Are we just waiting to tear Rob apart?

We love to build up celebrities just to tear them down. It's a culture of meanness that seems to have trouble differentiating between snark, which is funny, and hate, which is lame. When hating on a celebrity for sport, "insert Rob here" and see if it's still funny. Cuz unfortunately, as it goes with celebrity, it's just a matter of time until it is Rob who's a punchline to that joke.


Rob, Meet Your Future

I was just spending my lovely Saturday morning catching up on The Daily Show by watching clips online. You can watch segments from any episode going back to at least 2003, if not further.

Anyway, one link led me to another and I landed on an old interview with Ben Affleck (I don't even remember how I got there). He was so cute and funny. He had smart things to say and I enjoyed watching him go back and forth with Jon.

Here he is in February 2003

Ben Affleck is surprised the MTV viewers didn't get layered satire.

I had forgotten how insane the media went over Ben's relationship with Jennifer Lopez. I don't know how I forgot, being that "Bennifer" was thrust into my face constantly by every possible media outlet at the time. This is from the same year, still at the height of his notoriety:

Here he is in December 2003

Ben Affleck is surprised his relationship with J.Lo is such a big story.

This got me thinking about Rob (it does seem all roads lead there) and how he'll be changed over the years due to the media blitz that is his life. Will he suffer the same fate as Ben, going from the pinnacle of stardom to becoming a cautionary tale? 

Here is Ben in September 2006, after hiding out for a couple of years under the radar. Literally in hiding. He still gives a great interview but he seems way more reserved and guarded and perhaps a bit dead in the eyes. There are a million different reasons why his demeanor might be different. Maybe he's become more of a reserved adult in the almost 3 years since the previous interview. Maybe he's having an off night. But to some extent it's obvious he's been beaten down by the overexposure and gossip-constructed controversies that caused him to go into hiding in the first place.

I'm not some huge Ben Affleck fan but he seems like a nice-enough guy who didn't deserve to be torn apart by the media. He seems to be in a better place now than he was in 2006, but it was interesting to see a before and after of sorts.

We Take Part in the Game

Ben's a prime example of the whole building someone up just to tear them down for sport. I understand that the thirst for blood of the media machine is a given. But it's sad that that has become an expected part of our public pop cultural discourse. It's like we're all sitting around watching Lindsey Lohan's life unravel before our eyes like an E! True Hollywood Story in real time. And everybody has something to say about it. It's not just the late-night talkshow hosts cracking jokes anymore. It's no longer just the gossip mags jumping on a story.

Twitter and blogs have given a public forum to anyone who has access to a computer. Social media has made public opinion tangible. Ordinary individuals are empowered to articulate their point of view and have their voice heard by people all over the world. In our communities of use we spur each other on to act in ways we'd never be able to in real life.

These can be wonderful life-enhancing developments. For example, never in my real life have I found an opportunity to invoke the word "bewbgropes" yet I've lost count of the number of times I've used it on Twitter. I've got the stellar women in my circles of Twific friends to thank for expanding my horizons. This is one of countless delightful examples of the behaviors that are not only supported but encouraged in my online interactions. I love being surrounded by like-minded pervy women who enjoy playing around like I do. But sometimes this phenomenon gets weird. Circles of people can sometimes egg each other on, doing/saying uncool things in the name of having fun.

Do You Take Part in the Culture of Mean?

There's a sense of vulture-like meanness that's pervasive in our culture. A giddy thrill of skewering public figures. I know I'm going to come across as some Pollyanna, we should all just hold hands and be friends, kind of gal. But I ain't got no high horse - I notice myself getting caught up in it too. But there are instances when it goes to far. Sometimes it goes from being snarky fun to weird rage. Here's an example:

Rob was a guest on Leno and the other guest was Emma Roberts who said she was Team Jacob. Rob said something in the moment like: Well, you've just confirmed that you have no taste. Twitter immediately blew up with all of these people tearing Emma Roberts apart. It was disgusting. I saw a ton of tweets flying by that directly addressed her like, "OMG I fucking hate @EmmaRoberts" or whatever her handle is. I was practically shouting at my screen: Dude, you know she can see that, right? That you're basically saying that to her face.

This was all up in my timeline, and people were retweeting retweets of horrible things and being like, "Yeah!" Things like "Rob should knock her ass down" and "Bitch has an attitude that needs a punch in the face." ALL BECAUSE SHE SAID SHE WAS TEAM JACOB. It was a weird, scary-ass display of mob mentality. And some of these women have kids (I don't but I fear for our collective future). At one point I was just going down my timeline clicking unfollow unfollow unfollow. I could not believe the hatred that her one statement stirred in people. Whether or not they were being serious in their anger, they were still spewing it forth into the world, sometimes directly at that poor girl.

It can get gross and ugly and when it shows up in my Twitter timeline it can become disturbing. I want people to feel free to say and do whatever they want. That's what having an online persona is all about for me: exercising my right to speak and reveling in the freedom I feel doing it. And with Twitter there's the great "unfollow" option which gives me the right to not have to listen to someone else's speech. But just because I unfollow and erase their negativity from my Twitter universe, doesn't mean their behavior goes away. And just as they're entitled to say what they'd like, I'm entitled to point it out and say, dude, that's so uncool.

In conclusion

Rob is so hot right now. But as the way of every hot actor who has ever been in their 20s, he won't always be the "it" guy. The media is circling like vultures in the sky just waiting for some scandal or some slip up that will cause him to stumble. When they finally smell blood and go in for the kill, is your voice gonna be one of the crowd of people that is spewing negativity in his general direction? If Rob develops a drug problem like Lindsey, will you be one of the people cheering as he's sentenced to prison? If he's quoted as using the wrong word like Kristen, are you going to accuse him of being a fundamentally bad person? Bring the snark, not the hate.

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