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I glanced into a dark mirror world in which people (mostly men) wrote that I am vile and stupid and should kill myself
I glanced into a dark mirror world in which people wrote that I am vile and stupid and should kill myselfI’ve enjoyed the hundred or so I’ve written.
I’m not a journalist by vocation or training. I’d written the occasional feature before and frequent book reviews, but the discipline of the weekly column was an interesting challenge to someone used to the much longer horizons of writing books. I feel like the vicar in a Victorian novel, I said early on to a friend, who is actually a vicar, always scouting for next week’s sermon.
It has been an honour and a privilege to participate in the national conversation of a country to which I am a recent immigrant. I have tried to tread carefully, to be mindful of the limits of my education and point of view, and also to offer an outsider’s perspective where it seems interesting.
I’m stopping now for several reasons – other projects taking shape, a fear of becoming repetitive soon if not yet – but mostly because the initially minor discomfort of being hated on the internet has begun to tint more of my life and sleep and thoughts. Relative to the experiences of professional celebrities, mine is surely very mild, but the effect is cumulative and corrosive.account and never used to look at social media in the limited ways available without one.
My publisher has always been supportive of this position, and more than willing to represent my books online. As far as I can tell, the readers of literary fiction don’t mind if writers are on social media or not, but anyway I felt no pressure and remain convinced that avoiding the whole business saves me a great deal of time and anguish, albeit at some cost.
So when I started to write this column, in the knowledge that it would be posted on social media, I felt as if I had secret armour. Whatever people were saying, I didn’t know, and not knowing, couldn’t be upset. I’m not wholly naive; I knew that thinking in public while female would incur punishment and that particular issues – cycling, gender equality, big trucks – attracted particular attention from angry men.
I just thought that what I didn’t know wouldn’t hurt me. For a while that seemed true, and then people who did know started, in all kindness, to check how I was feeling or commiserate over some particular font of vitriol. I started to feel as though, if I didn’t at least glance at what I could access, I was walking around with a target on my back, and so I started to glance.
I still don’t have social media accounts and never will. I glanced into a dark mirror world in which people wrote that I am vile and stupid, that they would enjoy driving over my body, that they wanted me to kill myself, that I deserve terrible things. I admitted to my friends that I had seen this and that I was upset, and they told me it’s a normal response to women with opinions on the internet.
I kept going for months after that, glancing and recoiling. Even glimpses of online hatred began to affect my daily interactions. Does the driver who slows to let me pass a bus on my bike really dream of crushing my head under his wheels? Does the friendly waiter go home and post that older women should wear muzzles?
Are the angry men right about me and my worth? At low moments I found myself remembering what they write, affirming the worst things I say to myself. Even if the people online are more accurate representatives of humanity than the people I meet, I don’t want that knowledge poisoning my life, or, frankly more importantly to me, poisoning the books I write.
I want to meet people with my mind and heart open, and I certainly want my novels to meet their readers that way.were bullies who should not have been paid off with public money. I still think the perimenopause industrial complex is cynical, ageist and misogynist. I still think the victim-blaming Road Safety Authority has cyclists’ blood on its hands. I still think driving an SUV is a symptom of moral failure.
Sarah Moss’s last Irish Times column: ‘Being hated on the internet has begun to tint my life’‘All I could think about was getting cocaine’: Mothers share their stories of addictionPatrick Bergin, co-star of Julia Roberts in Sleeping with the Enemy, seeks buyer for Offaly castleThat’s not a hum from your local data centre. It’s a growing backlash
Weekendreview Road-Safety-Authority Cycling Social-Media Fuel-Protests
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