Everything Is Content - Everything In Conversation: Tattle Life, Trolling & Toxic Gossip

Episode Date: July 23, 2025

Pssst... yes, you, want the latest hot gossip? We've got you covered, happy Wednesday :)Tattle Life describes itself as ‘a commentary website on public business social media accounts which allows commentary and critiques of people that choose to monetise their personal life as a business and release it into the public domain.'They say that they ‘have a zero-tolerance policy to any content that is abusive, hateful or harmful and a team of moderators online 24/7 to remove any content that breaks our strict rules, often in minutes.’And yet, a landmark legal case involving the website concluded with a £300,000 damages award to Neil and Donna Sands, a couple from County Antrim, following their successful defamation and harassment lawsuit. The two-year legal battle unmasked the site’s operator, Sebastian Bond, who had previously concealed his identity under the alias “Helen McDougal.” The Sands couple, who endured prolonged abuse and stalking, argued that the platform promoted hate speech and severely harmed their reputations.Neil Sands, a tech entrepreneur, and his wife Donna, who runs a fashion business, launched the legal proceedings after facing sustained harassment, privacy violations, defamatory content, and breaches of their data rights. Tattle Life, which draws up to 12 million monthly visitors, is known for forums where users comment on influencers, celebrities, and members of the public.Should anonymous gossip websites exist? Will this court case have any real long-term ramifications? Listen to hear our thoughts!Thank you so much for all of your comments and takes as always, O,R,B x Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Say hello savings and goodbye worries with Freedom Mobile. Get 60 gigs to use in Canada, the US and Mexico for just 39 bucks a month. Plus get a one-time use of five gigs of Roam Beyond data. Conditions apply. Details at freedommobile.ca. I'm Beth. I'm Rachera. And I'm Anoni. And this is Everything in Conversation.

An extra helping of content to get you over the midweek slump. This week we're talking tattle life, trolling and toxic gossip. Also please give us a follow on Instagram and TikTok at Everything is Content Pod to keep up with conversation topics and have your say. And do make sure to follow us on your podcast player app so you never miss an episode and please also do leave us a rating and review. We appreciate it so much. Tatl Life describes itself as a commentary website on public business social media accounts which allows commentary and critiques people that choose to monetise their public life as a business and release it into the public domain. They say that they have a zero tolerance policy to any content that's abusive, hateful or

harmful and a team of moderators online 24-7 to remove any content that breaks our strict rules, often in minutes. And yet, a landmark legal case involving a website concluded with a 300,000 damages award to Neil and Donna Sands, a couple from County Antrim, following their successful defamation and harassment lawsuit. The two-year legal battle unmasked the site's operator, Sebastian Bond, who had previously concealed his identity under the alias Helen McDougall. The Sands couple, who endured prolonged abuse and stalking, argued that the platform promoted hate speech and severely harmed their reputations.

Neil Sands, a tech entrepreneur, and his wife Donna, who runs a fashion business, launched the legal proceedings after facing sustained harassment, privacy violations, defamatory content, and breaches of their data rights. Tattel Life, which draws up to 12 million monthly users, is known for forums where users comment on influencers, celebrities, and members of the public. Since then, lots of celebrities and influencers have come forward to talk about the impact that the site has had on their mental health, their wellbeing, and their livelihoods. And lots of users of Tattel have taken to Reddit and other forums to express their concerns of their own identities being revealed. So I want to know, are either of you one of the 12 million

monthly visitors to the site? How much did you know about Tatl before the case? And do you think that this is going to have any impact on similar sites or anonymous gossiping going forward? So I knew of Tattoo Life. I actually learned about it from Sarah Minervis' piece for The New Statesman from a few years ago where she did an amazing deep dive into the site and spoke to people affected by essentially being topics of conversation on that site and having been doxxed.

So that I think would have been roughly around five years ago. And since then, hands, you know, firmly held in front of the camera to, you know, be honest about my use of it. I think once a year, I'll probably go on it and go in with almost an errand to pick up. And it is just a scratch and itch of like gossip about an original YouTuber from back in the day just to find out if they're still with their person because perhaps they haven't been posting them online and then I go in, go on the thread, often find that and more of things that I wasn't looking for and then just remove myself immediately and don't go for another 365 days because it's made me feel kind of weird and just as if I shouldn't

have been on there in the first place and I did something kind of a bit gross. So I guess that's my relationship to it. I don't think this unveiling of who's behind Tattoo Life is necessarily going to change anything long term. Having looked at it briefly after to see what the vibe check was on the platform, it does feel much quieter and it does feel like that kind of intense kind of manic posting every few seconds has dropped a bit. So that's quite interesting. But as you said rightly, Tattoo Life isn't the only forum on the internet for this kind of thing and Reddit and SNARK forums that have popped up a plenty on that site, do the job and more. So I don't think long-term this is gonna have a huge impact.

