I’ve written about ableism before, I wrote about it back when Sia’s awful movie Music was getting backlash (rightfully so) I also wrote why I believe it’s the worst film ever made. However this is an entirely different situation, this is about how people expect autistic people to be absolutely perfect and not slip up once.

Let’s set the stage first, Julia Fox an actress who got a lot of spotlight in The Safdie Brother’s 2019 film Uncut Gems is on Tiktok a very popular social media site. The last few years she has gained a following due to her talking about real world subjects as well as generally being likable by her audience. It’s also important to know that Julia Fox has said she is autistic and has even talked great lengths about it.

Enter the whole “mascara” trend which apparently was popular on Tiktok, I say apparently because I’ve talked to many people who pretty much live on Tiktok and they have told me they haven’t heard of it. So what is the mascara trend? Mascara is used as an euphemism for sexual assault, rape or dick (I can’t 100% confirm the dick part but I’ve seen some people claim that it’s also used for that). To give a little background on why this exists it’s basically because Tiktok has been censoring any video that talks about sexual assault and rape, which is disgusting as I believe that those topics are very important and people should be absolutely allowed to talk about, educate and share their stories.

That’s all well and good using a euphemism to get passed TikTok’s censorship isn’t the problem. The problem starts when you expect people to completely understand it without giving any context, Julia Fox ended up commenting “idk why but I don’t feel bad for u lol” on one guy’s video (I won’t be naming the person) that could easily be taken as talking about mascara, it was quite clear to almost everyone that Julia Fox did not have malicious intent, she’s been a very huge activist when it comes to sexual assault. Plus some autistic people take euphemisms very literal it’s very common knowledge that you really don’t even have to do that much research to realize.

That didn’t stop people expecting the absolute worst in her however, without even giving her five minutes to clarify ableism was thrown around and death threats were being sent. Which led me to realizing that this wasn’t just about Julia Fox this was about how people do not give autistic people a chance to clarify, or learn about something new.

Let’s start off with the common justifications, while yes the video was tagged “SAAwarness” be completely honest how many times have you looked at the tags on a video? Unless you are actively looking for a certain hashtag 90% of the time you aren’t going to notice anything.

Another common argument is the word consent being used, much like other words consent can have many different meanings and in this case you can easily fit it in well with mascara. Example being “you didn’t have my consent to use my mascara” or “this person didn’t consent to you using their video game console” consent doesn’t just mean sex.

I also do want to point out that having the mindset that everyone is supposed to fully understand that mascara is euphemism for sexual assault, rape ect is just wrong, especially when you don’t give an explanation you just yell at them.

Which leads me to the main point of this piece, you would think that Julia Fox being very open about her autism people would actually try and educate her rather than yell and act terrible…that’s not the case here unfortunately. Which is when I made my post about the matter, most of the comments agreed with me, others respectfully disagreed and then there were those who threw a bunch of ableism. I even got ableism thrown into my DMs as well as a few death threats. And i’m not the only person several other autistic people and sexual abuse survivors who didn’t go with the narrative that “Julia Fox condones sexual assault” were harassed and sent nasty messages.

So what does this whole situation tell me exactly? Well people will resort to ableism or will automatically assume the worst in autistic people, some people are trying to argue “this has nothing to with autism!” Once you bring the r slur to the mix and harass autistic people who disagree with your point of view it becomes a topic that has to do with autism. You can’t gaslight people into thinking otherwise, what gets me however is when Julia Fox apologized nobody issued an apology to her or any of the autistic people or sexual abuse survivors that were harassed.

For an app such as Tiktok who has a lot of people on there that like to claim “everyone is a little autistic” you would think they would be more understanding and do the research about autistic people. But I guess that would be asking too much, why do the research when you can be performative and get brownie points. These are the exact same types of people who will say they are best friends with an autistic person when in reality they might have sat with an autistic person once at a lunch table and never spoke to them again. As someone who has been very open about their autism, it’s truly both disappointing and really scary to see people send death threats and harass autistic people all because we have a completely different view of the situation and which was the case.

