Gaslighting is a specific term. It’s a technique where the gaslighter manipulates events in a way that makes their victim start to question their own perception of reality and memories, leading to them questioning their sanity. The word comes from the play that later coined the term.

For instance, say person A always keeps their handbag in a particular place. One day, person B hides it. Person A looks for it in its usual place and it’s not there. B replaces it, and tells A it was there all along. The next day, B puts the bag in a different place, but A is sure they put it in its usual spot. B tells A that A put it there themselves, they saw them. Repeat this often enough, A will start to question their own memory. B can now more easily convince A that something that didn’t happen, did, or that something that did happen, actually didn’t. This is a form of gaslighting.

What Amber Heard did in court was not gaslighting. It was on the same level as a child caught with chocolate around their mouth saying they have no idea what happened to your chocolate. Or a child feigning illness to get out of a test they haven’t studied for. No one on the jury could be made to question their memory of the relationship, because they weren’t even witnesses to the relationship.

Don’t give Heard that much credit. She’s just your common or garden liar. And a bad one at that.

My old sidebar avatar is returning. Here’s my gif for posterity.

That’s not to say she never tried to gaslight Depp (“I didn’t punch you, I hit you” could be seen as an attempt), but what she did in court was just plain old-fashioned, unsophisticated porkie-pies.

Gaslighting is just a buzzword now. I’ve lost count of how many times people have accused de Pfeffel Johnson of gaslighting, when all he’s doing is telling easily-debunked schoolboy lies. Stop misusing this term. It has a meaning, and you’re diminishing it by using it for everything.