I think it's made people feel uncomfortable because they realize maybe the shaky ground at which this whole platform was built. They believed it was possibly a place for feminist critique. I think that's completely delusional, FYI. But I think the fact that this site was clearly built by a man, profiting, encouraging, enabling women to just say some of the most awful things about each other and just kind of utilise this site behind the scenes whilst pretending to be a woman, or I guess, misleading people into thinking he was a woman, has made people now realise that

maybe this site, this kind of behaviour isn't as honourable as they have led themselves to believe. So I think there's a bit of that, but I don't think that's going to last for very long. What do you think, Beth? I'm trying to remember when Tattle Life entered my consciousness. Now, I've not used it, as in I don't have an account, but I have looked at it. I was trying to work out why. I think it was for this podcast, but I can't think of what the episode was. I remember thinking at the time, I chose an influencer that I hadn't heard of because

I thought otherwise, this is really going to feel very nasty because it's not that I'm on here to gather information or to join in, but I will find something out because these users of this site, they are bloodhounds. Also, very often they will twist the truth and will just straight up lie. I thought that will put into my mind something nasty. Actually reading it, I was like, I am becoming nastier. But I haven't used it. And as we'll get onto, I naively thought we would get a lot of messages from people saying, disgusting, hate the place. We got a few from people saying, no, I have used this,

or I was an active user at some point. And non-judgmentally, but I was quite surprised by that. I think Tattle for me as a non-influencer, non-celebrity hasn't factored very highly, but I have as a sort of secondary source seen on close friends of certain influences that I am friends with or just on the web at large, seen people discussing it as like victims of the site and the people that use it. So I've always just felt like this is this poison bubbling away.

I didn't think there would ever be any kind of reckoning. And I will, again, we'll go on to discuss whether we think this is any kind of reckoning, but I really thought this will go on and on. And actually I didn't even think, Oh, there's someone behind this. I kind of, it felt very much like it was just created by the women that use it. It almost didn't matter to me who made this. It's like, there's so many horrible websites on the internet. How often do you think, yeah, but who actually applied for that domain? Who actually wrote the terms and conditions? Who actually is profiting from this?

And that is where suddenly I'm like, oh, this has been making a man, allegedly a fat sum of money every single year based on hatred of women. So I, yeah, it's been in my periphery, but like it hasn't ever really factored as the thing that I have cared too much about unless I am reading something like Sarah's piece, something like someone's thread being like, this is exactly how it's hurt me. It's sort of just been like, oh yeah, another internet ill.

And what about you and Oni, talk to us. Well, I have a quite a dose of relationship with Tussle because I've discovered my thread, maybe in like, I want to say like 2020. It was a lockdown, I think. Prior to that, there was also another website called Guru Gossip that I'd been on. People have written about me on and I remember that was where I found out what is it butters means because they were like, but no, is it butters something it's like she's ugly, but her face? No, she's got a good body, but I can't remember what it was anyway. I remember, I remember crying about that on my like 25th birthday or something. And then the following

year finding this tattletale. Now it's interesting because I actually then got quite like obsessed with tattle in that I was so fascinated because had I not had a thread and one of the first things that was posted on my thread was just a complete made up thing where someone says something like, my friend went to school with her, her parents are absolutely loaded, they pay her allowance every month, blah, blah, blah. And it was just completely untrue.

My parents have never given me money. My parents have no money to give me. But that's by the by. The point is this then starts off like the thing for the rest of my thread and it became the like running truth that the whole thread went with and it always came back to this fact of this person that went to school with me. Obviously, I couldn't even like think who that was.

So that made me realize just how much you have to be so careful when reading these websites because everyone on those sites is very willing to believe any kind of negative or piece of information that is like fix their biases against these people. So it set me off in a chain of then like reading other people's sites with that lens of thinking, oh my god, people are really building whole worlds of fiction around these like public figures in order to kind of tear them down. And also my thread wasn't that bad. Like they would, they would call me ugly. They said that my clothes are like my granny's curtains or something. I can laugh at that because actually in hindsight, my thread was really quite tame. There wasn't that

many pages. And also since this, my thread doesn't exist anymore. It's been gone for about a few months. I don't know if it's gone or if you can't view it because every now and then I do check it on it, but with a much more like it doesn't, I don't really care anymore, but I did when I was in my twenties. But yeah, I went to check it recently since this court case, I don't really care anymore, but I did when I was in my 20s. But yeah, I went to TechEd recently since this court case and I can't get on to it anymore. Anyway, I got so down about it that I remember at the time I just made friends with this documentary maker, Ellie Flynn, who does documentaries for the BBC. And I was like, I think we need to make a documentary about Tattel and what causes people to want to write anonymously on these sites. Because there are some of the

