A bizarre and disturbing trend has swept TikTok in the past few days: Dozens of posts on the short-form video service – some amassing millions of views – have used video or audio from Amber Heard’s harrowing testimony in the Johnny trial. Depp, with the creators of the videos reproduce her spectacularly, perform dances in them or make fun of her.
The trend includes this video, which has more than 30 million views in five days, with a video of Heard testifying emotionally on the stand overlaid with a clip of Kim Kardashian in a judge’s robe from a “Saturday Night Live” skit saying, “Ew, that’s so cringeworthy. Guilty.”
Overall, videos with the “amberturd” hashtag have been viewed more than 1.2 billion times to date, according to the TikTok website. These include this video, from TikTok user @sansanjovs, which has been viewed almost 10 million times, featuring a mocking recreation of Heard’s testimony.
Another viral TikTok is this video, viewed more than 14 million times since it was uploaded on Sunday, which features a cat with a blonde wig (supposed to represent Heard) and as Depp’s Jack Sparrow in “The Pirates of the Caribbean”. As previously reported by Rolling Stone, the 9-second video – captioned “Johnny looks so innocent!” – uses Heard’s audio of the trial saying, “I was walking out of the bedroom. [Depp] slapped me in the face. And I said, ‘Johnny, you hit me. You just hit me.
According to TikTok, it has removed several such videos that use Heard’s testimony that the company violated its anti-bullying policies and says it will continue to enforce those rules. TikTok’s community guidelines state in part that it prohibits “content that disparages victims of violent tragedies.” Additionally, per TikTok policies, “We remove expressions of abuse, including threats or degrading statements intended to mock, humiliate, embarrass, intimidate, or hurt an individual.”
But in addition to the three videos cited above, many TikToks that extract audio and/or video from Heard’s testimony and use it in a disparaging manner still remained on the platform as of Monday afternoon.
During her testimony last week, Heard told jurors of several instances where Depp punched her, yelled at her and pushed her to the ground. “It’s horrible for me to sit here for weeks and go through it all again,” she said on the stand May 4. “It’s the most painful and difficult thing I’ve ever experienced.”
Depp sued Heard for $50 million, alleging she destroyed his career by alluding to his domestic abuse allegations in a 2018 op-ed for The Washington Post (though she didn’t name him in the article). article).