Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian and controversial media personality Jason Whitlock exchanged words before the former verbally annihilated the latter regarding Serena Williams’ cameo in Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime show on Sunday.
Ohanian shared a tweet on X, formerly Twitter, with a screenshot of an article The Week published following his wife’s celebration after defeating Maria Sharapova to win the gold medal in the 2012 Olympics, asking, “Does Serena Williams deserve to be criticized for ‘Crip Walking’?.
The image included a quote from Whitlock, who said Williams “deserved to be criticized and she should’ve immediately apologized.” The article with Whitlock’s comments continued, “What she did ‘was akin to cracking a tasteless, X-rated joke inside a church.’ As a black woman, Williams ‘has never been given her proper respect at Wimbledon,’ and the Crip Walk was her ‘F-U revenge’ to ‘give the snobs at Wimbledon a taste of the Compton girl they fear.’ The dance was ‘immature and classless,’ and she ‘deserved to be called out.'”
Ohanian’s tweet also included a clip of Samuel L. Jackson exclaiming during K.Dot’s Super Bowl performance, “Too loud, too reckless, too… ghetto,” and “Mr. Lamar, do you really know how to play the game?”
He wrote, “Some of y’all have no idea how criticized Serena was for this same dance at Wimbledon 13 years ago and it shows…. This is bigger than the music.”
Whitlock then entered the conversation, retweeting Ohanian and writing, “This is Serena’s husband, a true beta. He’s mad at me rather than the wife Crip walking and still thinking about Drake. Simp.”
Ohanian didn’t respond in kind with name-calling but offered Whitlock some advice:
“I get it—you’re 57, and life didn’t turn out the way you imagined,” he wrote. “That kind of disappointment must be exhausting. You’re the embodiment of peaked in high school, spending decades chasing validation from strangers through Likes and Digital Hugs, only to find that no amount of external approval fills the void. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
“Criticism only fuels your victim complex, reinforcing the comforting delusion that there’s some grand conspiracy against you and your ‘brave ideas’—when in reality, you’ve just got terrible takes. It’s a cycle: outrage, backlash, self-pity, repeat.
“This is a lonely road. There’s still time to rewrite the ending — start by working on yourself first. You’ll find that if you wake up every morning trying to be a little better, a little more curious, you won’t have time for irrational hating — you’ll be too busy winning.”
Williams also mentioned Wimbledon in a video she tweeted after her Super Bowl halftime appearance.
“Man, I did not Crip Walk like that at Wimbledon. Ooh, I would’ve been fiiiiiiined!” she exclaimed. “It was all love,” she added.
