Taylor Lorenz’s Power User - An influencer’s battle against her snark subreddit

Episode Date: June 27, 2024

For the past several years, influencer Lily Chapman has been plagued by a relentless community of women online. They congregated in a snark subreddit dedicated to mocking and criticizing her. Lily says they even contacted her friends and family, and attempted to kill her sponsorship deals. But Lily did something most influencers haven't been able to do: She fought back and won. Taylor Lorenz talks to Lily about how it all went down. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Taylor Lorenz. Welcome to Power User, where this week we're talking about Snark subreddits. In 2021, Lily Chapman started posting sewing videos to TikTok. All right, this is where we're at right now. It is cropped. And the zipper is ripped out. I'm considering adding buttons. I want to check my button collection. To her surprise, she picked up a pretty decent following, enough to become a full-time influencer. Now she has more than a million followers across social platforms. She shows off her style, travels, and documents her day-to-day life. It's usually light-hearted, but recently it's become more serious.

My name is Lily. I'm 25. I'm a content creator. I'm eight months pregnant. And over the course of the next week, I'm going to be posting some really detailed videos about my experience with cyberbullying and snark. Lily, like many influencers, has a Snark subreddit dedicated to her. It's full of people who mock and criticize her relentlessly. Lily says members of this community have harassed her and even tried to kill her sponsorship deals. But she did something most influencers have not been able to. do. She fought back successfully and got the snark subreddit taken down. I'm talking to Lily up next on

Power User. Hi, Lily. Welcome to Power User. Hey, Taylor. Thanks so much for having me. So you posted this wild story to TikTok recently about this campaign that has been waged against you for months, stalking and harassment campaign, largely primarily driven through Reddit. When did you start to realize that there was this entire community on Reddit dedicated to stalking, and harassing you. Yeah. Yeah, that was a crazy realization. I don't think it really sunk in for me until it would have been early, 23. I was newly with my now fiancee at the time boyfriend. And I actually remember so vividly, we were on a trip together. And he was like, so I googled you. Like when we started seeing each other, like you have like a snark subreddit. And I was like,

oh yeah like I've seen like there's threads about me and he was like no you have like your whole own sub-redit and I was like oh that doesn't seem great so actually like he kind of is how I became made aware that I had one dedicated just to me and then just like genuinely it felt like in a matter of weeks from when I posted his face for the first time and he kind of made me aware of it is when I started to realize, oh, these weird hate comments that I'm getting are tied back to this community. And like, from then on, it was literally like the happier I got with him, the more active and involved and therefore the more aware of that Reddit community I had to become. Were you familiar with Reddit snark pages before you became an influencer and before this started to affect you directly? Not at all. And it's funny because I had actually posted about Reddit on TikTok before. I used to love Reddit. I was a total redditor because I have three older brothers. And when I was in middle school, I was on

nine gag, which I don't know if you remember. It's like a meme website. I was very online as a kid. And so I have had a Reddit account since like literally I was like 14. And I used to love like ask Reddit threads and, you know, just kind of obscure subreddits for makeup or travel. But you weren't in the snark Reddit world. Never. I had never even heard of it. I didn't know what snarking was. was. Yeah, I was completely unexposed to that part of the internet until it was directly affecting me. Can you kind of explain some of the things that they had accused you of and how you had sort of successfully debunked it? Like, here's what they accused me of and here's the truth. So my snark

subreddit will say that I berated a homeless man, that I sent a mob after a creator who was simply holding me accountable, that I lie to my audience, that I am a pathological liar, a narcissist, and a slew of other untrue things. The reality here is that I got my passport back from a man who stole it, who happened to be homeless. I addressed a lie told about me on a public platform by another creator. And these people see my joy and happiness in life and will do anything to twist it into something nasty that fits their narrative. None of the lies they've ever said about me have had even a great truth. How did it go from a few hate comments here and there on your TikTok videos to this entire community dedicated to sort of watching your every move? So it started with two things that I

noticed at the same time. One was a ton of comments from someone who would comment on the exact same things thousands of times a week. And the other was that this hate community on Reddit started to have a very real impact on my life. And these kind of happened in conjunction. So I noticed the hate comments first. And then I realized that that person was in the Reddit. And I messaged the moderators of that Reddit to be like, hey, I have a stalker. They're in this community. Can you try and lock it down? the moderators of the hate community basically said no like we're not going to help you at all which isn't shocking because it's a hate community and from there things just really propelled so because i had interacted with the moderators that one time they decided to say that i was lying about having a

