Chet Faker has apologised for his response to a particular tweet about the lack of female talent featured in the Hottest 100.
It was pretty obvious that there was a lack of female acts in the top 10 of triple J’s Hottest 100 yesterday, marking the first time since 2012 that no female artists have placed near the front of the countdown.
Sports writer Erin Riley decided to share a little fact about the countdown and stirred up a kerfuffle with Chet Faker. Riley took to Twitter with the following comment, which ended up being largely misunderstood by Faker.
The comment seemed to have a personal effect on Faker, who replied with a series of Tweets which have since been deleted.
After realising he may have missed the point of Riley’s original tweet, his comments were removed, followed by an apology for his public mistake. He also backs up Riley’s tweet and shares his support for gender equality.
According to Riley, the response she received from Faker resulted in a large backlash from his fans towards her, although she told the Daily Mail that the abuse “was clearly in no way Faker’s fault”. She took to her own personal blog to express “I really didn’t think this was a revolutionary idea,” Riley wrote on her blog, “yet the reaction I had to this pretty simple tweet was far more aggressive and, frankly, abusive than anything I experienced after I published a piece about sexism and cricket a few weeks ago.”
