A Quest for Credibility: Victimhood as a Revenge Tool
Over the years, the MeToo movement became an indispensable instrument of retribution, advocacy and victim protection. It is a symbol of hope, inspiration and bravery that brings back the voices of those often left silenced before.
And it’s a damn
shame some people see it as a petty revenge tool, used mindlessly to ruin the
reputation and career of people for any perceived slight. Those abusing the
MeToo narrative aren’t just jeopardizing the movement. Eventually, they will
succeed in completely ruining whatever credibility they might’ve had.
A great example of
a MeToo abuser is our good “friend” Yi Zhou. Back in 2019-2020 she got sued for
sexual harassment by her personal trainer. Instead of getting therapy to curb
her entitlement and predatory tendencies after that situation, she decided to
learn the patterns and abuse the victim narrative instead.
Her first target
was writer and director Cameron Crowe. She got to him through an agency they
were both signed up for and began their collab in 2024. Cameron was supposed to
write the soundtrack for a project of hers.
Zhou likes to
claim they worked in 2023, but the earliest picture of him on her social media
was posted in January, 2024. Knowing her absolute love for name-dropping and
bragging, she wouldn’t have waited for so long to post about a celebrity
collaborator, had she actually met him in 2023.
At first, it’s all
sunshine and roses.
Zhou’s outright
expressing romantic interest in the guy. Seems normal? Not really. Because
Crowe’s been in a relationship with another woman since 2023! And Zhou was
aware.
Around June, 2023,
publicist Anais Smith began dating Cameron Crowe. That month, she posted about
them attending a Joni Mitchell concert.
In November (same
year) Anais posted a series of personal pictures of her and Crowe, see below:
And while being
aware of her collaborator’s relationship, she either became infatuated, or
saw the opportunity for a publicity stunt and began to actively flirt
with/accept flirtatious remarks from Crowe.
See below:
Zhou is literally wearing a Victoria's Secret lingerie piece and a miniskirt for a magazine photoshoot with a work colleague.
She also kept
posting about spending time with Crowe on her social media.
It was clearly an
announcement made consensually by the couple, yet Zhou decided to attack Ms.
Smith on social media over the announcement:
Zhou used
derogatory terms like “baby mama”, “preggo”, “gold digger” and “weekend
squeeze” when talking about Ms. Smith, clearly showing lack of manners and
respect towards women, though she still tries to pretend she’s a feminist and a
victim advocate for women.
Zhou never had
sexual relationship with Crowe, yet him fathering a child with his girlfriend is seen by her as
harassment and abuse.
And I am about to
show you the faux victimhood pattern Zhou will be using from now on with a
little help from my trusty little Bingo card:
Let’s use it on the following posts Zhou made in reference to Crowe.
“Woe is me!” is the general gist of both posts, she actively
flirted with a taken man she was supposed to be working with, yet she’s the
victim, lured, seduced and discarded by this wicked man and his fame-hungry
girlfriend, apparently.
From gushing about the man, Zhou went straight to smearing his
name the moment she realized she’s not going to get something she wanted
from him (a celebrity relationship).
AAPI (Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders): Yi Zhou only
remembers of her Asian roots when she needs more victim points, so whenever
she’s running a smear campaign, you can see the narrative of “Asian female
abuse in Hollywood” mentioned in every other post she makes.
“He was so in
love with me”: “…Last
year, <…> a director @firsttimersseries
[Crowe] pursued me for 1 year, <…>, he made me believe I was someone
very special and would call me for 5 hours a day, <…> He would continue
call and do things for me and my projects saying he would do anything for me. I
felt loved in his lullaby and his constant support…”
“I helped his
career so much” + “He’s a
D-lister”: “…he would <…> dine and wine me for 8 hours asking for
film finance for his movies that he can’t get off the ground for 10 years +.I
really wanted to help him and listened dialy [sic] as a shrink for about a year
his daily confessions / issues…”
“He’s a
pervert!”: “…he would try
to hold my hand while walking and tried several times to kiss me or grab my
butt…”
“He’s a
womanizer!”: “…One day
he told me he went to a sudden day road trip, I suspected he was hiding
something, so I found out he was celebrating his 1-year anniversary with some
woman in SF that he called back then as his weekend squeeze that he never saw…”
And for the “Hollywood needs to protect meee!” we have her Me2x2 posts:
Because who would you be passionate enough about their cause to actually write a handful of sentences themselves, come on!
