The glamorous lives of the rich and famous are easy targets for online haters.
Some say it's the price you pay for celebrity, but that doesn't mean it's not painful.
From Scarlett Johansson to Leslie Jones, the following celebs were all viciously attacked
by online trolls.
Singer Lily Allen is evidently a magnet for trolls.
In 2018, she told Vice:
"People always say to me, like, God, you just overshare too much on Twitter.
It's like, wait a second, I'm just spending time on my phone exactly like you are."
In 2017, the Twitter nastiness got so intense, the star temporarily quit the social network.
According to the Independent,
"She was targeted while trying to highlight prejudice against immigrants and Muslims."
And Allen did this by replacing the words "immigrants" and "Muslims" with "pensioners."
For example, one of her tweets read:
"Can't even get an appt at the doctors because pensioners just skip the queue, and claim
all benefits.
It has to stop."
Things went way downhill from there, with some Twitter users even claiming that Allen
was mentally ill.
Instead of ignoring the haters, Allen opened up about her struggles with bipolar disorder,
postnatal depression, and PTSD.
She even discussed the trauma of losing her son during a premature birth in 2010.
Instead of triggering an empathetic discussion, trolls essentially accused the star of killing
her own baby.
According to the Independent, one user wrote:
"If you didn't pump your body full of drugs you wouldn't have miscarried."
Allen responded:
"I didn't miscarry.
I went into early labour and [my] son died [because the umbilical cord was] wrapped round
his neck."
Not long after, she announced that she was taking a break from the social network because:
"My timeline is full of the most disgusting, sexist, misogynistic, racist s---.
Really, new levels."
Pop star Iggy Azalea was basically chased off of the internet in 2015.
Much of the hatred seemed to stem from the fact that she's a woman and her past feuds
with other celebrities.
Asked how she dealt with all the negativity in 2016, she told Good Morning America:
"It's tough sometimes.
But you have to think about the people that support you as well."
According to TMZ, the Australian rapper even got into a fight with the "Cash Me Outside"
girl — otherwise known as Danielle Bregoli — in 2018.
"Cash me ousside!
Howbow dah?​"
That little skirmish involved Brigoli throwing a drink at the "Fancy" rapper.
Trouble really seems to follow her: According to the Independent, Azalea's list of beefs
includes rap superstars including Snoop Dogg, Eminem, and Azealia Banks, but she faced a
serious online opponent in 2014 when the notorious hacker group Anonymous put a target on her
back.
In a since-deleted tweet,the hacktivists threatened to release private images of Azalea because
they felt like:
"[She was] misappropriating black culture, insulting peaceful protesters and making light
of Eric Garner's death."
By 2015, it seemed like Azalea was waving the white flag.
The final straw may have been when paparazzi photos of her wearing a bikini while on vacation
suddenly began circulating online.
She angrily exited the Twittersphere after writing a since-deleted tweet that read:
"The Internet is the ugliest reflection of mankind there is."
Actress Drew Barrymore had an interesting way of firing back at trolls after an Instagram
video devolved into accusations of animal abuse.
The star received an onslaught of negative comments after posing next to a starfish — which
matched her lipstick — in a cheeky boomerang video.
The bronze shade of lip color was from her PETA-approved, cruelty-free makeup line called
Flower Beauty.
But it seems the Internet was concerned about some of Barrymore's other life choices.
One Instagram user wrote:
"A starfish taken out of water without its consent (which is impossible to obtain) is
the same as dunking a human's head under water."
The following day, Barrymore uploaded a photo with a brand new haircut and some fresh lipstick,
writing:
"Yesterday I saw comments on my Instagram feed about my post that were mean, cruel,
and ugly.
It hurt me.
And you know what women do when they get hurt????
They pick themselves up.
Go get a haircut.
Put on some lipstick and chant 'if you don't have something nice to say…don't say anything
at all.'"
In other words?
"I want you to get the hell off my property."
Think you had it bad in middle school?
Well, you probably weren't trashed by thousands of online trolls who called you racist and
homophobic in a misguided effort to take you down a peg.
Well, that's exactly why Stranger Things' actress Millie Bobby Brown left Twitter in
2018.
According to CNN, the hate campaign began when
"Someone claimed in a tweet that the actress refused to take a picture with her unless
she removed her hijab."
This infernal troll went on to allege that Brown pulled the hijab off the woman's head.
Of course, there's absolutely no evidence that the then-14-year-old star did any such
thing.
Nevertheless, the "Take Down Millie Bobby Brown" hashtag started trending on Twitter.
Trolls used the hashtag to invent horrible stories that linked the teen to homophobia,
too.
Forget the fact that Brown has publicly supported GLAAD's Together movement.
The star deleted her Twitter account amidst the flurry of mean-spirited messages — while
lots of fans showed their support in tweets of their own.
One person aptly wrote:
"Wowwwwwww humanity really is the worst.
Y'all bullied Millie Bobby Brown into deactivating her Twitter?
Hope you feel real good about tearing down a 14 year old (who's more successful than
you'll ever be)."
