Social media has become an increasingly perilous double-edged sword for any public figure, in that it brings them closer to their fans than ever before, but even the tiniest misstep or minor controversy and a baying mob ends up sharpening their pitchforks, determined to add them to the list of cancel culture targets.
In the last week alone, we’ve seen Sylvester Stallone publicly respond after he found himself being slated as a racist, white supremacist, traitor, scumbag and much more, based entirely on a tabloid story that wasn’t even true, while Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings‘ Simu Liu deleted a tweet he made in 2012 after people waited for the day the trailer dropped to dig him up over saying nine years previously that he wasn’t a fan of Nicki Minaj’s music, with the attacks coming on his birthday no less.
Elizabeth Olsen, meanwhile, packed up and left social media late last year, and while the actress has never disclosed the reasons why, most folks are under the assumption that it’s because she was subjected to abuse from so-called fans after she failed to post a tribute to Chadwick Boseman following the Black Panther star’s passing.
In a new interview, Olsen said that she’ll never return to social media, and while she didn’t outline the specifics, it certainly sounds as though the supposed obligation on any celebrity’s part to react to major news in a public forum was the catalyst.
“The whole thing just made me uncomfortable and it’s not even like I was really paying attention to comments or anything, I just felt weird how it organized my brain, like, if something happened in the world, I would say, ‘Oh, do I have to post about this?’. I think it’s very dangerous to think, ‘Oh, something just happened in the world. I am an entitled person whose voice must be heard on this issue’, and I just think that is such a narcissistic viewpoint that we’re all a part of, like, it made us all live in this weird narcissistic cycle. During the pandemic, I was like, ‘Oh, well. you know what, this just is not for me’, and I just got rid of it and I won’t go back. I’m never going back to social media.”
Not commenting on social media over the death of a co-star is hardly a reason to blast somebody like Elizabeth Olsen, especially when everyone grieves differently, and she’ll be much better off without having to worry about such negativity in the future.
