(https://tattle.life/threads/about-tattle-life.4030/) 

By Charlotte MacDowell

Popular gossip forum, Tattle Life, describes itself as a ‘commentary website’ allowing its users to adopt anonymous identities under a username. These users can then create and comment on threads which target influencers and celebrities of their choice. 

In reality, Tattle is a platform which enables bullying on a large scale. The threads created certainly do not praise the celebrities in question. Unlike other social media platforms, influencers cannot restrict and delete what is posted about them. 

Screenshots emerged on a Tattle Life thread, titled ‘Elle Darby #39 Went to New York and didn’t see a peep, sacked vlogmas off after only one week’, of tweets that influencer, Elle Darby, had previously posted when she was fourteen. Those tweets unveiled that she was racist, hompohobic, and fatphobic. 

Since the tweets were revealed on Tattle Life, Elle posted a Youtube video apologising to her audience. 

In her video, Elle comments that ‘this image of me is now tainted’. Her followers have commented that her apology video is insincere and that Elle seems more concerned with the fact she has destroyed her own career than the actual comments she made. The majority of these comments and hateful messages have been made on Tattle Life as Elle turned comments off on both her Youtube and Instagram accounts. 

Ultimately, Elle’s actions were wrong and unacceptable. However, do they warrant death threats and the sheer amount of abuse she has received? Merely, unfollow, block, and move on. 

Tattle ‘allow commentary and critiques of people that choose to monetise their personal life’. However, they also claim that they ‘have a zero-tolerance policy to any content that is abusive, hateful or harmful’. You only need to look at any thread on the platform to know that this isn’t true. There is a reason why the website’s owner wants to remain anonymous.

Mrs Hinch, who has a whopping 4 million followers on Instagram and clearly has a huge following, has over 400 threads dedicated to her on the Tattle Life website, branding her as ‘dull as a dishwasher’. 

Popular social media stars, Sophia Tuxford and Cinzia Baylis Zullo boast 386 thousand subscribers on Youtube. Cinzia, previously having been called out for her excessive amount of plastic surgery, had her lip filler dissolved recently and received a huge amount of backlash for it on Tattle. She gave her audience what they wanted and received hate for it. There really is no pleasing people. 

Interestingly, the website seems to be targeted towards women in the lime-light. Are fans jealous?

So many celebrities are getting called out by these trolls on Tattle, with the platform being one of the most-visited websites in the UK. When will it end? When Caroline Flack committed suicide in December 2019, the message ‘be kind’ went viral. Yet, here we are, 2 years later and nothing has changed. People still don’t know when to stop trolling and abusing online.

A petition has been created to shut the website down and has been signed by 66,000 people. Unfortunately, this isn’t enough to get Tattle taken down.  What is deemed a sufficient reason?