R&B artist Chris Brown criticised for mocking people with seizures

R&B artist, Chris Brown has been fiercely criticised by the Epilepsy Society for sharing a post of someone pretending to have a seizure, then messaging a woman with epilepsy to say he would come round to her house with a strobe light.

Read the article in the Daily Express.

TikTok post

The controversial musician who has 119m followers on Instagram shared the Tik Tok post from freelance dancer, ‘one_cnova’ to his Instagram account in spite of protests from people with epilepsy who called the original post “offensive”, saying Brown was making a mockery of a serious health condition that could be fatal.

And the Epilepsy Society which has been campaigning to shut down internet trolls and make the internet a safer place for people with epilepsy, condemned the R&B artist for using his platform to laugh at people with a disability and for threatening to use strobe lighting to try to trigger a seizure.

The original post has now been removed by TikTok.

Brown has sold 197 million records worldwide and has had more US top 100s than any other male artist.

Brown threatens woman with strobe lighting

Breanna, a woman who regularly posts about her epilepsy under the name ‘socal.epilepsy’ messaged the artist direct, saying: “I’m disgusted by this. I have no idea when and what it will take for social media to stop making fun of our disabilities.

“Chris Brown you’re absolute scum for thinking this is funny and reposting it in any matter.”

Breanna has since shared the singer’s messages where he replied: “Shut yo *** up before I bring a strobe light to your house.”

And in a further message, he taunted her by writing: “Alexa – play flashing lights by Kanye.    

       
Beyoncé acts to safeguard people with epilepsy

Nicola Swanborough, Head of External Affairs at the charity said: “In recent weeks, Beyoncé posted a video for her new album Rennaissance, which included flashing images which posed a real danger for anyone with photosensitive epilepsy.

“We asked her team to add a warning to the video and within hours, they had added a seven second clip to the front of the video warning about flashing images.

“Chris Brown, by comparison, shows no sensitivity to the thousands of his followers who are likely to have epilepsy and possibly also be photosensitive. One in 100 people have epilepsy, so with a following of 119m, it is likely that 1.19m of them will have epilepsy and 35,700 may be photosensitive.”

Clare Pelham, Chief Executive of the charity added: “Mocking a group of people with a hidden disability that is often stigmatised and overlooked, is unforgiveable. Chris Brown could be using his platform to raise awareness of the condition and increase understanding of epilepsy.”

Government commits to Zach's Law

In response to the charity’s campaign “Zach’s Law”, the UK government has committed to introducing a new offence to criminalise the sending of flashing images via social media to trigger a seizure in people with epilepsy. Internet trolls have been labelled ‘vile’ and ‘disgusting.’ 

But the Epilepsy Society is also campaigning for sanctions to be imposed on social media platforms that do not clamp down on this type of behaviour and clean up their own platforms.

Clare Pelham continued: “Sadly we know that many internet trolls operate outside of the UK jurisdiction. But social media is a global platform and we need global measures to address the issues which defy the term “social”.’