Why didn't #FreeBritney happen in 2011-2012, the way it happened in 2019 onwards? What Things were different?

[Tear the floor up up]

I think a lot of fans were just relieved 2007 was “over” and at least she appeared to have stability in her life now, and as others have said we didn’t have the evidence back then we have today 

[CameronValimere]

I love how Queen B is still so adamant to thank us and praise our dedication, even knowing what we'd done to her.

Back then we didn't have to face what team con did to everyone. I like to think B doesn't hold our guilt against us and far as I can tell, put us in a great position to give the con its comeuppance.

We can only speculate on the finer points of the cship. We do know the tactics the con relies on, and their trying to sway public opinion is the best they can do.

Their web relies more on us than B now, if they are gonna use us to sway public opinion, I say we sway it for B.

#BArmy #JusticeForBritney

[Steel Magnolia]

The truth is that the fanbase is incredibly selfish.

All anyone cared about was having a bigger and bigger era...They wanted the #1's and wanted to buy the concert tickets.

Anyone who spoke out got called out hard and told it was "none of our business."

I can think of particular people who still post here who used to be the biggest culprits. 

 

[Midnights]

Information.

A LOT of the well known information we now know simply wasn't known around that time.

It was still relatively 'new' and people didn't know what it actually meant in reality or had no clue how far things went.

Things only started to become clear after her hiatus. Confessions from previous isiders came out, legal documents started to leak massively, and Britney's testimony which brought a LOT of new information with it.

 There's a saying:

"Knowledge is power".

 

Couldn't agree more.

[BringTheAction]

We made the mistake of believing everything we were fed back then. We thought she was ok because she was working; she performed, she did interviews, and everything we saw seemed ok. She’s not fighting it, so she must be fine! 

Then it was put out there that the conservatorship was “in name only” and Britney was happy with it for the time being. We kept hearing the reports that it as going to end after this tour or that tour… then we’d get the news that it was extended. It’s crazy to look back on it all. I wish she had  known to speak out sooner or to refuse to work, but obviously it was hard because of all the threats and them keeping her kids from her 
 

[PokemonSpears]

8 hours ago, TakeYourHand said:

I mean tbh something was set up in 2019 with that voicemail that Tess and Barbs got. It came out April 17th my bday and I never heard of their podcast prior to that and even today its not well known. Something changed on the inside. I do wonder if they have ties to Sam somehow. Maybe through Sam's sister or something? 

tbh, and maybe I'm mistaken, but I think I had heard about them before, precisely here on Exhale. I remember there were a couple of podcasts that were literally dedicated to Britney's Instagram, or I think there was another one that had like guests that had worked with her, like makeup artists or background singers, and I think it was the Britney's Gram podcast the ones that first covered the resignation of Andrew Wallet, well, first when he asked for a raise (that was ultimately approved) and then when he suddenly asked for resignation on an expedited basis because otherwise it would harm Britney, that was like  I think they attended those hearings if I'm not wrong.

That's also when the judge Penny ordered an extraordinary hearing, though I don't remember if that happened before or after we knew about Britney being at the mental facility. 

[THE_MIKY]

The media did not cover the reality as much as they did recently. (Or they were paid not to tell the truth)

Also, she was touring, doing albums, so the "fans" were happy enough.

[itsxrichiexbish]

Britney fans were just babies at this time.... All we saw was Britney coming back from that paparazzi blitz. We all knew something was different... Even though social media was more prevalent, I think we were still more separated. I think the birth of the # was the biggest thing in the movement. Like I literally changed every thing to #freebritney. I wrote it in random places, had them as my name in online games... I do wish I could go back in time and try to get ppl together with it 

[ElenaB]

we didn't know sh1t back then. take for the record as an example: the truth was there in front of our faces, she says her situation is worse than jail, that she's sad and that nobody listens. still we could only see that she was back to work and didn't seem "erratic" anymore, spending time with her family and her kids... we didn't know. 

plus the gp still thought she was "crazy", much more than now. many of them still think so, bc of what she posts on instagram and such. the shaved head created a huge cultural impact too and 2011 was too close in time. 

she did what she could with the few resources she had, and i'm proud of her bravery because, as many users have said, she was being threatened. it must have been 13 terrifying years. 

[BlackoutITZ]

Mainly because she was still working, and the sad truth is that a lot of people were distracted by the glitzy blonde pop star of it all. That was really their smoke and mirrors. And it worked, for a while.

I also think that her increased use of Instagram contributed to Free Britney, as well as most of her fans being older and starting to make sense of what was really happening.

[Tear the floor up up]

Does anyone remember just how dark lots of the 2010-11 tabloid stories were? Lots of speculation and rumours about her mental state, abuse allegations, lawsuits, behind the scenes meltdowns etc. In hindsight, perhaps we were gaslighted by her team to “not believe what we read” and perhaps hoped, or assumed, she’d be in a position to speak out if things were truly wrong. Not to say there weren’t lots of people who were concerned and did question things, however.

[hallucinate]

5 hours ago, Steel Magnolia said:

The truth is that the fanbase is incredibly selfish.

All anyone cared about was having a bigger and bigger era...They wanted the #1's and wanted to buy the concert tickets.

Anyone who spoke out got called out hard and told it was "none of our business."

I can think of particular people who still post here who used to be the biggest culprits. 