And, Bingo! We got
the first complete smear campaign by Yi Zhou!
Zhou proceeded to
blame Ms. Smith for the dissolution of their partnership with Crowe, while simultaneously
accusing him of sexual harassment, even though it is very obvious she
disregarded personal boundaries of the couple to begin with.
She even has the nerve to try and twist the story, claiming Ms. Smith was “jealous of her”:
But ask yourself this: after her nasty posts with pregnancy emojis, created right after the couple announced they were “expecting”, who really was the jealous one?
She had no sexual relationship
with Crowe, who was already in a relationship that was anything but secret.
Zhou chose to overlook that, was rejected and decided to use the MeToo movement
as a revenge tool against a man who chose someone else, a pattern very similar
to her behavior in the A. Simone (personal trainer) case.
Less than a year later, she initiated her second smear campaign, this time her target was actor and musician Jeremy Renner.
It started the same way it did with Crowe; with a professional collaboration, Zhou’s lovey-dovey posts praising Renner and a tabloid article directly quoting her:
Post made on October 6, 2025, talking about their collaboration:
Post made on October 14, 2025:
Their collaboration turned sour pretty fast, with Zhou signing Renner up for one documentary that happens to be a part of her “Masters of cinema” series, then taking his voice and likeness to create an AI soundtrack and an AI-model of the actor to be used in her AI animated film. Zhou added the animated film to the series, even though it didn’t match the series theme whatsoever, and thought it was okay for her to abuse the actor's right of publicity because it’s all “part of the series”, even though her own contract posts never mentioned the actor signing up for the entire series.
Obviously,
whatever relationship they might’ve had dissolved along with his support for
her “projects”. And we got our first Bingo spot stamped: “From gushing to
smearing his name”.
Post dated November 3, 2025:
Post dated November 8, 2025:
Then we can knock down three more squares on our Bingo card: “Woe is me!”, “AAPI” and “Hollywood must protect meee!” See the post below, created by Zhou on November 3, 2025:
As well as this one, dated November 27, 2025:
While smearing his name, Zhou, of course, keeps saying the actor was “so in love with her”:
Post dated November 5, 2025 (abstract):
Post dated November 8, 2025 (abstract):
She proceeded to
call him a womanizer and a pervert, which didn’t matter to her,
apparently, until she didn’t get the free marketing for the project made with
his stolen likeness. See below:
Post dated November 8, 2025:
It should be noted that the post initially doxed all 4 women, showing their names and Instagram handles, with one of the alleged victims getting blocked by Zhou once she told her she briefly dated the actor and was NOT mistreated…
More slander:
Post dated November 7, 2025:
Zhou also though it would be a great idea to slander Renner’s charity foundation, practically calling him a trafficker (see below).
As well as this FB post from January, 2025 (abstract):
And my favorite part of the Bingo card, Zhou claiming she helped a collaborator’s career, while calling them a “D-lister”:
Post dated November 5, 2025 (abstract):
Post dated November 27, 2025 (abstract):
Post dated January 14, 2025:
And we’ve finished our second Zhou smear campaign bingo! Lovely! But we aren’t done just yet!
In March of this
year, Yi Zhou ran her third smear campaign! She just can’t get enough of
abusing the MeToo movement! This time, her “dearest mentor”, Oliver Stone, got
dragged through the mud in record time!
Zhou went from
singing him praises to a full-on smear campaign when she didn’t get a
credit (“story by”) in his upcoming movie!
The first explosive post went live on March 21, 2025:
A simple search
lets us know she was talking about Stone’s upcoming film titles White Lies.
Zhou isn’t giving names yet, but we already get the claims of her “helping
with a collaborator’s career”, of course.
Back in January, she claimed the film credit issue with Stone was happily resolved…
Well, apparently, it wasn’t!
