#so get someone to do a ‘surviving r Kelly’ type doc

[aizenat]

I think the biggest factor in this is when Johnny Depp was huge: the mid to late 90s and 2000s. For boomers, I would imagine most wouldn’t know much about his movies other than pirates. And while a lot of younger gen xers would have been the target demographic for some of his works in the 90s, I don’t think older generations are that emotionally attached to Derp as they would other actors.

For example, my gen x mother doesn’t care one way or the other for Derp (and def wouldn’t go see a movie just for him); however, she was very much so questioning all the woman who came out against Bill Cosby, still watches the Cosby Show (almost defiantly as tho to say she stands by him), and even if she finally came around to believe (SOME of) the women, was one of those ppl who felt given his age he shouldn’t face any jail time.

The biggest difference being she grew up with Bill Cosby. He was a comedian in her childhood, and she would have been in hs when the Cosby show came out. My mother loved how he pushed education with black ppl, loved a different world (she would have been college aged when that came out), etc. He was more prevalent pop culture wise in her time than mine. Sure I watched the Cosby Show reruns growing up, but when I heard the allegations, it was nothing for me to dead him in my mind. But my mother had a much harder time (and still doesn’t) after growing up seeing him in a good light. And so turning her around is hard.

Meanwhile, as a millennial, Derp was inescapable at a point. ESPECIALLY if you were an alternative kid, he was in every movie the weird goth/emo/punk/burnouts would like. Pirates, the Corpse Bride, Sweeney Todd, etc. He was even in Willy Wonka, and most ppl didn’t hate him in that (just hated the overall plot and story changes). And when that Willy Wonka movie came out, gen z would have been kids. They would have been kids during Pirates, during the Alice in Wonderland movies (that my ass had no desire to see with it’s weird cgi ass), etc.

This is why older generations get so mad when they get cancelled by younger generations because their real fans don’t have a problem with them. It’s the younger generation looking at them like “uh dude wtf.” The people loudest against Dave Chappelle for example probably weren’t huge fans of his when they were young. They probably saw a few sketches from the chappelle show and that was it. Gen Z were the ones mostly pissed at his first comedy special on Netflix, while gen xers and millennials mostly (not all, but mostly) rolled their eyes at the “controversy.”

A situation like how libs turned on JKR is rare: it’s easier to convince ppl who already don’t like you/don’t care one way or the other/don’t know you to dislike you than someone who was a fan. Look at the different responses between Keke Palmer’s no name having baby daddy and Jonah Hill who both got outed essentially doing the same thing: trying to control women’s bodies as tho expressing yourself is somehow a slight against the man a woman is with. And yet while Keke’s bd got nothing but hate, there were a lot of sympathetic takes to Jonah as he had a legit career and most ppl like him generally.

People always have a hard time letting go of their idols, but I think that millennials and gen z’s tendency to really go balls deep with their favorite celebs/influencers (how easily and commonly they form parasocial relationships with them, fan culture/fandoms, etc) it means that millennials and gen z are primed to be so emotionally invested in these ppl, as well as build huge chunks of their identity to worshipping these ppl (kpop stans are a great example of this), that disavowing them is impossible for them. And especially with how mental health/therapy talk and social justice language is what they use to both stan and dislike people, they build up defenses that will only be deterred by a huge social movement that vilifies people who think like they do.

What’s going to happen is in 15-20 years, hell maybe even within the next ten years considering things get “renaissances” despite only being around about a decade (“Twilight wasn’t THAT problematic; it was just a bunch of hate on something girls liked” or something), someone will make a documentary or a revisit of the trial. And they’re going to review the court documents and see clearly how Derp was obviously the abuser, and whoever does this deep dive will criticize millennials and gen z for siding with Derp. And the younger generation will turn to their parents and ask what they thought and be aghast to learn their parents were team Derp. And it’ll only be when public opinion changes that they’ll disavow him.

As bleak as the numbers for younger people are, I have faith that public opinion will change. In the 90s, a lot of people believed OJ was innocent. Especially black ppl who believed this was society’s attempt to (yet again) vilify an “innocent” black man. But let’s be real: we know he did it. And if that same trial happened to day, his ass would be in prison. This trial is our generation’s OJ trial. And in due time, the tide will change and people will see him as the evil, drunken bastard he is. And anyone who defended Derp then will have nothing to say.

Johnny Depp’s Popularity Decreased During Trial—Despite Social Media Craze—Survey Suggests

This is from June 2022 . The fact millennials and gen z had the smallest change and we want to mock boomers for being brainwashed by Facebook. You're going to hell

This feels like a, how addicted to social media spectacle are you? with millennials not doing good and gen z fully suffering from some brain damage