threads. Mine was really like tame. Some of the threads that Louise Thompson comes to mind, Deborah, who was the bowel babe, when she was going throughout her battle with cancer, there was extremely active, heinous threads about her. There are things on those sites that are you cannot believe that anyone would write them. And I remember reading a book called Break the Internet by Olivia Yallop, who sadly has since passed away when I was researching bad influence. She found like a snark group about Caroline Calloway and she also found it really interesting and wanted to find out like, who were these people? Because when we talk about trolls, we often, or we used to say that trolls are these kind of like, people that were depressed in their

basements and you know, they were just taking out on other people and they had nothing to live for. So she went undercover as a member of this like Caroline Calloway's SNARK group and they had a meetup and she went to the meetup and everyone at the meetup were like professional young women who are extremely stylish, who had really busy lives, who were married, who had boyfriends, and they just did not at all fit the profile of this imagined troll that we come up with in our head. And the other thing that was really interesting, she said that when she went to this meetup, no one really spoke about Caroline Calloway. They started off and then they all just were like friends. So I think there's a really interesting

psychological reason why people gather around gossip and they're like, we'll go on to like the toxic mentality of why it descends into such nastiness. But I think it actually comes from a place of like loneliness and needing community. I know that was a very long answer, but it's something that I think about from like a 360 degree thing because it did impact me. And then I found it kind of fascinating because there are so many people that use the site. That is just so beyond awful. I know you said that your thread was tame, but that hurts my soul thinking about you reading that

and reading that on your birthday and being in your mid-20s, which is a very vulnerable time and having to just receive all of that horrendous, unnecessary, not even feedback, just like horrible, horrible commentary about who you are, your life, how you look. That is just, I truly think that no one deserves that. That is so horrendous. And yeah, you're so right for pointing out the Louise Thompson thread because that was part of my,

I guess, interest in the site because I have, like I used to report on internet culture for the eye and when I was a freelance journalist. I find corners of the internet, especially when conspiracy theories and kind of, I'm not going to say extremism because extremism makes it seem like terrorism, but I just mean like extreme kind of behaviour and thought spirals. So something like the Reddit snark forums, for example, because it quickly just spirals into this very dark place. And it's so interesting to see how that happens and what triggers it and the kind of things that triggers people to get there.

And I remember this phrase that's kind of related to this topic called bit-sheeting crackers, which is basically just a term to mean like the point of hatred that you feel for a certain person descends to they could just eat a biscuit and that pisses you off so much that you have to go on the internet and say something about it. And that really describes the level of intensity sometimes on these forums that somebody posting a selfie,

somebody sharing their child online triggers hateful speech on Tatalife or on Reddit or wherever. So that's, yeah, I guess that's the kind of level of intensity we're talking for some people using it. And then the other thing, back to Louise Thompson, I completely agree with you. Sometimes I would lurk those pages during my yearly visits. And that's the thing that would just make me feel so, so, so upset because all of those kind of comments about, you know, what was one of the most difficult times of her life and she has since shared. At that point, she hadn't shared her story and she was very open about, this has been,

you know, super traumatic for me, what's happened to me. I will talk about it if and when I'm ready. Then why is it anyone's business to talk about it as if she's deceiving the public, as if she you know, is hiding something from people we aren't due a story like that. But platforms like this make it seem like audiences, consumers of people are the victims constantly and influencers, or high profile people are just deceiving, you know, out to get our money, taking all of our attention spans away from us,

and we have to reclaim it by criticising them online and finding loopholes or issues with the things they're doing. It's definitely a hierarchy, a sense of hierarchy that people feel, I think, on Tattoo Life, where it's trying to regain the balance by having this sense of commentary constantly pointing out the issues with influencers. But what I think it really is doing is creating these hateful cesspits where people are spending more and more time of their lives talking about influencers rather than taking a step away if that's what they really want to do. What this is making me think of and I think that's a really good profile of what someone who is writing on, for example,

Louise's thread is like, because again, that's the one that I've looked at. It is often mothers discussing other mothers and to just like my image of a tattle user now is actually a young mom or a very tired, harried mother. It is a woman who has children and is often focusing their attention when they're on the site on other mothers, mothers in the public eye. And it's interesting because I think often there is an element of they are writing from a place of pain because you will see like a postpartum mother be like, well, this celebrity had this, a night nurse, a nanny, a supportive family, money in the bank that

I didn't have. This is unfair. You can see mothers bonding over this and saying, you are doing a great job, mom. I know that you're tired, but look, you're doing even better job than this woman. She's got everything. It's so strange to watch these women who are parents bond over this hatred of another woman. I find it easiest to understand actually when you follow that thought to its conclusion because it is like a deep place of her, a deep place of like disparity in terms of what they have. I think they are posting from like places of economic struggle or postpartum depression or a bad relationship, and they are watching richer, more preened, more fully supported mothers and wives, and they are thinking like, this is not fair. I don't have access to this.

