Grammy nominated artist Ari Lennox was bullied by fans of MacG's podcast after she took exception to the way he asked a question about her sex life | Picture: Instagram
Grammy-nominated artist Ari Lennox has put South Africa on her list of countries to never visit. Her decision came after a sub-section of Twitter, commonly referred to as “CBD Twitter”, bullied Ari after she spoke out about how she felt about Macgyver “MacG” Mukwevho’s conduct during a recent interview.
In a viral clip from the interview shared on Twitter, MacG asks Ari Lennox if someone has been “f**king her good right now”.
Ari responded: “Oh my God, uhm I am not happy… wow that is a foul question… why ask it in that way? Woah.”
MacG laughed throughout her reaction, saying the question came from a reference to one of her songs.
Before Ari spoke about how the interview made her feel, countless South African women came to her defence and explained what was wrong with how the podcast host chose to phrase his question. They also explained why her lyrics were not grounds for an inquest into her sex life.
“I’m just like… why was I alone on a call full of people? Why didn’t anyone intervene? And why wasn’t parts of the interview destroyed like the team promised? Why did it happen to begin with? I just feel so and ambushed and blindsided,” tweeted the singer on Saturday.
“Just because I happily and freely sing/write about sex don’t make any kind of creepy disrespect warranted. I clearly was in an immense shock and hate that I didn’t react differently,” added Ari Lennox.
She then declared that she would no longer be doing any kind of interviews.
“Babe if you hate being treated like a piece of [meat] then stop making yourself a butchery. Change your branding sisi,” tweeted a man hiding behind an anonymous Twitter account – a hallmark of Twitter users who fall under the CBD Twitter category.
“South Africa! Y’all got it! Heard you loud and clear. This won’t be a place I will ever visit,” she declared.
“Really got grown men justifying rape and predatory culture. Disgusting… A woman gave [you] your vile worthless self life.”
“Self-hating misogynistic weirdos. Yea, I’m good right here. 17 hour flight can kiss my whole a**. No tf thank you.”
CBD Twitter refers to a certain, somewhat undefinable subsect of Twitter, often identified by particular behaviours and closely held values.
In addition to the frequent and often ill-timed use of pictures of babies as memes in overtly sexual conversations, CBD Twitter users favour the use of memes featuring animals (often monkeys) and the misuse of hashtags to draw more attention to their tweets.
Most Twitter accounts classified under CBD Twitter are anonymous and feature Twitter handles made up of names or random words followed by a long sequence of numbers. This is because their Twitter handles are auto-generated by the website upon opening the account and they cannot be bothered to think of a Twitter handle.
The accounts are usually anonymous because the people behind them intend to be as misogynistic, homophobic, xenophobic and generally bigoted as possible.
With this knowledge of the subsect in mind, most South African Twitter users have a “do not engage” policy when it comes to interacting with accounts that bear the hallmarks listed above.
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