Then came the posts claiming Stone was a thief, a forgotten D-lister who was definitely “so in love with her”, and whose career was utterly saved and revived by the “perpetual victim” Zhou (“Woe is me” story + claims of helping a collaborator’s career):
And a few more
storytime posts, where we get the “AAPI” inserts and “Hollywood needs
to protect meee!” whining along with womanizer/pervert accusations
towards Stone:
Notice the “Woe is me”-type whining as she allegedly witnessed other women get mistreated, yet felt bad for herself only. Quite the empath we got on our hands…
More stories about the almighty Zhou saving careers of collaborators:
Aaaand, Bingo! The third smear
campaign is complete!
All three cases aren’t just similar; her approach is identical! Yi Zhou developed a brazen habit of using MeToo as a tool of revenge whenever she doesn’t get something she wants from men. Didn’t get a celebrity relationship from Crowe – smear campaign, didn’t get free endorsement of her projects from Renner – smear campaign, didn’t get a narcissistic trinket in the form of a film credit from Stone – you guessed it, smear campaign!
This person
willingly and enthusiastically destroyed all personal credibility she had by
throwing tantrums over not getting her way. Had she put all the energy she used
for smear campaigns into actual work, she’d probably have made films people
would actually care about without begging for third-party endorsements,
name-dropping and nagging for credits!
Should this mean,
we must dismiss her future victim stories outright? And you know, there
absolutely will be more! The answer is…no! Of course, even the worst liar can
become a legit victim of violence at some point. And victims deserve to be heard…
What we should really do, is keep drawing the parallels, check for the tell-tale signs of her smear campaigns and not let her pleas, no matter how loud, silence our logical thinking.
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This article was a really long one, I hope the little comparative review turned out entertaining and gave you some interesting info! Thank you so much for reading, and see you next time! 😊
What a great layout of the situation. I assume you have seen the Reddit comments from people who know this woman IRL? They say she is around 50 years old and has a history of financial scamming and chronic lying.
ReplyDeleteI was interested to read your breakdown of her history with Cameron Crowe: I saw a badly photoshopped image of a fake album cover of an AI "soundtrack" she claimed to have made with Crowe (which seems, in reality, to exist only in her mind/on her insta) and wondered what that was about.
As a big Oliver Stone fan, I can shed some light on things: the script (White Lies) she claims to have "rebranded" by having the insight for Stone to brand it as autobiographical is a lie. The project has existed for about 15 years, and there are interviews going back that long with Stone describing it as an autobiographical swan song to end his career, ala Fellini and Truffaut. The film was originally almost made back in 2018 with Benicio del Toro as the star: you can compare the Deadline article announcing the movie back then to the one announcing its production this year to confirm it has the exact same logline/summary as almost ten years ago, long before she claims to have read the script/given her insight. So...how did she "rebrand" it exactly? She claims she deserves a "story" credit, yet the title page of the script she posted on Insta (first reading it in 2023!) clearly shows the script and story written and copyrighted by Oliver Stone! So she wants a story credit on a 15 year old, already completed script?
That doesn't mean she wasn't given the script and asked for her opinion, but that is very common in Hollywood. Stone gave the script of White Lies to multiple friends, family members and acquaintances over the past 15 years to ask their opinions, for example film critic Matt Zoller Seitz. As the film is also about him meeting and marrying his wife (who is Korean) I can definitely see him wanting the opinion of AAPI friends in particular. None of them would ever think that their feedback entitled them to a "story by" credit! Seitz btw laughingly claimed years ago (during the making of Snowden) that he told Stone there was too much sex in the script - which is the same big idea Zhou is claiming she said and deserves credit for! Sorry, babe, but that wasn't even your idea!
Hi! Thank you for reading and reaching out! Yes, she's indeed pushing 50s, but likes to knock a decade off her age on social media. And she absolutely has a shady history with dodgy charities and fake donations for PR!
DeleteCompared to her other smear campaigns, the one about Stone unravelled really quick. She hinted at the credit situation last year twice, but it was so vague, no one really cared. And now that the movie's progressing, she wants a piece of it. A credit in a movie shot by Stone is a perfect target for her, a pure vanity project, considering the fact that the absolute majority of her imdb projects never really came out...
