MJ fans have triggered me!

Yes, it doesn't irk me so much when US fans say it, but when European and especially British fans go along with it, it comes across as a form of victim olympics. Anything to portray MJ as the wounded martyr. We don't need to make stuff up to show how shitty the media were to him. And claims that the "Jacko" name was a racist thing are just disingenuous.

BTW, a reminder: this thread is about the Elvis movie and MJ fans. After the first few comments it took a weird turn that has nothing to do with the original topic.

Who harmed the wellbeing of Gavin Arvizo? MJ? Maybe his mother shouldn't have trained him to be a grifter and should have raised him better. Maybe then MJ wouldn't have run from them. MJ wasn't even the only celebrity befriending them and later distancing themselves after they realized what kind of people these were. Read Chris Tucker's or George Lopez's testimony! They too befriended them, bought them gifts, gave them money, took them on trips, invited them to their homes - and distanced themselves after a while, once they realized what kind of people they were.


And from certain facts we learned from the lawsuit and LN I get the same vibe from the Safechucks. Crazy Stephanie Safechuck gave me crazy Janet Arvizo vibes in LN. And they too seemed to have been people taking advantage of MJ's generosity a bit too much. And since it wasn't the norm, but rather the exception that MJ distanced himself from these families, I will assume there was something there indeed that the Safechucks, of course, won't tell us about themselves in their lawsuit or LN. We should never forget that we only have their side of the story and we are never going to have MJ's.

At the end of the day, knowing what the Arvizos and Safechucks did to him in the hindsight, doesn't it look like MJ was onto something and he had a good reason to distance himself from these people after a while?

It isn't. What this thread is about is the constant Whataboutery of some MJ fans in relation to Elvis and Priscilla with the allegations levelled against MJ as though the two situations are the same as well as many of them suggesting Elvis was himself a pervert in an illegal manner with minors.

The OP doesn't mention the new Elvis film once.

On this one, seeing as these kids were more like teenagers when they stopped hanging out with Michael, don’t you think it has more to do with them starting to have other interests asides water balloon fights and going to Toys R Us? I mean, what teenager still wants to do the childish activities Michael enjoyed? I don’t think it was Michael doing the “dropping” in that regard.

I don't think anyone has been navel gazing about his faults. The original thread was about fans claiming racism in MJs defense when it wasn't necessarily the case. As pg13 said, most of the subsequent discussion has been an evolution on that same point. I also don't see why a conversation has to stick strictly to the content of the original post. Conversations and debates evolve and that's all part of the fun.

I think we should be able to have debates around his lifestyle choices without being made to feel like a bad fan for it. After all, he led such an unorthodox life and harboured some legitimately controversial personal beliefs. Are we meant to pretend this wasn't the case and just blindly shout "racist" like infatuated teenage morons to anybody who points this out?

And who was doing that here?

I'm discussing the points made but still feel the thread took a weird turn.

The theme that Innuendo brought up reminds me of some blue tick comments around LN on social media that said "even if he didn't sexually abuse anyone he still emotionally abused those children because he befriended them then suddenly dropped them". So even if the sexual abuse part isn't true MJ is the guilty one somehow. Not the false accusers.

I reject that. We should never forget that this whole narrative of him abruptly dropping children when they reach puberty comes from the one-sided LN and it's not true. Whenever there was a drifting away with a certain family (rarely - basically the Arvizos and Safechucks) he probably had a good reason for that, but regarding the Safechucks we will never get his side of the story and his reasons for gradually distancing himself. I imagine if we hadn't had MJ's side represented at the Arvizo trial there too it would have been easy to sell that story as MJ hurting children's emotional wellbeing by callously dropping them.

I think Innuendo's point is that he shouldn't have befriended those families or children at all thus he could have avoided being accused. We have discussed that point many times and yes, MJ did make himself a sitting duck for such allegations. The part I take issues with is that MJ is somehow guilty
emotionally harming these kids. I'm sorry, but I won't feel sorry for Gavin's little broken heart for MJ not calling him back, when this "precious" little kid was someone who sat there on the stand and lied about MJ and would have had no problem sending him to jail for life and making his young kids paractically orphans. The fact he was able to do that tells you all you need to know about his moral character. I have zero sympathy for him. Same with Safechuck. The fact that he and his mother are able to participate in all this shows that maybe MJ was onto something regarding their moral character when he distanced himself. Of course, they are not going to tell you about the problems MJ might have experienced with them in their one-sided narrative.

Also, IMO these people mainly saw the glamour and the megastar in MJ. When he distanced himself and they were falling out of favor, I don't think they were mourning the loss of a friend, rather they were mourning the benefits and potential opportunities that come with being his friend. These people saw him as a commodity, not as a human being. That's also the reason why they are able to falsely accuse him.