An influencer’s life can leave people riveted. Influencer content can be informative and motivating for some, but offensive and enviable for others, and can raise questions about the source of the creator’s wealth. There is a gender. The anger towards some influencers is so strong that an entire site known as Tattle Life exists, with thousands of anonymous users dedicated to expressing their disdain for certain influencers.
Celebrity gossip was seen as a 1990s phenomenon, at least of a very unpleasant kind, when singers, actors, and other people in the public eye simply accepted having their lives ripped apart as the price of fame. I am. Our relationship with celebrities, or at least the way we think about them, has changed a lot over the past 15 years. The main reason for this is the emergence of an entirely new type of public figure: the influencer. Most people know that influencers deal with trolling, but the widespread and tolerated public brutality experienced by celebrities like Britney Spears is certainly a thing of the past. right?
Well, not necessarily. Tattle Life is a space on the internet dedicated to this kind of vitriol. It’s also very populated, with threads about thousands of influencers and updated by thousands of users at least daily, but usually more often. Tattle Life users are typically seen speculating about influencers’ lives, judging their decisions, and making (often very hateful) comments about their personalities and the way they post online. If you visit any of these sites, you’ll probably be surprised that the thread was published in 2024, not 2004. Even the website’s interface resembles old-school platforms like MySpace and MSN.
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But Tattlelife is anything but niche — The Guardian report In 2021, the site received a whopping 43.2 million visits in six months, most of them from users in the UK. If you’re looking for proof that trolling is still alive and well, look no further than Tattle Life. “She’s so huge that her pronouns are fe/fi/fo/fum,” the title reads. There is one fatphobia thread. “My eyes are weird, is the pregnancy a lie?” This is the title of another thread, and is a classic example of the speculation and rumor spreading that takes place on this site.
It is difficult for the average internet user to understand what motivates people to post hateful content online. Dr. Carolina AreSocial media researchers at Northumbria University’s Center for Digital Citizenship explain that there are a variety of reasons why people post hate towards influencers. First, many people misunderstand what influencers actually do. “There are some misconceptions about the reality of creator labor. Whether it’s comments, certain news articles, or even gossip sites, a significant portion of the population views influencers as unintelligent and scams that bash fake products. “They can live a very easy-going life because they see them as their teachers and as the people who are doing the wrong things,” she explains. For someone who works long hours in a difficult job, it’s easy to understand the feeling of resentment towards influencers who portray themselves as living an idyllic life. “Another reason influencers are hated is good old schadenfreude. Viewers love to see celebrities and famous people fail, and they love to criticize their every move. .Perhaps it’s because of a kind of relief that comes from the fact that money is not everything,” Allais added.
“Another reason influencers are hated is good old fashioned schadenfreude. Viewers love to see both major and minor celebrities fail.”
Samantha* (name changed to protect her anonymity), 30, has been posting on Tattle Life for 11 months and read the site for nearly a year before being accepted as a member. “As social media sites have introduced stricter and more sophisticated comment restriction tools, the scope for free discussion and critique in spaces directly adjacent to original content has become more limited,” Samantha said. mashableexplained why she joined Tuttle Life, adding that she believes it’s difficult to accuse influencers of things like “child exploitation” and “ED feeding.” This refers to when someone promotes or glamorizes unhealthy eating habits that can be a trigger for people with eating disorders. Disorder — on social media. Samantha said that at first she was particularly keen on joining the site to post about one influencer, but since joining the site, a total of about 20 influencers have commented on her thread. explains. She said: “I’ve always been frustrated by how open discussion is restricted, so I’m grateful for sites that provide a place to chat.”
