Today, Explained - Why the internet hates Amber Heard

Episode Date: May 24, 2022

It’s not just Johnny Depp’s fans — it’s Amber Heard’s anti-fans, too. The Atlantic's Kaitlyn Tiffany explains the Depp-ressing social media hate campaign. This episode was produced by Amina Al-Sadi with help from Hady Mawajdeh, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Paul Mounsey, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram.  Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained   Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Johnny Depp and Amber Heard trial has entered its sixth and likely final week of testimony. Over these six weeks, we have had a lot of news. The war in Ukraine, surging inflation, Elon Musk tries to buy Twitter, political primaries, a leaked Supreme Court draft opinion that could spell the end of Roe v. Wade, a baby formula crisis. I could go on, but for these six weeks, if you've logged into any kind of social media, you've been subjected to just an onslaught of...

I have a message for Amber Heard. Amber, I just would like you... Oh! I thought you were gonna punch me. Ahead on today explained why the internet hates Amber Heard. I know it's really sad. There's no court for the next week, but it's perfect. It gives me time to dissect Amber's life on the stand.

Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit Superstore.ca to get started. Today, today, explain. Caitlin Tiffany, staff writer at The Atlantic. You recently wrote about Johnny Depp and Amber Heard and why the internet hates Amber Heard so much. Is it just me or is it on like every platform everywhere?

Yeah, it is. I think it's been bubbling up for about a month. The first wave of coverage was journalists being like, is this real? Like, are these bots? Are these people? This can't possibly be like such a widespread topic of debate. Hundreds of miles away from the glitz and glamour of Hollywood, this high profile case will be right here in Fairfax County. And in a rare move, cameras will be allowed inside the courtroom. What seems immediately attractive about this story, I think, is that it's the kind of thing that involves a lot of salacious details

and a lot of different celebrity players, including, like, Elon Musk, very tangentially. Attorneys may want to hear from the world's wealthiest man because he dated Amber Heard. So it really appeals to this culture that's super concentrated on the internet right now of like investigation and amateur sleuthing. All right, you guys, let's get into it. More lies Amber told on stand part. I can't keep up. What I would call like pop culture, true crime. Pop culture, true crime.

You know, kind of like the aftermath of the Free Britney movement. People are really interested in this process of like wading through court documents and through various like depositions and testimony. Remember Source X? They said Amber definitely went through hard times because of his addiction, but he was not abusive.

I think it's just like a really rich well of content to mine, I guess. More so even than just the normal speculating about a celebrity where you have paparazzi photos to go through. Amber heard lying again after they played a recording of her hitting Johnny Depp. Dan, that's you and Mr. Depp on that recording, right? That's correct. And Mr. Depp was hiding from you in the bathroom. Isn't that right, Ms. Heard? I think a lot of people got into this during the pandemic with like the Gabby Pet directly related to QAnon, but I think it's like the same kind of urge to put like these puzzle pieces together and pull from this really big sprawl of documents and hidden connections.

And so I think that's part of it. Let's just wind back and talk about everything that's happened up until this point. These two people, they really seem to hate each other now, but that wasn't always the case, right? Yeah. She's of another era, you know. I mean, it's like walking into a room and meeting Lauren Bacall or Betty Davis or, you know, any of the sort of great, Veronica Lake? So Johnny Depp and Amber Heard met in 2009, which would have been maybe not the peak of his career, but still a high point of his career,

definitely like amidst Pirates of the Caribbean frenzy. You're supposed to be dead! Am I not? And the beginning of Amber Heard's career. So she was much younger than him, like 20 years younger than him. They started dating in 2012. And in 2015, they got married. And they were only married for a year. In 2016, Amber Heard filed for divorce and requested a protective restraining order, which she was granted by a judge in Los Angeles. The 30-year-old actress accused Depp of verbal, emotional, and physical abuse. Well before the events of Me Too, which arguably was kicked off in October 2016 with the Trump hot mic. This was locker room talk. The story was kind of murky. There weren't a lot of details available.