 

This right here is the hard truth. If we don’t accept it we can’t learn from it. People WERE pointing out that something was wrong - most of us just weren’t listening.

[Stefani]

We were too distracted by Femme Fatale's bops at the time.

[toysoldier88]

Well for me It was her testimony, I was like WTF!!! It is all true and worse, It was Just unbelievable the level of abuse! Until then I was inclined to think that the conservatorship wasn't that bad, her team managed to cover the thing very well...

[Mr. AmericanDream]

Because we all were teenasgers/kids & we really thought her family wasn't ******* crazy like this. Plus she was back to work and we were just enjoying seeing her again and not in a state of fearing something bad was gonna happen.

[Urbanney]

In addition to what’s been said here, society is a lot different than it was 10 years ago. There’s been a lot of conversation about inequality, how women are treated in the media and in the workplace, the #MeToo movement, mental health, etc. that made #FreeBritney possible. I think, without these things and with it being so close to Britney’s “breakdown,” there wouldn’t have been nearly as much public support at all.

As a fan, I didn’t realize how out of control the conservatorship made Britney, and I thought the fact that she seemed out of it, looked different, after different, etc. were due to the same things that caused her breakdown or were after effects of her breakdown. I didn’t think it was her being drugged, trafficked, and having her freedom taken away. I thought she wanted to do the FF era but just had mental struggles. 

Also, no one seemed to look into or have access to court docs back then. I think if more people had seen that the basis for her being in a conservatorship (which was never real in the first place) was dementia, maybe more people would start questioning things. But I still don’t think it would’ve been possible in the culture of 2011. 

I was also only 12-13 during the FF era, so I really didn’t know much about life in general. I didn’t even believe she was medicated and got so tired of fans saying that all the time. I remember speculation of Britney being upset when she had court dates and wasn’t released from the conservatorship back around 2011-2013 though. 

I think a lot of fans and the media also felt like it wasn’t their place to poke and prod. Unless the media was just all paid by Jamie (possible), it seemed like the media started immediately treating Britney well and almost stopped saying anything bad about her at all, like they were trying to rebuke and make up for what they did in the 2000s.

[ivosoares]

If you notice in the second video, when she's annoucing the Latin America Tour Dates

She's looking at the camera with a really scared 'out of her body' look, and then somebody on the side I think tells her, or gestures her to 'smile'

and then she has the fakest smile. You can see she wasn't really there, probably lithium.

[toxiccriminal]

16 hours ago, PokemonSpears said:

I don't think so, at least not the vast majority. Personally I hadn't heard the name until a few years ago and for the longest time I thought it was a man lol until someone brought up again that 2011 picture of "Britney's team" with the photoshopped Britney. 

I don't remember what people thought about Jamie. I think people disliked Lynne more because of the book, and For the Record kinda put him in a better light, like this caring father that makes cheese grits for her and stuff

We knew he was rude and strict with everyone that worked for them, but it just kinda made sense for him to be so overprotective. 

Jamie Lynne though, she was loved in here and y'all are not gonna come here and say you never liked her  because I always hated to see topics about her just because she was Britney's sister. Everyone stanned Zoey 101 and her country record and whatever and I was always like whenever a JL thread came up (and still am but now the threads are made for very different reasons) and people also thought that Bryan was hot and that Britney definitely seemed much better around him, but that wasn't until 2016

Honestly those cheese grits looked kinda good, not gonna lie...@ Jamie make me a plate before your @ss goes to jail!!! 

 

Anyway, to OP's question, I really think the movement would not have happened if not for 1. COVID making the court hearing public and 2. the anonymous voicemail. I think the voicemail was the huge turning point, and the feelings towards the c-ship turned heavily among the GP. After that, more and more came to light, and then COVID making the court hearings public and the GP being able to hear Britney's testimony was like the point of no return. At least, that's how I remember it...

[hotasice2007]

I think the commercial success kept the Conservatorship more in the shadows. Some of her singles were charting higher than they did in her prime

[Psammead]

3 hours ago, toxiccriminal said:

Honestly those cheese grits looked kinda good, not gonna lie...@ Jamie make me a plate before your @ss goes to jail!!! 

 

Anyway, to OP's question, I really think the movement would not have happened if not for 1. COVID making the court hearing public and 2. the anonymous voicemail. I think the voicemail was the huge turning point, and the feelings towards the c-ship turned heavily among the GP. After that, more and more came to light, and then COVID making the court hearings public and the GP being able to hear Britney's testimony was like the point of no return. At least, that's how I remember it...

Britneysgram started when Britney had some instagrams to look at, so that's one milestone (her Instagram). And the voicemail went to Britneysgram. The transcripts were sealed until Ingham started demanding the hearings not be sealed. So nobody could look at court transcripts till then, which there would be for every hearing.

I don't know if this is right, but my feeling is that, apart from Covid making court hearings public, it also meant a lot of people had time to study the court transcripts and what legal documents they could find. And they had more to look at because the hearings were more public.

Framing Britney Spears was another milestone. But what got them interested in making the documentary? It wasn't just the voice mail. Basically, the house of cards fell apart when the voices against it reached some critical mass that the conservatorship team couldn't silence anymore. Or to put it another way, when the ears open to the voices reached a critical mass. I don't know when exactly that was, but a whole lot of little things added up in her favour. Finally.