During the evening of Super Bowl Sunday, news broke that 21 Savage was taken into custody by ICE because he had allegedly overstayed his visa and is actually from the U.K. instead of Atlanta, Georgia as he had originally claimed. A score of memes came out mocking his apparent British roots. A few of the memes included him writing his verses with a quill feather pen and dubbing a British rapper over videos of him rapping. It was all fun and games and it seemed as though no one was laughing at the fact he could get deported, just that he’s from the U.K.
That same evening, Demi Lovato came online to say that the jokes were funny, just like everyone else. But instead of laughing along with her, “stan” Twitter got angry with her, claiming she was making fun of him getting deported, and resorted to making fun of her drug addiction. A few called her a “crackhead,” and the hateful comments got so bad that she deactivated her account the same night.
“Stan” Twitter bullied an innocent celebrity to deactivate their account because of a misunderstanding. That kind of energy doesn’t get seem to be used against people who are actually problematic. Tomi Lahren, a known American conservative political commentator with known racist views, even took herself to Twitter to make fun of 21 Savage being deported, but she didn’t get bullied to the point of deactivation.
This energy that “stan” Twitter always puts out has grown incredibly toxic over recent years. It seems that they would rather bully an innocent celebrity into deactivating rather than actually calling out problematic people. For example, Alessia Cara, who was bullied for being a “flop” according to “stan” Twitter, went on a break off of Twitter and Instagram and even cried on stage because of how overwhelming the alleged bullying was.
It’s such an ugly thing to see people tearing women in the industries down for doing small things that could be seen as a misunderstanding or nothing serious at all, but won’t attack the men in the industries that are actually horrible people. They will stick by people like 6ix9ine, who was arrested for use of a child in a sexual performance and is known to have abused his girlfriend, praying that he will get out of prison, and then call Demi Lovato a “crackhead” over a misunderstanding. What is the difference?
The jokes of drug addiction and suicide are both overwhelming and worrying. People actually find things like that laughable when Demi is someone who’s had issues with both drugs and self harm. She even recently had to go back to rehab because of the harassment she received after the tweet. It’s hypocritical to make fun of someone’s harmful issues because they made a joke about someone else’s issues. It’s especially ridiculous when my Twitter feed was full of everyone making jokes about 21 Savage but the moment Demi says something, it causes an uproar.
I just hope that Demi takes time to herself and returns back to social media when she’s ready and that “stan” culture will change their hypocritical way of thinking.