If this could happen to Julia Fox an actress this could happen to any autistic person, all because we don’t automatically get something, all because we make one simple mistake, all because people can’t find the decency to actually explain the meaning of something.

The only positive (if you want to call it that) to come out of this situation is seeing a bunch of people’s masks slip, some of which before this claimed to be huge activists for sexual abuse survivors and autistic people. While I’m not going to say they hate sexual abuse survivors or autistic people however I will say that their “activism” are now going to be looked at very differently and questions are going to start being asked.

To wrap this up the next time an autistic person doesn’t understand something, try and actually tell them what said topic means. It’s the absolute bare minimum you could do and they will absolutely thank you for it, a little clarification can go a long way. Accusing someone of condoning sexual abuse, calling them the r slur or sending death threats is only going to make you look horrible to any reasonable person who’s reading.

I. Introduction

Hello again, I hinted at this being the next topic I was going to talk about when I talked about Film’s Pedophillia and sexual abuse problem. This is a topic I’ve wanted to talk about for awhile now but what was holding me back was the loss of how many people have been outed as racists. That alone should tell you how many racists are unfortunately plaguing Film Twitter, I apologize in advance if I don’t explain every single situation, luckily I did have some help by someone who helped me out quite a bit! The main reason why I decided to write this article is to call out Film Twitter’s hypocrisy. A lot of people on there want you to believe they are not racist at all and have never done a racist thing in their life! When in reality they themselves have took part in it. The layout is going to be the exact same as last time, only this time I’m going to start with the more straightforward cases and work our way up.

II. Gina/LonelyFilms and Muriel/Ptanderstan

I grouped these two together mostly because they pretty much did almost the exact same thing, I’ll start with Gina because I honestly had no idea who she was until I saw that she got exposed for it. Basically what happened was somebody found her using the n slur in several instances while at the same time claiming how much of an “ally” she is. Spoiler alert that’s going to be a recurring theme throughout this whole article, at first she deactivated her account but now. It’s a empty account on private. Maybe someone took her username who knows. Muriel was pretty much the same case, she claimed she was an ally, but someone found her using the n slur several times. I remember this one actually pretty well due to the fact that I use to follow her. Her half ass apology did not help her case at all, in fact that’s what did her in the most. She basically gave the whole “I didn’t know the full effect of the word” which is not an excuse if you didn’t know the “full effect of the word” then why say it? I’m pretty sure we were taught in Elementary School to not use words we have no idea what they mean (even if she knew the meaning she STILL should not have said it) She should have educated herself and realized why the word is terrible and why she should not have said it. Not just say it without doing any research. As far as I know Muriel is no longer on Twitter.

III. Khoi/bongjoonwhores

Khoi is another straightforward one he made a slavery joke what the joke was I’m not entirely sure, I really didn’t know too much about Khoi, he’s no longer on Twitter all that’s left is a few mentions of his name.

IV. Jay/UncutJays

Jay was a very popular user on Film Twitter, he was another example of someone who claimed to be an ally but was later exposed of xenophobia. Keep in mind he made plenty of xenophobia comments yet for whatever reason his fans told people “to give him a pass” or “he didn’t mean it” Jay took no responsibility for it at all he made no apology and deleted his account.

V. Caterina/ Caterinacmrg

Apparently this person is still on Twitter, basically what they said was that she wants to see Jojo Rabbit as a theme park, they apparently rebranded and pretended this never happened.

VI. Robert Storms

I don’t think Robert Storms counts as Film Twitter but I feel this needs to be addressed again since Storms apparently wants to talk about how good of a person he is. If you don’t know who Robert Storms is considering yourself very lucky, he’s basically The Quartering if he had far less subscribers and followers. Same idea as The Quartering you know “go woke for broke” or another idiotic Anti-SJW. Robert Storms went on a Xenophobic rant about how Parasite won best picture and pretty much “criticized” the film without even seeing it, most of what he said was just xenophobia no actual criticisms. That event alone pretty much killed his YouTube career while yes he still does have 26.3K subscribers his reputation has gone down the tubes and is now known as “The Parasite Guy.”

