Right. So unless you have an Amber Heard Stan account that no one is aware about, like now I'm going to like start conspiracy theories about Kat Ten Barge. Actually, I'm sure people already did create conspiracy theories about you. Oh yeah, tons. So, yeah, so what were like, I mean, what were some of the ways that people went after you?

So they accused me of being in it for the money. Right. And so what is... Which is like, what do we accuse women of when we disagree with them? We accuse them of being paid. Right. I fucking wish. Right.

That would be amazing. No, because, like, what was actually happening is people were making hundreds of thousands upon millions of dollars supporting Johnny Depp. Right. Like, these YouTubers. They actually are making money. In it for the money. They actually are in it for the money. And they made so much money.

And that's not, like, there's nothing wrong with making a career. No, absolutely. But what they were doing was grifting. Right. And grifting is when you make money by selling people something that isn't real. That isn't real or that you don't actually believe. Yes. Right.

And, like, I truly deep down believe that a lot of the content creators who made content in defensive Johnny Depp are aware that he abused Amber Heard. Because if you actually are in it that deep, like I had to get so deep, I had to watch the trial. But beyond just watching the trial, I was also reading hundreds of pages of court documents. Right. Dozens upon dozens of screenshots, text messages, audio files, video files. Like, I immersed myself into this world because I needed to know who the victim was. Right.

And like presumably all these content creators were on some level consuming. you know, that level of detail about the trial too. Yeah. And it's really hard to do that and not see that she was clearly a victim of abuse. Yeah. And so I believe that they know that she is a victim. And I think that for some of these content creators, their motives are really clear because some of them are misogynistic men who are seeking to create a world where

female victims aren't believed. Right. And some of the content creators are abusers themselves. I remember you turning off your replies on Twitter, which is, you know, what's what we do when we're getting dog piles. Yeah, I got dog piled. People created a petition to get me fired that has almost 2,000 signatures. Oh, wow. And NBC was like, we don't fucking care.

Like, yeah. I mean, NBC didn't give a shit. They're just like, they're so above it. Right. Like, I don't think people understand that. Like, people genuinely think that they can get me fired. And don't get me wrong. Kattenvarge claims to be invincible.

Well, let's wipe the smirk off of her face. Yeah, that's literally what they're going to do. But no, they've already tried so hard. Like, so many groups of people have tried to undermine me. And it's like, it's the same thing that they did to Amber. You know, they make shit up. There was an Instagram account with like over a million followers that posted a spam email that claims that I worked for Amber Heard. Oh, my God.

And that was like, like, I'm like, I'm doing shit up. Just making shit up. Because when you don't have actual ammo against people, you just make shit up. You just make shit up. I mean, I was not creating content around this at all because I didn't really know what the fuck was going on. The only tweet, and I was looking back this morning at like, I was like, did I talk about this at the time? I think I made maybe a tweet about the Malani TikTok about how it pissed me off. But like maybe I think I deleted it because even that was like too much of a sin in the eyes of Johnny Depp stands.

but the one tweet that I did still have up, I tweeted that the S&L skit was inappropriate. I said something to the effect of like regardless about how you feel, regardless of how you feel about this case, like, why are we making S&L skits about like a domestic abuse situation where the trial is still ongoing, yada yada. And like even that, like people were in my replies. Like, well, but Johnny Debt's a victim.

And so male victims. And so, and I'm like, but what does that have to do with an S&L skit? Yeah. The very first thing that I ever posted about the trial, because I kind of wanted to just step into like, not the deep end, the shallow end. Right, right, right. The first thing I said was just that I was watching the trial and I was watching her witnesses and I thought that they were good. That's all I said. Yeah, and people were like, kill yourself.

Literally. Kill yourself in the name of like preventing abuse. Right. Like, that's really what it was. Yeah. You know, we're talking about this a year. later, in some ways the dust has settled kind of in other ways it hasn't. You know, he's more popular arguably than he's ever been. She's kind of in tatters. And I've seen online a bit of a shift.

There's definitely more people now being like, I think I was wrong or I was wrong, but I'm not sure how. I saw a tweet the other day that was like, I feel guilty about the way that I participated in the Amber Heard Pylon. Can someone explain to me why I was wrong? Because I have a feeling in my gut that I was. Yeah. And I'm starting to see more of that, which is good. And it's also, I mean, it's what we're doing here today. We're kind of looking at this for how it actually happened and not, you know, the mess of trying to speak to it at the time, which some people like Rehn and Fischer-Quann and yourself did and got, you know, an unimaginable amount of backlash for. But the thing is, like, we always do this where we look back on the way we treated, you know, especially women

in the public eye. We did this with Britney Spears. We did this with Janet Jackson and the Super Bowl. You know, Tanya Harding in the 90s. We absolutely harassed these women. And then after we've harassed them and after we've transformed their lives for the worse, we look back and we go, yeah, that was wrong.

