Frei accurately diagnoses the digital mob's tendency to prioritize performative outrage over factual context. This analysis is a sobering reminder that in the age of viral justice, the truth is often sacrificed for the sake of moral posturing.
Approfondir
Prérequis
- Pas de données disponibles.
Prochaines étapes
- Pas de données disponibles.
Approfondir
French Open SCANDAL: Internet Mob Tries Destroys Rafael Jodar for Ballgirl "Push" That DIDN'T HappenAjouté :
Ladies and gentlemen of the interwebs, Viva Frei, former Montreal litigator turned current Florida rumbler in my home office for a Saturday afternoon of vlog. If you're new to the channel, you may not know that I often say that the collective memory of the internet is about six or seven years. Videos go viral in cycles. Six or seven years goes by and the same video or something very similar will go viral and the question is why. I have a long-running theory that the memory, the aggregate memory of the internet is about six or seven years. It's like the generation on the interwebs. What happens is people get old, they move out of the internet, other generations which were too young before move in, and so things that are of universal appeal have a rejuvenation of sorts, a cycle of sorts.
We're witnessing right now another one of these cycles known as public shaming on the interwebs. Back in 2013, who's old enough to remember a name, Justine Sacco? Justine Sacco was a woman who worked at a marketing firm, I think, in New York, and she was going to South Africa on a trip. And as she's on the plane right about to put her phone on silent, she goes to Twitter back in the day and posts something to her 115 or 150 followers, "Going to South Africa, hope I don't get AIDS. Just kidding, I'm white." Turns her phone off and in the 12 hours of her flying to South Africa, the tweet goes viral. She is getting demonized as the most racist SOB POS on the internet. The tweet gets amplified, makes it onto various other platforms, and people pretend to take the tweet seriously, pretend to take the tweet not as the sort of self-deprecating joke that she intended it to be, and this woman, who was hitherto unknown to the internet, in her flying with her phone on a silent, becomes public enemy number one, and she had, I would say, her life ruined. She was fired, she was demonized, she went through a lot of stress. You should really read Jon Ronson's So You've Been Publicly Shamed to understand the Justine Sacco story.
The irony of it is that it was an internet lynch mob of self-righteous virtue signaling scumbags who knew that she didn't mean her tweet in any malicious racist way, but they got such satisfaction of painting themselves as being the self-righteous ones, the ones who were going to shame a woman. They were going to destroy Oh, I'd never say anything terrible like that. She's an awful woman, Satan, scum of the earth, and they all rejoiced orgiastically in their self-righteous destruction of another human.
She got over it and she survived. Fast forward about six or seven years. We were in December 2013. Let's fast forward to January 2019.
And you'll all remember a certain incident involving the Covington Catholic kids, one Nicholas Sandmann.
Another incident of the internet where people take a nanosecond, in this case it was actually a still shot, a photograph of Nicholas Sandmann infamously smiling in the face of the Native American, I believe now faux veteran. He may have lied about his valor. We're not certain about that, but Nathan Phillips, a little young white boy smiling in the face of a elderly indigenous man, and the internet said, "What a racist POS sitting there getting up in his face, smiling with his white privilege, white supremacy." They had no idea, or maybe they did, that it was a single image from an incident where Nicholas Sandmann was in fact the victim par excellence. Nathan Phillips approached Nicholas Sandmann. Nicholas Sandmann was at the Washington Monument for a pro-life rally, and the kid, 17 years old or 16 at the time, didn't know how to react, sat there smiling at a man who came up beating his drum in his face. The internet took that shot, demonized the kid as a white supremacist, maligned him, defamed him, and all of other Covington Catholic kids. And the internet, again, in its orgiastic virtue signaling, went nuts with it. Look how terrible this kid is. I'm tolerant and I'm virtuous. I am the person to destroy and eviscerate another human being on the internet based on a single frame which was wildly out of context.
>> And the white people were shouting racist things back at the black Hebrews.
>> Phillips couldn't be specific about what the boys shouted, and so far no video evidence has emerged supporting his claims. Student Nick Sandmann said the boys did not shout racial epithets.
Sandmann was shown in the first video standing close to Phillips as Phillips continues to beat his drum.
>> Outlets got sued for defamation, uh settlements occurred, and to this day there are going to be people who still think Justine Sacco is a terrible racist, that Nicholas Sandmann is a white supremacist. And what is the date today? We're in May 2026, so about 7 years after people having learned and forgotten Nicholas Sandmann, which itself was 6 years after Justine Sacco uh having people having learned and forgotten. And today, a tennis player at the French Open is being dragged through the mud because people are reacting to a 3-second or 4-second clip from the French Open where it looks like this 19-year-old tennis player, Raphael Jordao, where it looks like he pushed a ball girl in frustration as he left the court. People self-righteously, orgiastically going to the internet saying, "What a piece of trash this man is. Scum of the earth.