In her latest posts she claimed she wanted "story by", "produced by" credits and she "would like to write the soundtrack" as well, which is a bold move after she called him a thief, threatened legal action and indirectly called him a perv with claims like "his kids have to bring him bitches".
Most likely, that soundtrack would have been as elusive as the one recorded by Crowe, since no one really heard any of it online, not even a sample, on any of her social media/studio websites. And giving basic advice on shooting abroad really doesn't sound like it deserves a full-on producer credit.
As for the idea, she herself stated early on that she never saw the final script version. How does she even know if Stone kept whatever ideas she wanted to add?
I also was offended at her description of his first ex-wife. As in, it's offensive to his first wife by misrepresenting her story. Stone wrote a memoir which goes into detail on that marriage (with his ex-wife's full approval). She wasn't "dumped" when he became famous, they divorced before he moved to Hollywood. In fact, the main reason for their divorce was that Stone decided he needed to move to Los Angeles if he was going to have a career as a screenwriter, and his ex-wife was unwilling to leave her home and career in New York and didn't want to live in California.
DeleteTo this day, Stone always gives full credit to his first wife for "saving his life life," "bringing him back from the dead," and similar language, for helping him through the PTSD he suffered as a veteran of the Vietnam War. They remain close friends, even though they had no kids, and he fully credits her in his memoir for having a stable career and being the breadwinner in their marriage.
The only time his first ex-wife was interviewed was for a 1995 biography of Stone by James Riordan. She told Riordan that she agreed to speak with him only because Oliver asked her to. You know what she said? She said she didn't like the press because she didn't like their portrayal of her ex-husband, and resented them for not portraying the wonderful man she knew. She also said, "We're no longer in love, but I still love him and will love him until the day I die." That's his ex-wife of almost 50 years now.
Stone has a second ex-wife, too, with whom he has two children. They divorced in 1995 but remain best friends, per her social media. They spend every holiday together with his current wife!
Wow, this just shows how "well" she truly knew "her friend and mentor". She knew he moved to CA without his wife and made her own conclusion, fitting her narrative :/
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ReplyDeleteI would love to see her, an unknown with no writing credit, try and sue Oliver Stone, an Oscar winning screenwriter with over 20 written films to his credit, over a script he's been working on for 15 years that she didn't see a copy of until 2023. He famously writes longhand and keeps all his notes and drafts for every project he works on. At one point, she even mentions in passing having signed a non-use agreement! (likely signed before she ever allowed to read the script). Zhou doesn't seem to realize that ideas are not copyrightable, only specific implementation of ideas are.
She seems to realize that trying to claim story credit on a script that initially went into pre-production almost a decade ago is useless, so now claims to deserve a producer credit for having the idea to...film on location using tax credits and international funding. Stone has almost always filmed on location in his 50 years of filmmaking, and anyone with a cursory knowledge of Hollywood knows it's going through an economic crisis because almost all productions film overseas to use tax breaks. She thinks that's her idea?? Stone has also been using foreign investors for about 20-25 years. There are too many interviews with him to name where he talks about how both his films' subject matter, combined with the collapse of the independent film industry, make his movies impossible to film with American investors. Contrary to her claims that he thinks he's King Shit, this is the director who told the New York Times, when asked what he thinks Hollywood thinks of him, replied, "I don't think they think of me at all."
Furthermore, most of the producers on White Lies are ones Stone has worked with for 10-15 years. Does she believe that suggesting "shoot international, get tax breaks" was a revolutionary idea to the international producers Stone has long been working with? Funny how all these experienced filmmakers and producers and actors with long careers need this nobody with no film experience (except horrible AI trailers for non-existent projects) to tell them perhaps the most obvious fact about modern filmmaking. What next: film using cameras? Incorporate sound? White Lies is currently filming in Thailand, a country Stone first filmed a movie on location in....1993!
I really doubt she has any legal grounds to sue for copyright, she implied the script was about her, a "mysterious Asian woman", clearly thinking people can't google Stone's wife, and her claims about bringing investors sound strange at best. If, according to her, Stone is this "has-been", a forgotten icon, and she brought in the investors to fund the film, how come she can't find any for her own projects stuck in production hell for years, since she considers herself this "new generation talent"??
