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The saga of the former television host and the Brooklyn mechanical bird continues.
A few days after Kelly Clarkson put a Brooklyn store on blast for allegedly snubbing her, the co-owner is responding.
“Everybody wanted us to die,” he shared, even before the store’s very diplomatic explanation came out.
He warns about “the place we give celebrities” after this “reprehensible abuse of power.” Is he right?
Art of Play employees have been bombarded with vitriol
Adam Rubin, co-owner of Art of Play in Brooklyn Heights, spoke to Page Six on Tuesday, October 13 about the barrage of threats and harassment that his store has received in recent days.
“It’s a pop star, a mechanical bird, it’s surreal,” he described. “When this thing first started, everybody wanted us to die.”
Rubin described: “And as the truth has come to light, thinking people realize this is reprehensible abuse of power.”
He urged: “We have to reconsider the place we give celebrities in our society.”
Rubin and staffers, he shared, have received thousands of threatening messages, presumably from Clarkson’s fans, since she declared war on their independent business.
“This is not how you can behave as a citizen in the world,” Rubin described. “Like, if you are this famous and powerful and you try to squash someone like a bug, then we’re supposed to blame the trolls for all the damage that’s inflicted.”
After noting that “she lit the fuse,” he said that the bombardment with vitriol over the previous 72 hours felt “totally surreal” to him and his staffers.
“It’s been so intense — thousands of hateful phone calls, thousands of hateful text messages, Kelly Clarkson fans demanding we issue her an apology,” Rubin detailed.
“And it’s just such a perverse distortion of reality,” he lamented, “that anyone could look at the situation and think that we are the ones who owe an apology.”
As painful as having his business and livelihood targeted by weird internet bullies, things have gotten much more personal than that.
‘She was treated like everybody else who comes in’
According to Rubin, Clarkson’s fans “came out of the woodwork” to track down and harass him and employees all across social media, even targeting friends and neighbors with hate.
That wouldn’t be okay anyway. But it’s especially odd because, he says, Clarkson didn’t receive any special treatment — positive or negative.
“Regardless of what happened in the shop, a misunderstanding in a crowded shop — everybody that comes into the store is treated the same, like a normal person,” he described. “That’s what pissed her off.”
Rubin continued: “She was treated like everybody else who comes in, whether they’re in sweatpants or they’re 9 years old, or they’re a celebrity we don’t recognize.” Some speculate that simply not being recognized was the inciting incident.
Describing her as having symbolically thrown a lit Molotov cocktail into his store, Rubin was quick to note that her obsessed fans “don’t actually know this woman.”
“This is asymmetrical social warfare,” Rubin described.
He argued that Clarkson knew what effect her scorched earth tweet would have, and “she needs to be held accountable for her actions.”
Rubin did admit: “Listen, I understand objectively, this is hilarious. If it wasn’t happening to me, I would think it was so funny. The memes have been glorious.”
He emphasized: “This is about the power that we acquiesce to celebrity, and how okay we are with it as a society when they abuse it.”
Rubin reiterated: “I’m saying, society is f–ked, and we need to take a look at ourselves in the mirror.”
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