VII. Jason Lei Howden

*Trigger warning suicide attempt mentioned*

This is a huge one so let’s start at the beginning, Dilara Elbir was pretty popular on Film Twitter, she founded the site Much Ado About Cinema, in mid -February of 2020 a leaked DM of Dilara and a friend surfaced which showed Dilara using the n slur very causally. After the DM was leaked Dilara apologized some people accepted it others thought it was too little too late. The entire staff of Much Ado About Cinema all left the site (understandably as most of which were POC). Dilara then attempts suicide mostly because well Twitter is Twitter and some people (who were not involved with the situation to begin with) are going to take advantage of the situation, luckily she did not end up killing herself. Barry Jenkins and Lulu Wang even expressed concern for Dilara. I want to make it clear that it was trolls and people who wanted to take advantage of the situation who sent the death threats, there was a lot of genuine criticism towards Dilara for using the n slur. After that the situation seemed like it was over….at least you would think. Enter Jason Lei Howden who made the situation 100x worse than it already was, if you don’t know who Howden is he’s the director of Guns Akmibo (which at the time was coming out in one or two weeks) and Deathgasm. Basically what happens next is Howden attempts to make this whole situation about “woke culture” and felt Dilara had no reason to be criticized despite being white and using the n slur. He then starts attacking a bunch of the Mucho Ado staff blaming them for Dilara’s suicide attempt when they had nothing to do with it and even tried to help Dilara not hurt herself. What Howden did next was what really set this whole situation into a blaze, he focused his attention on two black writers Valerie Complex and DarkSkyLady he accused the two of cyberbullying and “attempted murder” which is bullcrap because neither of the two had anything to do with Dilara. Both Valerie and DarkSkyLady got harassment from people who agreed with Howden. Howden also tweeted out a list of every writer who left Much Ado About Cinema opening them to get harassed.

It’s worth noting that Howden never gave a full apology, he never acknowledged the damage he had done or the pain he gave people. Howden currently isn’t directing any films and rightfully so, the fact Howden turned a situation that could have been resolved on it’s own to a whole “woke culture!!!” Narrative is gross to be quite honest. Let me make one thing clear calling out someone’s use of the n slur is not “woke culture” Dilara is a white woman who should not have used the word. The worst part about all of this is people were actively trying to minimize the situation, “be kind” Twitter started telling people who were giving genuine criticism to Dilara to “stop” or “you are spreading hate and it’s not the time” “be kind” Twitter wanted to make the narrative that the death threats outweighed the genuine criticism when that wasn’t the truth. The death threats were the minority, a bunch of them were trolls who were suspended from Twitter after the situation. There were far more people giving genuine criticism, it doesn’t help that “be kind” Twitter did absolutely nothing about Howden, not once did they call him out they just wanted to police black people on when it’s okay to criticize someone for using the n slur. Completely messed up if you ask me.

VIII. Film Twitter’s attacks on Chloe Zhao

Finally we come to the most recent example of Film Twitter’s racism, as always let’s start from the beginning. Chloe Zhao is a Chinese film director who directed The Rider, Songs My Brothers Taught Me, Nomadland and is going to direct The Eternals. I’ve expressed how much I love Chloe Zhao and how she’s one of my favorite directors working today. Anyway a few days ago when Nomadland released there was a screenshot floating around that claimed Chloe Zhao was a billionaire, the screenshot claimed that her father is a billionaire and that she has the money as well. Spoiler alert the screenshot was debunked by Zhao herself who disproved the screenshot, what angers myself and many other people is that Film Twitter believed this rumor with no evidence. All they went off of was one screenshot and thought it was real, no research, no actual evidence no nothing. Film Twitter talks about wanting more WOC directors in the film industry but the moment they are given the opportunity to they will destroy their character. I’ve noticed they have never actually gone after white directors who are well known billionaires. Gee I wonder why that is? This was a pathetic attempt to kill Zhao’s character because she’s currently the frontrunner for the Oscars, what disgusts me even more is that Zhao herself had to come out and debunk the rumor. Even if she was a billionaire….so what? She made a film that shows what life is like for the nomads she is using her platform for actual good unlike many other directors people often praise.

