You’re Being Manipulated to Hate Blake Lively (Just Like Amber Heard)

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Transcript:

Back in May of 2022, I made a video about Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, which I understood at the time probably seemed like a spicy hot take because it went against the overwhelming majority of online opinion, but from my perspective I was just saying something blindingly obvious: people were being extremely critical of Heard while lauding Depp not because of the details of their defamation lawsuit, but because of rampant misogyny. In the years since, I’ve been repeatedly proven right, and new details have recently emerged that show ONCE AGAIN how correct I was, which normally would feel great except for the fact that these details have only come to light because the exact same thing is now happening to another famous woman.

So, first a very brief overview of the Depp and Heard drama if you missed my previous videos: the two actors dated for several years but were married for only about a year before Heard filed for divorce in 2016, at which point gossip columns the world over suddenly started talking about how evil Heard is, forcing her legal team to release a statement saying that she was trying to keep everything private but Johnny’s PR team was clearly trying to vilify her.

In 2018, Heard referred to herself generally as a “public figure representing domestic abuse,” and despite the fact that he was never mentioned, Depp sued her for defamation. In 2020, he also sued the Daily Mail for defamation but he lost that case because a judge found that there was ample evidence to suggest that he had abused Heard at least a dozen times.

The case against Heard, though, was here in the US and it was a jury trial in which the jurors were allowed to stay connected to the internet and hear all about the case as it was ongoing. What they saw was a coordinated attack on Heard that had increased in viciousness since 2016, with gossip columnists, social media influencers, and pseudoscientific “body language experts” loudly claiming that Heard was a liar, that the audio of Depp admitting to abusing her was fake, that her bruises were makeup and photoshop, and that she actually abused him. While many of these critics were just going along with the flow, there were early very obvious signs that this was an artificial campaign of hatred, like how Ben Shapiro’s far-right media outlet the Daily Wire spent tens of thousands of dollars on misleading Facebook and Instagram ads mocking and vilifying Heard.

Last year, experts examined a million social media posts made about the trial in 2020 and 2021, and they agreed that more than half of them came from inauthentic accounts, meaning bots and trolls who posted identical messages praising Depp and insulting Heard, and asking brands to drop Heard as an ambassador. One of the bot networks was identified as being a well-known Saudi operation. Apropos of nothing, Johnny Depp enjoys an “epic bromance” with the crown prince of Saudi Arabia and Saudi groups are now financing his films as Depp “is eyeing a possible seven-figure deal to become a global cultural ambassador” for the country.

All of that is well known by now, but the new news comes courtesy of a suspiciously similar story: the coordinated character assassination of Blake Lively following the premier of her latest film, “It Ends With Us.”

Now, I have not seen this movie because frankly it looks awful, and it’s based on a book that looks even worse. But against my will, in the past few months I learned that it is about domestic violence, and more so that Blake Lively was promoting it in a very disrespectful way, by encouraging women to grab their friends, dress up in florals, and go out on a fun and empowering movie night together to see this film. The film about domestic violence.

Well! It turns out that that was just propaganda meant to vilify Lively, who was told by production to promote the movie in exactly that way and to avoid talking about the issue of domestic violence. This comes courtesy of a lawsuit Lively filed this month against her costar and the director of the film, Justin Baldoni, and the film’s producer, Jamey Heath, amongst others. Lively has made a massive amount of evidence public with her filing, and you’re free to read it in full if you’d like–as always, links to everything I discuss are in the transcript available at patreon.com/rebecca and skepchick.org and linked directly in the description box,  but if you don’t have the time, let me give you a quick overview:

Blake Lively detailed how she repeatedly complained about both Baldoni and Heath made sexual comments to her and violated her boundaries during the filming of It Ends With Us, including Baldoni trying to add gratuitous sex scenes with her, improvising kissing scenes, describing his sex life to her, and showing her video of his naked wife. He even creepily whispered sexual things to her during a scene that was filmed with no sound. Lively told production that she would require him to change his behavior and institute protective measures that are standard on other film sets, like hiring an intimacy coordinator and keeping the set secure and free of “friends” and other random people during nude scenes.

