When sticks and stones hurt less - a look at online bullying

image taken from UNICEF

The first time I remember reading negative words about me was back in 1997. A magical summer working as an actor at The Mac-Haydn Theatre in Chatham, NY. Still an acting student at the University of Southern, MS, it was a dream come true. That summer I went to NYC for the first time, had my first leading roles as a professional actor and even had my first attempts at a SHOWmance!

I can’t recall the name of the character I played in “Annie Get Your Gun”, but I still remember the review. It was in a local paper where a critic said that I looked like a kid playing dress-up in my parents’ clothes. This critique was less about me and more about the casting of me and the costume, but it stung. I have always looked young for my age, and I was in my early 20s playing a much older character, looking like a teenager.

The next negative review I remember is from 2003 when I was touring “My Way: a Tribute to Frank Sinatra.” The critic, this time local to Omaha, Nebraska where we had a sit-down residency for a month said that I had a great, belty singing voice, but I sounded nothing like Frank Sinatra. This one didn’t bother me too much because the script told us that we should not try to sound like Frank, that we should sing as ourselves instead. I did, and the critic, subjectively thought this was the wrong choice.

For many years after that I stopped reading reviews, even the good ones. That was until I starred in a musical inspired by the song “Big Rock Candy Mountain” in NYC in 2012 at the height of my addiction to drugs. I was trying very hard to get back into acting, but I was in such a state that I didn’t even show up to our tech rehearsal. When the reviews came out I was desperate for positive outside validation - something that would tell me I was still a talent on my way to stardom/Broadway. I got validation, alright, but for my active addiction. The review read something like - Brian Whisenant has a great voice, but it’s like he isn’t even there. They were right.

Now, a decade + later, I am dealing with a different kind of criticism. One that often borders and sadly crosses the line of harassment, bullying and hate speech. It’s happening out in the open on the likes of Instagram, IMDB and TikTok, and I can guarantee you it is having consequences that will one day come crashing down on top of these social media giants if we don’t do something about it.

What Happened to Me on TikTok

I joined TikTok like many people during COVID. At first I was looking for something to do out of boredom, but it very quickly became a place for me to connect. I had a couple of hundred followers and would make funny videos of my cat Ellen, sing songs in my car and make funny reaction videos. One of these went viral, and I suddenly I had a few thousand followers. It was all so thrilling.

It was after my beloved ex boyfriend Scott died, that a stitch I made with a comedian joking about “functional alcoholism” that things turned a corner for me. I gained several thousand new followers, hundreds of thousands of new views and was even getting recognized at the grocery store and in 12 step meetings.

It was my followers who began to help me see that I was a storyteller. They believed in me wholeheartedly while I was still trying to find my confidence and voice again. They even helped me raise over $2000 for my short film, “Wrath Mercy.”

I had a few more videos go viral telling stories about my life and addiction, but I plateaued for a couple of years at 19,000 followers, what some call a micro-influencer. Changes to the Creator Program and the addition of the TikTok shop (something I utilized once and realized quickly was not interested in) stopped any money coming in. I accepted that if this was how it was now, with limited engagement from only a few hundred dedicated followers with no hope of money or new followers, it was still worth it.

Imagining that I was talking to these few hundred people, I told a story last week that was innocent enough. Until it wasn’t. Within an hour I was getting 1000 views per minute, and knew I was going viral. Crossing half a million views I started to get strange comments - calling me a liar, saying my story wasn’t true. People were calling me gay (and not in the fun way), boring, ugly, a crack head…. Not knowing what to do as the video continued to go viral, likely toward a million views, I made my account private so that only my followers could see my content and deleted the app from my phone.

Suddenly this place I found so much comfort in had become the new schoolyard bullying. Although TikTok filtered out the worst of it, for only me to see, the comments were still there, only hidden. When I sat down to read the worst of it with comments like - “you should disappear” and “go away,” poorly veiled wishes for me to kill myself, I was traumatized.

The 90s v/s now

Thinking about how things feel so different than they did in my early days of acting and finding myself on the internet, I wanted to hear from someone who was famous before social media took over our lives. Natanya Ross, a dear friend of mine, was in practically everything back in the 90s, but she is best known for playing Robyn Russo in “The Secret World of Alex Mack.” I asked her how things were different when she was at the height of her fame.

“Well, fortunately, in the 90s there wasn’t a lot of opportunity for online bullying until aol.com came out,” Ross says. “To be honest, I’ve noticed and agree - a rise of wanting to take people down from that decade until now. It’s really sad to me to see how many people have such hate in their hearts, but are also cowardice enough to do it from the safety of a phone screen, sometimes even in a different country.”

Twitter, Trump and supposed balls….