DeleteP.S. it's also funny that she wants everyone to "support women" (her) but other women are "the bitches" for seeming to do nothing but be in her presence? I understand if Stone was upset that this woman he has no relationship with, by her own admission, "cried" because she had to sit at a table at a dinner with....other women? As in, other friends or guests of his?? Nothing about why these women get branded as "bitches" except existing. She "cried" because Stone's kids...have girlfriends they brought to their dad's house? How bizarre, but makes sense, after reading her weirdness about Crowe and jealousy over his girlfriend and spiraling out that he "didn't tell her." She does seem to meet these stars through other people, become friendly enough to take a few photos or attend events/parties where they're at, but then becomes weirdly possessive. Cameron Crowe doesn't need this random acquaintance's permission to have a baby with his girlfriend, nor does Oliver Stone need this rando's permission as to who he invites to his parties/lets in his house.
ReplyDeleteThat one was really outrageous! She likes to attack other women around her current "target", Crowe's GF was branded a "gold-digger preggo", Stone's acquaintances were called bitches for no reason (who were allegedly abused before her eyes and she only felt bad for herself), and even with Renner! Early on, before the accusations, she would leave nasty comments on posts of women he worked with (like a model from his music video), as well as comment on his posts, calling other women he was supposedly talking to "whores". Such a supporter of women, this one, lol.
DeleteI'm wondering how often Zhou even interacted with Stone. I think I've seen three photos she's posted with him.
DeleteThe first is the one from 20 or so years ago at some sort of "Q&A" she said she did as her "introduction as a visual artist" or something (and also apologized to him for how it turned out, apparently??). She's posted that repeatedly but bizarrely no backstory over how she got Oliver Stone to attend the "debut" event of some unknown. The room in the photo kinda resembles a maybe college classroom, and there are others seated in a row that Zhou has clearly cropped out. I suspect, with her history, this was some event not revolving around Zhou at all, but some sort of class or event Stone did a Q&A at. (Of course according to her math, her photo looking in her early 20s with a 20 years younger Stone would have made her about 12 at this event, because she's 37 remember lol).
She claims she "remained friends" with Stone this whole time, but there seems to be no photos of mentions of him until she coughed up origin story #2 during this crash out where suddenly now she met him for the first time 2-3 years ago when her "best friend" brought her to dinner or some sort of party at Stone's house.
Now Stone is known for having "movie nights" wherein his invites various friends, family members and acquaintances to watch a (usually vintage) film in the home theater of his mansion. The two other photos of Stone Zhou posted seem to be at a movie night: one of him and several other people (including his adult kids) sitting in his home theater (recognizable from others' social media pics and interviews he's filmed in his home) and another photo of him standing in his kitchen signing a copy of his book for Zhou.
I'm curious what you think about my guess: that Zhou met Stone ages ago as a college student at some event, and a couple of years ago a friend of hers brought Zhou to a movie night at his home (where his signed a copy of his book for her upon request). Were there any other photos of Stone on her Insta aside from those three?
They first met at some panel in Hong Kong, Stone was the moderator. It was most probably not about Zhou, and since Zhou clearly couldn't put two words together, Stone did all the talking. Then, years later, Zhou, who was desperate to get close to Hollywood stars and used the services of agencies that could get her to parties and events, weaseled her way into Stone's movie nights and sucked up to him, most probably asking for his script herself. That's my take, knowing her tactics... Most of her posts about him are just mentions, and the pictures of her "good friend" from the house parties are all taken just the way she likes: from the side, when no one's looking/expecting to be photographed. The same kinds of pics she took of Crowe and Renner.
DeleteWow, I found it! Stone's outfit matches. Google Images states it's from an appearance Stone made at a class for visual artists at the University of Hong Kong on November 30 2008: https://g.co/about/dm4xtk or https://arthistory.hku.hk/HKinTransition/image_detail.php?id=10667
DeleteWow, that's a long time ago! And it wasn't "her" event after all! Great find!
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