stalker and for the next six months they just kind of got worse and worse and meaner and meaner and more people started to join and they got to about 2,000 members and then after a about, like I said, six months in December of last year, they figured out that my father-in-law is a very successful man. And I had never shared about his career on my platform because it's nobody's business what he does. And once they put that together, their hate really accelerated. And then someone went on the TikTok and made a video about it. And that drove thousands more people into the subreddit. And then an ex fling of my fiance posted a bunch of lies in the subreddit. and that post took off and that narrative took off. And it just kind of spiraled into this

really unmanageable ball of complete lies that went from Reddit into every social media in the world. So it was on TikTok. It was on Twitter. They've made YouTube videos. And it just completely spiraled out of control. Yeah. I feel like once these sort of influencer drama narratives take hold, they spread across the internet and it's really hard to combat them. And if people want to believe something about you. There's almost no amount of evidence that you can show them proving it's false that will make them believe that it is false or misleading or they don't have the true story. And I just want to say, I am so sorry that anybody would ever accuse anybody of faking a stalker. I mean, it's so unfortunate what happens to women in those situations. It can actually be very

dangerous if they're not believed. How did you respond? Because I feel like, you know, in a lot of these instances, the advice, the old school advice is don't feed the trolls. Never respond, right? But if you don't respond to an internet rumor, it often spirals out of control and becomes reality to a lot of people. How did you manage this? And what steps did you take to combat it? Yeah, Taylor, that's a great point. That is pretty much exactly what I realized. So for months, the advice that I was getting was, you know, just ignore it. They'll get bored. They'll die down. That is not what happened at all. Every week that I ignored it, it got so much worse. And the narrative got worse and the lies got crazier. And the deeper that they got into their lies, the more that they

felt it was appropriate to hate me. And the more that they felt it was appropriate to hate me, the more they felt it was appropriate to come after my friends, come after my family, come after every paid contract that I've had for the last year, and then spread their lies onto other social media. And so as things got to the point where every single day, I was terrified to check my phone because I didn't know what are they going to be doing now and every day they were doing something worse whether it was my management telling me hey they've contacted this brand or my mom sending me screenshots of horrific emails that she's getting it felt like every single day it was getting worse and I knew I had to do something so in an act of pretty much pure desperation when I was

12 weeks pregnant I hired a family friend of ours who just is a licensed counselor and like has spent a lot of time on Reddit and that's truly all of their credentials um and they were just like lily i love you i see what you're going through i believe i can do something about this please let me help you and basically they discovered that you know my content is copyrighted and so they were like i think i can get the subreddit shut down by reporting your content in it so at that point i also got a lawyer And when I got a lawyer, you know, he kind of informed me that some of the other stuff they were doing was also illegal. It's called contract interference to try and get me fired based off of lies. It is, in fact, defamatory to sit there and say awful things about me that are untrue.

And so then I got a lawyer involved. And from then on, I had a PI, a lawyer, and this family friend. And we just started fucking going at it, honestly. We took every angle that we could. And my goal the whole time was just like shut it down, shut it down. because they're just spreading this lie. It's only getting worse. And yeah, kind of like you said, you know, the advice is if you go after them, you're fueling them on. And it fueled them on a little bit, but it worked. And I'm so glad I did it because it got them shut down and it brought light onto their

lies. We'll have more with Lily Chapman after the break. These snark subreddits have, they have been on the internet since the beginning of the internet, right? Like blog snark and gomies, they started as forums before Reddit was even really a thing. And then they sort of migrated on. So I feel like this sort of hating online is almost an eternal pastime on the internet. And Reddit has really not taken a lot of steps to combat these snark communities. I mean, Reddit always says that these communities are up to sort of follow community guidelines, but they don't seem to enforce it very heavily. And they sort of seem to be just a thorn in a lot of content creator's side. It's very rare that a content creator could ever get a community taken down. And so these communities often just go on these years-long campaigns

against women. It's almost always women. It's almost always women. And they destroy lives. And the craziest thing is we did not find a single active user in my subreddit that was a man. There were over 5,000 people in there. Not one of the people that was doing any of the things that I had to take action on. Not one of them was a man. Right. And I mean, I think so much of it is the subtext of all of it is who does she think she is. It's like, who is this woman who has influence? I want to be able to take that away from her and I want to be able to revoke that. And also, you're mad at the wrong people. This is what I think all the time. So much of my snark would talk about my wealth, how wealthy I am and how I'm not using my wealth and my power

