It should go without saying that the internet can be an environment as reactionary as it is hostile, and the latest example has snowballed from a single social media post into wide-ranging accusations, allegations, insinuations, and conspiracies swirling around what happened between Ashton Kutcher and Danny Masterson 22 years ago.
Chrissie Carnell Bixler, who was one of the accusers that helped send the disgraced That ’70s Show star behind bars for 30 years, aired a grievance on social media where she stated “I know the secrets your ‘role model’ keeps for you,” before noting that “you were on speaker phone that night you called Danny on February 21, 2001. I heard everything. I heard the plan. In my opinion, you’re just as sick as your mentor.”
That was the exact date Ashley Ellerin was murdered before her date with Kutcher, with the actor testifying in court almost two decades later prior to serial killer Michael Gargiulo being convicted and sentenced to death. Obviously, we’re not going to quote, embed, or endorse the myriad of responses to have emerged in the aftermath of Carnell Bixler’s initial post for reasons that should be self-explanatory, but you can probably draw your own conclusions as to how the purported bombshell is being greeted in not just the wake of Masterson being put behind bars, but Kutcher’s initial defense of his longtime friend and colleague, as well as the subsequent apology video for doing so.
As unsavory as it sounds, the knee-jerk reaction has led to a not-insignificant number of netizens connecting dots covering everything from implying Kutcher’s involvement runs much deeper than he testified, or that he wasn’t telling the entirety of his side of the story, never mind implications Masterson assisted him in covering up the fact he knew she was dead and opted not to report it to the police immediately.
It’s an uncomfortable evolution of the Masterston story that’s already leading to entirely justified shock and outrage that there’s people out there even trying to draw a direct line between one and the other, but it’s an unfortunate indictment and unsavory byproduct of how the online sphere’s collective mind tends to work, regardless of how traumatic and upsetting the circumstances are.