A mother has told how relentless bullying on an influencer discussion website left her feeling suicidal.
Eimear Varian Barry, 34, who lives in Surrey, was horrified when she searched her name on Tattle Life in September 2019 – discovering thread after thread of comments discussing her appearance, mental health, children and marriage.
Tattle Life is a website where people can criticise influencers under anonymous usernames, with Eimear predicting the majority of her trolls are women because most of her 96.5k Instagram followers are female.
The mother-of-three told The Sunday Times that the bullying left her ‘scared and paranoid’ and that she’s had to go to the police on three separate occasions because of malicious comments.
Eimear Varian Barry, 34, who lives in Surrey, was horrified when she searched her name on Tattle Life in September 2019 – discovering thread after thread of comments, discussing her appearance, mental health, children and marriage
The mother-of-three said that the bullying left her ‘scared and paranoid’ and that she’s had to go to the police on three separate occasions because of malicious comments.
‘It goes way beyond kind of bitchy comments,’ said Eimear. ‘It’s something dangerous, darker, deeper.’
Eimear became a victim of ‘doxing’ – where trolls maliciously post identifying information about an individual on the internet – when users posted a link to her home on RightMove when it was up for sale.
The mother says she was left terrified after receiving threatening messages and that Tattle Life users have speculated about her friends, family, relationship and her mental health.
One troll set a Google Alert for Eimear’s name so they could cross examine every single post she did and users even accused the mother of child abuse for involving her children in her content.
Eimear became a victim of ‘doxing’ – where trolls maliciously post identifying information about an individual on the internet – when users posted a link to her home on RightMove when it was up for sale
‘The first time I went on the site I went into a deep depression, I just wanted to literally stay at home,’ she said an interview with Grazia in October 2020.
‘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.’
She said that while she tries her best to get damaging content removed, there are no guarantees the website will remove the thread and that despite all the pain they’ve caused her, she feels ‘compassion’ for the ‘bitter’ trolls.
Discussion forum Tattle Life, created by Helen McDougal in 2017, is a website dedicated to discussing influencers, which has come under recent fire amid claims it is encouraging bullying.
According to the site, they provide ‘commentary on public business social media accounts’. It adds: ‘We allow commentary and critiques of people that choose to monetise their personal life as a business and release it into the public domain.’
The site hit headlines in 2019 when a mummy blogger created a fake account on the social platform, which she used to defend herself against trolls as well as make negative comments about other influencers.
Mummy blogger Clemmie Hooper, 35, from Kent, went viral in 2019 for creating a fake account on the social platform which she used to defend herself as well as make negative comments about other influencers
Midwife Clemmie Hooper, 35, from Kent, who had racked up almost 700,000 followers documenting her life as a mum-of-four, confirmed on Instagram she had been posting under a false identity.
The revelation provoked both sympathy for the years of trolling she received which resulted in her creating account to defend herself, as well as anger at the negative comments she was thought to have made about fellow bloggers, and even her unsuspecting husband.
Clemmie is thought to have been posting comments under the name ‘AliceInWanderLust’ on Tattle Life.
The insight into the website comes after backlash following the revelation that influencer Clemmie had felt forced to create a fake account to hit back at ‘years of trolling’
Posting a statement online, Clemmie revealed the trolling she had experienced led her to set up the account, initially to defend herself, but in an effort to cover up her identity when other users began suspecting who she really was, she began posting negative comments about others.
Writing in the post, she wrote: ‘I know there are some rumours circulating and I want to take the opportunity to explain.
‘Earlier this year, I became aware of a website that had thousands of comments about my family and I. Reading them made me feel extremely paranoid and affected me much more than I knew at the time.
Posting a statement online, Clemmie revealed the trolling she had experienced led her to set up the account, initially to defend herself, but in an effort to cover up her identity when other users began suspecting who she really was, she began posting negative comments about others
‘I decided without telling anyone else that I would make an anonymous account so that this group of people would believe I was one of them, so that I could maybe change their opinions from the inside to defend my family and I.’
She continued: ‘It became all consuming and it grew bigger than I knew how to handle.
‘When the users started to suspect it was me, I made the mistake of commenting about others. I regret it all and am deeply sorry – I know this has caused a lot of pain.
‘Undoubtedly I got lost in this online world and the more I became engrossed in the negative commentary, the more situation escalated.’
She added: ‘Engaging in this was a huge mistake…I take full responsibility for what’s happened and I am just so sorry for the hurt I have caused to everyone involved including my friends and family.’