Rebel Wilson Shows Us How Not to Use Social Media
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Actress Rebel Wilson is being called out after she used Twitter to publicly shame a journalist who she accused of harassing her 86-year-old grandmother. Not only that, she got the wrong person, the journalist in question told Mamamia.
In addition to tweeting that the reporter, Elizabeth Wilson, was "a disgrace for harassing my sweet, sick grandma," the "How To Be Single" star also identified an editor at Home & Garden magazine as Wilson, in a post with the caption: "Here she is: total scum." That post has since been deleted.
BuzzFeed - buzzfeed.com
(Image blurred for privacy reasons)
People who claimed to know the woman pictured in Wilson's tweet said the actress had mistaken the journalist's identity, causing people to contact her with inquiries about the situation. Others criticized Wilson for choosing to share the photo at all, which was sent out to her more than 2 million followers.
"[T]he Elizabeth Wilson in this photo is the loveliest person in the world & it is unfair for her photo to be posted to the world," a Twitter user who claimed to know the journalist tweeted at Wilson.
It is clear from other tweets that Wilson made an effort to identify the journalist she was accusing, BuzzFeed reports. But lawyers from tabloids that Wilson contacted reportedly informed her that she had her facts wrong.
While high-profile celebrities exert greater influence over the social media world than average users, cases of mistaken identity on Twitter are more common than you might expect. In the aftermath of the Aurora, Colorado, shooting, numerous users with the name of the shooter were inundated with hate-filled messages, Cosmopolitan reports. The same thing happened to users with the name Kendall Jones after photos of a 17-year-old huntress beside a dead lion spread online, infuriating conservationists and animal lovers.
Elizabeth Wilson said that she didn't know the actress and hadn't communicated with Wilson's grandmother in any capacity, stating that "this is so far out of the realm of what I deal with" in an interview with Mamamia. The actress has yet to issue an apology for the error.
