Basically, hav ea character who accidentally kills someone important, and I'm having trouble with how to accurately portray how people would treat him in his daily life. So, kinda looking for some real-life examples that go beyond just "received death threats." Like, did service workers treat them different? Were there cars scratched-up and graffitied? Did people try to physically assault them? Just trying to figure out what the likes of Casey Anthony, Steve Bartman, and others experienced in the aftermath of the events they're infamous for.
Famous Examples - Natalia Kills after X Factor New Zealand - Jane Fonda after her activities involving Vietnam War - The Dixie Chicks after they spoke out against George Bush and the Iraq War
I was first just going to list a few examples off the top of my head as the previous user did, but the more I thought about it, I felt (and I hate to be that guy)...it depends. It depends on the severity of the offense, how many people were offended by it, and how 'useful' the culprit was to the population (either as entertainer, businessperson, etc.) after the offense. Some examples: Sinead O'Connor (ripping up photo of the Pope on live tv) O.J. Simpson (you know the allegations, which were not proven in court, but everyone has an opinion either way) Donald Sterling (racist comments recorded by mistress) Michael Vick (ran dogfighting ring that resulted in the brutal death of many dogs for sport - this is the one that got me thinking how each case is different, because he offended and angered a hell of a lot of people, but did his time and still had a respectable career after release. I think he did do some public service stuff after release but I don't think it really made a huge difference. The people that really disliked him still did.) Mel Gibson (drunken anti-semitic rant - similar to Vick, I think this really hurt his career but he had already amassed a huge fortune and was so famous by then. But I do think his actions have limited the choices he has in Hollywood)
Have any of these people ever talking about the specifics of how their life changed? I'm more wondering the specifics of how often they were recognized (so, not really talking people who were already famous), how this affected their personal and professional relationships, etc. Like, if Casey Anthony went to Starbucks, did the barista berate her, and refuse to serve her? Did people track down her car, and graffiti it? Did she wake up to find someone put shit outside her door? Just stupid stuff like that. Writing a story where a guy is absolutely hated by everyone in the city after he accidentally kills a superhero, and I want the aftermath to seem genuine, and not too much.
Also forgot to mention Anna Gunn, the actress who played Skylar White in Breaking Bad, I guess she can kind of be included in this to an extent. Because of how hated her character is in the show, Anna Gunn revealed in The New York Times that she received death threats as a result. Other than that, she hasn't really done anything problematic (that I know of lol)
Just learned yesterday that Michael Vick did time in the federal pen at Leavenworth,KS. 17 months, and he became a celebrity there because of his inside info on the NFL. Isn't that weird, since gambling was illegal in Kansas then?
I could see people throwing bricks through his windows, spray-painting KILLER! on the side of his house, and things like that. Maybe when he's out in public someone or several people might start following him and shouting or mocking him. They might continually vandalize his car and his property. They might harrass his kids if he has any, or his wife or relatives. Maybe some members of his own family hate him and he can't go to Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner anymore without being constantly harrassed by them. You could ramp it up and get more intense if you want. Cutting his brake lines, spraying him with pepper spray or throwing rocks at him etc. He might need to have his mail and packages diverted to the police bomb squad for fear of haters sending him terrible things. There was a woman in England who got targeted once and the haters killed one of her dogs and stole two others. She got continual death threats and harrassment until she finally had to move. Maybe to another country? I don't recall. Maybe there are always people 'protesting' in front of his house and he can't get any peace and quiet, when he tries to get in his car he's mobbed and gets things thrown at him. They might occasionally throw molotov cocktails at his house and parts of it catch fire. And maybe the police don't really do anything to protect him? Or some do and some hate him, and they can get away with not doing thier jobs because higher-ups in the department hate him too.
If you want to see serious harrassment/death threats look into Erin Pizzey (the woman in England I mentioned).
