Posted Sep 13 2020 at 9:01 am
Genre: n/a
Written by
Becca Carroll
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Tyler Joseph isn't the first to face some vicious backlash after speaking up on Twitter, here's what happened Tyler Joseph
Yet another victim claimed by ‘cancel culture.’ The Twenty One Pilots frontman is far from the first online attack, but his just sort of hit the deepest…
In the wake of Black Lives Matter, the mishandling of the COVID-19 outbreak by the Trump administration, and the ongoing human rights demonstrates across the country, we’ve been witness to a moment so fucked up that it’s shed light on the incredible capacity for us to come together; but we’ve also seen a lot that we’re not proud of. This week alone, I saw a few things that I could’ve lived without – one of them being Phoebe Bridgers’ cover of Radiohead’s “Fake Plastic Trees” (sorry), and another being the hashtag #TylerJosephIsOverParty, after it started trending on Twitter.
The hashtag had been used over 60,000 times – and that was only in the first few hours, with most tweets sounding something pretty close to these:
A straight white millionaire male thinks it’s funny to not use his platform that will be seen by millions of people to speak up on blm. he hasn’t said one word about anything black people being MURDERED by cops and still jokes around. this is sick. #TylerJosephIsOverParty. – @aotdts
#TylerJosephIsOverParty your behaviour encourages making light/a mockery of the unjust killing of the black community by white supremacists and refusing to use your power to speak out on this issue is vile. – @touchtheleather
bro CANCEL THIS MAN #TylerJosephIsOverParty – @rejectmichaelc
By the time that I tuned in, the damage had been done and Tyler had already come out with an apology, in reference to the Tweet that set it off. What happened was, the Twenty One Pilots frontman made a tasteless joke about his fans’ requests to ‘use his platform’ (which, on Twitter alone, has an audience of about 2.2 million ) to contribute to the sweeping social justice movements that have been recurring since the police attack on George Floyd back in May. The Tweet appeared to make a pretty cringy play on the word “platform,” shown below:
you guys keep asking me to use my platforms.
— tyler jøseph (@tylerrjoseph) September 2, 2020
feels good to dust these bad boys off. pic.twitter.com/CFyMOIkKgC
Yep, sufficiently cringy. Although, the message meant to be lighthearted in a way, it mostly came across as insensitive regarding his capacity to use his following for good. What meant to be an icebreaker instead landed heavily on his followers, who typically know Tyler to be unbelievably empathetic to the voices of his fans. At first, though, Joseph didn’t seem to take the hate too much to heart, even when it started getting pretty ugly. Instead, he proceeded to go into depth on Suicide Awareness month, offering statistics, tips, and humble sentiments on mental health that spanned across eleven tweets.
And then, he circled back to his first comment, tweeting, “im doubling down on my platform tweet. it was fantastic.” Queue the second round of cringing. As you could imagine, this made things worse and caused fans to entirely dismiss his references to mental health and intensify the pressure for him to advocate for BLM. So Joseph finally tweeted: “i’m truly sorry if i hurt anyone. here is a link with a lot of great info that i stand band,” with a link to Black Lives Matter resources.
im truly sorry if it hurt anyone.
— tyler jøseph (@tylerrjoseph) September 3, 2020
here is a link with a lot of great info that i stand by.https://t.co/ItppMmW1u8
But you could tell that Tyler wasn’t too pleased. His apology came off, I’d say, defeated, especially considering the way that it was prefaced: “my tweet wasn’t suppose to be about human rights. so in case you are wondering where i stand: Black Lives Matter. i just wanted to take a moment to raise awareness about something else that has meant a lot to me for a long time. but now I see there is no room for that right now.” In my humble opinion, what there’s no room for right now is aggression. I’m honestly not even one of those who felt the pangs of his initial ‘platform’ joke (because I believe in this guy with, like, every inch of me), but even my initial takeaway had labeled Tyler as defensive and insensitive. I now know that the platform joke was just a jumping-off point to talk about his support for suicide awareness and prevention. But I will say that I do see where the rabid pack of Twitter trolls were coming from.