and my privilege. And I just, there was a time where I literally said to my fiance, should I just put my taxes out there because I'm like full transparency. I make 200K a year. I make 200k a year. Like tie me to the stake. Like I am not this all powerful millionaire that you think I am. There are so many people making 200K a year. Guess what? Groceries still feel expensive to me. Like I can't change the world and I don't believe that you want me to change the world. You just want to see me fail. It makes sense to have anger at inequality. It's prevalent. land everywhere. It makes sense to be pissed that you have to work three jobs. I'm pissed that you have to work three jobs too. It's fucked up and I managed to escape it because randomly some of my

videos went viral and that's really lucky for me and maybe I'd be a little mad at me too. But you're mad at the wrong people. Take the anger that you have that you're directing at a mid-tier influencer who looks happy with their life and direct it to your politicians. Direct it to the billionaires. Do not direct it me because I can't do anything with it except maybe stop showing you my life. And then no one wins because I'm still going to be fine and you're still going to be mad and nothing will have changed. Yeah. Also directed at some of the male influencers, I have to say, if you are going to hold influencers accountable, sometimes you will see conversations on these general ones like LA influencer snark or things like that. They'll touch on some of it. But I feel like these dedicated

communities really primarily exist for women, maybe for LGBTQ men. But it's kind of an interesting thing because the people with the most power are not often targeted. And also it seems to me, tell me what you think too, I feel like, and I've seen this point made on TikTok too, and I wrote about it in the past, but especially in the past few years, it feels like you can't just be a hater anymore. You have to kind of come up with this moralistic reason for hating someone. So then that you seem morally in the right for hating. And you can essentially launch this hate campaign where you feel morally justified. It's not just like, look, I don't really fuck with that girl. I don't like her vibe. She annoys me. I find her to be annoying. It's like she is actually problematic and

wrong for these reasons. So I am morally justified in this hate campaign. It kills me. It eats me alive the way that these people misappropriate their activism and use it to justify misogyny. Like I think you summarized that so well. It is exactly what I've seen happen to me. And it is exactly what I've seen happen to dozens and dozens of other women. It's no longer like what happened to the beauty of a group chat where you could take a TikTok, send it to your friends and say, this is so cringe or oh my God, I hate her outfit. Bring that back. Bring back. Being a hater in private to your friends. That's so okay. And like my subreddit will always say like, she is just not okay with people not liking her. No, it is so okay to not like me. It's so

okay to not like someone. What's not okay is to do exactly what you just said, which is to take your feelings of dislike for me. I give you the ick and then decide that because I give you the ick, I must also be racist and fatphobic and abelist and transphobic and all of these things that you have zero evidence to support that I have never been in my life, that it's incredibly insulting to say to me, that it's incredibly insulting to say that my friends are, all of these things that I have never fucking been and assume that I must be, because you just simply don't like me. You don't like my personality. And that's okay. But I think you're completely right. It's, it's as though people feel rightly embarrassed by what they're doing. And there's a little voice

in the back of their head that says, ooh, I might be in the wrong here. Like, I, I, I'm being a little bit weird. It's maybe a little weird that I've made 300 posts about this girl I've never met. So I'm going to say she's a really bad person because that allows me to not have to admit that what I'm doing is actually really, really strange. Yes. I mean, I've written about just some of the effects that they've had and it's horrific what these communities can do. How did you ultimately get them taken off the internet? Yeah, sheer fucking willpower is how I would describe it. I mean, we tried everything. We started with the copyright reports.

What ultimately worked was a lot of sleuthing. And so the person that I hired would go into the post history of my moderators. And I use that term so fucking loosely, pardon my language, because they just did not moderate at all. They didn't care what they let through. But these so-called moderators were just not the brightest. And so they would talk about their entire careers. in their post history. They would reveal where they went to school.

They would talk about where they lived. And it became easy to find out who they were. In fact, a number of them actually signed posts in my subreddit, like FU Elizabeth signed their name. And so when the person that I hired was able to figure out their identity, I was able to send them cease and desist. And when they continued doing what they did, I was able to get injunctions. And actually, I have been able to go.

even further to take actual, like file actual lawsuits against these people. I don't want to get super into that because ultimately that's not what I think matters. That's like you can do it. It's just so incredibly rare. I have to tell you what you have done is so incredibly rare. And I'm a huge defender of free speech online just to be clear. I don't believe personally in defamation lawsuits as a journalist because we have to deal with them all the time. However, however, I think allowing these communities to just thrive with impunity. Some of them are harmless, of course, but a lot of them are not. And they cause real damage. And I think it's really hard to get law enforcement or platforms to take this issue seriously. Well, Reddit still hasn't, for the record. Reddit still doesn't.

