By and large, the one major downside of the internet is that every single person is on it.
Sure, there are *some* nice people, like Chrissy Teigen and your mum (probably), but there’s a lot of total assholes on the damn interwebs who’ve found being a huge dickhead online is easier and comes with less consequences than being a huge dickhead in real life.
Obviously, the issue of online abuse is enormously magnified for the celebrities among us. Once upon a time, celebs and A-listers only had to deal with shitty things being written about them in the tabloids; now, anyone with a social media account can @ them without mercy.
In a new interview with InStyle, supermodel Bella Hadid has addressed some of the enourmous pile-on she experiences on the reg.
“I learn new things about myself every day because of the stories that are put out about me. They’ll say that I had a conversation with someone I’ve never even met before,” she said.
She also says she sometimes just wants to face her trolls in person and ask them – politely – what the fuck is up.
“Or people will judge me for things I can’t change. Imagine that somebody is telling you that you’re a piece of shit every day on social media. You kind of feel like, ‘Well, am I a piece of shit?’ You don’t really know.
“[Sometimes, I just want to] go to the house of that random person from Twitter who is in Missouri and tell them, ‘I promise, I’m a nice person! We could be friends! It doesn’t have to be like this!’ But it’s a very strange world.”
And speaking of Twitter, did you know she and BFF Kendall Jenner apparently met via Twitter? Looks like nobody else did, either, because that yarn is doing the rounds.
“I met her for the first time seven years ago over Twitter. That was before we started modelling; I was probably 14 or 15. We met up and had sushi, and now we’re best friends. She’s a pretty significant human I met online.”
Y’know – it’s not that they’re both from very famous families or anything. They met via the swirling cesspit that is Twitter dot com.
In the interview Bella also addressed the Fyre Festival disaster that she was – albeit quite distantly – involved with, having posted pics to Instagram telling everyone to buy tickets to a festival that ended up less Coachella and more upper middle class Lord of the Flies.
“It’s also a different kind of job that I don’t do very often,” she said in relation to plugging shit on Instagram. “Now I tag everything as an ad.”
Honestly, fair – and at least Bella was the only model involved to actually apologise for that debacle.
Have a read of her full interview here.
Photo: Bella Hadid / Instagram.