And I would if I was rich and famous and the world was a fair place. And I think that must sting very badly. And so they're sharing with other women in the same boat, and they're kind of reaching out for community, which is a part of this. I'm like, yes, this is what you've identified in yourself that you need. Unfortunately, you are doing it in the vehicle of calling a former made in Chelsea star, you know, a whining bitch for talking about her PTSD. It's such, it must really test your ability to compartmentalize, to be able to know that you're saying this about a mother while also supporting other mothers while also being there to be like, I'm only here out of concern for the child. I think it really must like, it's something in your brain, you must have to be like, shh,

don't like a little voice that says, shh, are we the bad guy? Because I think it is just a desire for community. Maybe that's too generous. Maybe that's just a part of it. But they have a real need for that. And it's like, well, could we not just organize a meetup? Or could we not maybe just do a group chat with all of these women that are struggling and maybe park the nastiness for the meantime? But again, maybe naive.

I mean, I do agree it's generous, but I do, that is kind of the nub of what I've got to, is I think it is, it stems from a place of meeting a community and it is kind of the nub of what I've got to is I think it is it stems from a place of needing a community and it is kind of human nature to bond over it's making me think of in the white lotus when the three friends when one of them leaves the thing that they all bond over is bitching about the one that's not in the room so that is something that we see I think the problem with tattle life and I'll use my threads as an example because that is the one that I read the most even though there

wasn't really that much to read if If anyone said anything positive, they would all go nuts. They would be like, is that you and Oni? Oh, what do you love her now? So I think the ecosystem or the lifeblood of Tattle was built off negativity and was built off this really mean attitude, which dictated that anyone that had even a slightly balanced take. So I remember once, because Louisa's thread at the time, I genuinely said the same to Ellie, I was like, we need to make a document. This is like insane. So I read loads of her thread and then I think a midwife came in and said, look, I'm the

midwife. I understand that you will dislike Louise for like these various reasons, but I'm going to outline why you taking screenshots of her thing in the hospital and comparing it to this and saying that she has munchausens and the way that they went in and tried to like timestamp things or accuse her of lying or said that she'd made this whole thing up. She wrote the most balance and even gave them the space to say you might dislike her, but you know, it's really wrong for you to sell these things. And they annihilated that person. They just would not allow because it's groupthink and the group think mentality on that

site is pure negativity. And they do have things called rave threads, which is where you're allowed to be nice about someone that are very few and far between. But the way that it works is basically like unless you're saying something nasty, you must be that person. And we had a message from Amy, it's a long message, but I want to read the whole thing. So I think it's interesting to have this perspective. And she said, I do think influencers have to expect some level of accountability from their followers.

We are the consumers of their content and they make very good livelihoods out of their followers watching their content or clicking affiliate links. They turn their lives into businesses and I honestly do commend them for being able to do so. But there's an expectation of sorts that if you buy a product that doesn't meet the mark or a brick and mortar business disappoints in some aspect, you can complain. We have venues for feedback and reviews. I just don't think we've successfully come up with a way of expressing dissatisfaction or upset when the business is, in Verticom, is a person as a brand. When influencers delete comments or block dissenting voices, which they have the right to do, people will naturally find other avenues to voice their opinions. What I'm really not a fan of is the knee-jerk reaction I've seen online with influencers

now calling for banning anonymous forums or people having to provide ID in order to sign up for anonymous accounts. The potential ramifications of that are genuinely terrifying to think about. LGBTQ plus youth who are out in non online spaces but not in real life, women seeking support anonymously in domestic violence situations, people who face persecution for political views, think Arab Spring, etc. I know for me personally as a survivor of rape, being a member of an anonymous forum was a huge help to me processing that. And if we're now going to say you can't have that support network without handing over your ID to an

unknown entity, that scares me. All of that to say I don't think influencers are fully innocent in this. I don't think Tata is the worst place on the internet although I also don't think it's particularly a nice place. I don't have any answers but I don't think it's a simple case of these people are all trolls and influencers are being bullied relentlessly. I have a lot of thoughts on that but I'll try and keep it concise. I agree. I think everyone needs to be held to account. I don't think that was what was happening on Tuttle. I also agree. And I think we've spoken out before, if not, I've spoken out elsewhere, but the need for marginalized people to have anonymity, the need for people who maybe

