It's weird reading all of this as someone who was a teenager from the era who idolised Brand and other indie scene figures like Pete Doherty. I remember reading about Brand dating Peaches Geldoff in the paper but didn't realise how young she was and how old he was in comparison. I think I assumed he was in his 20s and assumed she was in late teens or twenties based on the fact the tabloid press showed them stumbling out of nightclubs together and no-one seemed to be batting an eyelid. Though looking back I, and many others, were sneaking in to nightclubs all the time underage with fake IDs. It still goes on to this day and parents just seem to accept it as normal part of growing up and even a celebrated and encouraged rite of passage but maybe we should be having a more serious conversation about it. I don't go out anymore, but in my 20s bouncers definitely seemed to be taking checking IDs a lot more serious than they did when I was 17 so at least that's a start.
It wasn't uncommon in the 00s for school girls to be dating older guys who were no longer at school, Arctic Monkeys even wrote a song about it (Bigger Boys And Stolen Sweethearts) but someone over 30 dating a 16 year old definitely would have been considered weird and the fact the mainstream media wasn't batting an eyelid at it is damning. Why the Brand stuff is headline news but I've not seen a single mainsteam media article calling for the legal age to have sex to be raised to 18 is ridiculous. Teenagers are going to fuck regardless, but no-one is going to prosecute a 17 year old and a 15 year old having a relationship, and the police are smart enough not to waste time on an 18 year old and a 17 year old having a relationship but at least you then have a mechanism to protect 16 year olds from getting groomed like this. It also made me sad to find out that another of my indie heroes, Noel Fielding, was also doing the same thing - dating a 16 year old Pixie Geldoff when he was 33.
I'm not justifying any of Brand's actions, he has to take responsibility for what he's done especially if there was no consent, but he's quite obviously a people pleaser and he wouldn't have done half the stuff he did if it wasn't for the mainstream media and the culture they created around him. People are trying to use old videos of him flirting with celebrities on talkshows to damn him and disregarding the fact that the entire audience is laughing and clearly signalling that the culture at large was OK with what he was doing.
Stuff like Google demonetising Brand's videos just make me believe even more that at least some element of this is a targeted MSM culture war attack to take him down, even if a justified one. The problem is that at some point it's also going to take down people who don't deserve it - in fact it's no doubt already happened. I've read several mainstream articles where Jordan Peterson's ideas are completely misrepresented and character assassinated in a way that is completely unjustified. I agree with some of the things he says and I also disagree with others but there seems to be absolute no nuance or tolerance in the mainstream media any more, it's all tribalism - either you're good or you're bad and if you even agree with part of what one of the "bad" people say then you must be one of the bad ones. I honestly can't even debate any of Jordan Peterson's ideas with some people I know, even the ideas I dislike, because mentioning his name is like saying Voldemort and he's "The One Who Should Not Be Named".
Mainstream media outlets clearly have agendas and will go after people who speak out against them and will use anything at their disposal to do it. It's completely ridiculous.
*Obviously I would prefer for this to actually be settled in a court of law with evidence rather than public opinion, but the text message exchange and the rape clinic visit do look quite damning which is why I'm currently inclined to believe that at least that allegation is looking more likely than not on the face of it, even if some of the others turn out to be false.