Chris Brown Loves Him and Some Homophobia on Twitter
Funny how 140 characters can cause such a ruckus. Sure enough, two of the top trending topics on Twitter at the moment? RazB and his cousin/ex-manager Chris Stokes. The drama between these two is pretty thick, with RazB (who as a teenager was a member of the group B2K) accusing Stokes of sexual assault and rape, and Stokes vehemently denying the allegations.That's the preface. So how does Chris Brown, the megastar musician trying to give his career a comeback kick after a domestic violence charge against former girlfriend Rihanna, fit in? Brown and RazB got into a Twitterfeud this afternoon, and faster than you can say "retweet," Brown went for the jugular, poking fun at the idea of RazB being raped by a man, and accusing RazB of being gay.
Here's the Twitter conversation. Perhaps neither party is really innocent here, but for Brown to feed into the use of the Internet to bully and ridicule people because of their sexual orientation is pretty gross.
"@razb2k: Im just sittin here Thinking how can niggas like @ebenet & @ChrisBrown disrespect women as Intelligent as @HalleBerry11 @Rihanna"
"@ChrisBrown: @razb2k nigga you want attention! Grow up nigga!!! Dick in da booty ass lil boy"
Not content with just that response, Chris Brown added another tweet, complete with the #homothug hashtag (meant to demean an LGBT person of color who dresses or acts hip hop):
"Tell me this @razb2k!! Why when the money was coming in u won't complaining about getting butplugged! #homothug!!!"
Welcome to Chris Brown's latest comedy routine, all jokes about male rape, all the time.
Brown wasn't finished, either. After several followers suggested he might be fostering some anti-gay sentiment with his tweets, Brown blasted off another round letting his followers know that there is no way he'll be deleting any of his tweets.
"I ain't deleting my tweet either!! I was minding my damn business and Peter pan decides to pop off!!! # whatalame" Brown wrote (and check out the lovely image he sent RazB to accompany the tweet). And then he followed it up with: "I'm not homophobic! He's just disrespectful!!!"
Sure enough, RazB doesn't win any gold stars for Internet manners. The artist continued to engage Brown in a Twitter war with lines like, "@Chrisbrown Do you hit your boyfriend @andre_merritt like you do your women?" and "yo @chrisbrown i heard about all yo BoyFriends & tell yo cheerleader @1omarion 2 shut the fuck up b4 i send J BOOG 2 fuck HIS MaMa again."
Alright, so two musicians get into a Twitter shouting match. What's the real world impact? Just another example of how whenever someone wants to slur or bash someone on the Internet, the first place to turn is the issue of homosexuality. And what a tragic message to send to the more than 1.2 million people who follow both RazB and Chris Brown.
Over the past few months, you only have to look as far as the death of Tyler Clementi, or the suicides of a number of LGBT youth who experienced cyber-bullying, to see the tragic consequences of the kind of storm Chris Brown and RazB are brewing here. Can the two have their feud? Sure, go at it. But as celebrities who carry at least a marginal amount of clout, they owe it to their fans and followers not to foster the type of violence that when translated into the real world, outside of the comfort of 140 characters, can have some damaging and dangerous implications.
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