The Good Place star Jameela Jamil has rarely shied away from sharing her opinions, and the recent "scandal" surrounding Chappell Roan is no exception.
Roan has once again become the internet's whipping girl after being accused—falsely, it would seem—of sending her security to harass Jude Law and Catherine Harding's 11-year-old daughter Ada at a hotel in Sao Paolo, where they were dining with Harding's husband, Brazilian soccer star Jorginho Frello.
To Jamil, the whole thing adds up to a "smear campaign" against the controversial artist, which the media and social media alike love to call "difficult" and who seems to become the internet's Public Enemy #1 every six months or so.
And in an Instagram post, Jamil suggested that in these heavily propagandized times of incessant bot campaigns and the like, none of this is accidental.
In her post, Jamil sarcastically said she agrees with all the Roan "hate," going on to say:
“She is pro Palestine. Pro women. Pro asking for basic respect in the industry."
"She left a huge management firm publicly because the owner was in the Epstein files."
"She’s pro trans. She’s gay. She’s anti-establishment."
"She de-centres men in all of her rhetoric and empowers millions of young people. She calls out her own industry for neglecting the health of young artists.”
Indeed, Roan has repeatedly stood firm on the right side of history on pretty much every issue, and seems to get blowback constantly. But rarely is the blowback actually about her actual stances.
In her caption, Jamil went on to suggest that there was nothing organic about this uproar.
As she sarcastically put it:
"It all seems super organic and legit and not suspicious at all to me..."
"God we love the taste of a smear campaign. Gobble gobble gobble. Yum."
It's easy to shrug Jamil off as a tinfoil hat paranoiac, but what she speaks to is very real: Recent studies have shown that more than half of everything on the internet, including all engagement such as likes, shares and watch time, is fake and propagated by bots as part of influence campaigns designed to change public perception on myriad issues.
This uproar coming just weeks after Roan publicly parted ways with her agent over his appearance in the Epstein files is certainly notable. Especially because the security guard story has never added up.
Harding and Frello claim that Roan sent her security guard to harass Ada until she cried because she walked past Roan's table in the dining area, touching off a viral firestorm about Roan being cruel to a young fan.
But Roan says she had nothing to do with the incident and knew nothing about it until the internet lost its mind over it. The security guard in question, who works for the hotel and not Roan herself, has since posted publicly to back up Roan's version of events.
But of course, at this point, it doesn't really matter: The viral outrage has already done its job in cementing Roan's image as such an unlikable and ungrateful shrew that she made an 11-year-old cry.
As Jamil put it:
“Remember, I have been telling you for 7 years now, a woman is only allowed 2 years at the top before she is dragged into hell and submission.”
On Instagram, many applauded Jamil for calling out the issues with the Roan story, including her fellow celebrities.
Perhaps one day we'll all learn to reserve judgement until we get the actual facts instead of just assuming viral hot takes are correct. But probably not!
