The name \u201cWill Smith\u201d means far more than it used to. Beyond an actor, he has become a blank canvas upon which to project discussions on race relations, class warfare, and basically anything else you want to talk about. After the Oscars, Twitter exploded in a million different directions. People debated whether to shame Will Smith or Chris Rock. They meticulously assessed Smith\u2019s relationship with his wife. They searched through his past with the thoroughness of criminal investigators. He has been called an abuser as many times as he\u2019s been called abused. He\u2019s been publicly diagnosed with everything from anger issues to anxiety disorders. Will Smith isn\u2019t the only one\u2013 this trend of diagnosis via public opinion started with people commenting on Britney Spears\u2019 \u201cmeltdown\u201d way back in 2007, and hasn\u2019t stopped for a moment since.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The trend of \u201cdiagnosing\u201d celebrities is a practice that should be dying as society works to destigmatize mental illness. However, that destigmatization seems to only apply for certain symptoms. Things like mild depression and anxiety are almost commonplace, but more serious, \u201cscary\u201d mental illnesses (such as personality disorders) are still very much taboo, especially in the public sphere. They\u2019re used as catch-all explanations for \u201codd\u201d behavior\u2013 quick answers to the question, \u201cJesus, why do they act so crazy?\u201d Every time Kanye West enters the news, his bipolar disorder diagnosis litters Twitter feeds. Back in 2013, after Miley Cyrus\u2019 controversial performance at the VMAs, people were quick to blog about her potential slew of mood disorders and addictions. It\u2019s almost as though we see everything bad a public figure does as something that can be pulled into one uniform condition, easy to digest, with symptoms on WebMD for the world to see. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Due to our shortening attention spans, all we need is one word to describe someone\u2019s entire personhood. We feel less and less for these people, and yet we act educated enough to apply blanket labels for their emotional and mental struggles. As we continue to repeat these terms in reference to celebrity cultures, they lose their meanings. \u201cGaslighting\u201d has become a stand-in for \u201clying\u201d, and the word \u201ctriggering\u201d (meant to describe something that reminds a person of a traumatic experience) now signifies childlike petulance. Everything gets pathologized. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
These disorders aren\u2019t becoming accepted parts of society\u2013 they\u2019re becoming the opposite. We collectively wash meaning out of these words with each diagnosis, bleaching them into buzzwords. They become useless. And the celebrities at the center of this era of public diagnosis only help to turn these words into hashtags. Abuse is a serious thing, not to be tossed out casually in a tweet. Same with bipolar disorder. Same with mood disorders, personality disorders, and addictions. These are nuanced. The meaning of words ultimately is not decided by the dictionary but by public use. We give words meaning, and we take meaning away. We should collectively treat these terms and diagnoses with caution and respect. Will Smith, as far as we know, is not \u201ctoxic\u201d for hitting Chris Rock, and he\u2019s not \u201cabused\u201d because he got a side-eye glance from his wife\u2013 and if he is, it\u2019s up to professionals and not public opinion to decide how to deal with that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The name \u201cWill Smith\u201d means far more than it used to. Beyond an actor, he has become a blank canvas upon which to project discussions on race relations, class warfare, and basically anything else you want to talk about. After the Oscars, Twitter exploded in a million different directions. People debated whether to shame Will Smith or Chris Rock. They meticulously assessed Smith\u2019s relationship with his wife. They searched through his past with the thoroughness<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":317,"featured_media":6473,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[435,318],"tags":[],"coauthors":[467],"class_list":["post-6472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Screen-Shot-2022-04-24-at-10.12.23-PM.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/317"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6472"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6472\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6474,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6472\/revisions\/6474"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6472"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=6472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}