IX. Conclusion

Film Twitter has a lot of cleaning up to do when it comes to racism, a lot of people on Film Twitter want to believe that “racism is no longer in our community” but that’s just not true. A lot of people on Film Twitter want to go into the film industry at some point which is great, the problem is a lot of these people who were exposed of racism also wanted to go into the film industry. Film Twitter pretending to be progressive is just laughable, if some of these very same people grow up to be part of the film industry. Racism in the film industry is not going to change we are going to be back at square one repeating an endless cycle. So what can we do about it? Well if you see racism taking place call it out, use your voice to combat against it. Even if your a small account somebody will hear you or see you speak out. Thank you for listening and I hope I helped out by bringing this to people’s attention. Because this is a conversation that needs to be talked about.

I – Introduction

This is something I really did not want to talk about, but because of what happened yesterday with three huge names on Film Twitter being exposed of being sexual predators who harassed several women and are just overall down right cruel to women. I felt the need to say something, if it means potentially helping survivors and people who are going through abuse then I will do my part and help out.

Before we get into what happened we need to go over other people who have been exposed which led up to this. But first I’ll catch up the people who don’t know what Film Twitter is. It’s exactly what it sounds like a part of Twitter where people discuss movies, actors, actresses, directors and all of that good stuff.

I am not part of Film Twitter although I do talk about movies, I do not consider myself part of it and quite frankly never will given what happened/what’s happened over the years. I’ve made some friends from Film Twitter who are great people some of which thanked me in advance for making this piece on this topic. Next we are going to discuss all of the people who have been called out that I can remember, unfortunately I’m not going to remember all of them. But by the end you should get a very solid idea of what is going on and realize how common it really is on Film Twitter. So let’s start…

II – Spiro

Spiro was the first person I remember being exposed as a pedophile on Film Twitter, I believe he wasn’t a huge name but he had somewhat of a decent following. He pretended to be a 22 year old man when in reality he was in his 30s messaging girls on Film Twitter who were about 14-16 years old. After being exposed he didn’t even apologize he straight up deleted his account, the DMs came out and the stuff he sent to this one girl was disturbing and disgusting which I won’t repeat here. Spiro is no longer on Twitter thankfully.

III – Caillou Pettis

Caillou Pettis

This was definitely a shocking one and this is the only person who was exposed I actually messaged with. I’ll just summarize what happened with my experience because it’s really not important but it does add a little bit. I started actually using Twitter properly rather then just randomly post things in like 2018. Around the beginning of 2020 when I didn’t have any pictures of myself or have my age in my bio, Caillou Pettis who is actually a film critic on Rotten Tomatoes messaged me, which is fine we exchange thoughts on movies and then he asks me how old I am. I tell him I’m 25 (at the time I’m 26 now) he all of a sudden stops messaging me. Several months later he is exposed as a Pedophile messaging teens on Instagram and Twitter. He gave a very fake apology saying “he didn’t know the people he messaged ages” when DMs show that he was fully aware of their ages. As of right now Caillou Pettis is very inactive on all of his social media accounts even on Rotten Tomatoes.

IV – Joseph Solano (1st Time)

Yes you read that right Joseph has been exposed twice we will get to that later but for now let’s talk about the first time. Joseph Solano use to be a popular person on Film Twitter he would call out racism, sexism and so on he primarily focused on the Star Wars fanbase…which leads into what happened. For whatever reason Joseph thought it was a good idea to pose as a woman to “see if sexism is real” apparently several women told him not to do it, but he did it anyway. He also made a lot of people feel very uncomfortable as well. This leads into something you will see that plays a major theme in the next section. Men who put themselves on pedestals claiming “they are the champions of women and are the only respectful ones towards women because they speak out more than others” it’s a very toxic mindset and actually a quite hypocritical one as well. Joseph is one of those who used this logic and thought he wouldn’t be called out because he’s against abuse of women although he himself sexual harasses women. Joseph is still on Twitter surprisingly enough but that will probably change very soon.