We’re all guilty of what feels like harmless gossip from time to time, but at Tattle Life, this behavior escalates to a much larger scale. The difference is that influencers have easy access to threads posted about them, and the amount of hate written about them can affect their mental health. Niomi Smart She’s been an influencer for over 10 years and has over 1.3 million followers on Instagram and 1.49 million subscribers on YouTube, so she’s no stranger to online hate. But discovering sites like her Tattle Life had a huge impact on her. “Every time she visits these websites, she feels numb,” she told Mashable. “I feel like I’ve gone into freeze mode. People who are interested in my life are not only posting threads about my life, family, friends, relationships, but they are also making huge profits. I’m also completely shocked by the fact that I’m uploading it. ”
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“It was a huge shock to say the least,” Smart continues. “It really added a different dimension and dynamic to what I was doing because I felt like I had to be incredibly careful with everything I showed, everything I did, everything I said.” Tattle The majority of threads on sites like Life are aimed at women, which is not surprising since the majority of influencers are women (2023 report Collabstr reported that 79% of influencers are women). However, this means that women are often targeted in particularly gender-biased ways on the site, with many threads dedicated to women’s decisions regarding relationships, motherhood, and work. . “It’s important to pay attention to scripts that occur and repeat in different scenarios,” she says. “Metaphors like failing as a mother, being ‘easy,’ messing up, and being a fraud reproduce stereotypes that make our lives even worse, especially as women.”
Journalist Sari Hughes petitioned for Tuttle Life to shut down several years ago, and she petition It received over 69,000 signatures. However, the site is still up and running, with a waiting list for people who want to become members.
“I have long felt strongly that this should not be tolerated and should be removed.”
“I’ve felt very strongly for a long time that this should not be tolerated and should be removed,” Smart said, adding that she has read many threads on the platform that spread information about herself and her friends. He added. It’s completely false. “I wanted to speak out about this in some way to stop this because I know that so many people, especially women, are affected by this platform. . We know that women in particular are affected by this platform. This is online bullying.”
The way Tattle Life users post on the site seems to suggest that they believe influencers won’t discover their threads. But if influencers read or post certain hateful threads, there must be some concern about their mental health. “I don’t worry just because a Tattle thread exists,” says Samantha. “But sometimes I feel like there’s an element of groupthink in certain threads and that criticism can turn into something like hate.”
Compared to other social media sites, Tattle Life is largely unmoderated and features fatphobic, misogynistic, and racist comments that are flagged as hateful and abusive on platforms like Instagram. We provide room for you to do so. “I feel like one of the big problems with Tuttle is that moderation is weak,” Samantha says. “He has never felt that the mod could be trusted to remove extremely hateful content, and many have pointed out […] Even if you report it, you will only be punished yourself. All I can do is leave a thread if I find it too hateful. I’m sure I’ve done that several times. ”
Yair Cohen is an international internet law and social media lawyer at a London law firm. coen davis He explained that the UK has laws in place to deal with hateful and abusive content posted online. “The Communications Act 2003 is one of the laws that prohibits the sending or posting of grossly offensive, obscene, indecent or threatening messages on public electronic communications networks,” he explains, and protects against harassment. He added that there are many other laws aimed at protecting people. online. Cohen’s law firm continues its investigation into Tuttle Life. However, the founder of Tattle Life is completely anonymous and she uses her pen name Helen. Therefore, it is very difficult to find information about the site and how to manage it. “We have made some progress in identifying the owner of this website and have provided their name and address in the UK,” Cohen explained, adding that the investigation is ongoing and that affected individuals should contact us. He added that he is calling on people to do so.
Smart is part of what many consider the first generation of influencers, posting YouTube videos before anyone realized the opportunities that could arise from them, and the online hate began in the mid-2010s. She says it peaked and has been gradually decreasing ever since. “Generally speaking, things are getting better. I understand how disconcerting it is to stumble on this online platform, because it doesn’t necessarily have an impact on what’s happening broadly across the internet. ,” she says. As the internet evolves and online hate becomes less common and more socially acceptable, you might think that sites like Tattle Life will disappear. But for people who are growing frustrated with influencers and looking for a place to vent, Tuttlelife is now one of the only options to express their feelings freely. “We found that even the most toxic digital spaces can create communities for people who feel disenfranchised for specific reasons,” Allais says.
When asked if she thought Tuttle Life had a positive impact on her life, Samantha said she didn’t think it had a positive or negative impact. “I have a lot of time and I enjoy reading books about humanity,” she says. It is unclear what the future holds for the Gossip Her site, which already looks like a relic of the early Internet, although it still receives millions of visits by anonymous users. But they certainly say a lot about digital humanity, and how the internet creates a space for hatred that is virtually impossible to organize in the real world, especially at this level of anonymity. . Answering the question, what would many people do if their words had no consequences, or at least no personal impact? It proves why I find it hard to believe that it can be of help.
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