Popular mum blogger, Modern Mumma, Mel Watts has released an emotional video describing a vicious backlash she received after writing a funny post about her sex life.
The original post was a fairly innocuous, intended-to-be-amusing story of a daytime quickie she had with her husband, a rare event that surely most parents can relate to. The post was 'liked' over 5,000 times and attracted more than 700 comments.
After posting the anecdote to
Facebook, the abuse began to roll in with readers dubbing it “humiliating”, “degrading” and “insulting”.
One reader appeared to imply that Watts' tale was in some way contributing to infidelity with the comment “and you wonder why spouses stray”.
While another posted: “why are you posting this sh*t online?”
In a video titled: "Going Viral Isn't All That" the devastated Aussie mum detailed how that online abuse has affected her mental health.
"I can usually tolerate a few trolls here and there but when you feel like you're being suffocated by people from around the world who viciously attack you it's hard not to let things get to you," she explained.
"Maybe I could be someone's daughter, someone's wife and someones mother and maybe it's time you can see the bad side of going 'viral'."
Even after blocking some of the more abusive users, Watts found that they were migrating to other social media channels to continue to target her.
“They started personally messaging me. I’ve had numerous people try and contact me in other ways, and write horrible things.”
“I’ve seen huge amount of resources and money go into teaching our children about bullying. The actual problem isn’t our children; it’s the parents,” said the emotional mum.
“All I did was write an opinion, and everyone is saying horrible things about me that aren’t true,” she says. “You either like it, or you don’t, if you don’t have anything nice to say then scroll on, you don’t troll.”
“It’s not called for. They go write nasty things so everyone else has a sh*t day, and I have to sit here and feel like I am the one who is failing.”
“It doesn’t matter if you’re Kim f***king Kardashian, or a nobody like me sitting at home while their kids are playing and their husband is at work."
“I don’t have to tolerate it; no one has to tolerate it.”
After posting the video to her Facebook page, the mum received an outpouring of support from her followers for which she was hugely grateful:
"Thank you to every single one of you. I really appreciate the support and love from all of you. You have no idea how much it means to me. I didn't want to be the Debbie downer on it all, but sometimes something has to give. I was beyond hurt and obviously upset. I'm not a pretty crier – actually I could possibly work on my crying face. In all seriousness, I read all the comments, and I read all the messages. I try to get back to you all because I want you to know that you're not just another 'liker' and you mean more to me than that, virtual social media friends."
Watch the full video here.