Disgusting filth. He should get banned from tennis. He If that were my daughter, I'd jump down in the stand and beat him up." People reacting the exact same way they did to Nicholas Sandmann. 3-second video clip taken out of context, but also that doesn't even show what they think it shows. And so people have made their beds, they've staked their reputation on their high-horse virtue-signaling, judgmental attitudes, and it becomes clear it will never become clear to those who have already staked their reputation on it. It becomes clear even if you just look at the video in slow-mo that Rafael Nadal did not push the ball girl at all. He didn't touch her at all. It was an interesting angle where it looked like she might have been touched, but in reality she tripped over the tarp as she was backing up as Rafael Nadal was leaving after one of the rounds of his tennis match. Clearly frustrated, he threw something up at his coach, I think it's his father as well, and then made a hand gesture as he was approaching his coach to leave after the round at the exact moment that this ball girl stumbled on the tarp, fell backwards, so it looked like his hand gesture was that which pushed the girl over. People took to the internet to eviscerate this young man, to destroy him, to demonize him, to depict him as a woman-beating, child-beating, uh egotistical, arrogant man.
And as the real story emerges, you point it out to them and they say, "Oh, maybe he didn't push her." But this is where people pivot after they've made their mistake instead of just admitting it and apologizing. They've got to justify it to themselves, they've got to save their own face if only to their own egos. "Oh, maybe he didn't hit her, but he got in her space, in her personal space." This is a competitive tennis player who's at the French Open leaving after the round. To say that he got in the space of the ball girl as if it's in public areas where you don't enter someone else's private space because it's weird and awkward. This is a tennis player and the ball boys and ball girls are trained to stay out of the way of everybody, to not interfere, to not distract, to not enter the space of the tennis players when they're in competitive mode, but people go, "All right, he hit her. He pushed her, he shoved her out of the way in frustration. Ban him." All right, he didn't. "Well, he approached her private space in an aggressive manner because they refused to admit that they were wrong, that they jumped on this orgiastic bandwagon that seeks to destroy and then ask questions later and they can't admit it to themselves because they publicly already made their own bed. People learn nothing from the mistakes of the past or the new generation comes in and doesn't even know who Justine Sacco is. Doesn't even know what the Covington Catholic kids are. Rafael Nadal didn't touch her.
I'll play the video so that you can watch it at the end of this video.
There's no if or buts about it. He didn't touch her. It's not even clear that he knew that she was there because he's quite clearly in the zone in his own mode right now in competitive tennis. The girl clearly stumbles on the tarp on the way back, but the internet is what it is. It's a leaderless lynch mob that is just looking to virtue signal its own good virtue to show how nice and proper and holy everybody else is that they would go and eviscerate and wrongly so a human. The only The only distinction between this and the other cases, you know, Justine Sacco in fact made the tweet that people wrongly judged her on.
This guy didn't even do what people said he did before they judged him, but they can't bring themselves out of their high horse moral virtue signaling silo to say, "Oh my goodness, I made a mistake.
I didn't know the context. I was just sitting there on the toilet and went a little crazy." People learn, they forget, a new generation comes in and needs to learn and every now and again you're just going to need someone to remind you. Justine Sacco 2013 publicly shamed for an innocuous tweet. Nicholas Sandmann Covington kids publicly eviscerated for a photograph taken out of context that didn't just tell part of the story, didn't tell the story accurately. Fast forward another 7 years, Rafael Nadal, a man who on a Saturday afternoon when he's trying to compete in the French Open is excoriated, eviscerated, drawn and quartered in the court of public opinion by a bunch of virtue signaling buffoons who react to a 4-second clip and then cannot admit that they made a mistake.
That's what happened today. And if you like what I do, you know what to do.
Like, share, subscribe, hit the notification bell. Most importantly, take a step back. It's not because you can say something that you must. It's not because it makes you feel good that you should do it to get that little dopamine rush of judgment. And for those who thought that he hit a ball girl, what the hell is wrong with you? I watched that video. My initial reaction is, "Nobody shoves a ball girl. Nobody shoves a ball boy. It doesn't happen."
And so, if you think that something happens, that might be a reflection on you. That you might Oh my goodness. No, in my world people do that. No, in my world nobody does that. And I would have to see incontrovertible evidence that he in fact shoved a young ball boy or girl out of frustration before I would believe it. But everyone's default setting out there is, "I want to be virtuous. I want to be holier than thou. And I want to judge my fellow man and woman." Not to make them look bad, to make me feel good. You made a mistake. Own up to it.
Peace out. [clears throat] Boo-ya.
>> [music] [music]
Vidéos Similaires
DeenTheGreat Is Absolutely DISGUSTING
challzbrown
681 views•2026-05-29
Choa Chu Kang Tragedy Raises Questions About Warning Signs and Relationship Violence
TwentyTwoThirty
872 views•2026-05-29
Why Is It ALWAYS About The Pregnant One? 😂
alikicomedy
9K views•2026-05-30
Flotilla activist on 'racist' response to Ben Gvir's video of her
MiddleEastEye
13K views•2026-05-29
10 French Cities That Could Collapse First as the Homeless Crisis Worsens
InsideEuropeToday
359 views•2026-05-29
Elections Are Rigged! Only Those In Government Can Tell How ~ Diana Ngao & Mark Ouko
RadioGenKe
696 views•2026-06-02
White People RECOUNTS How Great Black People Are Becoming So Fast Now They Can't Take It
mrsan_20
939 views•2026-05-30
Foreign-Owned Shops Targeted as Anti-Migrant Tensions Rise in South Africa
aljazeeraenglish
25K views•2026-05-30











