Unless you really want to be pissed off...

[CashRules]

...do not look at the IMDB board for Amber Heard.

[Derived Absurdity]

Internet comments have lost all power to piss me off anymore. I read a comment saying her bruises were somehow photoshopped, even though she went to court with them, and I literally felt nothing.

[Monk]

Huh, I looked for it but didn't see it.

[CashRules]

Actual abuse victims would not want money from their abuser.

Gold digging HO

Golddigger and a liar

Amber, why? Why are you doing this to an innocent man?

You're history, witch.

If this piece of trailer trash

[aels]

I have seen so much gross bullshit over the past few days, even in spaces that I thought were reasonably progressive when it comes to not assuming that people who allege abuse are lying for attention/money/revenge. People are the fucking worst.

'She hit *herself* in the face because it's ridiculous to assume that a substance abuser with a history of violence might hit someone! Look at a list of people who haven't accused Johnny Depp of abuse, because abusers either hit everyone they know or no one at all ever! She just wants money, the kind of money you somehow get from alleging abuse even though the amount of divorce money she is entitled to is presumably based on however shared assets are divided according to Californian divorce law! She just wants attention, the kind of awesome attention that involves everyone calling you a dirty gold-digging slut liar bitch! She's trying to ruin his career, because allegations of abuse always result in convictions and no one in society is prepared to give rich, white men a break! Look at that poor Roman Polanksi, a man formally charged with drugging and raping a child, who has never been able to work in Hollywood or go to a fancy party since! Innocent until proven guilty, except for Amber Heard, who is obviously guilty of lying despite not being proven otherwise!'

[CashRules]

Hollywood should be carpet-bombed. Those assholes still defend a predator like Polanski.

[Derived Absurdity]

Hollywood is full of child rapists (and regular rapists). This has been known for a long time. There are so many stars who say they were raped as a child or know many people who were and nothing ever came of it. It's an open secret. It's a disgusting degenerate snakepit and it needs to be razed to the ground.

[aels]

I'm straying off of Hollywood and the Heard case here but over the past few days, I have been aware of people victim-blaming/making jokes about a teenage girl who was gang-raped in Brazil, and a woman in Italy who was burned alive by her ex-boyfriend because he couldn't deal with getting dumped (and a lot of the comments were like 'Well, *actually*, this kind of thing doesn't happen too often and also bad things happen to men so what are you broads getting so flustered about?') I humbly invite you all to come live on my moon colony.

[CashRules]

And a woman in Cincinnati is a horrible mother who belongs in prison because her four-year old was able to climb into a zoo's gorilla enclosure and a male gorilla had to be shot out of concern for the child's safety. Because obviously you must be a poor excuse for a parent if you don't know your child's exact location every fucking second. No, it's not a problem that the enclosure was so badly constructed that a child was able to get into it - WE MUST CRUCIFY THIS BITCH! We really need for the movie "The Purge" to become a reality because I've got some plans.

[aels]

Literally the only thing I know about small children is that they can move like shit off a shovel when they want to.

[CashRules]

I've got one who wrestles geese, that's some satanic bullshit right there.

[Derived Absurdity]

I don't think it's too much to ask for a parent, when their kid is near a gorilla enclosure, to make sure they don't fall into said gorilla enclosure. Especially if the enclosure is as badly constructed as that one apparently was, you should be extra vigilant if your kid is near it.

[CashRules]

I'm not saying she wasn't negligent to some extent, but keyboard warriors keep acting like she's the worst thing in the history of parenting.

[Anakin McFly]

Not looking at the boards, but I've seen some of those comments around. Most of them are assholes and Cash can take care of them during the Purge.

There's one group of defenders that I have empathy for - fans of Depp who were themselves the victims of abuse, or in similar vulnerable circumstances, and who are denying this as a coping mechanism. I know a girl whose parents used to fight all the time and were physically violent to her and her brother, banned her from bringing home friends and all that, and when it got bad she would lock herself in her room and cry to her poster of Keanu Reeves. She knew he couldn't hear her, but it made her feel better and less alone to feel that someone was listening. Chances are there are people who did that with Johnny Depp, because I've heard many similar stories from many fans. Sometimes it's one of the few things that keep them going - turning a celebrity into the personification of their hope that there are still good men in this world. They become surrogate ideal boyfriends, guardians, role models, that distant figure who will always be there for them. Which is definitely unhealthy, but they don't always have better alternatives.

So to find out that that their ideal man has actually abused someone (and might thus abuse them too if that fantasy relationship were real) can be psychologically devastating in a very intimate way. The knowledge that they're wrong - which I think most of those fans know - is precisely what makes it worse, because then they're struggling between their conscience and the need to preserve their coping mechanism that might very well be their main lifeline.

Which doesn't make it right, but I've been there and have had friends who've been there, for whom all the shitty things they were saying were just a defensive smokescreen, because I knew what they actually believe and I knew what was going on in their lives. So I feel for them. And I can't imagine how much worse it is for Amber Heard, who had her trust directly betrayed and is now just having insult added to injury.

I often wish the tabloid industry would just die. Everyone would be happier then. Fans get to preserve their ideal visions of celebrities to inspire them and give them hope, celebrities get to keep their privacy, and all their conflicts can be worked out and settled without members of the public making everything worse.

EDIT: lol I checked out the IMDb boards. I'm with DA. also most of them are just horrible people who don't fit the description I mentioned.

[Monk]

I don't think it's too much to ask for a parent, when their kid is near a gorilla enclosure, to make sure they don't fall into said gorilla enclosure. Especially if the enclosure is as badly constructed as that one apparently was, you should be extra vigilant if your kid is near it.

I haven't followed this too closely, but my understanding was that it wasn't like he just fell through the railing into the pit. When the family was getting ready to leave, the daughter started crying because she didn't want to. While the mother was dealing with her crying daughter, the boy climbed over the railing, crawled over to the edge and through some bushes at the edge of the enclosure and then fell in. Witnesses say this all happened very quickly.

I've found that the people most vocally judgmental of the situation are those who don't have kids. I went to the museum and then the aquarium this past weekend with my two nephews (ages 4 and 6). Despite there literally being 6 adults, occasionally one of the boys would manage to sneak away for a minute without us noticing.

[Derived Absurdity]

I've been babysitting cousins on both sides of my family for many years now. I take them to malls and shopping centers and stuff. I know how easy is it to lose a kid in a public place. I still don't have a lot of sympathy for the mother. If you have a four-year-old near a gorilla enclosure which he can fall into, you should make sure he doesn't fall into it. Period.

No I'm not saying this proves she's a horrible mother or that her kids should be taken away or whatever, but if anyone was in the wrong here, she was. As it is this was basically just a "shit happens sometimes" kind of incident and people are looking for blame for what was essentially a random chance event.

[phe_de]

Internet comments have lost all power to piss me off anymore. I read a comment saying her bruises were somehow photoshopped, even though she went to court with them, and I literally felt nothing.

Pretty much this.
There are quite a few apologists for male violence on the Amber Heard board; but I knew before that they exist.