How do you like your revenge? Immediate, or long-awaited? All week, the internet’s been talking about a real slow burner. When Louisa Manning went through puberty, she was bullied and teased by a guy and his mates to the point where she stopped eating properly. Eight years later, a week or so ago, she bumped into him at Oxford University’s Yule Ball.
They had a conversation where, she says, he made ‘objectifying comments’ and remarked how she looked ‘so different’ to before. He then asked her out, either not remembering how much of a prick he was before, or just thinking that Louisa would put up with the fact he used to be a prick to her.
Agreeing to the date, Louisa later admitted in a Facebook post: ‘I obviously didn’t actually want to date him, because he wasn’t very nice to me.’
So what did she do? Serve up some pretty great slow-burned revenge: ‘I found a photo of myself from Year 8, wrote a message on the back, gave it to the waiter, and asked the waiter to give it to him when he got to the restaurant.’
This is what the back of the photo read: ‘Hey, so sorry I can’t join you tonight.
‘Remember Year 8, when I was fat and you made fun of my weight? No? I do – I spent the following three years eating less than an apple a day. So I’ve decided to skip dinner. Remember the monobrow you mocked? The hairy legs you were disgusted by? Remember how every day for three years, you and your friends called me manbeast? I thought I’d send you this as a reminder... next time you think of me, picture this photo, because she’s the one who just stood you up.’
She put photos of the photo and the back
and about 10 minutes afterwards, he called her to apologise for his past transgressions.
She kept the post up, which might be questionable to some, but it doesn’t identify him, plus it’s a photo of her looking like an awkward teenager, not him, and it now has 18,000 likes. She told the BBC yesterday: ‘It was a really nice feeling sending him that note, and especially when he apologised. It’s a 10-year late apology, but I got an apology.’
Oh, and she’s pretty – rightfully – annoyed that she’s been referred to as a ‘hot girl’ when this story has been reported, posting on Facebook a link to a friend’s tweet correcting an American news outlet for using that description of her: ‘Also known as 22-year-old woman’.
]The best part is, it’s not giving the guy a taste of his own medicine, it’s letting his own logic fuck with his head! Plus, she’s now getting the support of peers around the world, with comments under her post calling her a ‘hero’.
It goes without saying that bullying is pretty shitty, but what’s also shitty, is guys who think they can go from being a massive prick to you to asking you out with no apology in between.
There’s A Celebration Of Sadness Happening Online And You’re All Invited
Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.