They released these kind of like vague statements. They were saying that there wasn't like an intention of physical harm in their relationship, which was very vague. And then they also said that Amber Heard hadn't lied for financial gain. So that was vague, too. Hmm. So even way back then in 2016, the two of them essentially signed statements saying Amber Heard did not make anything up for money. Right. But it also didn't, you know, outline any culpability on Jenny Depp's part either. You know, at first she got the $7 million divorce settlement, but she said she would be donating all of it. So there wasn't as much controversy as far as I recall about this situation at that time because there weren't a

lot of details available and there wasn't much to create a narrative out of. So that's where it starts. How does that start to change? Yeah, so it starts to change when the allegations are sort of resurfaced because of Me Too and because of the attention that was being put on sexual abuse and violence in Hollywood and in popular culture in 2017. And then Amber Heard becomes an ambassador on women's rights for the ACLU. Here we are, enduring and surviving almost too much. And I want to just be one of the many, many voices right now of countless women who are standing up and saying, enough is enough, hear me too, yes, me too, time's up. That's the capacity in which she wrote the op-ed for the Washington Post in which she talks about herself as a public figure

who represents domestic abuse and had all these experiences with a more powerful man who she doesn't name, but her allegations get a lot of coverage, including the Sun British tabloid writes a headline about them in which it refers to Johnny Depp as a wife beater. So that instigated him suing the tabloid for libel in the UK, which is an important precedent in this case because in the course of that trial, which took place in 2020, Amber Heard testified specifically to substantiate the claim

that Johnny Depp was a literally, quote-unquote, a wife-beater. This morning, Johnny Depp lost his libel trial against The Sun after theyunquote a wife-beater. This morning Johnny Depp lost his libel trial against The Sun after they branded him a wife-beater. Judge Mr Justice Nickel found that 12 of the 14 alleged incidents of domestic violence were in his words substantially true. And in 2019 then Johnny Depp filed the lawsuit against Amber Heard for defamation because of her Washington Post op-ed, which has brought us to this trial now. That's the claim that the jury will be deliberating on. So basically the UK has already been through this to some degree and they decided that Johnny Depp is in fact a wife beater. And then he sues Amber Heard again at some point in Virginia? Yeah, he sued

in Virginia for sort of complicated legal reasons. But essentially, like in California, where Amber Heard and Johnny Depp both live, you can file to dismiss a frivolous defamation lawsuit before a trial. So obviously that's something Amber Heard would have tried to take advantage of had she been sued in California. But that is not part of the defamation laws in Virginia where the Washington Post maintains some of its business operations, which is why Johnny Depp was able to sue there instead. That's like a pretty common move increasingly. I think Virginia is getting a bit of a reputation as a quote-unquote libel tourism state for that reason. Wow.

So he's very much suing her there because it might be easier for him to win there. Yeah. I mean, maybe his lawyers are suing there because it'll be easier for him to win there. I don't know how much he knows about libel law. And this lawsuit is very much about the op-ed that Amber Heard wrote in the Washington Post in 2018. Right. I think, you know, basically the case would be about proving that Amber Heard is lying, proving that seemingly he seems to be intent on proving that she was actually the abusive partner in the relationship. And then secondarily, he will probably have to prove that what she wrote about caused him significant financial or emotional harm of some kind. And despite the trial being very sad and personal and salacious,

if you just consumed it via the internet, you'd think it's just one big joke. Right. I have a message for Amber Heard. Amber, I just would like you... Oh! I thought you were going to punch me! So basically, as soon as testimony started being presented in the trial, there was this kind of cottage industry of people pulling moments from it, either because they were

really disturbing and it was kind of a watching a car accident type of situation or because they wanted to make fun of them. So Amber, what do you recall on June the 16th? I don't know. He just, he was looking at me. And I just saw, I just saw in his eyes, brown. Because his eyes, they're brown. For example, in some of Amber Heard's testimony, she was describing a moment in which Johnny Depp slapped her across the face pretty quickly on TikTok. There were dozens of teenagers acting this scene out in order to highlight what they felt was an inconsistency. I said, Johnny, you hit me.

You hit me in the face. My back was towards you, but you hit me in the face. But I mean, obviously she meant that she had been hit so hard that she was facing the other way and then had to turn back around. But pretty much immediately people were acting it out, making fun of these inconsistencies they thought they saw in her testimony, picking out these really grotesque images. Like Johnny Depp has accused Amber Heard of pooping in his bed. So they've come up with these nicknames like an Amber Turd fan, accused her of exploiting like MePoo instead of MeToo sympathy. And there have been just like just meme after meme after meme after viral rumor. I've seen claims that she murdered her own mother so that she wouldn't be able to testify in favor of Johnny Depp.

