Over the past few weeks, how many times have people you presumed to be of entirely sound mind referenced the suspicion that Amber Heard stole lines from The Talented Mr Ripley to use in court? 

After Heard’s second day of giving testimony at a courthouse in Virginia, where her ex-husband Johnny Depp has filed a $50 million (£40.4m) defamation suit against her, various social media posts circulated claiming that she had plucked the script to use in her “opening statement”. Lines like: “The thing with Johnny… the sun shines on you and it’s glorious. And then he forgets you and it’s very, very cold.”

But it’s not even a little bit true. Defendants don’t even give opening statements.

The worrisome truth is that the meme represents the fluffy tail of a very vicious monster that has been social media’s response to the Depp v Heard trial. A tsunami of online content has veered from one misogynistic trope to another, framing Heard variously as a gold-digger, whore, crazy ex – and, always, a liar. Support for Depp, despite the complexities of the case, is as strong as ever, with #JusticeForJohnnyDepp trending as a pretty much constant since the beginning of the trial. Yet, if you were to ask around, most people would admit that humiliating an alleged domestic abuse survivor in court is wrong, so why is this attitude brushed away in favour of supporting a celebrity they love?

There is an intriguing explanation. Unless you are a Hollywood exec or Keith Richards, then any relationship you have with Johnny Depp is likely to be what is known as parasocial. “These are one-way relationships with a person you may feel you know intimately, but that does not know you back,” explains Gayle Stever, professor of social and behavioural sciences at Empire State College/SUNY and author of Understanding Media Psychology. “In the case of a celebrity, they don’t have the opportunity to know you back – it is unreciprocated – and is the result of a perceived connection that one feels with this otherwise distant persona.”