I mean, isn’t that typical Refinery 29 though? I admit, I don’t frequent the site a lot but the times I’ve clicked on links to articles from Facebook or other places, it seems very superficial and like they don’t delve too deep into anything. It is not a site I would ever go to if I wanted to learn more about…

I don’t find it shocking at all that a publication accused of toxic racism from the top down only deigns to publish Black people’s stories when they’re fawning all over white people.

xoJane had some jaw-droppingly misogynistic commentary too!

See that’s the issue with representation though. If Refinery29 was already putting out lots of diverse content, this might just blend in with all their other dumb shallow stuff. But if this their only attempt to represent Black perspectives - and it sounds like it is - the fact that they chose a superficial meet-cute…

Quick comment to make sure this article does not provide misinformation in the same way it is critiquing 13 Reasons Why...

Yeah, it sounds like Hallmark Channel’s attempt to cash in on the current movement. All you need to do is throw in ‘Aunt Becky’ in her redemption role as the hot white guys’ older sister/aunt who is a veritable saint and it’s an insta-hit!

That story doesn’t even sound real. Sounds like Hallmark and Pepsi trying to appeal to the Black demographic.

Hard to know since it was anonymous, but black twitter said they found out who it was and nobody has said it was a secret-white person.

But was it written by a black woman?

Oof, this is why you need multiple BIPOC in editorial positions at a publication. I can see why a white editor might have thought, “well, she’s black, this is her story to tell and it’s not my place to criticise”. You need editors who are qualified to be critical of their peers.

13 Reasons Why is the carton of milk you buy from the store before realizing it was already a week past its expiration.

I’ll give one take on what I found offensive about this — there are a couple of other reasonable ones too, that I’m sure other people will chime in with, but, here we go —

Basically the blue-eyed devil is her white knight and that’s just all kinds of gross

Thought about this for awhile, and I think the backlash is that this was the best R29 came up with in an attempt to pivot to anti-racist content. And their best was a meet-cute at a protest of state-sponsored murders.

I mean it’s embarrassing either way for the sheer cringiness of the writing!

his sign above his head. Be still my beating heart.

Thanks, I hate it. What a tone deaf story.

Stunned by the level of narcissism it takes to pen this. Why would anyone take this moment and reduce it to their own personal sociology project? This is the extremely disgraceful version of those cringey YouTube “swirl” couples. These assholes think their otherwise uninteresting relationships are the model for world…

This makes me miss xoJane SO HARD. I’ve been getting my fix by reading Medium. Some of the shit they publish is jaw-droppingly misogynistic.

I know that their whole thing is to be “realistic” and “shocking,” but what a horrible message: even if you end up getting clean from drugs you’re still gonna die anyway. wtf