12 December 2017
Newsdesk
John Mayer got deep with his Twitter followers when explaining the turn of events in the Keaton Jones story.
Since Sunday (10Dec17), stars have rallied around bullied Tennessee schoolboy Keaton, after a video of him crying went viral. In the clip, Keaton is seen in tears asking why he is constantly picked on.
Everyone from Katy Perry to Mark Hamill have shared their support with Keaton, but reports have since surfaced that he himself has used racial slurs and there are accusations that his mother Kimberly Jones was trying to profit from the situation by setting up a GoFundMe page. Photos of Kimberly waving a Confederate flag, a symbol to many Americans of slavery and oppression, have also been unearthed.
John has now shared his take on the situation and urged people to think before they judge.
"Pay attention to the Keaton/bullying story lifeline as it plays out. In many ways it's the perfect example of how we've come to create completely synthetic experiences in 2017," he began to his Twitter followers.
"We have a real boy in a real place with a really emotionally stirring problem. Video of this is ultimately posted to Twitter. This is the last real event to have occurred. The rest (if you agree that twitter is a thought space) is playing out in our minds.
"Obviously this stems from an incredibly well-intentioned place in all of us. (stay with me...) but this is a window into how we assess/index/respond to situations and ultimately what we walk away from them thinking."
He adds that 48 hours after the video went viral the backlash began, and that followers of the story have been introduced to a grey area and the unified take "begins to splinter under its own weight".
"Pay attention to what you're thinking about and how you're thinking about it here. The fingerprint we leave on this situation will be the cleanest one we've left all year. How we play this out is who we are," he concluded.
