"I thought trolling only ever happened to the Kardashians, but then it happened to me"

Have you ever received a message and your whole body starts shaking? It’s quite an intense and visceral reaction: the adrenaline pumps through your body, your face feels hot. Your heart drops into your stomach. You breathe quickly.

“Please eat something your face looks skeletal.” I was so ashamed. Are people going to read this? Were they going to think something was wrong with me? Do people think I am doing this on purpose? I had posted a photo of myself during London Fashion Week in September and this had elicited my first ever ‘troll’. The weight loss was caused by stress. (I was going through a divorce at the time - out of respect for my former partner I will not go into any details.)

I wanted to power on, put on a brave face and act as I normally would during that time. My work has always been a coping mechanism and at that time it was a very welcome distraction. Of course, the troll didn't know any of this. For all they knew I was just a vapid Insta-attention seeker, flexing about Fashion Week on the gram. I get it. You have an open Instagram profile, and you leave yourself open to criticism. What I wasn’t prepared for was the relentlessness of the ‘troller’ - something I now look back on a few months later and realise… I probably couldn’t really handle.

Straight away friends weighed in to defend me against my new ‘online adversary’. My pal shoe-designer Sania Claus Demina was one of the first to 'help'. To the troll, Sania replied, “I find it way worse to comment on other women’s bodies. Stop doing that. Period. Because if you and people like you just stopped commenting bodies already. Completely, none of the problems you address would exist and this is a person in this photo, an actual person with feelings and you're an internet troll who don't seem to realise this is a person you're attacking , a person you know absolutely nothing about. I think the only right thing would be to apologise for your comment to her and stop this behaviour asap.”

Sania has witnessed trolling against some of her other friends in the past such as our eco-beauty expert Babba Rivera and told me that she wouldn’t stand for it. Of course, it didn’t stop at the first comment, the ‘troller’ kept on going, “So it’s better that we all pretend this looks healthy and disregard the psychological and physical damage this kind of imagery has on young women? That’s the plan? We 'spare the feelings' of this irresponsible influencer rather than try to protect the innocent girls and women being influenced?” To be fair, I understood the point she was trying to make. I wasn’t trying to be a bad influence on people but, of course, I felt horrified at the reality that I might be one, and a really really bad one at that. The ‘troll’ didn’t know the reason I looked the way I did. I don’t want to call anyone out so I’m not sharing the name of the ‘troll'. The comments are all still on the Instagram post and available for anyone to read… although the person who wrote them might delete them after this article is published. Who knows.

(I feel kind of bad even calling them a ‘troll’, which in itself is a really mean word. Henceforth I shall call my ‘troll’ Emily because I’ve just been re-watching Emily in Paris.)

Emily continued, “She looks 40 easily and if she’s not careful she’ll have the ovaries of an 80 year old and ruin her fertility. That’s what happens when you starve yourself.” Obviously, I burst into tears when I read that one. When you have a break up the idea of not having children suddenly becomes a possibility that you hadn’t even had time to consider. I’ve always been quite lanky and it had just occurred to me that ‘according to the internet’ I looked really crap. There were many other comments that came in thick and fast after that one - all from Emily - all hitting back at my ‘defenders’.

One of my best friends, Roxie Nafousi who is a mental health and wellness coach (and who knew exactly what was going on in my personal life at that point) replied, “Hi there, I just wanted to say that perhaps it is not wise to report on people’s weight and assume everyone that you think is 'thin' is deliberately trying to meet some beauty standard. This would be quite ignorant to assume and does not account for extreme grief, trauma, illness or stress that one may be going through without disclosing. And these comments may be really hurting and exacerbating an already painful and mentally challenging situation.”

There were nine more comments from Emily after Roxie’s reply. Mainly about how emaciated I looked, or how bad an influence I am being. It simply didn’t stop, no matter who tried to defend me, (someone who follows me even replied to Emily saying “STOP. You are bullying”) and with every new comment from Emily I became more upset. I didn’t know I could even get more sad at that point in my life - turns out I could. I actually took some time off work after that. I didn't want to delete the comments in case it aggravated things, or in case it led to even worse comments under a different account.