Many other people on set observed his behavior, and according to Lively’s complaint, several other members of the crew also told production that Baldoni had been inappropriate.

Production agreed to Lively’s stipulations, and she was reassured enough to finish filming, though she and other cast members refused to do promotional events with Baldoni once the film premiered.

So far, it’s just the usual tale of a sleazebag industry insider being a jerk to a woman he wants to control, sexualize, and dominate, right? Well, it’s about to get so much worse.

Lively could hardly help but notice the sudden increase in attacks on her happening online and in the gossip rags, with people criticizing not just her promotion of the film but also that she was a bully who tried to get the rights to the film’s sequel, who tried to wrestle creative control from the director, that she was a privileged bitch who was weaponizing feminism, and on and on and on. So she got a subpoena and ended up with a metric fuck ton of texts that revealed that Baldoni and Heath were worried that Lively would reveal Baldoni’s sexual harassment after the film premiered, and so they hired a public relations firm called The Agency Group with the express purpose of destroying Lively’s reputation and “burying” her.

The Agency Group, run by Melissa Nathan, promised to manipulate social media networks like TikTok, Reddit, and Instagram using a “digital army” of paid trolls to post and boost negative stories about Lively and her family. They were so successful that the team was astonished, with Nathan texting their (also female) publicist things like “The majority of socials are so pro Justin and I don’t even agree with half of them lol” and bragging that Baldoni doesn’t know how lucky he is because the internet was filled with so much hate for Lively despite the fact that there’s so much dirt on Baldoni: “The whispering in the ear the sexual connotations like Jesus fucking Christ Other members feeling uncomfortable watching it I mean there is just so much,” Nathan wrote.

Meanwhile, Baldoni was out there receiving awards for being such a great ally to women, thanks in part to his request that The Agency Group focus on promoting how much he respects victims of domestic violence on TikTok.

The New York Times details everything and it’s an absolutely horrific read. But the reason I bring this all up? Because another client of Melissa Nathan and The Agency Group is Johnny Depp. It certainly looks as though they did the exact same excellent job in getting the entire internet to shit on Amber Heard. And boy were they successful there: not only did they get a jury of 12 people to agree that Amber Heard defamed Depp by saying that she had experienced domestic abuse, but it’s been nearly three years since I pointed out the obvious fact that the hatred of Heard was baseless and artificial and people are STILL commenting on it to bash Heard. After we already know about the bots, and the lies, and the money funding the hatred. They’re still leaving comments, and I bet nobody is paying them to do it anymore:

“Heard have been proven to faking injuries with makeup [that never happened]… Misogynistic society…wow..”

“Bruh Johnny depp literally had his career destroyed, he was bashed relentlessly online and he was dropped from his film franchises [he has two films currently in development and is recurring role in a series for children]. Are you seriously saying he didn’t go through all of that before Amber was exposed??!”

And my favorite: “Lady get over all this shit it’s now 2yrs later moves on for God sake.” Posted on a video that’s nearly three years old.

I’ll end with a quote from the woman who made all this possible. Melissa Nathan texted this to Jennifer Abel after sharing how well “socials” were doing supporting Baldoni and bashing Lively:

“It’s actually sad because it just shows you (how) people really want to hate on women.”

Yeah, Melissa, it is actually sad. People want to hate on women so much that they fall for these manipulation tactics so easily–tactics so obvious that even the team behind them sent worried texts that they were being too obvious. They don’t bother to question what they’re hearing because they desperately want to hate women, and even years later they will reminisce over how much they enjoyed hating women. And they’re going to comment on this video, insisting that they weren’t fooled, and that everything hateful really was true about the women they hate. No amount of evidence will convince them. They will hate these women because these women are hateable, because they are women, and anything they do or don’t do will be held up as evidence for why they must be hated.

So why did I even make this video? I honestly don’t know. I guess it’s just a bit of a rant, from another hateful woman.