You know, and when these comparisons are made, you know, when people are like, when comparisons between Amber Heard and, like, Britney Spears, for example, are made. there are Johnny Depp supporters or people who, you know, don't support Amber Heard will be like, yeah, well, the difference is, like, Britney Spears was actually a victim

and also, like, she wasn't an abuser. Like, Amber Heard was an abuser, and so that's why all this is justified. But if you look at what people were saying about Britney Spears at the time when the public was abusing her, it was the same shit in the fact that, like, people made these grand moral proclamations about, like, why their harassment of her

was not only just, but like righteous. And so, and I think a lot, I think a lot. I mean, I think a lot about Britney Spears in general. I think about her just like a lot. Like more than I should. But I think a lot about the Diane Sawyer interview that she did when the public was starting to turn on her in a really huge way. And she was like fucking like 20 years old or something. But in it, Diane Sawyer is addressing that with her. And she plays an audio recording where the wife of the former governor of Maryland says that, that if she could shoot Britney Spears, she would. Which is such a jarring thing to hear.

And you would be crazy to think that that would be included in any way other than to be like, wow, isn't that crazy, Brittany? Like, how do you feel about these people harassing you? But after the audio plays, Diane, Brittany goes, oh, wow, that's horrible. I can't believe she'd say that about me. And Diane Sawyer immediately goes, because of how hard you make it to raise kids when you're always on the TV. And, you know, everyone's now feeling like they should dress like you.

Brittany Spears has upset a lot of mothers in this country, starting with the wife of the governor of Maryland, who appeared at an anti-violence rally, and, well, listen to what she said. Really, if I had an opportunity to shoot Britney Spears, I think I would. Oh, that's horrible. That's really bad. Because of the example for kids and how hard it is to be a parent and keep all of this away from your kids.

Well, that's really sad that she said that. Ew. You know what? Like, I'm not here to, you know, babysit her kids. Like, it's immediately turned into this moral thing of like, well, but you make it really hard to be a parent of children. Yeah. Because now they want to wear, like, low-wasted pants or something. Yeah. And so, no. Like, Britney Spears was, was not, like, this perfect victim at the time. Yeah. Because, like I said, like, the perfect victim of abuse, and I know it's a different kind of abuse. I'm not saying that what she went through in the public is the same, but there are parallels with Amber Heard and with all the other women that we do this too, where we pick a woman to hate.

We find a reason why it's morally justified to hurl any amount of abuse at her. And then we do it. And a bunch of years later, we're like, hmm, guess we were wrong. And then like two weeks later, we do it again. And like, how do we stop ourselves? That is a really good question. Yeah. I don't know if you have the answer.

I think that for me, the big shift was the Deppard case, because I think that it made me realize the extent to which misogyny goes unchecked. And how when we confront these issues of misogyny, we still blame women. And I think that we're even going to see that with Amber because, you know, as the backlash to Amber was occurring, people said things like, you're making it harder for real victim. Right, which was another like morally superior proclamation of like my abuse of Amber is justified because she's making it harder for real survivors. Yes. And what those people are doing when they say that, like that phrase in itself is the antithesis of what helps survivors because Amber Hurd is a survivor.

So when you say that Amber Hurd's making it harder for real survivors, anyone whose experience is aligned with Amber now feels like they can't consider themselves a survivor. Anyone who ever fought back? Yeah. And I've seen this, you know, in my work, I've seen both victims of celebrities and victims of just average ordinary people. All of them face added stigma because of this case. And I know for a fact that there are victims of celebrities who have decided not to come forward because of what happened to Amber. They don't want to be the next Amber.