I stayed silent - I didn’t really know what to say and I’d never been ‘trolled’ before. All I kept thinking was how could someone who knew nothing about me, someone who I’d never met, make such comments? Call me naive but I thought ‘trolling’ only really happened to the Kardashians and celebrities. I’ve written a lot about trolling and that kind of cyberbullying over the years but I’d never had a first-hand experience of it. As a journalist, and now as someone with personal experience I decided to go ‘full ham’ on the research and found plenty of information about why and how it happens.

Studies suggest that bullies tend to be more aggressive online as there are rarely any real-world consequences of their actions, so the impact on the victims is potentially greater. According to dosomething.org cyberbullying mainly affects teenage girls, at the moment 15 per cent of girls between the age of 12-17 have reported being bullied online. With more social platforms on the rise, there are more places to ‘bully’ but it mainly happens on Facebook, Instagram and Youtube. Well, ‘why don’t they or their parents simply close their accounts’ you might be thinking? The difficulty is that for this particular demographic - so much information is shared via social media, and the only way to connect with friends is online.

I’m a geriatric millennial but my Gen-Z sister told me that many of her friends don’t text or use Whatsapp like I do, they will exclusively speak on Snapchat or Instagram. They send each other memes on Instagram, and funny videos on TikTok - its the de rigueur mode of communication. In the case of Gen-Y - teenagers - it’s even more acute. They essentially live out most of their social lives in the digital sphere. To eliminate these accounts would further isolate themselves from the friends they do have, so deleting their social platforms isn’t really an option. That means they’d cut out all of their social interactions, positive and negative.

Recently I attended the launch of ‘Nej till Näthat’ an anti-cyberbullying movement spearheaded by Their Royal Highnesses Princess Sofia and Prince Carl Philip of Sweden, they spoke to the audience about the dangerous effects that cyberbullying has on our youth. “It’s reported that as many as three out of 10 children have been exposed to cyberbullying, often in the form of abusive, intimidating and threatening messages,” Princess Sofia explained to us.

Clearly I’m not a child, I’m a 31 year old who looks like she could easily be 40 (according to my troll). I know I am incredibly fortunate in my life - I have an incredibly supportive network of friends I can rely on… so I can take a few ‘mean’ comments. I was able to laugh about it later on (and, in case you're wondering, I’m back to my normal weight.) But some people can’t and that was what I kept thinking about. What if someone’s comments could have pushed someone else over the edge during a hard time?

You never know what someone is going through in their own lives, or how much someone can take. Emily certainly didn't know what was going on in mine. According to data from ResearchGate and ScienceDaily, cyberbullying is twice as likely to trigger suicidal thoughts in victims as regular bullying. It’s also common for victims to engage in self-harming behaviour as a coping mechanism. I thought of UK TV presenter Caroline Flack, and what she must have been going through when she wasn’t just trolled on Instagram and Twitter, but by the entire media after her notorious break-up. I thought of Charley Patterson, a 12-year-old little girl who took her own life last year after months of vicious bullying online on her school laptop during Covid-19 lockdown. Her mother took away her phone and electronic devices after the online bullying escalated. Charley liked to play computer games, but the bullies found ways to message her abuse as she played.

I'm actually really grateful to 'Emily', this entire experience opened my eyes and making me understand how prevalent 'cyberbullying' is, literally anyone can be trolled and normally it is children and teenagers. It also made me realise how important my friends are, and how lucky I am to have such a great support system around me, some people don’t have that. Having had this experience I can tell you that comments can hurt, no one is immune to vitriol, not me, not a celebrity and certainly not a 12 year old.

I think it would just help if before commenting we stopped to think ‘what exactly is that person going through behind the scenes.’ If you are seriously concerned about someone's appearance, or weight, maybe privately message them first in case you exacerbate the problem. Perhaps the online world could be a better place with a few less trolls and a few more friendly fairies, and luckily I have a few of those. If you have ever received a comment about the way you look or are facing serious bullying online I encourage you to visit both nejtillnathat.se and cybersmile.org. Headspace also offer a list of mental health resources here. Thanks so much for reading.