Alina earned the ire of fans for her racist social media history, but viewers are just as upset about TLC’s lackluster response to the controversy.
All about TLC’s response to 90 day fiance The controversy of franchise star Alina Kozhevnikova has disappointed fans. When the 90 Day Fiancé: Before the 90 Days When cast members’ offensive social media histories were discovered, it immediately became a major scandal that drew intense criticism from fans who felt a line had been crossed. Viewers didn’t have much hope that the network would do the right thing, but the way TLC handled the situation was worse than anyone could have imagined.
Although Alina started the season as a fan favorite, viewers started to turn on her even before her social media activity came to light. Fans didn’t like the way Alina treated Caleb Greenwood as she often pressured him for sex and also wanted him to define the relationship and agree to be exclusive with her. Instead, viewers thought Caleb was reasonable to take it easy and see where they naturally go. When it was discovered that Alina has made numerous posts and comments in the past that were extremely offensive and racially insensitive, fans were completely fed up with her and ready to make her disappear from their screens.
Alina’s abusive messages were discovered in mid-January, but it took weeks to get a response. Fans waited and waited for the network to make a statement, and even when one was given, it was still a disappointment. TLC took no blame and offered no real apology. Instead, the network released a garden Celeberinfo statement about not tolerating racism and pledging to fire Alina from the franchise. There was no apology for not doing better in vetting cast members, which angered fans who were just as mad at TLC for not running better background checks as they did with Alina for her racist actions.
TLC’s lackluster response became all the more frustrating as no decisive action has been taken so far. Viewers expected Alina to be removed from the show, but in the final episode of For the 90 days, her segments were still in the episode. If TLC had intended to remove Alina’s segments, then the network grossly messed up the editing efforts and initially re-aired Alina’s segments from the previous episode. Then, on a later airing of the episode, new segments featuring Alina and Caleb were inserted, and it only made fans more confused and upset.
With the way other networks have responded to similar controversies in the past, 90 day fiance viewers didn’t have much hope that TLC would be any different. But the network fared even worse than they expected. The big problem is that there was no accountability and minimal action, and fans have two words for TLC: do better.
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