Face to Face with Online Trolls

I have been fortunate enough run a social media agency for the past 4 years. During this time I have worked with, and represented many companies and individuals. Some of the individuals are celebrities and come with many exciting challenges.

I am currently managing the Instagram account for Paul Danan, a celebrity in the latest series of Celebrity Big Brother. Paul is a friend of mine and I am more than happy to help show my support whilst he is in the house. For those that know of Paul, he first came on our screens when he landed the role of Sol, an actor in Hollyoaks.

Following a successful career on Hollyoaks, Paul appeared in a few movies before becoming the star of the original Celebrity Love Island over 10 years ago now. Paul was a young man full of confidence and energy but the pubic didn’t take to his onscreen behaviour and lack of professionalism. He soon became the butt of every joke, which took a toll on Paul’s personal life and relationship with the media.

Paul experienced a number of highs and lows in his life and managed to find the strength, with the support of friends and family, to turn his life around. He appeared in a number of pantomimes and set up a drama school, in his local area of Hertford to help young aspiring actors further their craft.

Like a lot of celebrities that experienced fame at an early age, it can be tough to deal with and many aren’t fortunate enough to have a second chance to show the world who they really are.

I decided to help run Paul’s Instagram page for a few reasons;

1.   I wanted to learn more about very fast growth social accounts of celebrities in the public eye

2.   I wanted to show the best of Paul whilst he is in the Big Brother House

3.   Giving Paul confidence that his online profiles are in good hands

4.   Engage with fans and help build a bigger profile for him online

5.   Use as a case study to pick up similar work in the future

One thing I didn’t expect, naively perhaps, the amount of abuse someone in the spotlight faces.  This is something Paul and other celebrities deal with most days of their lives but I have only been exposed to it for 14 days so far and am beyond shocked at some people. 

I have always been aware of the terms online trolls, Internet trolls, social media trolls but never realised how bad a problem it was until I experienced reading it first hand.

We all have opinions of people, especially those that appear argumentative, drunk or rude on TV in front of millions of people, but most of us would never dream of sharing those opinions particularly when we have never met the person or given them a chance to show who they are.

I have learnt that an online troll is faceless, gutless and thrives off of hurting other people.

A few examples of what Paul has received today alone is below

As you can see this particular person has no bio, profile picture and has no followers. They also haven’t posted anything themselves and I assume spend all day trolling celebrities. Anyone can do this but in my opinion you have to be a massive loser, with nothing better to do in life.

Apart from the fact Paul has a lovely partner and child, is a normal human trying to make his way in life and has chosen to be an actor does not for one minute mean he chose a career where it’s ok to be spoken to like this.

This recent post achieved 1736 comments of which 1730 of them were trolls.

Here are a few of those comments

Thankfully these examples are few and far between but worryingly become more common. Especially as we live in a world where reality TV contestants becoming the new rock stars. The recent series of Love Island proves that you can become a celebrity overnight with those that have a good personality finding themselves inundated with work in an industry that many have been trying to break into for decades. 

As social media continues to grow along with reality TV, contestants become celebrities overnight, will this only get worse or will we see social media platforms put in some sort of regulation to monitor or even stop it? If not for the good of the social platform itself but to protect people in the limelight.

The best advice i can give someone in a similar situation is to not get involved or bother commenting back. Let the celeb do their thing and continue to position the online profiles as professional. Block and report people when necessary but it can very quickly get out of hand and unmanageable.