Member-only story
Why The Media Needs To Stop Re-Traumatizing Victims
For the past few weeks, Twitter has been hosting the dreaded blast from the past via viral clips of old interviews featuring troubled superstars of their eras, who were forced to eat shit on the glitzy platforms of influential media personalities, mercilessly interrogating vulnerable guests for the world to witness.
From Lindsay Lohan to Britney Spears and a handful more, there’s been a growing case study on how shitty things were, back when nobody cared enough about “hurt feelings” and grossly crossing over the line of reasonability and humanness.
We should be able to look back and heave a sigh of relief at the wonders of evolving away from normalized social dysfunction that the media-at-large helped to enhance with brutalization of primed targets, who were fair game because of the celebrity that dictated why their controversial moments needed to be relentlessly documented.
However, it seems that in an effort to heroically stand up for those who were voiceless decades ago, we run the risk of activating trigger centers that could do more harm than good for the recipients of an online movement, that aims to grant viral justice — long overdue.
It’s reminiscent of those sporadic moments when Chris Brown starts to trend, and haters swiftly remind his adoring crowd why he will never be…
