I need to go back to the start, because while PJ's DMs and apology letter are important, they are not half the story.
PJ had had a social media presence for years, but I became a fan around the release of It Chapter 2 in 2019, so my firsthand account starts there. Early on during the height of the It Ch2 fandom, someone resurfaced a 2015 interview PJ had done with Sean Baker while promoting the movie Tangerine. The video is no longer on youtube as far as I can tell, but in it, the interviewer made some awkward and insensitive remarks about trans people, and PJ and Sean acted awkward and ignorantly in response. It was thoughtless, but it wasn't hateful, nor did it counter support for trans rights. It’s also important to note that the interview was around four years old at the time and that PJ had also given other very thoughtful interviews (like this one with Karamo Brown) during that same time period.
That clip (now a decade old) was the initial catalyst for an unwarranted barrage of hate. Perhaps in part due to the fact that PJ was accessible and responsive on social media, he was regularly hounded wherever people could reach him. I also feel it's important to note that he was openly critical of apology culture, and was never someone to write some PR apology to appease online mobs. Not that it would have helped, but I'm not surprised he never addressed it at the time. And I feel like his refusal to play along may only have intensified people's persistence.
At that point, there was still an active fandom for him. There were the determined haters, but there were also a large percentage of people who didn't take an old interview as a final say on his character. But for those who did let a seed of hate take root, it only grew and they actively searched for new reasons to condemn him. One of the notable events during this time was an interaction at a convention. A fan asked him to say “gay rights”, a meme-y fan request, and he declined. That same person then came back to his table and confronted him with a camera in hand (I remember thinking how the entitlement was off the charts). But this person got him on film, unprepared for a confrontation. He didn't even express any homophobic viewpoints, but because he didn't have some perfectly worded, online-approved response, it was all people needed to spread and further some narrative that he was anti-lgbt.
After these two catalysts, the hate machine continued. People twisted events, exaggerated details, and even outright fabricated stories. I won't recount every instance, but the point is people didn't care about the truth or how any of this started. The court of public opinion had decided PJ was homophobic and transphobic and that's all that mattered.
These people flooded his instagram daily, accusing him of various transgressions and asking him to explain himself. They tried to pick fights with him in DMs. They harassed his co-stars on their own pages. They led campaigns to get him fired from jobs and to get kicked out of conventions (when he didn't even have much on the horizon career-wise in the first place).
I don't have an exact timeline as I didn't want to save and revisit most of the ugly things I saw, but I know that this harassment went on for well over a year before any of the infamous DMs were sent. Over a year of provoking a man who had been open about his struggles. From surviving csa to overcoming heroin addiction and navigating his mental health in the aftermath. (He did a great episode of The Mental Illness Happy Hour right around the time of It Chapter 2's release.) He also spoke openly about his regrets and pain surrounding Ken Park. But people only took all of these vulnerabilities and weaponized them to punish him for being "problematic".
Eventually after so much time of this, he started responding both in DMs and comments. Yes, he said fucked up things. How much of that reflected true beliefs, how much stemmed from paranoia, how much was a last-ditch effort to push people away, etc, I don't think anyone can ever know. But once again, the nuance didn't matter. All that mattered was that he said those things and that people had more receipts to run with. (For even more context, he later shared publicly that all this was happening around a time in which he was working with police to try and have something done about the teacher who had abused him.)
None of this is meant to justify the DMs, but to provide additional context around them. And it matters that there was a large-scale amount of hate even in the absence of "deserving" reasons. It is painful and messy to recount but I feel like it is needed. I don't want the way that PJ responded while at his lowest to allow people to downplay the extreme and coordinated amount of hate that was directed at him. Nor should it overshadow the staggering lack of care and empathy shown towards someone who was openly dealing with trauma. The way people behaved was abhorrent and their actions have real and lasting consequences.
If any good can come from all this, I hope it can help soften some hearts and make people pause before joining the next online hate bandwagon. Think for yourself and trust your heart and start choosing and valuing grace and empathy more.
RIP James Ransone. You deserved so much better.