It's been weird to see just how pervasive it is because I don't think that it's only Johnny Depp fans. I've seen members of all kinds of fandoms talking about how disgusting they find Amber Heard. I follow a lot of Harry Styles accounts for work-related reasons, and a lot of them were tweeting, like, Amber Heard is the plague, claiming that she's, like, setting women's rights back by making up these claims. It's just, it's a total mess and my friend ryan broderick who has a internet culture newsletter called garbage day his coverage of it he titled like something like all the worst people on the

internet have found each other and i felt like that was a really accurate summation of what's going on why all the meanies on the internet are being so mean to Amber Heard, in a minute on Today Explained. Support for Today Explained comes from Ramp. Ramp is the corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your pocket. Ramp says they give finance teams unprecedented control and insight into company spend. With Ramp, you're able to issue cards to every employee with limits and restrictions

and automate expense reporting so you can stop wasting time at the end of every month. And now you can get $250 when you join Ramp. You can go to ramp.com slash explained, ramp.com slash explained, R-A-M-P dot com slash explained, cards issued by Sutton Bank. Member FDIC. Terms and conditions apply.

Bet MGM, authorized gaming partner of the NBA, has your back all season long. From tip-off to the final buzzer, you're always taken care of with a sports book born in Vegas. That's a feeling you can only get with bet MGM. And no matter your team, your favorite player or your style, there's something every NBA fan will love about bet MGM. Download the app today and discover why bet MGM is your basketball home for the season.

Raise your game to the next level this year with BetMGM, a sportsbook worth a slam dunk, and authorized gaming partner of the NBA. BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you,

please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. I used to be respected, people took me at my word. Then I became a lawyer representing Amber Heard. Caitlin Tiffany, staff writer at The Atlantic. You mentioned earlier that when we first started seeing Amber Heard, Johnny Depp stuff on TikTok, Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, everywhere. The initial feeling a lot of people had was something like, this must be bots. This must be fake someone is paying for this but eventually we realized that it was indeed real yeah there were quite a few firms who analyze bot activity that looked into it and they found a couple hundred bots or something

which i think is pretty typical around any major news event. There are people who will create bots to participate in it for various reasons, probably have to do with click farming. But yeah, I mean, in general, this is real. It's been pushed out on TikTok and Instagram and Twitter. And I think part of the reason that it's everywhere is that it's being pushed around by these groups that are already really tightly networked and are already really good at amplification. And that would especially be fans and fandom. So are these Johnny Depp fans? Yeah, some of them are definitely Johnny Depp fans. Who knew his fans were this passionate until now?

I know. I think that's part of why people were surprised because everyone knows who Johnny Depp is. I think he had a little bit of a resurgence when he got involved in the Harry Potter movies. Magic looms only in rare souls. So some of it's definitely Johnny Depp fandom. A lot of it is also this kind of separate phenomenon called anti-fandom. Anti-fandom? Yeah, anti-fandom.

Like you're a fan of not being a fan? Right, yeah. In a lot of fandoms, they're called antis. People who just viscerally hate a celebrity, or if you're talking about a fictional character, a fictional character. And that is what determines their fan practice. And I think in this case, there's definitely a huge faction that doesn't care so much about Johnny Depp at all. I've actually gotten a lot of emails from people

that start, I'm not a Johnny Depp fan, but people are going online to hate Amber Heard specifically. It's not anti-feminism. I'm very for feminism. It's anti-unbeheard. There's a difference. And some of those people are Johnny Depp fans who think that she's manipulating him and controlling him and ruining his life, and others just see her as this sort of, like, dangerous figure who's making women look bad or disgusting to them in some other way. But that is like as highly personal and engaging and fixation-inducing

as regular fandom. It sounds like anti-fandom didn't come to be in light of this trial. What's like the history of anti-fandom? What else have people been anti-fans of? The example that I have touched on the most in my own work is in the One Direction fandom, one of the members, Louis Tomlinson, he had sort of a surprise pregnancy situation with a woman that he had been dating casually. Louis is expecting a baby with Los Angeles-based stylist Brianna Jungwirth, also 23. This was a very big deal within the fandom because a lot of people believed that he was secretly gay

and closeted and in love with Harry Styles. Oh. Yeah. As soon as this pregnancy became news, it was, like, narratively undesirable, impossible. there had to be a different story to explain why you know he would be on good morning america saying obviously it's it's a very exciting time so uh i'm buzzing thank you pretty much immediately like an anti-fandom sprung up around the woman that he impregnated brianna jungworth who was not a person who was in the public eye, really, until this incident. And this really aggressive anti-fandom sprung up around her.

