Twitter Trolls Gonna Troll, Troll, Troll

Last week, Lena Dunham became the latest celebrity to speak out about how she's been affected by Twitter trolls. Speaking at the annual PaleyFest in Los Angeles, she talked openly about her experiences trying to brush off comments that had been made about her online:

"I was like 'the spelling's so bad, I'm not taking these people seriously; they have eggs for avatars, I don't care!' And you walk through the day and these horrible phrases are being repeated through your head... There are things that affect me; I'm weird, I'm affected by violence, threats of rape, I'm a mess!"

As someone who has had her own experiences with Twitter trolls, I know those feelings all too well. It's been almost a year since my Twitter went into meltdown over a mistaken identity with former Manchester United boss David Moyes. I'm not trying to say that I received even a tiny percentage of the abuse Lena gets on a daily basis, but I can certainly understand how people like Lena are left feeling after checking your phone to find hundreds of horrible comments.

When I was getting abuse online, people continually told me to ignore what other people were saying. But trust me, it's a lot easier said than done. I mean, how would you feel if people said these things to you on Twitter?

"@Moyesy is such a cunt. Your dad deserves to be injected with the Aids virus and you little shit gang raped by buffaloes! Whore"

"Your dad is a proper cunt you bitch. Tell him to fuck off you slag, waste of oxygen and stop sleeping with every United player"

"@Moyesy get your inept father out the club before I fucking burn him alive! You probably got a fanny like a window cleaners bucket!! #Slag"

"@Moyesy what happened to your face or are you naturally that ugly?"

This is only a tiny selection of the tweets I got last year. I lost count of the number I got from people who were calling me everything from a slut to someone who should die because she was so ugly. Just like Lena, I found it really hard to push these sort of comments aside, even though I didn't know the people who were saying it. And if you're someone who doesn't have much confidence to begin with, then these comments will only knock that confidence even more.

I also had the unpleasant experience of running into someone in a bar whose friend had given me abuse online. Last month, I could hear my name being said really loudly by someone at another table, and within a few seconds he was over at my table telling anyone would listen that his mate had given me lots of abuse on Twitter. Although instead of being apologetic about the whole thing, he seemed really proud about it. It was as if he was expecting me to give him a high five or something.

So what's actually being done to help people who get this sort of abuse online? Well if the abuse is really bad, then you can report it to the police. It's a step that Chloe Madeley took a few months ago when found herself on the receiving end of rape threats via Twitter. Looking back, it's something I wish I had done. I wouldn't say I felt in any real danger from the rape threats, but if a journalist from The Sun newspaper can turn up at my flat unannounced, then I'm sure other people can find out my whereabouts too.

I went down the route of shaming, blocking and reporting the people who said the vilest things. I felt a huge wave of support from people I didn't even know as soon as I started retweeting what people were saying. I had quite a few people who continued to send offensive comment after comment, so knowing the block function stopped them from being able to do that again was a great help. I also reported these people to Twitter, as did quite a few of my friends, but I'm still not convinced any action was actually taken. I found the reporting function on Twitter to take a lot of time, especially since I couldn't keep up with the number of tweets I was getting to be able to report them all.

In December, Twitter announced plans to make it easier to report abuse so it does look like they're trying to help people who find themselves victims of Twitter trolls. However with a rise in the number of people falling victim to these trolls, it looks like we're a long way off finding a proper solution to help them.

Why is it that we only believe the bad things people think or say about us? 

It's like we're programmed to ignore all the nice things people say in favour of replaying all the bad things over and over again.

A few weeks ago I was at a wedding when someone leaned over the bar and told me I looked stunning. He wasn't some creepy old man or someone who was trying to hit on me. He was simply a really nice person who felt the need to give me a compliment. It wasn't that I thought I looked terrible, I just didn't look anywhere near stunning. I would say I looked ok at best, and that was mainly down to what I was wearing. It's hard not to look ok when you have a long red dress on. 

Surely I can't be the only one who finds it hard to accept a compliment. Even yesterday, I couldn't believe what my best friend was telling me. She sent me a text describing me as one of the prettiest people she knows. Instead of just accepting what she said, I decided to replay the horrible thoughts implied by other peoples actions.  

I've been bullied before and I had a horrible trolling experience earlier this year when people posted things like "What happened to your face or are you just naturally that ugly?" to me on Twitter. That was when the whole Moyesy thing happened, and it was not a nice experience at all. But I think sometimes all this is why I find it hard to accept it when people do want to say something nice to me.

The logical thing is to accept the 10 lovely things before say against the one horrible thing someone else thinks. That makes sense, even to the most unlogical mind. That should even make sense in my mind. So why is it that I still continue to think everyone is just being nice to make me feel better, rather than having any truth behind their comments? Yet I can't shake off what someone else thinks of me.

