How Africa News
Amanda Knox, who cheekily joked that her trip was “wonderful,” insulted an American college student over a whiney op-ed about studying abroad in Italy.
“Girl, what are you talking about? Studying abroad is awesome!” Knox, 35, tweeted Tuesday alongside a link to a maligned Insider essay in which New York University student Stacia Datskovska laments that she “hated” her semester in Florence.
Knox, 35, was notoriously imprisoned in Italy for four years after being sentenced to 26 years in prison in 2009 for the gruesome 2007 murder of her study-abroad roommate, Meredith Kercher, in their flat in Perugia.
In 2015, she and her then-boyfriend, Raffaelle Sollecito, were both exonerated.
Datskovska writes in the post, published last week, that after a few weeks in Florence, she “came to dislike the scenery, hated the people, and couldn’t wait to return back home,” a feeling she relates to a lack of shared “values” among herself and her classmates.
The article was quickly excoriated online, with one Twitter user attributing the journalism student’s cringeworthy takes to “no self-awareness.”
The internet, however, was divided over Knox’s own facetious response.
“You have won the internet for the day, Amanda,” reporter Benjamin Ryan replied to the “Waiting to Be Heard” author.
“I’ve been thinking about this tweet for 20 minutes and this needs to be framed and put in The Uffizi Gallery,” wrote another commenter, referring to Florence’s preeminent art museum.
But others were offended by her flippancy, with the Times editor Olivia Alabaster writing, “Your roommate was murdered,” which she quickly followed up with “it’s not always about you.”
“I’m sure the Kercher family will really appreciate this attempt at humour,” another disgruntled tweeter replied.
Knox, now a mother of one, has made a name for herself as a writer and podcaster in the years following her acquittal. She regularly collaborates with her husband, Chris Robinson.
Nevertheless, Rudy Guede, the man convicted of sexually assaulting and murdering Kercher in expedited proceedings, was freed from prison early in December 2020.
At the time of his release, Knox slammed Guede, whose DNA was found at the murder scene, as the “forgotten killer” of the salacious saga.
“I am the one who has been condemned to live with his infamy,” she told “Good Morning America.”
“The only reason you know I exist is because [of] what he did, and that is a grave injustice.”