They were analyzing every one of her outfits, every one of her tweets, every one of her Instagram posts, but they were doing it because they hated her. And so they variously portray her as this mastermind who's manipulating Louisis tomlinson and ruining his life and then they also you know discuss her as like stupid and gross and often like accusing her of being like a bad or delinquent mother all of these things that seem on their face to be so obviously misogynistic but what was interesting to me about them and about all of the anti-fandom examples that I would kind of bring up in relationship to Amber Heard was that they claimed to actually be feminists and said, I'm not misogynistic. If I don't criticize this woman

because she's a woman, that's misogynistic. And actually, she's the one making women look bad. And it's my responsibility almost as a woman to call her out because men can't see what she's doing. That became a huge part of the Amber Heard anti-fandom, which is why I felt like, OK, this is part of a continuum or a pattern in fandom. We hate these women, but we are no longer comfortable saying, I hate women, they're gross. So instead, we have these contorted explanations of like, well, I hate this woman because she's evil, or I hate this woman because she's actually undermining me too, or she's actually an abuser. She's actually doing all

of these things that go against my progressive politics and my interest in social justice. Do we have any idea if these anti-fandoms are more often directed at women? Yeah, it's definitely more often women than men. You know, people hate all manner of celebrities for all different reasons. But I think the anti-fandoms that pick up a lot of momentum are the ones that are focused on women. Another example I've reported on is Benedict Cumberbatch's wife, Sophie Hunter. His fans claim that she is just part of an international, like, drug and human trafficking ring. Yeah, it's wild. Benedict Cumberbatch's wife what did she do to

anybody i guess it's just that people were really surprised by how quickly they got married they don't believe that their children are real you know they think she faked all of her pregnancies fake pregnancy is like or like lies about paternity is like really common in all of these conspiracy theories gee get a life, internet. I mean, just to be clear, like, there's no evidence at all that Sophie Hunter is, like, an international crime syndicate mafia boss. Thank you for that.

I mean, thinking about Benedict Cumberbatch's wife and, you know, this guy from One Direction's, like, ex-girlfriend, baby mama, whatever, Amber Heard has more reason to actually have fans than any of those people she was in an aquaman movie or two i can't tell but is anyone coming to her defense there's definitely like little groups on twitter and tumblr that are supporting amber heard i spoke to a woman who had made a new twitter account specifically for that purpose to debunk claims about Amber Heard's testimony that were blatantly ridiculous. Or to point out the way that making fun of her claims of being abused, whether or not you ultimately think she's telling the truth about every single one of those claims,

it's still really messed up to just make jokes about domestic violence on the internet all day long. Yeah. It just feels like we're supposed to be a little bit more mature at this point after Me Too, after Black Lives Matter, after just having some sense online that like there is reason to be a little more sensitive to people. It's sort of shocking to see how brutal people are willing to be to this individual who is on the stand, whether you believe her or not, like pouring her heart out and crying and talking about just awful things that may or may not have happened in her life. I mean, we don't know, but it just feels wise to keep a distance and maybe respect it. But that is not the way this is gone i mean if you're the type of person who makes any kind of content for the internet there's certainly an

incentive to start making content making fun of amber heard or at least following the trial from an anti-amber heard perspective and there's been some like good reporting about youtubers totally pivoting to that kind of coverage because it gets tons of views. Or I was following this Instagram user who used to do like totally generic lifestyle, you know, here's my beautiful house in California type of stuff. phases of gaining like hundreds of thousands of followers and it's always because she starts covering something like Free Britney or Gabby Petito and most recently Johnny Depp she just goes all day long posting clips from the trial and emoting about oh I can't believe Amber Heard used to make fun of Johnny Depp's Wynonna Forever tattoo like we love Wynonna I think she specifically said that was evidence of Amber Heard's psychopathic derangement because she would make fun of that tattoo.

Her audience is clearly eating it up. There's definitely, like, motivation to make this kind of stuff. It is really strange to see a Me Too backlash coming from seemingly, like, young women. That's not the corner where I thought it would come from. Caitlin Tiffany is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where she wrote an article titled Why the Internet Hates Amber Heard Recently. You can read it at theatlantic.com.

Our show today was produced by Amina Alsadi, edited by Matthew Collette, backtracked by Laura Bullard, and engineered by Paul Mounsey. I'm Sean Ramos for him. It is Today Explained.ん