how the internet failed women in 2022
from johnny depp to andrew tate, the internet gave platforms to violent and misogynistic men last year
If 2018 and 1992 were “the year of the woman,” 2022 was the year of men.
Last year, the internet uncritically gave platforms to abusers, misogynists, and desperate transphobic billionaires. Years after the advent of the #MeToo movement, we were hit with a year where women were pigeonholed on social media into being attention-seekers, liars, villains — and men were praised for evading their accusations.
In 2022, the internet fueled violent misogyny against prominent figures like Amber Heard, Angelina Jolie and Megan Thee Stallion, while Elon Musk gave platforms back to Jordan Peterson, Andrew Tate, and Donald Trump. It was a year where internet users learned how to cherrypick, take information out of context, spread disinformation.
While misogyny online is certainly nothing new — talk to any woman who’s been online ever — last year felt like a hearkening back to the days of iFunny in 2013. You know, that get-back-to-the-kitchen type of misogyny.
Depp v. Heard is one of the most obscene examples of this. And by the way — I’m not arguing with anyone who believes Johnny Depp is innocent — if that’s your perspective then you may go read this piece by Michael Hobbes or this one by Rayne Fisher-Quann or the dozens of other pieces by legacy media that include evidence, research and contextualized information.
If you were online at all this year, you knew about Depp v. Heard. Videos of the trial started circulating on TikTok then made their way to Twitter, Instagram, and even Facebook — so now your boomer neighbor makes jokes about Heard shitting in Depp’s bed (which there is no evidence of — see the Hobbes article above). Plus, YouTube commentators like Andy Signore have started spewing misogyny over edited trial videos, profiting off the controversy and benefiting from their hatred of women.
The trial was televised and accessible to anyone who wanted to watch it, and the celebrity drama of it all made for excellent content. There was a period of a few months where Johnny Depp or Amber Heard were trending topics on Twitter every single day — or worse, more sinister hashtags like #AmberHeardIsALiar or #JusticeForJohnnyDepp (need I remind you that “Justice For X” is a term most often used when Black men are killed by police?). The trial was inescapable, and brought out the worst, innermost misogynistic tendencies of people — even those who call themselves feminists or progressives.
The use of TikTok and the democratization of video editing has made the representation of this trial much worse. With easy-to-use tools, anyone could skew a video of Heard however they wanted. Even an innocent nose rub amidst her tears was edited to make it seem like Heard was doing cocaine on the witness stand (some people seem to need a reminder that the simplest explanation is often the correct one). Her facial expressions, whether she was showing too much emotion or too little at various times, were used against her. Her feelings were weaponized. She was ridiculed for crying, mocked for sharing her sexual assault testimony. Some TikTok users even made videos using audio of Heard describing her sexual assault — in those videos, they implied that they would’ve enjoyed what Heard went through. It was just another way to discredit Heard and ridicule her.
One of the most baffling and frankly inane arguments people make online when defending Depp is, “Give me one reason Amber is innocent — and DON’T mention her gender,” as if gender is not a massively important factor when it comes to domestic abuse. These situations are about power. Depp had power over Heard when it came to money, age, gender, fame, access, almost anything you can think of — and yet still, these videos made people believe that gender was just a side note in the abuse. Yes, men can be — and are — victims of abuse. That is not up for debate. But that certainly doesn’t mean we should ignore gender as a factor in domestic violence cases. And just because this man played your favorite movie pirate doesn’t mean he deserves an automatic presumption of innocence.
This story of misogyny comes straight from new media. Legacy outlets, even the New York Times, wrote in support of Amber Heard. It’s not just “media representations” that demonized Heard, it’s social media. It’s a fucked up kind of citizen journalism that lets people decontextualize anything they want so that their sweet sadboy 59-year-old millionaire can get off scot-free and keep playing his mediocre rock music and appear in a Savage X Fenty show and the VMA’s.
TikTok pushed these videos and allowed them to circulate without any sort of fact-checking or added context. With media literacy rates in the U.S. lagging behind other countries, it’s no wonder people didn’t question their sources or check who was posting these videos.
The same thing happened with the Megan Thee Stallion and Tory Lanez trial. After Lanez shot her, Megan was accused online of lying and seeking money — and that myth even made its way to a Drake song.
Unlike Heard, Megan Thee Stallion’s assailant was eventually found guilty. But the online crusades against her, heavy with misogynoir, enabled and encouraged fans to doubt her and smear her reputation. She was not spared the cruelty and hate she endured once Lanez was found guilty. The legal system did not stop people on line from calling her a liar; it did not cause people to stop and analyze their perspectives.