So that's a real chilling effect. And then on top of that, when you have the cultural phenomenon of the way that's the way that's, this case was consumed, now we have a machine that is ready to find its next target. And so in the year following the trial, we saw this machine turn on other women and people. We saw it on TikTok, on YouTube, on social media, in real life. Like, it's the same misogynistic pattern being applied over and over again to different situations. Right, which brings me to my last kind of question for you, which is, you know, a lot of people listening are probably, like how I was the first time I heard about this airing, which was like, I don't really care about

the court trials of rich and famous white people, which is like a very understandable thing. Like, and in general, like, I don't. Like, I, you know, and you could say like, well, I don't, I'm not really a fan of Johnny Depp and I don't really care much about Amber Heard. Why should I care about any of this? Why should I care about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie? Why, you know, Maryland, like, this all has nothing to do with me and all of these people will be rich forever. So who cares. Why should people care? Because I think that they should. Yeah. And this is like kind of a question that I think gets to the heart of cultural criticism and cultural reporting, which is that our pop culture informs the way we think about the world. It informs the way we treat each other.

And it informs our opinions and our knowledge. And so most people aren't taking classes to understand domestic violence. Most people aren't reading books. Right. They learn about domestic violence. through watching a YouTube video about Johnny Depp and Amber Hurd. Exactly. And so that's the real danger here is that it is a trickle-down effect far beyond just Amber and Johnny. We see, you know, examples of abusive men referring to their girlfriends or their partners as Amber Hurd. Amber Herr 2.0 was trending, right, like almost immediately after about like some another woman. Yes.

And when we have these bad misconceptions around domestic violence and when we have this myth of the perfect victim, which ensures that a woman will never be believed. And we combine that with the TikTok outrage machine. What we're now seeing is the Amber Hurd effect, not just happening to celebrities, but it's happening to regular people who have no desire to have their life blown up and commented on by millions of people. You know, there are TikToks now of abusive men who are not famous, but they're taking the Johnny Depp playbook and they're smearing their victims online.

And we see viral outrage coalescing around people who aren't even famous. Right. Towards people who are not Amber Heard. Towards people who aren't famous, who aren't well connected with, you know, legal teams. Yeah. They're just people like you and I. Yeah. And I've spoken to people where it's like they're not the victim being abused, but they are their best friend or they are their sister. And they're like abuser has a viral TikTok or something.

Yes. And it's like coming from an outside of perspective. Like, I've spoken to women who defended Johnny Depp and are now seeing their own friend or sister be torn apart on the internet by the same mob. And you see that, and you see that realization over time that these attitudes aren't reserved for just the rich and famous. They also affect everyone. And so you could be Amber Heard. Right. Any of us could be Amber Heard.

Right. Any of your loved ones could be Amber Heard. And Amber Heard with significantly less resources. Yes. To deal with the fallout. It really is important to correct the record of how we should think about this because how a lot of people did think about this is now allowing regular women. Yeah. To just feel the wrath of the culture that does not accept and believe survivors of abuse.

Yeah. I feel like if I could distill one thing in the population to take away from all of this is that in an abusive relationship, there is a perpetrator and a victim. Like, they're, regardless of whether you like either of those individuals, one of them is a victim and one of them is a perpetrator. And you cannot like Amber Heard while still acknowledging that she's a victim. And in fact, if you don't, if instead you retreat to this position that many people view as neutral, which is that they're both bad, that's actually not a neutral position. That helps Donnie Depp because that's the argument that he is trying to make. is like my behavior is excused because of her behavior. Right.

And so when we view both of them as bad, we're ensuring that the cycle of abuse will be perpetuated. And so that's what I would want people to take away from this is like they're not both bad. You don't have to support them. You don't have to talk about it. You don't have to make it a focal point of your life. But don't look at abusive situations as like, oh, everybody involved is culpable because they're always as a victim. And the victim is Amber Heard. And the victim is Amber Heard.

Kat, you are 25? Yes. And so unbelievably wise beyond your ears. I mean, it's been such a pleasure. Thank you for coming today. Thank you so much for having me. Where can people find you and support your work? So you can follow me on Twitter at Katmarge.

I'm on Twitter and I'm now on Blue Sky at Kattenbarge. And you can also find my author profile link there to read my NBC news coverage. Is Blue Sky going to succeed? I hope so. We don't really know. If you enjoyed this episode, I would love if you could give it a share to a friend, your mom, your uncle who had a lot to say about Johnny Depp or someone you know with a Johnny Depp stand account where, you know, whoever, whoever might gain something from listening to it. I hope you enjoy it. I hope you learned something.

I definitely did. If you like this podcast, if you want to hear more, you can follow us on whatever app you used to get your podcast, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, whatever. I'm a Spotify girl thrown through, but, you know, you do you. If you have five seconds or less, you could give us a rating that would really help us out and it takes no time at all. If you didn't like this episode, do not give us a rating. I would really appreciate that. And yeah, thank you so much for listening. I really, really do appreciate it.

Until next week, stay fruity.