don't have a legal right to be in this country, need to have the ability to communicate with each other online. I totally agree with that. But I wonder if it's slightly spurious to link those two things together because I don't think Tattel, say you're saying you need like government ID for those kind of websites. I don't know if that means that you know, other websites can't exist where marginalized communities cannot find a space to speak without fear of being outed for whatever reason. What did you guys make of that message? Say hello, savings and goodbye worries with Freedom Mobile. Get 60 gigs to use in Canada, the US and Mexico for just 39 bucks a month. Plus get a one-time use of five gigs of Roam Beyond data. Conditions apply. Details at freedommobile.ca. Hey, you're a Canadian podcast listener, and that makes you important to us. We'd like to know more about you, what you think of this podcast, and the other podcasts

you'd like to hear. So we've put together a super brief survey we'd like you to fill out, complete it, and we'll give you a chance to win one of three $100 Amazon gift cards. That way we can say thanks for your opinion. Just go to mypodcastsurvey.ca and have your say. That's mypodcastsurvey.ca. I agree. I agree with what you said there. I think she had so many valid points in what she was saying, but I don't think it has to be one or the other. And I also think, yes, Tattle Life is not the worst place on the internet, but we can still talk about why it's a very

dangerous place and also corners of it are extremely dangerous. So say something like 4chan where terrorist action has literally been organized on that platform. Obviously that hasn't happened as far as I am aware, neither has been reported from Tattle Life, but what we have seen is that people have called social services on influencers' children for very spurious reasons and they collect and they activate on those platforms in ways that can be very, very damaging to people's lives. So yes, it's apple and oranges, but I also think there is a danger that can't be undermined on total life. And I think, although it's not a perfect answer, I do think having accountability on those sites is also important as well as influences having accountability as well. One doesn't necessarily equal the other, but it's important to have a conversation

to kind of pick out all of those nuances and try and look at the knots, I guess. And just on the note of the anonymity, I think it is a really wonderful idea to be like, well, unless quote unquote necessary or specialist sites, wonderful idea to be like, well, you will use, you will attach your name because you are sort of coming close to the mark on libel, but it's that slippery slope theory of if these privacy laws start to fall, it's very likely there will be a topple effect and it's the slippery slope of, well, then everyone will do it. I just think it speaks to such a need for people to behave better. And the way you get people to behave better is by attaching face and name.

And you always see, or sometimes you'll see these examples of an influence or celebrity finding out who has been talking about them and they are more often than they're not absolutely ashamed. They are desperate not to be revealed. They are completely contrite. And I think, I wish there was an easier answer, but it's very interesting to see the defense of tattle really be, well, this is a necessary site for accountability because, and I don't know where I stand on this because yeah, it's like some people are

calling out exploitation of children and vulnerable people and lies, especially about health and things where an influencer will say, modern medicine is bunk, you should eat a banana and have a nap and you'll feel better. I think there are so many examples of where it's actually dangerous and it's not dangerous in the same way that radical organizations are organizing widespread violence, but it's dangerous in a way that people with social media influence build whole careers about telling untruths and misleading civilians. And I think accountability is such a beast of a word now actually ends up

meaning like a bunch of things and not many of them good, but I do think that has to be like a reckoning with influencers who do, who exploit their family or other vulnerable people who prey on vulnerable followers and who tell lies, but I'm certain that it doesn't look like this. I think it can't be housed in a place that also encourages like the calling of social services on mums whose kids show no actual evidence of needing that or also zero in on people's looks or also are hideously racist, fatphobic. I think it's really intellectually dishonest to frame this as any kind of activism or do good in good doing. It is a website designed for being cruel specifically. There's

not even a thread of accountability in there anymore, I believe. I agree with you. And I was just going to pop in to say, I guess the reason I'm coming in with such a biased lens about potato lives potential is the minute I saw a thread dedicated to somebody who is an acquaintance, who had, I think at that point, maybe 5,000 followers on Instagram and possibly maybe 15K on Twitter, which to me does not strike the balance of punching down enough to warrant a thread talking about her weight and using the most fatphobic language around her. And at that point, I think something switched the dial where I just thought it's really

hard for me to take this platform seriously as a place of discussion and critique when the people involved do not even pass the benchmark of influencer or high profile figure. I agree. And also I don't think influencers are beyond reproach. And I completely understand the fear of someone who doesn't have a public profile sticking their head above the parapet commenting on someone's Instagram with their own name and thinking God, I might get in trouble for this.