In 1998 I started a construction company, we did a specialized form of welding on high rise building and bridges called studwelding. At the time about 90 percent of all the work done was union. I was a union iron worker, and we were a union company. After we had been in business for about 3 years, we were doing a building in downtown Buffalo. A job that required lots of trips, consisted of a lot of half days that could be done by one person. For me to go there and work a half a day I had to get a man out of the hall, they are guaranteed 8 hours no matter what, even though they are not needed. The worse part was that if a guy was short on his hours and he came to work for me for the day, and I was the only place he worked that week; I got stuck with his un-employment that went against the rates I paid. Back then the rate was about $44 an hours, plus the workman's comp. I had to match his half of the social security. In all, the fees, the extra and the unemployment meant that to hire a guy for a day, that was not needed cost about $800 for the day. When I cleared into the hall, I had to get a guy. The business agent told me that work was slow and that if I got a guy the first couple of times, that he would let me slide on the rest. Well on my third trip in, he seemed to forget all about our agreement. I told him I was not going to get a guy, he told me he was going to bring me up on charges and fine me. I told him to fuck off. I would do the job or any others without the union if he wanted to blackmail me. I was out of a different local, Rochester and we did work in 7 states and with about 16 other iron worker locals. My local Business agent called to tell me that they were reciprocal with Buffalo and if I did not work with them, then it would mean I could not hire iron workers out of my own local. He reminded me that I had 8 years worth of pension money tied up in their local and I would lose that as well. I would also be on what he called, un-friendly terms with the local. I told him to go fuck off as well. We went non-union that day. We were sued multiple times for unfair labor practices. We had all of our equipment vandalized. I have been in many fist fights, had to carry a gun all the time and on some jobs even hired armed guards. They fought me tooth and nail to try and put me out of business. They harassed the guys that worked for me, it was in battle in which people got hurt, stuff got wrecked and even though I was in business for another 28 years later they never forgot and would cause problems whenever they could. To say I was hated would have been an understatement. In the end, I won, it took tons of fight, a lot of money spent on attorneys. I always remember, good men are both well hated, and well loved, I got the hated part all taken care of.
He was acquited in criminal court because charges weren't proven beyond a reasonable doubt. In civil court,the plaintiff's attorney proved by a preponderance of evidence that Simpson murdered Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, and he was held accountable to the victims' families.
I happened to be in a city in Wales last year and noticed a kind of atmosphere. I was there for work and had no idea why. But I did learn whilst I was there. There was a feminist conference going on, apparently one that had been around for decades, tended to be 3/4th lesbian talks and attendees. It had gotten known that a number of well known 'gender critical' public figures (the in/famous 'terfs') would be attending and various groups starts to agitate against the conference and got the local businesses on side. The problem was no-one really recognised the public figure gender critters by appearance, so they couldn't tell them apart from some nice septuagenarian lesbian who had been coming to the conference since flower power and didn't give a damn either way if trans women are women. There was extra bouncers on pubs that don't normally have them, whose job was to seek out the wrong 'uns and keep them out. They wanted to see any lanyards someone wore before they were allowed in. Someone I knew was in a restaurant when an entire table of middle aged women were ejected because the staff thought they fitted the profile of conference attendees. They weren't attendees, they were just some middle aged women. There was a complaint made to the police about some genuine attendees, reporting them for a hate crime, which got them arrested and held for six hours until the coppers realised there was no case and the alleged hate crime was the conference itself. And so far as I heard no actual famous gender critical figures were inconvenienced in any way. Believe it or not this isn't meant as a political point either way in our high noise low signal public debate about gender. It happens like this in other public controversies too. I'm thinking that when someone has become very publicly hated, rightly or wrongly, then people start mobilising to inconvenience that person in all manner of small noncriminal low-risk ways, and usually they hit the wrong targets. So your MC would see a man who looked like him two tables over being asked to leave the restaurant for no reason, because someone must have tipped off the staff to look for him, and so on.
Don't wish to derail the thread because any proper explanation will be loaded one way or the other. So for the purposes of addressing the OPs question it means someone who has broken a new social taboo and is considered by their detractors as a public danger. My point is that the consequences of public shunning are often felt by people other than the supposedly shunned, be that friends, family, people the shunned have been hanging around with, or people who just look like they might not hate the shunned.
You could also look up what Bruce Dern went through after "killing" John Wayne in The Cowboys. He has talked about it and should be somewhere on YouTube.
That was insane! I guess it shows how good of a job Vince and company did making viewers empathize with Walt. She was a decent wife and mother trying to protect herself and her family from the psychopathic monster her husband had become, and they were all like "Why is she so mean to him?" It was Walt they should have hated.
Recently Will Smith, but to a lesser extent. Loraina (sp?) Bobbit. Monica Lewinsky <<--- this is probably a great example! I think she even wrote a book about it all.
I listened to a talk Monica Lewinski gave a few years back to encourage young women who find themselves in difficult circumstances. I stand up and throw roses in that woman's direction, I surely do.
There's a woman called Kellie Jay Keen who went under the name Parker Posey till she got doxed. She's a woman's rights activist. She put up billboards with the definition of Woman in England and was ordered to take them down. She's had death threats, been arrested multiple times. She was on a Let Woman Speak tour recently and someone doused her with spaghetti sauce, and then a whole mob of trans protestors surrounded her and her security had to hustle her out as they were getting pretty violent. This was in New Zealand, I think. One older woman that I know of got repeatedly punched in the head at that protest. She's had her pretty average life turned upside down but it's also fueled her activism, going from militant feminist to a more neutral form of woman's rights. She's hated from various sides but has started a kind of new movement.