That Time Lena Dunham Came To London

Excuse the blurry picture, but this was the only one I had a chance to take before the usher came over and told me to put my phone away. Apparently no one was allowed to take photos, although everyone did as soon as he turned his back to walk back to the door where he was positioned.

It's an understatement to say I'm a Lena Dunham fan. I feel like the biggest Lena Dunham fan, although that's probably a point that could be argued by everyone in the room. The event at the Southbank Centre in London, which is now one of my favourite places thanks to the bars and food market outside,  was filled with other famous people I'm a fan of. The cast of Call The Midwife including Miranda Hart had their own box a few rows in front of me. And Dawn O'Porter, Daisy Lowe, Gemma Cairney, Sarah Millican and Richard E Grant were also in the audience.

Caitlin Moran introduced Lena who came on and read a chapter from the book. I was hoping she would read 'A Guide To Running Away For Twenty-Seven-Year-Old Women' but instead she read 'Sex Scenes, Nude Scenes, and Publicly Sharing Your Body' which is still one of my favourite chapters in the book. Once the reading was done, she sat down to chat to Caitlin about the book, Girls, being a girl, and pretty much everything in between. She also answered some questions from the audience including a woman who told her that she'd inspired her to be brave enough to leave her marriage. 

I came away from it feeling pretty empowered by the whole thing. It was really amazing to be in a room filled with so many women who share similar views to you. Women who happy to celebrate another woman's success rather than being jealous and bitching about it. To see Lena, who is not much older than me, doing so much really gives me some ambition to chase other aspects of my professional life in the new year. My job is great and I don't want to change that at all, but I do want to write a lot more, and try and get back into broadcasting in some way too. 

Not That Kind of Girl!

I still remember the first time I watched Sex and the City. I was convinced I had found a show that spoke to me in ways other TV shows hadn't before. I had just got into university to study Journalism, so naturally I thought I was going to be the next Carrie Bradshaw. I imagined I would live in a studio apartment in a huge city funding my life by freelancing for some fashion or music publication. 

That was until Girls came along. The HBO show which launched in 2012, focuses on a group of twenty-sometimes living in New York. It not only stars Dunham, but she's also the writer and creator of the show too. It gives a much more realistic view of young women living in New York through unpaid internships, awkward sex and challenging friendships. 

Since then, Lena has been put onto a put on a pedestal with people really feeling like she's some kind of voice of their generation. She may have joked about it through her character Hannah during the pilot episode of Girls, but in real life she really is thought to be one. And I have to admit, I am definitely one of those people. So when I discovered she would be writing a book, I knew without even opening it that I would love every page. 

Lena writes with the open and raw honestly I could only dream of having the guts to do myself. Her book of personal essays and advice details her life through her childhood, long therapy sessions, OCD and string of dates and relationships. She talks so candidly about her sexual encounters in the way I don't think I ever could. It's the sort of information I shared with my best friend this morning, but wouldn't want the world to read. Not only because they don't really care about it, but also because I don't feel like I can talk about other people in that way, even if I only have the most complimentary of words to say.  

"The end never comes when you think it will. It's always ten steps past the worst moment, then a weird turn to the left."

"What a goon. He's lucky to know you, but too stupid to ever realize it."

The book is also full of advice and words that feel like she's climbed into the head of every confused twenty something women who is questioning their life at the moment. 

"Don't put yourself in situations you'd like to run away from."

The above advice that ends the chapter entitled, "A Guide To Running Away For Twenty-Seven-Year-Old Women". It's one of the best pieces of advice I took from the book, especially since I found myself in quite a few situations I wanted to run away from this year. I'd almost have an anxiety attack on the way to certain events, then spend a lot of time hiding in the toilet or outside the party because being inside gave me that sick to the stomach feeling that I shouldn't have to feel. Maybe next time, I'll think about how worth it is to spend hours feeling that rubbish about myself when I can spend time with people outside of those situations. 

She goes onto detail different versions of running away, a lot of which I've tried when needing to escape my own thoughts. Whether it's "listening to a Taylor Swift song about dancing in the rain" or "Going radio silent, then saying you lost your cell phone somewhere in your bed".  

Another great piece thing she said in the book was this - 

"I decided then that I will never be jealous. I will never be vengeful. I won't be threatened by the old, or by the new. "

I would love to think that I could take on board, but I realise it will take some work. Jealously and over thinking situations is probably one of worst qualities. It's embarrassing to admit that I constantly feel threatened by other women.  I have such low confidence that I generally feel 95% of the female population are funnier, smarter, prettier, fitter and more interesting than I am. Even when I'm with someone, I assume that there's someone they think is better than me. It's not a feeling that I enjoy and it's certainly not one I would entertain if I could help it. 

Overall, this is one of the best books I've read it years. With 20 odd pages bookmarked, I feel like it's the sort of book I'll go back to for advice and reassurance and I stumble through the rest of my twenties in a general state of confusion and self doubt.