The influencer could set everyone on me, which did happen in the past. I didn't think people do it anymore, but people this, the influencer could set everyone on me, which did happen in the past. I didn't think people do it anymore, but people might screenshot the comment, put it on that story and then their audience might go for that person. It does feel like you have less power. But on Tatl, from what I've seen, and I have read extensively loads of threads, there is very little useful conversation happening on there. And even if it starts off with

perhaps someone pointing out that you know the way that someone is acting or something is doing or a campaign that they did or they didn't you know they love reporting people to the advertising standards agency that's fine you know people need to declare their ads I'm very good at it myself but most of the comments on those sites are commenting on what people look like, people's relationships, the way that someone look like, people's relationships, the way that someone's dressing. It's all entirely unhelpful. It's all really cruel. And it's all things like Beth said, which if the person was unveiled, they would be mortified to have said.

And I've experienced this in a different way. A lot of times, every single person I know with an online account has where someone has messaged me something that they meant to send to a friend and they've sent it to me instead. And I've opened it and I said, "'Did you mean to send this to me?' And in response, I will get the longest reply, which says, I am your biggest fan. I've always loved you.

I'm so sorry, I really didn't mean to insult you. I would never thought that you'd see this. I meant to send it to my friend. I can't believe blah, blah, blah." They, there's a really interesting dynamic with the people that are quite big at trolling, that they actually are kind of the biggest fans because they're so invested in these people's lives.

If you read any of the threads, people that comment on those tattlethreads are monitoring these people's Instagram accounts like it's a full-time job. And I've had weird things in real life where someone who I've read, I know that like language of my thread, I got really obsessed with it to the point where it was like self-harm. My mom and sister got really angry with me, I read it because it put me into like such a downward spiral. I really felt I was under a microscope. And again, I have to emphasize my thread was not bad, but the feeling that anything you do is and will be used against you in a court of this thread, which everyone's excuses, you have to go and seek it out. But let me tell you, it's very hard when you know it's there to not go and read it. And then I'd sometimes get a DM from someone on Instagram,

who'd maybe been to my book club, and the language would be so similar to something that I'd seen on my thread that you then start to feel really paranoid because you think, are those people on my thread, like interacting with me in real life? And that's why I find the psychology of writing on it. And also the problem with parasocial relationships and the problem with internet celebrities in better commas is that I do think psychologically people don't think of the people they follow online as really real, as really being able to see these messages,

as really being able to be her. And even though we see people talking about how it impacts their mental health, and now I think of Emily Clarkson, who's come forward and spoken really eloquently about the way that tattle life has really impacted her. Her thread is completely active, and they're all tearing apart the fact that she's talking about it. They're all diminishing the fact that she has come forward and spoken about how hard it is as a postpartum mother to deal with this level of vitriol constantly. And I just wonder, like, there's a link missing

there. There's a human connection issue. There's like a fault in the system, because you would never say any of that to someone's face. Which is why one of the things I really wanted to do is I wanted to go undercover, organize a meetup with everyone on my thread, and then me turn up and just see what would happen. Because I was so interested to know who they were, how they would react because I know for a fact, the most likely thing would be everyone would be really apologetic. And that's what I think is so crucially interesting. I read a message I found on Reddit because now Reddit is full of people talking about their relationship to Tattle and discussing could this be the end of Tattor life. Somebody posted,

I was a very active user on Tattor. I joined as a teenager. I can't have been much older than 18 at the time, which brings me to being on the website around a decade. I was at my most active between 18 and 23-ish years old and then slowed down. Someone worked me out this year. I was still contributing, but not as often. And honestly, she made a bit of a song and dance of it all, bent the truth a bit. And I chose to just continue with my life. She hasn't doxed me. I was still contributing but not as often and honestly she made a bit of a song and dance of it all, bent the truth a bit and I chose to just continue with my life. She hasn't doxed me. I appreciate it. I've got very fragile mental health and this is something which had me contributing to Tattoo and I do generally think it's the same for a lot of people on that site." She says at the end, I don't use Tattoo anymore. I deleted my account months ago and I guess she's

referencing the comments responding to her on Reddit and she says, telling me to touch grass when I've already expressed remorse and said in the thread beneath I find it cringe-worthy and gross is counterproductive to what I'm even saying here and annoyingly I've already stated thrice I have fragile mental health and believe this is why I was on Tattoo telling me to quote get help is assuming I already haven't. I'm not trying to justify ever using Tattoo and have said in the original post, I don't think it should be online. So that definitely feels like a common thread that is coming up in all the messages of people saying that they're worried their identity is now going to be

