Johnny Depp Amber Heard verdict

Courtroom porn and social media have turned innocent bystanders into a mass of mudslingers.

I wasn’t surprised that the memes about Amber Heard far outnumbered those about Johnny Depp. I wasn’t surprised that the cruel and vitriolic discourse was predominantly aimed at the woman. And the queasier I felt about this behavior—even if millions of others were doing the same—the more I came to realize that distortion, not objectivity, has evolved into an acceptable lingua franca. This blurring of public figures and private lives can do a number on us—as bystanders, as an audience. What’s more, we have become so attuned to this narrow, cynical cycle of social media encounters that we consider the trial not tragic or pathetic, but as a pure car wreck: accessible, tawdry, and immediately gratifying. It’s like going to the opera and reading a couple of translated supertitles but not understanding Italian. And despite whatever else this is, it is a soap opera. As we all do nowadays, we watch or we read or we media-graze about these private turned public spectacles in bits and bytes, fearing that the sheer rancor and vulgarity might leave a kind of virtual stench—or, in my case, worrying that prolonged viewing might be triggering.

Jurors deliberated for their first full day in Johnny Depp's $50 million defamation trial against Amber Heard on Tuesday, as they posted a question to the ...

One of the statements is, “Then two years ago, I became a public figure representing domestic abuse, and I felt the full force of our culture’s wrath for women who speak out.” The other statement is, “I had the vantage point of seeing, in real time, how institutions protect men accused of abuse.” “It is clear that the title is the statement.” On the jury verdict forms, the headline is one of three statements that the jury has to weigh in determining whether to rule for Depp. The seven jurors also have to decide whether statements in the content of the op-ed are defamatory.