Social media is very powerful tool in the sense that it can make any average joe famous, even if they have a total sum of zero talent. Which is exactly the case with 19 year old vine “star”, Carter Reynolds. Now when I say he has no talent, I may be exaggerating a bit; he does have one, and that’s being able to brainwash an almost entirely teen/pre-teen audience into believing that sexual harassment is okay.
The 19-year old comedian posted a video a few weeks ago showing him and his underage ex-girlfriend Maggie Lindemann, both intoxicated and sitting on Carter’s bed. What started out as a harmless video, quickly escalated when Carter took off his pants on camera and kept asking Maggie to “do it”. Even though she was clearly uncomfortable and kept repeating that she didn’t want to, Carter kept insisting, and at one point even told Maggie to just “act like nothing is there” (referring to the camera).
Once the video “leaked”, twitter did what twitter did best, and the whole situation blew up.
Carter Reynolds became a trending topic in a matter of hours, but what has been particularly disturbing is the teenage girls that have been tirelessly defending the social media star. Having already had a huge following on twitter, youtube, and vine, his loyal fanbase quickly came to his rescue; similar to the culture of Beliebers or Directioners, they have been completely forgiving Carter for his wrongdoings, even going as far as to declare that rape isn’t even bad in an attempt to quiet the “haters”.
Carter is relying entirely on his fans right now, since the rest of the internet is a bit more non-impressionable than 14-16 year olds. Does he know what he’s doing? Why is he letting a bunch of teenage girls say that rape is okay? I mean, he even went so far as to tweet, after finding out that maggie was in the hospital from attempting to commit suicide, “maggie is saying I’m the reason she’s in the hospital…lol nah you’re just crazy and psychotic.” The problematic, dishrag of an excuse for a “media star” has done a good job of making a large teenage audience believe that rape is completely okay.
Following the leaking of the video though, Carter has still continued to receive an enormous amount of backlash. Much of the twittersphere has been bashing Reynolds for how he’s been handling the situation. He’s responded by tweeting sympathy-evoking messages like, “Never regret anything that has happened in your life, it cannot be changed, undone , or forgotten. So take it as a lesson learned and move on.” Or the less inspiration ones like, “i’m NOT a rapist”, and ultimately doing anything he can to not look like a rapist, except he’s really bad at it.
But, of course, the larger portion of twitter isn’t taking any of Carter’s crap. I mean, there’s an actual video of him trying to force an underage girl to have sex with him, does he think being sad will make the internet forget about that? Regardless of his efforts though, Carter just can’t seem to subdue the “haters”. The negative attention Reynold’s has received even prompted Vidcon, a multi-platform online video conference, to ban the comedy flop from attending. Go Vidcon!
After hearing about what happened, Hank Green, co-founder of the event, tweeted Carter asking him not to attend. Of course the media star played innocent, asking “for what reason” as if being famous on social media for being a rapist wasn’t enough. Despite Green’s polite request for him not to attend, Carter of course showed up anyway which isn’t particularly surprising; Carter obviously doesn’t know what “no” means.
Despite his efforts, he was still removed from his hotel after attending Vidcon the first day unnoticed, and asked not to return the next day. Staying home was probably in Reynold’s best interest though, because upon hearing the news, twitter got to work again. Multiple videos have been posted of youtube fans attending Vidcon, chanting things like “no means no” and taking pictures with trash cans meant to represent Carter. The internet is a beautiful place sometimes.
Between sexually harassing a minor on video, and then being kicked out of huge video conference, Carter may be better off just ending his career as a “video star”. All in all, I think Carter is a great guide for how to appeal to a teenage audience: don’t be a rapist and you’ll do just fine.
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