One of the great things about being a celebrity on the internet is that it's so easy to tweet out whatever you want and stay in touch with all your fans. Unfortunately, one of the terrible things about being a celebrity on the internet is that it's so easy to tweet whatever you want... and not all your fans are going to like it.
Take the recent Kanye West fiascos, for example: first, he alienates half his followers by declaring his admiration for Donald Trump and claiming that slavery was "a choice", and then he manages to offend the other half by using a photograph of Whitney Houston's bathroom as Pusha T's album cover.
But you don't have to be as extreme as 'Ye to tick off your fans, as Demi Lovato found out this weekend.
On Sunday, the Sorry Not Sorry singer clearly had some time to kill and decided to answer a few questions from fans on the social media platform. At first, this seemed like a pretty sweet thing to do, and hundreds of people flocked to ask her things such as, "Do you want to get another tattoo?" and "Have you ever tried bungee jumping? If not, would you like to try it?"
Unfortunately, things took a bit of a turn when one fan asked, "[What's the] funniest prank you’ve ever pulled?"
In a now-deleted tweet, Lovato responded to the question by detailing an incident in which she "hired a lady of the night" in order to "surprise" her bodyguard, Max. Apparently, the sex worker entered the bodyguard's room "without permission" and proceeded to touch him without warning - something that Lovato found hilarious.
Understandably, though, not everybody else saw the funny side and pointed out that this was technically assault by proxy, as the bodyguard had not wanted - nor asked for - anyone to enter his room and touch him inappropriately.
"I'm... not okay with this," wrote one Twitter user. "Like, this is legitimately a sh***y thing to do. That is sexual harassment on Demi's part, and sexual assault on the other woman's part. I am beyond disgusted by this."
And others pointed out that incidents like these are the sort of things that trivialise sexual assault against men:
"What I learnt today: According to Demi Lovato a sexual assault against a man is funny. CAN WE ALL UNDERSTAND IN 2018 THAT A SEXUAL ASSAULT AGAINST A MAN IS NOT A NORMAL THING AND WE SHOULDN’T LAUGH ABOUT IT?? NEWS: A MAN HAS FEELINGS TOO, A MAN CAN BE SEXUAL ASSAULTED TOO."
The singer wasn't going to take that sort of criticism, however, and implied that people were too easily offended by her tweet:
A few hours later, she tweeted again - this time to say that what she did was "a simple mistake" (though it isn't clear whether she was talking about hiring a prostitute or sharing that fact with the whole world):
Finally, however, after a lot more criticism, she apologised. Again, though, it seemed like the apology was more about offending people than actually partaking in a so-called sexual assault.
Many fans have been left unimpressed by Lovato's original tweet and the way she subsequently responded to fans telling her that what she'd done was wrong, but the singer herself seems equally unhappy with the criticism she received. At the time of writing, the last tweet she wrote says, "people DON'T know my full story" - so she may still have more to say on the matter.