The whole situation is happening again with Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. Just months after Jolie accused Pitt of assaulting her and her children on a plane, Pitt appears smiling at the Golden Globes, and is receiving acclaim for the film he produced — about sexual abuse. In fact, multiple Golden Globe winners took time out of their speech to acknowledge Pitt’s presence, and fawn over him. Pitt — who, by the way, has the same PR team as Depp and Harvey Weinstein — is simply moving on from Jolie’s accusations. The internet has basically forgiven and forgotten; they just love him so much. How good was Bullet Train, am I right?
As Rayne Fisher-Quann wrote on Twitter recently, “Brad Pitt unfortunately proves that there is no level of fame that can guarantee a woman justice or respect.” The fact that Jolie and her kids were basically ignored after her accusations surfaced prove this is true.
Aside from high-profile celebrity cases of abuse, 2022 also gave rise to Andrew Tate. For those unfamiliar, Tate is a former kickboxer turned media personality who brazenly hates women and believes they need to be submissive, preys on 18-19-year-old girls, has been caught on camera physically abusing women, and brags online about engaging in sex trafficking. He’s been accused of rape by multiple women, and also says victims of sexual violence should “bear responsibility.”
This year, the violent misogynist and sexual predator got his legion of incels to share his videos like wildfire, leading to his videos being shown to as many teenage boys as they could be. In fact, The Guardian conducted an experiment last year where they created a TikTok account for a teenage boy, and within just a few swipes they were presented with an Andrew Tate clip.
The damage Tate has done to young men’s psyches is dramatic, and it makes me worried for younger girls who are growing up around boys who consume Tate’s content. How will they be treated going forward? What kinds of things will they perceive as normal because of the glorification of Tate?
Yes, Tate’s location was hilariously outed via pizza box in a Twitter-own by Greta Thunberg, leading to his arrest in Romania. But does it really matter? The damage has been done. His messages about women are already out in the ether, spreading among high schoolers. If anything, his arrest will allow him to go down as a martyr among his subscribers and superfans. Like with Megan Thee Stallion’s trial, we’ll likely see that the legal system doesn’t have much bearing on people’s personal opinions.
I would be remiss if I didn’t touch on the way trans women specifically were attacked on social media this year. The vitriol against trans women and the trans community at large deserves its own piece, and it will get one. But it needs to be part of this conversation, too.
As Dave Chappelle continued to be a controversial figure, the “grooming” debate came into full swing, convincing a horrifying amount of people that trans women are dangerous. J.K. Rowling also continued to be her horrible, transphobic self this year, promoting her new (terrible) book about… a murderous transgender woman and a terminally online detective, I guess? I don’t think anyone in my audience needs this reminder, but trans women are much more likely to be the victims of sexual violence than the perpetrators. But J.K. Rowling and her large Twitter following won’t stop trying to convince anyone otherwise.
State legislation that prevents trans kids from playing sports led to horrifyingly ignorant arguments being made on Twitter about children and their bodies, it led to myths about trans women only transitioning to be superior at sports, and further hate being spewed by people who simply do not know what they’re talking about. And speaking of Twitter, Elon Musk bought a whole ass social media website and proceeded to be transphobic on it, mocking the use of pronouns, appearing onstage aside Dave Chappelle, and promoting Ron Desantis. (He’s neither left nor right, he says!)
TikTok is largely responsible for a lot of this trend in general, though Twitter and YouTube certainly aren’t blameless. But the way we — especially younger people — consume content right now is so tailored to our identities and happens in such rapid succession that it’s hard to allow for critical thinking. If anyone says something with enough authority, they can get their audience to believe them. And as we’ve seen, media literacy and deciphering what material is trustworthy is a skill that comes with age. A lot of teenagers, and teenage boys specifically, who are getting this content haven’t gained enough of those skills to determine what’s true and what’s gendered violence.
The way we consume information online comes in quick, black-and-white snippets that allow for no nuance, and generally leans toward extremes. As the Binchtopia hosts love to say, “bitches hate nuance.” They’re right! Few things can be explained in a three-minute TikTok video, especially complex interpersonal situations and gender dynamics.
My hope for the coming year is that the women who have been demonized and silenced get their comeuppance — but beyond that, I hope that the companies that allow for this content to be disseminated take some responsibility in curbing the spread of disinformation. And I hope that we start to see the change that we thought would happen when Tarana Burke’s #MeToo started getting attention in 2017. I — and probably lots of other women — thought it would be a culture shift, that men would finally understand, and start listening to women when they speak out about their experiences with sexual assault. Unfortunately, last year proved that the weeks in 2017 when #MeToo took over the internet were the exception, not the rule.