When I talk about how things are worse today than ever people often say that hate was always here, but even the likes of X, formerly Twitter, used to be a happier place. I can recall the early days on Twitter where I first found my community of movie loving Oscar watchers. I would stay up late at night tweeting back and forth with these cyber friends about movies and awards. They really helped me get through the darkest of times. Then I started to notice a new pattern. The people tweeting the more hateful, salacious items about film were getting more attention, retweets and followers. I had spent years building a brand of positivity grounded in a love of movies. Seeing this shift was disappointing. I would try to be more snarky, but it just didn’t work for me.

I certainly felt the loss of this shift. I first learned that Marriage Equality had survived the Supreme Court on Twitter. Corey Haim’s sister Carol and I found each other and followed each other there. Heck, even Britney Spears followed me. And yet, I eventually stopped posting there, even though I left my account active.

And then there is Trump. Most people who are anti-Trump will say that he allowed for hatred, racism and homophobia to find its outside voice again. And I agree. Some of his supporters, the less egregious and Q-Anon ones (they exist even if we don’t want to admit it) say that they love that he’s not afraid to say whatever he wants, that “he has balls.” This saying whatever we want has trickled quickly like a virus into the comments of social media, and “whatever” includes hate and lies, seemingly with almost no care of the consequences.

Twitter tried to clean things up, but to no avail. Even banning Trump didn’t help really. Once Elon Musk took over, I was out. I believe in free speech, and I also believe in consequences for what that speech can do. But who is the barometer of truth? This is the conundrum, and one I fear may take a complete fall to dismantle. The question I ask myself often - will the fall come from destruction or hope/love? Time will tell, although it’s not looking good.

Why do they do it?

When I asked Natanya Ross why people online bully, she had the same difficulty with the question I have.

“I really do think this it is just dependent on another person‘s mental health which unfortunately gets taken out on those of us in the limelight,” Ross told me. “…I feel that if you’re a celebrity, people feel very entitled to you and your life, and although most of that is usually very beautiful and supportive, I think there are a lot of miserable people out there that want to say things to you that they think makes them feel better about themselves or superior to you in some way by cutting you down. The whole thing is incredibly sad.”

I also think that the rise in “Online Sleuths” is part of what happened with me. Picking apart every bit of my story trying to find something wrong in it. Perhaps hoping that they might have their 10 seconds of fame sliced away from my three minutes of fame.

And of course there is the “hurt people hurt people” concept. Boredom. Attention. Ignorance. I think the issue here is that there are many reasons that people do this sort of thing. And perhaps the summary of it all is that we (society, TikTok, Instagram, IMDB, X, Trump) have told them this is not only ok, but standard and even rewarded.

On Facebook and Instagram for instance, a hateful, negative comment will get driven to the top of a post, not by its own likes, but by the comments calling out the hate. On TikTok, despite comments telling me to un-alive myself being filtered out, the accounts remain active so they can move on to the next victim. One person who I called out in a reply video for calling me a liar was able to very quickly report me, resulting in TikTok giving ME the Community Guidelines violation. Too many violations and my account - an account focused on hope, addiction recovery, entertainment and positivity would be wiped off the app- whereas the haters would live on…and on and on.

I reached out to TikTok and asked them for an answer to one question - “What is TikTok doing about online bullying?” I also gave them the opportunity to read this piece and comment. That didn’t even respond. That should tell you all you really need to know about what they are actually doing about the problem.

What can we do about it?

If these platforms aren’t going to do anything about it, what can we do as creators?

“Don’t read the comments” people have told me. And yet that would mean losing the engagement I have with my followers. I have had many, many people get clean from drugs in turn thanking me for my content on TikTok - expressing the part I played by opening up for them to get help. Would I give that away? Perhaps. Perhaps it is time to put my energies elsewhere.

For small creators like me, I can’t afford a moderator to keep tabs on these things, and you never know when a viral video is going to happen. With the comments off, engagement goes down and so do the views. And yet I keep asking myself, is it worth it?

Ross said, “As actors and creators, the one thing we can do to combat active online billing is to try not to engage in it in the best way possible for ourselves, but also to make sure to be vocal enough about it so that other people that are going through it know that they’re not alone. And as hard as it is to remember, you have to continue to tell yourself that it has nothing to do with you and everything to do with them. Continue to talk to your friends when things are upsetting you. It’s so crazy how there can be 1000 posts about how amazing you are, and then the handful of posts that are just cruel and mean are sometimes all our brain will focus on. The more we enforce a no bullying policy vocally hopefully we can try and make some sort of dent in it.

Come November, whatever happens, I feel that the hate bubble may burst. I don’t know if I can remain on social media if hate is emboldened beyond what is allowed today. And yet I know this as well. I can remove social medial from my phone and live in the California bubble, but that doesn’t stop the bullying, even if it protects me from it. And yet, I may have become wounded enough to care a little less. And that scares me the most.