V – Haydn, John Eberle Jr and Joseph Solano (2nd Time)

Finally we come to what took place yesterday which is what angered me to make this piece, you might be asking “after the instances you just described before why not say anything before?” which is a fair question, but it boils down to that I wanted to believe Film Twitter would fight back against this garbage, I truly wanted to believe people would look at what happened and say “we need to do something about this” sadly that is not what happened. With that said let’s talk about these three, last night a few brave young women came forward and told their experiences about Haydn, John and Joseph. Haydn was the first to be called out, someone who had a huge following on Film Twitter and like Joseph was supposedly against abuse and harassment towards women. Haydn sexual abused and harassed several women, used the “I’m lonely” defense as a way for people to feel sorry for him and he took advantage of his popularity on Film Twitter and manipulated people to not come forward. Some survivors even said they were afraid to speak out due to his popularity on Film Twitter. So it sounds like to me Haydn damn well thought he could get away with everything.

Next John was exposed arguably one of the biggest names on Film Twitter, like Haydn and Joseph he had the “champion of women/nice guy” mindset, John did almost the exact same disgusting crap Haydn did…sexually harass women, abuse women with very tasteless jokes when told to stop, he flirted with several women when told to stop he wouldn’t. John also took advantage of his popularity on Film Twitter he set up this nice guy personality where if anyone were to expose him they would be labeled “Cancel Culture” I would also argue John put himself on a much higher pedestal than Haydn or Joseph, he started that whole “Positivity Gang” garbage that really did not mean anything apparently it was a way to “combat against racism, sexism and sexual abuse” but each of these three who were all part of it are complete hypocrites.

Finally on to Joseph (again) he did a lot of the same things John and Haydn did but he also made a lot of sexual jokes that made a lot of women uncomfortable and told him to stop several times. He even made sexual jokes about a girl who was a minor at the time, he also said he was writing a screenplay about a lesbian love story and wanted to cast this same girl (who is a straight woman). It’s completely disgusting Jospeh also made an apology that’s just straight up manipulation and blaming it on someone else. It’s disgusting as hell and quite honestly some of the worst I’ve seen on the site.

What all three share is they were all huge names on Film Twitter, they all have that “champion of women/nice guy mindset” and all three took advantage of their platform to manipulate and sexual harass/abuse women. What’s even worse is several people looked up to these people, some people felt betrayed because they were friends with them. Yet these three took advantage of that and manipulated people.

VI – “The Positivity Gang”

What I do want to mention a little more is about the whole “Positivity Gang” thing, I want to make it clear that not everyone involved in the Positivity Gang are abusers as some people were more then likely manipulated into being involved with it I just find it very strange how the biggest three members were the ones exposed as garbage people (I believe John was the one who created it). As I said before the Positivity Gang was a response to supposedly combat racism, sexism and sexual abuse, which is a good idea those things SHOULD be called out, however the whole positivity gang thing slowly but surely morphed into this “I’m better than you because I’m more of an activist than you and call out things more than you” if anything the whole positivity gang thing felt like performative activism and had a lot of “that’s enough activism for today” energy. I love to use my platform to call out crappy behavior especially as of lately ableism (you know the whole Sia thing.) the difference is I don’t boast about how I’m a better activist than other people. It’s great using your platform to call out hate in fact that’s encouraged, stepping over the line and claiming you are better than anyone else is NOT okay.

VII – Conclusion

So what can be done? Well spreading awareness, educating people, calling out crappy behavior and reporting this type of behavior is a start. I truly hope this conversation does not leave Film Twitter for awhile, time and time again I’ve seen people exposed for this behavior, it’s talked about for about 2 days and then everyone collectively forgets that it happened. It’s a very disturbing process that has made Film Twitter a very unsafe place for several people, heck some people flat out said they aren’t involved with Film Twitter anymore because of this very reason, plus there’s the heavy racism which I didn’t even talk about in this piece (I will make a piece in the future about it though) where a ton of people got exposed of being racists. Some people might bring up the whole “it’s just a few people that shouldn’t ruin Film Twitter for everyone!” The problem is here most of the names I mentioned in this piece were very popular names John, Haydn and Joseph were a huge part of Film Twitter, I remember back then you couldn’t go anywhere on Film Twitter without hearing their names, how positive they were and how much they apparently cared about people. It truly shows you never know someone which is a very harsh thing to learn. I truly hope this community gets better and more people start talking about this in great lengths.