While I may stand with BLM, I’ll also always stand with Twenty One Pilots and the good that they’ve already done this world. But what continues to surprise me is the fact that Tyler couldn’t see the many ways his tweet could have been taken out of context. Some saw it as, obviously, mocking and aggressive – one follower replied, “This ain’t it dude! Maybe don’t mock your followers who want to use your social platforms responsibly.” Others, like myself, found it, honestly, to be embarrassing to watch someone who I stand with make such a point to stand only few select causes. It’s hard to reason a guy who so loudly roots for love and friendship would refuse to take a stand against our country’s hatred. One Twitter user summed it up, “:( it’s disappointing to see you joke about this dude.”
So, where are you with all of this? Are you blaming Tyler for the tasteless joke and the defensive rebound? Or are you feeling like the Twitter pack rats (…) may have blown this up by seeing red, instead of reason? What I’m here mostly wondering how fair it is, really, to make him feel like he started this fire, and that it was entirely his responsibility to put it out. Because this is a pressure being felt by so many across the music industry. On all ends of the genre spectrum, people are engaging in what we now commonly know as ‘cancel culture,’ where teens engage in an ongoing ‘woke-off’ (as I heard recently referred to as on Bill Maher) that seems to abide by this trope of ‘if it’s not clear that you’re with us, you’re assumed to be against us.’
With the extent to which our words are amplified across our digital terrain these days, it’s clear to many that there’s some sort of power game taking place – and those that never had the power realize they can take it, and those that have it are witnessing the consequences. We’re all too familiar with ‘cancel culture’ at this point – you know, world-wide woke-off, etc. Between the public pile-ons of criticism and mass public ‘stonings,’ so to speak, all taking place behind our screens, people are quickly learning that, in this time, what you say and type matters.
Was now the best time for a play on words regarding BLM? Tyler, no. Does Tyler know that his joke had to be alluding human rights activism in some way? That, I think he does know. And, like he said, he knows that there’s no space for that right now. If you’re so lucky to have a voice with millions listening, you need to see this online space as the vital real estate that it is right now. However, until the people asking us to use our voice are no longer the ones casting us out for it, this real estate will start to lose it’s meaning.
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Tyler Joseph isn’t the first to face some vicious backlash after speaking up on Twitter, here’s what happened
Yet another victim claimed by ‘cancel culture.’ The Twenty One Pilots frontman is far from the first online attack, but his just sort of hit the deepest…
by: Becca Carroll
Sep 14, 2020 | no genre
In the wake of Black Lives Matter, the mishandling of the COVID-19 outbreak by the Trump administration, and the ongoing human rights demonstrates across the country, we’ve been witness to a moment so fucked up that it’s shed light on the incredible capacity for us to come together; but we’ve also seen a lot that we’re not proud of. This week alone, I saw a few things that I could’ve lived without – one of them being Phoebe Bridgers’ cover of Radiohead’s “Fake Plastic Trees” (sorry), and another being the hashtag #TylerJosephIsOverParty, after it started trending on Twitter.
The hashtag had been used over 60,000 times – and that was only in the first few hours, with most tweets sounding something pretty close to these:
A straight white millionaire male thinks it’s funny to not use his platform that will be seen by millions of people to speak up on blm. he hasn’t said one word about anything black people being MURDERED by cops and still jokes around. this is sick. #TylerJosephIsOverParty. - @aotdts
#TylerJosephIsOverParty your behaviour encourages making light/a mockery of the unjust killing of the black community by white supremacists and refusing to use your power to speak out on this issue is vile. - @touchtheleather
bro CANCEL THIS MAN #TylerJosephIsOverParty - @rejectmichaelc
By the time that I tuned in, the damage had been done and Tyler had already come out with an apology, in reference to the Tweet that set it off. What happened was, the Twenty One Pilots frontman made a tasteless joke about his fans’ requests to ‘use his platform’ (which, on Twitter alone, has an audience of about 2.2 million ) to contribute to the sweeping social justice movements that have been recurring since the police attack on George Floyd back in May. The Tweet appeared to make a pretty cringy play on the word “platform,” shown below:
you guys keep asking me to use my platforms.
