I’ve been on Instagram sharing my life since around 2013. At first it was for friends and family. I had it set to private for ages at first, I was travelling in Australia and I’d just share my photographs of what I was doing. I didn’t even know what a blogger was, and I certainly didn’t have a clue how bloggers made money.
I’m originally from Cork, Ireland but after getting together with my partner in Australia we decided to move to Surrey near where he grew up. I started taking more photos which told a story about what was happening with my life, and after making my account public I started really gaining followers around 2014. I was invited to events in London with top influencers at the time. The curtains were like, pulled back and I was like, ‘Oh, okay. Maybe I can do this for a living.’ I was figuring stuff out as I went along.
Since then my partner and I have had three children. I would share family pictures and post about motherhood as well as lifestyle stuff, all things I felt were telling my story in an honest way. Now I have 97.8k and work with some brands I'm really proud to work with.
People glamorise the lives of influencers, but it hasn’t always been an easy ride. We have broken up and got back together, and I have struggled with my mental health. On top of that, about a year ago, I first discovered the website Tattle.Life [a website which acts as a forum for ‘discussion’ about influencers, which journalist Sali Hughes drew attention to in 2019 when she revealed she had been trolled in countless messages about everything she did].
I googled my name and found the website, there were a lot of threads which mentioned me. But then there was also a specific thread written about me and my Instagram account which I read, and it really affected me. I try not to go on there much but I've looked on the site for this article recently, and I've seen things written about me in the last few weeks like 'She can't hold onto friends', comments questioning my relationship, speculating about my mental health, and one commenter even said they had set a Google Alert for my name so they could check my posts for inconsistencies.
I’ve experienced negative comments before, of course, someone saying my hair looks awful or something like that, but the thing about this website [Tattle] is that it's much darker. They're making up stuff about my relationship. There's stuff written about me on Tattle which is completely untrue. My response was, ‘Oh my god. How can people get away with writing this stuff on the internet about me.’
The first time I went on the site I went into a deep depression, I just wanted to literally stay at home. I couldn’t get out of bed. I know as an influencer I choose to put myself out there, that's part of my job. But no one deserves this treatment.
I try to ignore it as much as I can but there was one moment that was a real turning point for me was when I read a sentence on one thread, all in capslock, which said, ‘She deserves everything that's coming to her’. That’s a threat. That's too far, that could mean anything. This is beyond someone saying, ‘Oh I saw her in Tescos a few times’. They have shared a link of my house [which is for sale] on Rightmove and said that they’ll ‘come and visit’ I can't even tell you how terrifying it is to see that. It all makes me very paranoid. I couldn't join the Whatsapp group for the school moms, for example, because I was very paranoid. I would get jumpy at cars driving past the house.
I do wonder if some of it is to do with jealousy. I know that not everyone's going to like me but I have an online following where there is a form of connection and I love that. Social media is wonderful, but I’m looking at it so differently these days, because I've experienced the dark side of it. And I can’t unsee that.
You can contact Tattle to try and get these threads removed but it's not guaranteed [Tattle.Life writes in its Terms and Conditions: We may remove or modify any Content submitted at any time, with or without cause, with or without notice. Requests for Content to be removed or modified will be undertaken only at our discretion. We may terminate your access to all or any part of the Service at any time, with or without cause, with or without notice.] I've come to a point where I actually feel compassion for these people who comment about me on Tattle. Like, it's actually really sad. It's actually heartbreaking because they are feeling a lot of bitterness.
All of this has made me think before I post. It makes me question every single thing I do. It makes me feel like I’m a terrible person because I don’t do everything perfect. I have drawn back on my Instagram account because I’m worried that I’ll be criticised on this website. I'm drawing back so much more. If you can’t do anything on social media without someone saying anything, then it makes you rethink your existence.
READ MORE: