The obsession with celebrity culture is pretty gross and the particular venom that comes with social media has supercharged an already fairly toxic place to be.

I watched the trial via Emily D Baker - and I think I caught around 70% of it on the days it unfolded. I went into it somewhat dubious that Depp would win and I don't particularly care for either of the two actors involved.

Both Depp and Heard supporters are guilty of the same thing, they've a) failed to understand the legal questions being asked and b) pick the evidence that supports their version of reality. It's a worrying trend that's being mirrored across whole sectors of society, because if we cannot agree on the reality of the world we experience the eventual outcome will only be violence. The courts system is designed to offset our bias and we have to differentiate between what transpired in the celeb conversation and what transpired in the courtroom.

Much of the stuff out here has been highly unfair, highly misogynistic and pretty disgusting. I argued the same thing when Depp was accused and Heard's words were taken prima facie. I think this case has set the cause of feminism (or humanism) back about ten years. However, that's different from what happened in the court room. What happened in the court room was fair and the verdict stands -we can't throw out verdicts we don't like and claim an unfair trial. We have to separate the conversation on social media from the legal justice in the courtroom.

I think in a jury of seven people, of all ages but taken from Virginia, there would've been a cross section of society who weren't interested, some who were a bit interested - but I would have expected a hung jury. I would've hung the jury based on the evidence I saw.... but they didn't. So I'm presuming that in their deliberations they examined the evidence more carefully than I was able to - and they drew a conclusion they were all happy with. Getting 7 people to agree on anything in the modern world is pretty much a miracle.

Here's my article about why feminism needs to be careful with people like Amber Heard. Apologies if you already saw it. I think it's pertinent to our conversation.

https://medium.com/lucid-nightmare/how-amber-heard-crashed-the-course-of-feminism-c0ec43ff7a52