shared in this reckoning with Tattoo life. This idea that they was really struggling with their mental health. Tattoo Life, this idea that they were really struggling with their mental health. We've mentioned it before and that's a very clear component to why people are drawn to sites like this and that makes complete sense to me. But I think the thing I'm really struggling with and I'm really grappling with is this sense that because of poor mental health, it also naturally equates to contributing to really damaging rhetoric around other people. And I just, I can't really get on board with that. This idea that somebody's poor mental health explains why, then they're kind of, I guess, widening the net and, you know, bringing other people into it. I don't, I don't feel

as fair. And I think we also have to have a conversation around that. I just don't think that that necessarily justifies one and the other. The idea of like a teenager on a site like this just makes me so sad, just all around, like your brain is still so soft, you are being made into who you're going to be. Like, as I said before, when I was on these, I could feel myself getting meaner, I could feel myself being like, actually, wow, I can't believe she did that,

this person I've never heard of. I feel like it's just such a dangerous thing. I don't think you even have to comment to be harmed by it and affected by it. I think if you ingest that kind of rhetoric, it will become part of your inner monologue and how you see the world, how you see other people, how generous you are with strangers, and you'll be lulled into thinking like, it's fine to do this, to be shockingly mean to strangers, because look, all of these other people are doing it and they're having

the time of their lives, they're telling me it's fine. Whereas it's like, no, you will be a worse person. You will be probably more judgmental on yourself because you're reading people be like, I can't believe it. Her baby cried for five minutes or something and your young mums will be reading that and often they will comment saying stuff like, I can't believe it. Her baby cried for five minutes or something and young moms will be reading that and often they will comment saying stuff like, oh well I do that because I'm really tired and things like that. I think it will make you meaner and I can't, the idea of a teenager doing that, I mean we all grew up in online spaces to some degree and like it does warp you in some way. That was my point on that. The only other thing I can think to say is I, and only same with, as your mom's sister,

I remember being like, just stop looking, just stop looking. It's digital self harm. And I understand to some degree it was like you scratching an edge, but I think also there is a degree of safety there. One, so you are sort of aware that if these people might be brazen enough to come into a physical space that you're at least alive and awake to that. And for some of these, these subjects of the forums, it is, it is about safety. It is kind of being able to predict, okay, social services may get called or, okay, I need to warn my family. Their, their information has been posted.

I need to warn the kids school because this is getting, this is escalating. Um, and I am full head in the sand girl about online harassment. If there is, there could be full websites, I doubt it, but there could be like full online spaces where people absolutely hate me. And I will never in my life know about it. But recently I got, and I thought this was quite funny at the time,

but I got like a light trolling online where someone had signed me up for a prospectus of a university in London under the name Stupid Cunt and Stupid Cock Sucker. And I was like, that is some, it's kind of top tier trolling. But then I got a little bit spooked. It's not even the most extreme thing that's happened. But like, for example, the university they chosen is the university of, or like the former university of someone I'm newly seeing. So I was like, oh my God, do I need to, am I being like, is this, I got really into like the weeds of it and I had to be like, no, no, you are spiraling slightly. This is, this is actually

just a coincidence. Maybe this is where this person went. It's a busy enough university. Maybe it's one of the only ones where you can sign up without a confirmation email. But immediately I was on high alert in a way that I was like, oh, this is why it's not as simple as telling influencers don't look because sometimes these things do spill out. There is always a chance that just one person is not like, I'm just here for the goss and then I log off and I go on with my real life, that this becomes an obsession. And that's why I think actually,

I understand it's to scratch an itch, but it's also, it's probably also smart, especially if you've got young kids. This is also like a bit depressing, but part of being an influencer, and it's one of the things that I actually struggle with the most, and it's like, is that your job

is kind of based on people liking you. If you fall out of favor, if you get canceled, your whole livelihood is gone. So knowing that there's like a thread that kind of talks about the people that hate the most is really hard to not want to know. Because I would generally try to like correct from what they were saying on my thread.

So if they were like, she's doing this too much, doing that, I would honestly take it as like feedback. And I would think, okay, when they were nice about me, I felt happier than if, you know, my best friend told me something nice because I couldn't believe it. If they said something like, I actually think she looked, you know, fine there, I'd be like, oh my God, they're being so nice about me. It's so ridiculous. But also to go back to the thing I said right at the beginning about that, really, it's a stupid lie. It doesn't matter that they said this lie about me, whatever, at the beginning, but it meant that every time I read someone's

thread, I was so aware of how easily people believe things. So to go back to that 18 year old, had I not read that thing about myself, because I love gossip, the first thing I do when I see anyone, even when I ring my mom, the first thing I say is, have you got any gossip? But this is not gossip. This is basically like slander. But if you're on those sites and they start off as someone saying, she didn't declare an ad, everyone can say that's awful. Someone, all it takes is one person to go on and say, I actually heard that five years ago,

