Today (or, I suppose, yesterday), an extra from Glee got fired. On her Twitter, she announced a massive spoiler for the next episode (which airs on Tuesday) without the writers' permission. Now, a lot of extras are known for sharing spoilers. Little teasers and irrelevant snippets of plotlines that get us excited for future episodes, but nothing that really spoils us and would get the extra in trouble. I don't really follow spoilers. If I see them on my tumblr dash, that's fine, but I don't go out of my way to look for them or make an effort to find out the latest goss. I prefer to watch the episode with as little knowledge as possible. That's fine, that suits me, but some people do like finding out the latest spoilers. Most extras provide those spoilers without revealing anything too big. However, Nicole Crowther took it to the next level.
The tweet has since been deleted, but she told her 3,000+ followers on Twitter (and their followers on both twitter and tumblr, it went viral on both sites) who would be elected Prom Queen and Prom King in the next episode. If you don't watch Glee or didn't see the tweet, you wouldn't understand why this is such a big deal. However, let me tell you, it's a huge plot twist that is extremely unexpected, and the writers (who I'll refer to as RIB from here on in -- Ryan Ian Brad) wanted to keep it under wraps.
Brad Falchuk, one of the writers, saw the tweet and publicly called her out/blacklisted her/fired her, with these two tweets:
The Glee fandom went crazy. People sent her messages, mostly insulting, some sympathetic. Some fans (myself included) were furious at what she'd done. You'd think it'd get better from here, right? You'd think Brad and Nicole would talk and solve things in a sensible manner, yes? Oh, I wish they had. A little while after Brad sent those tweets, Nicole sent an empty apology that sounded like something you'd find on a hallmark card.
Within five minutes, while the fandom was laughing bitterly at the fake abrupt tone of her response, that tweet was deleted. She then started throwing herself a little pity party, retweeting sympathetic tweets. I think this is when most people started getting angry, because she was acting like a child.
Again, these retweets were deleted within minutes of being retweeted. Nicole probably thought she'd gotten away with it, but I don't think she realises how fast the Glee fandom can be -- as always, we capped her ridiculous act before she could get rid of the evidence, and now we have photographic proof, even if the original evidence was deleted. It was around this time, maybe a little earlier, that the Glee fandom decided to get #BradIsOurKing a trending topic. I don't actually know if we managed that or not, but I spent quite a long time just looking through the tag and seeing what people had to say. It was pretty interesting. Anyway, upon deleting the rude retweets, the next thing she tweeted was her original explanation for posting the spoiler. I responded to it.
By this point, I -- among plenty of others -- was livid. I posted the above screencap on tumblr, and added this to it:
It’s genuinely surprising me how polite I’m being right now. I’m pissed off because I can’t help thinking … if that was me, if I’d spent months planning this great controversial plot twist that’ll shock every single viewer, if I thought we’d be able to keep this twist under wraps, and then someone I trusted spoiled it and told thousands of fans about it, I would be raging. And just putting myself in RIB’s shoes is enough to make me furious. I want to scream.
As a writer and a very empathetic person, it didn't take much for me to understand how RIB must be feeling right now. Not only did Nicole break her contract with Glee/FOX, she broke RIB's trust, and she ruined something that they were really anticipating (the audience's reaction the Prom Queen and King). She deleted that tweet before going through her blog and deleting everything she'd posted since early April, including the big spoiler. We didn't hear anything from her for a couple of hours, we starting thinking about other things, we began moving on ...
And then she tweeted again.
Now, while this sounds more genuine, I highly doubt she means it. After retweeting tweets that were bashing Brad, after deleting her initial apology, after saying she didn't want to be a part of the show anymore, it's very difficult to believe she's actually sorry for posting the spoiler.
Acting like the victim was a really low move. None of us had actually been bullying her -- expressing our rage, inquiring why she did it, questioning her motives ... sure. But none of us had been harassing her or attacking her. Most of the nastier tweets weren't tagged with her username, so she wouldn't have seen them unless she went looking (and if she did, then it's her own fault). And, yes, I admit -- sometimes certain members of the fandom can take things a few steps too far, but I wouldn't say any of us were bullying her. Glee has taught us a lot, and none of us would ever dream of bullying someone. Acting like the victim made me even angrier.
Then she replies to this message, changing her original reason behind tweeting the spoiler. Originally, she said she didn't want to be an extra anymore -- like she made a totally sane decision to post the spoiler in order to get fired. Now she's blaming it on the alcohol, like it was accident and she didn't mean to post it. However, if she didn't mean to post it, then she didn't want to get fired, which goes against what she originally said and later deleted. Makes sense, right? No. In other words, she's making excuses.
This entire situation has been a mix of amusing (the hilarious comments made by people I follow on tumblr) and infuriating (what Nicole has been doing has annoyed me to no end). It's starting to die down, but seeing how this day has been, I wouldn't be surprised if Nicole tweeted something stupid or Brad @replied her something really sharp and witty, which will set the entire fandom aflame and get them going crazy.
All I know is that I'm sick of Nicole Crowther and she deserves everything that gets thrown her way for being so stupid -- unemployment, lawsuit, blacklisted from the entertainment industry. If she can't be trusted as an extra whose character doesn't even have a name, she can't be trusted as anything more, either. You go against your contract, you get sued and fired instantly. That's how things work.
Drabbles IOU: 7
