By Stacy Lee Kong

Do you ever feel bad for people who you don’t know at all? Like, you know nothing about them, not even their names, but you are certain they exist and you just know they’re having a rough time because someone else is being stupid? Because that’s how I feel about actor Simu Liu’s PR team.

ICYMI, Liu has been reacting somewhat dramatically to a HuffPost article calling for more Asian representation in Hollywood, including directing his 3 million-strong Instagram following toward a young Asian woman who posted a TikTok that was critical of him. And, this isn’t the first time that he’s publicly reacted to a perceived slight in a way that feels disproportionate, if not downright disingenuous. In fact, Liu’s behaviour is a really good case study to understand how celebrity can shift power dynamics, and why it’s important for audiences to think critically about how public figures use the language of social justice in an attempt to build their own brands.

It all started with an article about hot Asian men. (Yes, really 🙃)

On April 11, HuffPost published a light article about Asian representation by writer Ian Kumamoto called, “We Love Simu Liu, But He’s Not The Only Talented Asian Thirst Trap In Hollywood.” Pegged to Liu’s casting as one of the Kens in the upcoming Barbie movie, it argues that the actor is not the only hot Asian man in the movie biz, and it would be nice if Hollywood remembered that. Literally—that’s as deep as it got. In fact, the piece seemed less like an example of reported analysis about Asian representation and more an excuse to acknowledge Liu’s hotness (Kumamoto made sure to say, “don’t get us wrong — we love Liu, and we’re all for an Asian king thriving” in his intro) as well as to post photos of other attractive Asian men, including Manny Jacinto, Jackson Wang and Steven Yeun. That’s not to say there wasn’t a central argument—as Kumamoto wrote, “when a single actor appears to be getting the bulk of Asian male roles in Hollywood, it starts to feel a little less like representation and a lot more like tokenism. All we’re saying is, we don’t want a predominantly white Hollywood to gatekeep sexy Asian male representation like it has for decades when there are so many other attractive and talented Asian men who deserve to be seen and appreciated by the general public.” But like… as far as arguments go, this one was pretty innocuous, I think.

Unfortunately, Liu did not feel the same way. He commented on HuffPost’s Facebook post promoting the story, saying, “Way to attempt to put us against one another. What ‘bulk’ of roles are you referring to? Are there movies I’m in that I’m not aware of? Do you really think that there is a quota of ‘Asian male roles’ that is a zero-sum game? Everything I have taken post Shang-Chi was not written Asian. We’ve been able to reshape stories to get more representation onscreen. Get your facts straight.” He also reposted the article to his own Facebook page, saying “The trashest take by HuffPo. Also I'm not a ‘thirst trap’ I'm a fucking actor.” (He has since deleted the post.)

This is definitely one of those multiple-things-can-be-true moments. 1. Hollywood does have a history of opening the proverbial door just a crack to admit only a privileged few into its ranks, and 2. HuffPost probably didn’t need to call Liu out in order to make that point.

So: when it comes to tokenism in Hollywood, we usually talk about it in the context of who shows up on screen—it’s easy to spot the token racialized/queer/disabled person in a story because they feel like a box to check, not a fully-realized character. They’re probably the only member of that marginalized group in the cast, they’re likely to be underwritten or one-dimensional and they usually exist solely to advance the main character’s storyline… or to give the show or movie the appearance of diversity. But it’s also useful to think about tokenism in a labour context: who gets considered for roles, who actually gets hired, and how much does that have to do with gate-keepers and decision-makers continually going back to the people they’re most familiar with instead of putting in the work to execute a truly inclusive hiring process? Because in my experience, that happens all the time. This approach means opportunities for marginalized folks tend to go to a relatively small group of people, which often perpetuates the false notion that there’s a scarcity of roles for that group and encourages the people who do get chosen to uphold the status quo.  

Of course, none of that is Liu’s fault, which is why framing the article around his casting probably isn’t that helpful. But how he has been reacting is his fault, and that is worth delving into.

From a personal brand perspective, Liu’s response has been a disaster

I think the first lesson Liu needs to learn is that not everything deserves a public response. It is deeply human to be hurt when someone says something mean about you—but for public figures, responding to those comments often fuels a conversation that would have otherwise made little impact on its own. (I mean… Barbra Streisand learned this lesson in 2003 and now we have a whole social phenomenon named after her!) It also makes him look over-sensitive and petty; like bro, are you really going to go after an Asian writer for making the case that other hot Asian men would have also made good Kens?!

What’s more problematic, though, is the way he reacted when other people started talking about this story. This week, he accused Kumamoto of clout-chasing on TikTok, which is silly and kind of petty, and reposted a critical video by a young Asian woman to his Instagram Story without redacting her username, which is straight up irresponsible. I guess I understand why he was annoyed—in her video, the TikToker says she’s pissed off that he’s the face of the Asian diaspora because he incorrectly thinks his presence in Hollywood is the epitome of Asian representation, and because he can’t take criticism. It’s just that he kind of proved that by finding a video by a largely unknown creator and sharing it to his 3 million Instagram followers with snarky commentary.

As of today, this creator has 23,000 TikTok followers, which is probably already a huge increase in the size of her audience. So, for starters, there’s a real disparity in online social capital there. But also, Liu has been online for long enough to know what happens to women who are ‘mean’ to popular men on the internet, particularly if they are racialized. Just so we’re all on the same page, though: According to the Canadian Women’s Foundation, “women and girls are at greater risk [than cis men] of experiencing violence online, especially severe types of harassment and sexualized abuse.” What’s more, a 2018 study published in the journal Advances in Gender Research found there are “distinctive experiences of online harassment for women of color [sic].” Researchers found “aggressive messages oriented toward women of color can be vicious and easily accessible… Typically hostile tweets [tend] to develop into interactive network conversations, where the original message spreads beyond the victim, and in the case of public individuals, quite widely.”

