Amanda Bynes: Leave Her Alone!

In recent weeks, a harsh furor has washed over the internet in response to the odd behavior of former child star Amanda Bynes. I would like to extend an plea to the echo chamber be more gentle with the All That original cast member and star of The Amanda Show. Behind the painted vale of celebrity is a human being, who may be in need of more serious concern.

Whether she’s crying in gymnastics class, making weird kiss faces into her mirror, or inviting Drake to murder her vagina, the retired actress is seemingly content to invite the cruel element of celebrity obsession. She is yielding the train wreck attraction that weighs heavy on the id of society. And the responses have been positively Perezian, with mean-spirited gawking ensuing on websites like, well, Gawker.

Has it occurred to anyone that this behavior is an ongoing practical joke? Or maybe Bynes is trying to be the Charlie Sheen of 2013. Both Sheen and Bynes have too much money to give a fuck, and maybe they're celebrating their absurd lives by being completely unhinged. If this is true, if Amanda Bynes really knows what she's doing, why buy into it by sharing, commenting, and liking, whether ironically or not?

If this weird string of incidents is not deliberate, than that makes it even worse. If her eccentricities aren't self-conscious, then she might need serious psychiatric help. Perhaps we could do well to emulate the sympathy of the same generation of kids that watched her shows. It seems to me that the only thing Americans love more than a comeback is the preceding downfall. This is the same person that we made famous, and now people deriding her relentlessly. Would Buzzfeed or dozen other gossip sites be so keen to mock Amanda Bynes if she her health was genuinely brought into question? Probably not, unless she dies prematurely. People used to relentlessly mock Michael Jackson, remember? Now they do not.