Dear Neurotypical people stop harassing People with Autism and defending Sia.

In short of what happened Sia posts a trailer for her directional debut “Music” and people quickly point out how Maddie Ziegler does not have Autism or any type of disability. Sia starts going on a rant about how “people should see the movie first” which means she doesn’t want to hear any genuine criticism. Many people with autism were trying to tell Sia about how this is wrong but Sia’s fans accused them of trying to “cancel” Sia. But then it gets worse with Sia’s responses, she even called an actress with autism who expressed concerns and said that Sia doing this silences our voices a “bad actor.”

Sia has completely trashed the Autism community the community that she claimed she loved and was making a “good intentions movie” about, but then more stuff came out…it was revealed that she worked with Autism Speaks a hate group towards people with autism and has a bunch of information online exposing the group. Sia claims that Autism Speaks joined in when the film was finished however screenshots have been floating around showing that she knew how bad Autism Speaks are since APRIL 2020 yet she didn’t say or do anything. But wait there’s more!! It was also revealed that Sia manipulated Maddie Ziegler into being in the film to the point where Ziegler started crying and said “this is wrong I don’t want to do this” Sia completely ignores Ziegler and goes ahead with the movie anyway. Lastly Sia is another one of those celebrities who whined about “cancel culture” when it was people with autism and allies giving genuine criticism. Sia has not apologized, held her fans accountable for trashing the community or anything else. At the time of writing this she hasn’t been active on Twitter since 2 days ago.

Sia’s ableism was of course ignored by her fans they claim “it’s called acting” yes we know that but people with autism deserve to have their stories told, another argument Sia’s fanbase likes to bring up is “nobody was saying anything about Rain Man!” Which is completely untrue people were very vocal about it, just because YOU haven’t seen it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. You just didn’t bother to do research and want to defend your ableist singer who can’t even do the bare minimum. The attacks on people with autism are absolutely disgusting, because Sia cried “cancel culture” her fans now think people with autism are a “mob” or “a bunch of snowflakes and aren’t worthy” there were even comparisons of people with autism and serial killers. Which I’m going to address this right now, people choose to become serial killers so anyone can play a serial killer. You aren’t born as a serial killer, you can’t choose to have autism. Sia’s fans are some of the exact same people who probably swear up and down that they support people with autism and are allies…yet they can’t do the bare minimum and call out their ableist celebrity. By defending Sia you are showing you can care less about people such as myself and the rest of the community, you are showing you would rather side with a terrible person who probably doesn’t even know you exist than people who would treat you with nothing but respect. A few days ago a thriller called Run was released and had the first wheelchair user actress in a thriller in over 70 years (great film by the way highly recommended). Plus she wasn’t a famous actress either in fact it was Kiera Allen’s first role in a movie! So answer me this why couldn’t Sia do that? What is her excuse? This proves to me that Sia wasn’t in it for the message at all, she was in it for people who claim they care about people with autism and use that as an aesthetic on their Twitter and Facebook profiles but then go right back to bullying people. Sia’s film “Music” just gives them some sort of way to pat themselves on the back for doing absolutely nothing or the bare minimum. Just because you plan on seeing some garbage movie by a singer who can’t even listen criticism about her ableism does not make you an ally it shows that you aren’t willing to listen to the community who is just asking you to listen and hold your favorite accountable for their garbage actions. As someone who was high functioning as a child what Sia has done is disgusting, this is the most angry I have ever been at a celebrity in quite sometime. I will not be supporting her new movie or any of her music, in fact I think her career is done with she buried herself deep in a huge hole that she can’t get out of. So to the people who insist Sia did nothing wrong let me leave you with a final question…the next time you see ableism taking place what will you do stand by a person from a community who is hurting and is trying to educate, who treats people with nothing but respect but gets told “they aren’t worthy” or will you side with an ableist who are hateful people and only pretend to care about people with autism and actually don’t care….if you chose the second choice congratulations you chose ableism and are part of the problem.