I’ve written about how Taylor Swift leverages her fan base before, and I think we need to similarly interrogate Liu’s behaviour here. Sure, he quickly deleted the Story. But what was his initial motivation when he angrily posted about someone who he perceived as being unsupportive or unfair to him? Did he consider the impact of his actions, particularly when leveraged against a young Asian woman? (Something he has a history of doing, fyi.) And how does this situation compare to other times where he has spoken out about criticism that he sees as unfair, sometimes using the language of social justice to lend weight to his point?

To understand the criticism Liu is facing, you need some backstory

Because this is not the first time that he’s reacted like this, and that’s related to why he’s even receiving this critique. The TikToker who he reposted referenced his “homophobic incel-adjacent past,” which might sound like a mean rumour if you’re not extremely online. Sadly, I am, so let me break it down: in 2021, a now-deleted Twitter thread by Edward Hong alleged that Liu used to be involved in the Men’s Rights Asians subculture on Reddit, something Hong knew because he himself had been deeply embedded in that community. In case you’ve managed to avoid that particular internet cesspit (in which case, congratulations), MRAsians are a vocal minority of Asian men who blame their inability to find sexual partners on Asian women who date white men. They often launch coordinated online attacks against these women, which can be incredibly damaging.

This unsurprisingly sparked a lot of interest, and while no one uncovered links to explicitly MRA posts, a profile under the name NippedInTheBud did seem to belong to Liu, and was responsible for some pretty problematic statements. According to Gizmodo, “though the ‘NippedInTheBud’ profile—which has been credibly linked to Liu via a searchable GitHub tool that archives Reddit accounts—has since been deleted, multiple screengrabs of posts tied to the account have been making the rounds online and causing a certain degree of backlash because of their content and where they were initially written. In addition to making casually sexist remarks about women being inferior athletes to men, and inelegantly expressing disdain for extremism in a way that carried Islamophobic overtones, NippedInTheBud (and by extension, Liu) came under fire for participating in r/AZNidentity, a subreddit that’s known as a hub for an Asian-identified subset of the Men’s Rights Activist community… Somewhat more concerning than the digital company NippedInTheBud kept, though, were ideas expressed in a post likening pedophiles to gay people.”

Around the same time, writer Madison Foote broke down Liu’s alleged behaviour in greater detail, including his history of calling out people, particularly Asian women, who criticize him (writer Roslyn Talusan and other Asian women have been calling this out for years) and for using the language of advocacy to undermine his critics. “Liu didn’t respond to anything specific in the allegations and criticisms toward him, instead highlighting a past tweet he made about past comments of his no longer reflecting the person he is today. He then referred to the negativity as ‘slander’ from ‘trolls and bad faith actors.’ Then he began liking his own past tweets that highlight his advocacy for others,” she wrote in Politically Invisible Asians, a Substack publication. “Liu’s response is strangely passive and, frankly, disappointing; if he’s genuinely changed and educated himself, shouldn’t he give us a real response, rather than writing off all criticisms of him as ‘slander’? At the heart of this entire situation are Asians calling Liu in and challenging him to listen, learn, and do better, for his community. His response thus far has communicated the exact opposite.”

Now, years later, he continues to react this way… even though he has other options available to him. As TV writer Franchesca Ramsey pointed out on Twitter this week, Liu could have shared the post only after cropping out the username, ignored the haters (my favourite option)—or left this to professionals to address, which could mean a social media team who can shield him from the mean comments or a lawyer who can send a lil cease-and-desist if they think the comments are defamatory (though this would probably still be very Streisand Effect-y.) The fact that he instead opts to defend himself by casting his critics as bigots or self-hating Asians comes off as self-serving and insincere.  

In conclusion, please take it to the group chat, Simu

I think it’s clear that Liu thinks of himself—or believes he benefits from positioning himself—as an underdog who’s trying to draw attention to inequality. But what he doesn’t seem to understand is, the more famous he becomes the more power he wields, and he needs to change his behaviour to account for that. Celebrity comes with responsibility, right? That being said, I’m not sure that there’s any action anyone needs to take here. I’m not calling for his cancellation or anything. I just think he’s an interesting case study—and perhaps an argument for why famous people should not also be extremely online people.

Or I guess if there is a call to action, it’s for celebrities to hire me to advise them on how to handle criticism. Actually no, I’m just going to give it away for free as a public service: you need to accept that becoming famous means attracting more criticism, some of it fair and some it not, and it is actually impossible (not to mention bad for your mental health) to try to engage with every person who says something unkind about you. It also makes you look very insecure!!! So please Simu, for the love of all that’s holy, unplug.

And Did You Hear About…

This truly lovely New York Times article about ‘Generation Connie.’

The latest dramatic Tarte brand trip. (If you’ve seen Tarte F1 drama on your Twitter or TikTok feeds, this is the breakdown you need.)

What Prince Harry’s ghostwriter had to say about Spare.

Buzzfeed News’ oral history of BuzzFeed News, which shuttered on May 5.

This smart take on historical accuracy in Queen Charlotte, why the actual Queen Charlotte probably wasn’t Black—and why the entire Bridgerton series being ahistorical actually does matter. 

The power of Bigolas Dickolas.

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