Because first of all, targeted harassment is against their rules. And that's all that these subreddits are. And while they say they have rules, we don't go in real life. They never follow their own rules. But technically, even if we're ignoring the harassment element, you're not allowed to repurpose a subreddit for the same purpose that a former one was banned for. And I have had over nine subreddits made about me. And it takes weeks to get them taken down. Reddit does not follow their own rules. And you're completely right. Law enforcement is practically useless when it comes to an online stalking situation or online harassment.

You built the following. So deal with it, I guess. So you have to try. every single avenue to get things taken down. And it was truly, that's why I say willpower, because it was ultimately figuring out these moderator's identities and then them continuing to post wild stuff that allowed me to report them as unfit moderators. And that's what ultimately got the biggest subreddit taken down, was their poor ability to moderate. I want to talk about sort of like clawing back control in the narrative. How can people manage their reputation when

one of these mobs comes for them. Document everything. When a lie is told about you, document the lie and then document the truth. So for example, someone said that I deleted 1,800 videos. I knew I didn't do that. So the first thing I did was reach out to the website that had that data and say, hey, why does this website say this? And then I screenshot the email to prove that I reached out on the day I did. And then I screenshot my recently deleted folder. And then I take a video of my phone screen, showing it's the date I'm saying it is. So I think, you know, know the truth and prove the truth and also be able to prove the lie because the second that you prove a lie about you is a lie, they will say, well, I never said

that. And so you need to be able to say, no, that's exactly what you said. In fact, I have it in your writing timestamps. So documenting everything if someone is coming after you is going to be huge. A lot of the time when people are coming after you, they're very, very stupid. They're very dumb. They will poke and prod, and they will do it on accounts with their full face. And so document all of that so that you can clear your name.

And the other thing is right. I mean, truly for weeks before I did these videos, I sat and I wrote it down because there was just so much living in my mind and the narrative got so convoluted because I lived it. And so I knew all the context. I knew, well, they're saying this because this user posted this on this date. But for people who didn't know that, it was very much. and very confusing. And so I feel like, you know, writing the true story out made it a lot easier for me to tell. But the thing is, the reason people don't want to do that is because the things

these people are talking about, they are embarrassing. So they're going to have, for example, screenshots of an Instagram story that you posted four years ago. And you have to just be willing to say, yeah, hey, I did this. Here's what I did. I've changed. That was, you know, maybe X years ago, I've learned, I've grown. You can believe me or you can not, but people do change. They are allowed to change. And when you've demanded this accountability, you're telling me you want change. So, you know, here's everything embarrassing I've done. Let me own up to it and you decide with the facts. Well, so, you know, you successfully got your snark subreddit taken down. Did you notice a difference once that community was taken down? Did it make a meaningful impact?

So the second I got it taken down, they made another one. and went way harder. So actually, the first time I got it taken down, the one with 5,000 members, it made my life worse. But I knew that that was a possibility, and I knew it was a matter of perseverance. So then the second one, I got taken down, I noticed, like, it was like a huge breath of fresh air because no longer could they congregate in this space and attack my career. And that was really, like, what pushed me into, I have to stop this, was, like, them

threatening my ability to work. And so that was a huge breath of fresh air. And then I don't think I realized until the most recent subreddit got taken down, I don't think I realized like just how much I felt like I could breathe again because it was like, like, I posted something silly on my Instagram story and it was like how it feels shopping at Target knowing someone can't go, like, isn't going to go make a post like this and it's going to get 200 episodes. And I put a screenshot of a post that was like, she's shopping at Target. She's so evil. It was just so silly. So yeah, my quality of life since getting it taken down has gone up exponentially.

I feel a huge weight off my shoulders. And though I know they will continue to come back, I'm not naive. I know they will keep trying. Their efforts just get sadder and sadder. And now that the truth is out there, people can see it for what it is. And it's really sad and it's pathetic. And, you know, I know they'll keep trying. But it just feels so much less scary because it's not in the dark anymore.

I've already told people what you're doing. So when you do it, it's no longer scary and it doesn't have power over me. And that just feels amazing. All right, Lily. Well, thank you so much for chatting with me today. I really appreciate it. Yeah, thanks for having me on. This was an awesome conversation.

All right, that's the show. We're off next week for July 4th, so we'll see you in a couple weeks. Power user is produced by Travis Larcuk and Jalani Carter. Our video producer is Brandon Kiefer. You can watch full episodes on my YouTube channel at Taylor Lorenz. Our executive producers are Zach Mack and Ashkarwa. Power User is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. If you like the show, give us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

That's it and see you next time on Power User.