— tyler jøseph (@tylerrjoseph) September 2, 2020
feels good to dust these bad boys off. pic.twitter.com/CFyMOIkKgC
Yep, sufficiently cringy. And although the message meant to be lighthearted (he explains later that he’s having trouble handling everything, and that humor tends to help) the message that ended up coming through just seemed insensitive regarding his capacity to use his following for good. But what meant to be a kind of icebreaker landed heavily on his followers, who typically know Tyler to be empathetic to the voices of his fans. At first, though, Joseph didn’t seem to take the hate to heart, regardless of how rough it got. Instead, he proceeded to go into depth on Suicide Awareness month, offering statistics, tips, and humble sentiments on mental health that spanned across eleven tweets.
And then, he circled back to his first comment, tweeting, “im doubling down on my platform tweet. it was fantastic.” Queue the second round of cringing. As you could imagine, this made things worse and caused fans to entirely dismiss his references to mental health and intensify the pressure for him to advocate for BLM. So Joseph finally tweeted: “i’m truly sorry if i hurt anyone. here is a link with a lot of great info that i stand band,” with a link to Black Lives Matter resources.
im truly sorry if it hurt anyone.
— tyler jøseph (@tylerrjoseph) September 3, 2020
here is a link with a lot of great info that i stand by.https://t.co/ItppMmW1u8
But you could tell that Tyler wasn’t pleased. His apology came off as a defeat, especially considering the way that it was prefaced: “my tweet wasn’t suppose to be about human rights. so in case you are wondering where i stand: Black Lives Matter. i just wanted to take a moment to raise awareness about something else that has meant a lot to me for a long time. but now I see there is no room for that right now.” Ugh, Tyler, what there’s no room for right now is aggression. I’m honestly not even one of those who felt the pangs of his initial ‘platform’ joke (because I believe in this guy with, like, every inch of me), but even my initial takeaway had labeled Tyler as defensive and insensitive. I now know that the platform joke was just a jumping-off point for his suicide prevention speech, but I will say that I do see where the rabid pack of Twitter trolls were coming from.
While I may stand with BLM, I will also always stand with Twenty One Pilots and the good that they’ve already done this world. But what continues to surprise me is the fact that Tyler couldn’t see the many ways his tweet could have been taken out of context. Some saw it as, obviously, mocking and aggressive – one follower replied, “This ain’t it dude! Maybe don’t mock your followers who want to use your social platforms responsibly.” Others, like myself, found it honestly to be embarrassing to watch someone who I stand with make such a point to stand only few select causes. It’s hard to reason a guy who so loudly roots for love and friendship would refuse to take a stand against our country’s hatred. One Twitter user summed it up, “:( it’s disappointing to see you joke about this dude.”
So, where are you with all of this? Are you blaming Tyler for the tasteless joke and the defensive rebound? Or are you feeling like the Twitter savages may have blown this up by seeing red, instead of reason? What I’m here mostly wondering is, was it fair to make him feel as though he started this whole fire, and that it was his responsibility to put it out? Because this is a pressure being felt by so many across the music industry. On all ends of the genre spectrum, people are engaging in what we now commonly know as ‘cancel culture,’ where teens engage in an ongoing ‘woke-off’ (as I heard recently referred to as on Bill Maher) that seems to abide by this trope of ‘if it’s not clear that you’re with us, you’re assumed to be against us.’
With the extent to which our words are amplified across our digital terrain these days, it’s clear to many that there’s some sort of power game taking place – and those that never had the power realize they can take it, and those that have it are witnessing the consequences. We’re all too familiar with ‘cancel culture’ at this point – you know, world-wide woke-off, etc. Between the public pile-ons of criticism and mass public ‘stonings,’ so to speak, all taking place behind our screens, people are quickly learning that, in this time, what you say and type matters.
Was now the best time for a play on words regarding BLM? Tyler, no. Does Tyler know that his joke had to be alluding human rights activism in some way? That, I think he does know. And, like he said, he knows that there’s no space for that right now. If you’re so lucky to have a voice with millions listening, you need to see this online space as the vital real estate that it is right now. However, until the people asking us to use our voice are no longer the ones casting us out for it, this real estate will start to lose it’s meaning.
Posted Sep 14, 2020 at 9:01 AM
Written by Becca Carroll
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