I feel like I should make a post detailing the Sebastian Stan drama because I see a whoooole lot of bad takes and misinformation and blatant lies going around. I’ve been on tumblr for nearly a decade at this point and this is genuinely one of the scariest and most out of control situations I have seen.
A quick summary for anyone who hasn’t been following: Last week, Seb was pictured with a women. Many assumed this was his girlfriend but this has not been confirmed. Fans began combing through her life and social media to find something incriminating. I feel like this is important, that the hatred came first, and the reason came after. They found a photo of the girl, from 2 years ago. I will include it for transparency (she is on the left): she is at an ‘Asian night’ party/club night, wearing a kimono.
It’s insensitive to use culture as a costume, and to lump all the diverse and distinct Asian cultures together into one party theme, decorated with pound shop Chinese lanterns. It is cultural appropriation. A number of Asian people were understandably upset by this photo and her actions.
But let me be very clear: These are not his actions. He was not at the party, he did not wear the kimono, he did not post or like the photo, he did not endorse, condone or defend the actions in any way. We have never seen them together before, so presumably this is 2 years before they met. He does not follow her or the friend that posted it 2 years ago on Instagram. There is no reasonable expectation that he ever would have seen this photo. He almost certainly did not know it existed.
He cannot apologise or seek redemption for someone else actions. He cannot set a precedent where he is responsible for everything everyone who comes within 20ft of him did, years before they even met. It is completely insane to expect him to do a full background check on everyone he makes out with, or to expect him and all his acquaintances to be ideologically pure, not be ignorant about anything and never make a mistake.
Some people seemed to realise that he cannot be held responsible for other people’s actions, so they invented something to pin blame on him: he defended her! I searched high and low for his statement defending her. He did not make one. Instead, he allegedly blocked a handful of people who spammed his comments with demands for apologies. At least one of these blocks has been outed as photoshop. If the others are real, we don’t know if it was him or his PR team. We don’t know if their innocent public comment alerting him to an issue was accompanied by vile death threats in his DM’s. Regardless, he is within his rights to protect his mental health by blocking people who harass him about something that is, frankly, none of his business. Blocking is not defending her.
I often hear: cancel culture is not real, it’s simply facing the consequences of your actions. So lets do an experiment where we outline the actions and consequences. If you were involved in the vile hashtags and threats made against him, ask yourself: Are these reasonable, proportional and deserved? Do I have the authority to distribute these consequences? Am I making the world a better place - or a worse one? Is my moral high ground getting a little shaky?
Action:
Kissed a girl who wore a kimono 2 years before they met. Allegedly (!!) blocked a few people who harassed him about it despite it being nothing to do with him.
Consequences:
Doxxed, pictures of his apartment and his address leaked online. He will almost certainly have to move from his HOME.
Intense death threats and suicide baiting, including #RIPSebastianStan trending, which his family may have seen and actually thought he had died, photoshopped articles and memorial pictures that say he died
Actual danger to his physical safety through the release of his home address
Emails sent to his newly signed agency and employers to get him FIRED
Severe damage to his reputation including news articles with his name and ‘racist post’ in the title, that do not make it clear it was not his post!!
Most likely a severe hit to his mental health, which he has said before he struggles with, particularly from all the KILL YOUR SELF CLOWN messages
If he was with the girl - well, I doubt he is now, so the possible destruction of his relationship, instead of her getting a chance to learn, educate herself, grow and be better.
I am genuinely concerned for his mental health - situations like this before have resulted in suicide (Caroline Flack springs to mind). His physical safety is also in danger. For the actions of someone else, years before they met. Please, stop this. Please see that you are making the world so, so much worse, and you could actually kill someone through this. Please exit the twitter echo chamber and think maturely and critically about whether your response is proportional, reasonable and necessary. Please see that he is a stranger to you, who is paid to do a job, and we have no more right to demand things from him or make him face consequences than we do our dentists or the cashier at the local shop. Please log off and go outside for a while.
