I'm thinking about this far too much, so should probably give it a rest for a while. Anyway, here's the latest in my attempts at fact-checking/sense-checking the R5 programme…
In response to EB asking how she feels now hearing the video SH says that she put the video out the night before her son’s birthday and that she spent the whole of the following day ‘crying and fielding abuse because of the statement I had made [...] It was just the most painful time.’
Comment: Why would she be getting abuse the day after she posted the video? EB doesn’t ask.
I was only an onlooker then but what I saw that evening and the following day was an outpouring of support for her on Twitter and Instagram. I think her video post received thousands of ‘likes’ and I didn’t see a negative comment anywhere. I don’t know, of course, what DMs she received but I imagine they reflected the support she was getting publicly.
I came here that evening to see what she had been talking about and people here seemed a bit shell-shocked, at first not grasping that she was talking about here, and then questioning whether what they had being saying had been that bad. I can’t imagine that those 20 or so people responded that evening or the next day by sending her abusive DMs. And if it wasn’t them, whose abuse was she fielding? It doesn’t make sense to me.
What seems more likely is that she had been blindsided by being reported to Estee Laundry, by having to rush out a statement to justify her behaviour, and it was that that had been so distressing and so stressful that she was in tears the following day.
It must have been devastating to have her ‘stalking’ in the public domain. People have commented here on how well she has done to build up a successful career from, by her account, not a great start in life. Having worked so hard and done so well, to feel that it might all come crashing down – it’s not surprising that it was ‘just the most painful time’.
She talks later in the interview about how she suddenly became too fearful to go to Paris alone, suggesting that it was the ‘trolling’ that was the cause. But she is clear that this new fearfulness was in the wake of the video – in the wake of having to respond to being reported for ‘stalking’ – not in response to having discovered, several months earlier, that she was being talked about here.
Throughout the interview she doesn’t seem to distinguish between what was as a result of this discussion, what was as result of her ‘stalking’ people and that being reported, and what was as a result of her video.
For example, when she talks about her child’s teacher or strangers expressing sympathy she seems to suggest that somehow, humiliatingly, they had stumbled across the discussion here. Given her social media reach, it would seem far more likely they’d heard about it from her video.
She would doubtless argue that it all comes back to here – which of course is true – but her response to it very much shaped what happened. If she hadn’t tried to track people down to show them they had ‘been seen’, if when that was reported she hadn’t responded with a video that grossly misrepresented the content here, if she hadn’t continued to mention the ‘hate site' pretty well every time she had a public platform… Well I for one wouldn’t be here.
As before, do let me know if you think I’ve got things wrong.
In response to EB asking how she feels now hearing the video SH says that she put the video out the night before her son’s birthday and that she spent the whole of the following day ‘crying and fielding abuse because of the statement I had made [...] It was just the most painful time.’
Comment: Why would she be getting abuse the day after she posted the video? EB doesn’t ask.
I was only an onlooker then but what I saw that evening and the following day was an outpouring of support for her on Twitter and Instagram. I think her video post received thousands of ‘likes’ and I didn’t see a negative comment anywhere. I don’t know, of course, what DMs she received but I imagine they reflected the support she was getting publicly.
I came here that evening to see what she had been talking about and people here seemed a bit shell-shocked, at first not grasping that she was talking about here, and then questioning whether what they had being saying had been that bad. I can’t imagine that those 20 or so people responded that evening or the next day by sending her abusive DMs. And if it wasn’t them, whose abuse was she fielding? It doesn’t make sense to me.
What seems more likely is that she had been blindsided by being reported to Estee Laundry, by having to rush out a statement to justify her behaviour, and it was that that had been so distressing and so stressful that she was in tears the following day.
It must have been devastating to have her ‘stalking’ in the public domain. People have commented here on how well she has done to build up a successful career from, by her account, not a great start in life. Having worked so hard and done so well, to feel that it might all come crashing down – it’s not surprising that it was ‘just the most painful time’.
She talks later in the interview about how she suddenly became too fearful to go to Paris alone, suggesting that it was the ‘trolling’ that was the cause. But she is clear that this new fearfulness was in the wake of the video – in the wake of having to respond to being reported for ‘stalking’ – not in response to having discovered, several months earlier, that she was being talked about here.
Throughout the interview she doesn’t seem to distinguish between what was as a result of this discussion, what was as result of her ‘stalking’ people and that being reported, and what was as a result of her video.
For example, when she talks about her child’s teacher or strangers expressing sympathy she seems to suggest that somehow, humiliatingly, they had stumbled across the discussion here. Given her social media reach, it would seem far more likely they’d heard about it from her video.
She would doubtless argue that it all comes back to here – which of course is true – but her response to it very much shaped what happened. If she hadn’t tried to track people down to show them they had ‘been seen’, if when that was reported she hadn’t responded with a video that grossly misrepresented the content here, if she hadn’t continued to mention the ‘hate site' pretty well every time she had a public platform… Well I for one wouldn’t be here.
As before, do let me know if you think I’ve got things wrong.
THAT house of cards comes crashing down spectacularly.