she punched her boyfriend in the face. Everyone will just take that as fact. And then every single thing on that third will be written with the shadow of this idea that this person is like a domestic abuser. And it will escalate so far that if you read like thread five of what whoever's it is, you will be like, Oh my god, this person is actually like a criminal. This is horrendous. And if you because this is what I kept doing. And then if you go back right to the beginning, you'll find the seed. And knowing how much people

because it's anonymous, because no one is accountable, and because these people are looking for a reason to dislike someone. I just think it's really dangerous for users as well because I think that as you said Beth, it actually skews your brain and reading it made me, reading other people's threads also made me like I had to actively remember that this by design was making me hate this person and I had to be really careful about that you about not try not to read anyone's threads that I kind of knew because it spo spoils you. And I understand the addiction of it. I understand why people enjoy reading it. I really do think that people should be held to account. I do think it's bad that, you know, people feel that there's

such an injustice there. And I completely understand why people feel that. But like you said, Beth, I think it's intellectually dishonest to say that this is the remedy for influencers doing wrong. So we had a message from Polly and I think this really summarizes everything. She wrote, on a separate note, I hope you guys touch on the fact it turned out to have been founded by a man. I feel like that speaks so much to how it serves men and misogyny for women to come together and tear each other down. It's a perfect metaphor. And I completely agree. I think it's really shaken people to understand

that this wasn't any semblance of a feminist site and also the just brazen fact that a man was profiting from all of this negativity, all of this hatred from women congregating, activating negativity, all of this hatred from women congregating, activating together for the sole purpose of attacking other women. This reminds me, and I wonder if I've told this story here before, but at my secondary school there was a sort of gossip girl forum that came one night after school and suddenly like texts were flying off being like, have you been on? There must have been the same kind of host and it was like the insert secondary school name, gossip, gossip girl.

And everyone, everyone used it. It quickly descended. I mean, me and my friends were a bunch of trolls. We started talking about the, the lunch food or something, praising the herb diced potatoes and just being like kind of chaotic. But people were using it to talk about who's cheated on who and who is a slut and everyone's appearance and they did an assembly on it. And it was revealed that the person that had engineered this was a really popular, like really handsome boy. It was, and it was so, people were shocked and then they were not

shocked. They were like, actually, this is dastardly in a way that I think men can be and young boys, but it was such high drama, and it was all from a bored teenage boy. It's just so funny. I don't think it's an unusual behavior, I think. I mean, the prophet element makes me sick, but how funny, like, people were like, I wonder which girl did this, which popular girl,

and it was just, there he is, some sort of like jack teenager. We should have known from Dan and Gossip Girl. Oh my God, this is so true. We had the same thing. I don't know if the site was created, the site, it was like a Gossip Girl thing and I think then you picked your school

and there was again comments about me being fat or something and about loads of people being a slut, a classic one and it all came from the same boy. And again, we all accused the girl but can I tell you of my funniest thing where I thought it's not funny, but I thought that I'd been like doxxed or like someone was going to come and get me is someone followed me on an account called Anoni Ramsden. And at the time I was living on Ramsden Road in Ballum and I rang my agent and I was like, I am so scared. Like, is this a troll? And it was

at the time as well when I just discovered my tattlethread and I was really in the throats of it. So she was like researching. she was like, okay, we'll figure out what to do, let us see if we can get someone to track the IP address. I was like, oh my God. Anyway, she ran me back and she was like, I worked it all out and she's like, I've like, because the profile picture really wasn't of anything, but she was like, there's a 14 year old girl I found on Facebook, her name is just Anoni Ramsden. She's probably followed you because your name's Anoni. And she's like never seen anyone called Anoni before, but it's that level of

paranoia because of sites like this. And like you genuinely do feel so terrified, but that was really funny. Cause I remember for a day I was like, Oh my God, it's a bit like your, your thing with the uni where it's probably, I'm sure a coincidence, but like it is, it is scary because things do really scary things do happen but luckily touchwood not to me yet. Yeah. Poor girl getting like swat team through her window just there like playing with a sticker book like sorry what's going on? No, I was going to, my agent was trying

to like contact Instagram to see if they could get onto like the back end of the thing to figure out because we were like do we need to call the police? Because people do post people's full home addresses and like pictures of their houses. But yeah, it's just a little teenager being like, Oh, someone's got my name. Thank you so much for listening and for all of your comments and takes on this week's episode. Remember if you want to get involved in our midweek hive mind, then us on instagram at everything is content pod that's where we share the topics and get your insights and don't forget to leave us a rating or review on your podcast player app you can do it now you can be late to work they don't care see you on friday bye Say hello savings and goodbye worries with Freedom Mobile. Hey, you're a Canadian podcast listener, and that makes you important to us.

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