Pop Style Opinionfest: When Celebrities Go After Critics

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Ooooh, girl! If you follow us on twitter then you probably already knew what the topic of today’s Opinionfest was going to be. But if you’re one of those poor lost souls who don’t follow social media, then suffice it to say, things got hot yesterday. Olivia Munn…

Actually, we’re too tired to type out an explanation. You can go here to read about what happened and here or here to get a good contextualized response. Long story short: Miss Olivia came gunning for our good pals the Fug Girls yesterday. This, in a week when Lizzo went after one of her critics, Michael Che went after one of Colin Jost’s critics, and Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande both had meltdowns and went after their critics. It was open season on critics from thin-skinned celebrities and T Lo was having NONE OF IT.

The thing is, we have a lot of opinions on this, not least because we also have some experience with it. When a celebrity goes after a critic – unless we’re talking about some sort of world-famous critic or one that has an unusually large platform – they’re punching down. When celebrities go after independent bloggers, they’re being pretty irresponsible with the power granted them by their celebrity. Yes, an artist or celebrity has the right to respond to criticism, but they’re absolutely wrong to use their platforms to badmouth them or to encourage their followers and fans to attack them. There’s a line and most of these folks crossed it, in our opinion.

But don’t worry. We don’t yell. Not too much, anyway. It’s a larger issue about our culture and how it sees celebrities, professional critics and the press overall. In short, none of the trends in these three spheres are looking good right now.

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• Olivia Munn
• Pop Style Opinionfest