Ashton Kutcher, of late less celebrity, more venture capitalist (but formerly of That 70′s Show and various romantic comedies), is engaged in a vicious Twitter fight with the Village Voice. You see, the Village Voice ran a lengthy piece taking Kutcher to task for overhyping underage sex trafficking. While activists fighting for this cause claim between 200,000 and 300,000 underage women are caught in the sex trafficking trade in the United States, the facts disagree. Sometimes, even though your motivations are positive, your crusade can be obnoxious and your claims without merit. I think that’s where Kutcher currently finds himself.

There’s certainly nothing wrong with attempting to put a stop to child sex trafficking (or human trafficking of any kind) but some activists, in search of millions of dollars in funding or constant attention from politicians, have grossly overstated the problem. Obviously, you wouldn’t get as much money or attention for a problem that involved less than 900 young women than you would for a pandemic that touched more than 300 times that amount of youngsters. So the motivation to exaggerate is there and, as in Ashton’s case, some may be sucked into believing these inflated facts and hesitant to admit any inaccuracies after they’ve stated their case.

In this particular case, Ashton is clearly in the wrong. His numbers are grossly inflated and he’s clearly taken the attack by the Village Voice personally. He’s reaching out to anywhere, to anyone that can defend him and even going as far as approaching Village Voice advertisers, encouraging them to end their relationship with the paper, with some immediate success. This last bit, the financial attack, is really what makes Ashton Kutcher look like an asshole. Instead of admitting that perhaps he was off on a stat or two and perhaps he had overhyped the problem but, hell, any child sex trafficking, even a single child, is a cause worthy of advocation – instead of doing that – he stood by the fudged numbers and used his celebrity-status to hurt his opponent financially.

And, honestly, that’s just fucking pathetic.

I don’t have a lot to add to the debate here. I think the Village Voice actually handled things quite well. Sure, they’re provoking Kutcher for some much-needed attention, but the facts are clearly on their side. Instead of rambling on and on, I’ll give you a blow-by-blow of the Twitter battle and a few other relevant graphics to complete the argument on a visual level. Unfortunately, even though the Village Voice is correct in their argument, they stand to lose much more than Kutcher. The best way to combat this is to arm people with some facts and encourage Ashton Kutcher to calm down a bit.

Hopefully, that’s what happens in this case.

To view the Twitter battle, continue reading this post…

[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/#!/aplusk/status/86323668371779584"]

[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/#!/villagevoice/status/86570826211667968"]

[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/#!/aplusk/status/86327619678769152"]

[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/#!/villagevoice/status/86628101638979585"]

[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/#!/aplusk/status/86620930704556032"]

[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/#!/aplusk/status/86621231897509888"]

[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/#!/villagevoice/status/86628911466807296"]

[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/#!/aplusk/status/86621457869848576"]

[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/#!/aplusk/status/86623916784754688"]

[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/#!/villagevoice/status/86629595046100992"]

[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/#!/aplusk/status/86843563354243072"]

[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/#!/aplusk/status/86850124529143808"]

[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/#!/AmericanAir/status/86853462838624257"]

[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/#!/aplusk/status/86892592435970048"]

[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/#!/villagevoice/status/86632580102889473"]

[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/#!/villagevoice/status/86637117379321856"]

[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/#!/villagevoice/status/86637176288317440"]

[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/#!/WVUCraig/status/86639943534911488"]

[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/#!/villagevoice/status/86657247182196736"]

Keep up with the back-and-forth by following @aplusk and @villagevoice.