Misha Brown, a 37-year-old influencer, actor, and host of the Wondery podcast The Big Flop, revealed in a TikTok video on July 17 that he had received an apology from his former high school bully — 20 years after graduation — after the bully’s 15-year-old son came out as gay.
“Hey man, I just felt like I needed to tell you that I’m sorry I was a damn jerk in school,” the message read. “Really, I’m sorry. But I’ve been following what you’ve done lately and it’s really cool. I’m proud of you. You’re like really helping people. The reason I wanted to tell you all this is I’ve got a son now. He’s 15, and he told me he’s gay. Man, all I thought about when he told me that was how I hope people are nicer to him than I was to you. It makes me proud to be his dad. And hopefully that makes up for something.”
Brown grew emotional as he shared the message, his eyes welling and his voice breaking.
“I would say that makes up for something, and I told him as much, but, wow. What a cool feeling to get that moment. I guess people can change,” Brown said in the video, which has since earned over 2.4 million views on TikTok.
Brown told PEOPLE he “didn’t know what to expect” when he first saw the message.
“I couldn’t think of a single reason as to why he’d reach out,” he said. “But there it was, and I opened it.”
Brown eventually reached out to his former bully and accepted the apology.
Growing up in a small town in Western New York, Brown stood out as a kid who loved Whitney Houston songs and Polly Pocket toys. He says he was bullied early on for not fitting masculine stereotypes.
“Being bullied as a child truly shaped the entire experience of growing up,” he told the magazine. “I overanalyzed every part of myself. How was I standing? Was I too loud? Was I safe in my surroundings?”
Brown told PEOPLE that after nearly two decades of healing, introspection, and sobriety, he learned to embrace himself and block out negativity — lessons he now shares with his 4 million social media followers.
Brown, author of the upcoming book Be Your Own Bestie (out next February), said parents of LGBTQ youth often share his content with their children to show they deserve a full, authentic life.
Brown hopes his reconciliation with his former bully can inspire others in similar situations.
“So many people have struggled through similar experiences, and maybe they can find a little healing of their own through this apology from my bully,” he said. “We can’t change other people or will them to give us retribution, but we can control how we show up for ourselves. I’m grateful that I got this moment, but I’m more lucky that I am in a place to accept it.”
A 47-year-old Colorado man has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for attempting to run over a lesbian couple with his vehicle and ramming their truck as they tried to escape.
As reported by CBS News, Vitalie Oprea took his parents' vehicle without permission on February 19, 2023, and was driving near the intersection of East Arapahoe Road and South Liverpool Street in Aurora when he spotted two women kissing.
Witnesses told police that Oprea became enraged, yelling at the couple and making obscene gestures before making a U-turn into oncoming traffic and driving toward them.
Netflix's Stranger Things is facing backlash from viewers after writers devoted the show's penultimate episode to a storyline in which Will Byers, played by Noah Schnapp, comes out as gay.
In part because of the negative reaction to the coming-out storyline -- which appears in the third of three episodes released on Christmas -- Season 5 is now the show's lowest-rated season, earning a 56% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.
The episode itself, "The Bridge," is the lowest-rated of the entire series on IMDb, with a 5.4 score. All other episodes in Season 5 are rated 8.0 or higher.
Documentaries generally don't need an onscreen host. The camera can play host, and real-life stories can tell themselves, with offscreen prompting from research and production, and shrewd direction and editing providing context.
If a filmmaker wants to put the prompting onscreen, there's a delicate art to inserting themselves or an on-camera host into the story without stealing the spotlight from their subject.
Ryan Ashley Lowery, director and creator of the LGBTQ doc Light Up, is anything but delicate in inserting himself and two on-camera host-interviewers -- Michael Mixx and Maurice Eckstein -- into the film's still-compelling portrait of Atlanta's "community of Black same gender loving men and trans women."
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