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Josh McDermitt talks Social Media Bullying and Body Shamers

Josh McDermitt recently sat down for a Build Series interview and during the conversation, spoke out about internet bullying and body shaming. Recently, Josh’s co-star Alanna Masterson was the target of crude comments online about her weight and the shape of her body in the episode that heavily focused on her character, Tara, two weeks ago.  Alanna shot back at body shamers on her Instagram account, taking pride in the body that just gave birth to her beautiful daughter and still allows her to act and perform her own stunts.

However, no matter how strong she is, the hateful words obviously affected her and Josh used his platform to stand up for his friend.  He also spoke out about the vile and unnecessary meanness that exists daily on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook and called it what it is; bullshit.

It’s very frustrating, ya know, the internet because people think they have a platform to say whatever the hell they want.

Josh went on to say that it’s even worse that so many people can hide behind these ‘fan accounts’ and remain anonymous as they treat other people as if they don’t matter at all. In a roundabout way, he also admitted that he’s been the victim of social media bullying as well when he spoke about how he is self-deprecating for the sake of not being as hurt when people say mean things.

He didn’t make himself a victim, but the sad thing is, Josh is one of the kindest actors in Hollywood, and it doesn’t make sense that people would pay less attention to that and more attention to whatever physical attributes of his that they don’t ‘like’.

It’s even sadder that people are judged harshly at all; be it on their looks or their personality traits or the things that make them different. From celebrities to your next door neighbor; we may have been taught that ‘words can never hurt me‘ when we were young, but the truth is, they certainly cause a lot more pain than sticks and stones ever have.

I think one thing that I do is I try to be as self-deprecating as possible for myself and I make fun of my weight and I make fun of my hair and stuff like that and a lot of times a lot of that is just insecurities and what that does is it kind of takes the wind out of the bullies’ sales at times. Not everybody is gonna do that, and honestly, I wish I didn’t have to do that and I probably don’t but people need to chill the F out with the crap that they’re putting on the internet. It’s very disturbing because we are people, everyone. And I’m not talking about actors. I’m talking about anyone on the internet. I mean, I just read something on CNN the other day where a teenage girl committed suicide who was cyber-bullied. This is bullshit. This should never happen.

Josh ended this part of the interview segment saying that he wishes big social media companies would go after bullies with stricter policies and shut down their accounts, for the safety of everyone. Bullying can cause mental anguish and that can turn to physical pain and no one should have to suffer that at the hands of faceless accounts online.

We’re a bit humbled to be fans of people like Josh and Alanna and hope that everyone chooses to live a bit more like they do. Kindness matters, especially online.

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