Wednesday, May 28, 2014

what is making Vampire Diaries creator Julie Plec sad?

Julie Plec regularly makes us TV-sad with the power of her narratives on The Vampire Diaries and The Originals, but what makes the executive producer and TV goddess sad in real life? Disclaimer: It will probably make you sad, too.
Julie took to Twitter earlier today to bemoan the fact that some presumably cruel Twitter users have run Originals star Phoebe Tonkin (Hayley Marshall) off of the social media platform: “Did horrible people run @1PhoebeJTonkin off twitter? Not cool, horrible people. Not cool,” Julie tweeted. Then, retweeted someone’s response to the Twitter drama along with her own: “‘Hate sucks but everyone from the cast gets hate its not new so she just needs to chill and be cool.’ This makes me sad. Why is any hate ok?”
Though we’re unsure what it was specifically that made Phoebe want to leave Twitter — we’re guessing it was a pattern of behavior more than one, singular event (which makes us even sadder) — the Aussie actress sent out the tweets: “This new twitter really sucks” and shortly after: “Peace out twitter! I gave you a good shot, its been fun. I'm moving to FB now. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Phoebe-Tonkin/1478482849035182 … be kind to one another! Love ya all.”
Twitter hate isn’t a new phenomenon, but we agree with Julie when she says that it is not something we should accept as normal. It seems counterintuitive that fans of the show would spew hate at the very people who make it possible. Or, if Twitter haters are not fans of the show, that they would spend anytime thinking about this cast and crew, let alone sending hateful tweets in their direction. The first comment in Julie’s response tweet wondering if people ran Phoebe off of Twitter reads: “I'd love for the same to happen to you b—h.” This is deeply unsettling and not OK. We wish all Twitter users could be as classy as Phoebe, who in her potentially final tweet didn’t dwell on the negatives of what instigated the departure, but the positive, asking everyone to “be kind to one another.” In relation to the TV world, Twitter is a cool resource for direct communication with show creators, actors, and other fans. It makes us sad when that community is endangered by hateful messages.

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