Meanwhile, Brown made sure to bring up bullying during a pre-recorded acceptance speech at
the MTV Movie and TV Awards, saying:
"If you don't have anything nice to say, just don't say it.
There should be no space in this world for bullying, and I'm not going to tolerate it,
and neither should any of you."
Taylor Swift had a rough 2016.
It started with a brief spat with ex-boyfriend Calvin Harris after Swift's camp revealed
she helped write his hit "This Is What You Came For" under a pseudonym.
The Scottish DJ took to Twitter, writing in a since-deleted tweet:
"[Taylor Swift is] trying to tear [her] ex bf down for something to do."
In a subsequent tweet, he wrote that,
"[She needs] someone new to try and bury like Katy [Perry]."
As you probably know, Swift and Perry had bad blood for years — and Perry reacted
to Harris's tweet with a gif of politician Hillary Clinton.
According to Paper, an army of trolls flooded Swift's Instagram account with snake emojis
— and the hashtag TaylorSwiftIsOverParty started trending on Twitter.
And then there was Kim Kardashian, who pushed the snake motif further by famously tweeting:
"Wait it's legit National Snake Day?!?!?
They have holidays for everybody, I mean everything these days!"
Kardashian was referring to the infamous argument between Swift and her husband, rapper Kanye
West.
In case you don't know: Swift was angry about West calling her, quote, "that b-----" in
his song "Famous," but Kardashian uploaded Snapchat footage that seemingly showed Swift
approving the song in advance.
According to the Daily Mail, that's when the #KimExposedTaylorParty started to pick up
steam.
In an essay for Elle, Swift said the troll-fest caused her to feel the lowest she's ever felt,
but she reclaimed the snake emoji for herself by working a 63-foot inflatable cobra into
her Reputation Tour.
During that tour, she addressed the social media bullying, and tried to put a positive
spin on the situation.
"That doesn't have to defeat you.
It can strengthen you instead."
Guess that means Swift got the last hiss, for now, anyway.
Trolls simply couldn't help themselves when Scarlett Johansson, a white woman, was cast
as the Asian lead in Ghost in the Shell.
The hatred reached a fever pitch when a group of users hijacked the film's online marketing.
According to Refinery29, the film's original campaign — which included a now-defunct
website — asked the question: "What makes you unique?"
It consisted of a meme generator where users could write an empowering statement about
themselves and overlay it on an uploaded photo.
ScarJo's character The Major got the treatment, with captions like "I am hunted" and "I am
fearless."
But everyone knows you can't ask people to create a meme if you don't want to become
a meme.
Twitter user Valerie Complex took the film's viral marketing in a whole new direction with
an image of an Asian woman captioned:
"I am the woman that should have been cast."
Complex added another photo of Johannson that was simply captioned:
"white feminism."
The whole thing got completely out of hand.
Needless to say, Johansson doesn't really have any warm, fuzzy feelings about social
media.
"Scarlett Johansson has the emotional range of a [beep] celery.
I hate white people."
The star once told The Washington Post:
"The fact is that trying to protect yourself from the Internet and its depravity is basically
a lost cause.
[…] The Internet is a vast wormhole of darkness that eats itself."
Twilight fans can be ferocious, but they really showed their fangs after Kristen Stewart and
Robert Pattinson ended their tortured real-life romance following Stewart's cheating scandal.
Pattinson eventually found love again with R&B singer FKA Twigs, prompting a horribly
racist reaction from some online trolls.
According to People, the biracial star was first spotted hanging out with Pattinson about
a year after his split with Stewart — and that's when the trouble started.
FKA Twigs told the New York Times that the racial insults were, quote, "relentless."
She also told the paper:
"It's really hard — I can't begin to explain how awful it is.
It makes you want to just stop everything sometimes.
It makes you want to smash your face into the mirror."
She added that:
"There's no amount of songs I can sing or dances I can dance that will prove to them
I'm not a monkey."
Leslie Jones deserves better.
The Saturday Night Live star suffered horrific online abuse following the premiere of her
Ghostbusters all-female remake in 2016.
The trolling was so intense, The New York Times published an interview with the cast
highlighting the sexist online criticism — and that was before professional troll Milo Yiannopoulos
stepped in to open the floodgates of internet hatred.
Yiannopoulos even published a review on Breitbart that claimed,
"[Jones has] flat-as-a-pancake black stylings that ought to have irritated the [Social Justice
Warriors].
I don’t get offended by such things, but they should."
He also claimed that
"[Ghostbusters is] full of female characters that are simply stand-ins for men plus a black
character worthy of a minstrel show."
The hatred escalated quickly.
After giving Jones his stamp of disapproval, Yiannopoulos' legion of alt-right trolls just
couldn't help themselves.
Bullies flooded social media with sexist and racist comments directed toward Jones.
At some point, Yiannopoulos started tweeting directly at the actress and sharing fake tweets
that he pretended were from her.
The real Jones called the comments "scary" and announced she was temporarily leaving
Twitter:
"I feel like I'm in a personal hell.
I didn't do anything to deserve this.
It's just too much.
It shouldn't be like this.
So hurt right now."
The hate campaign was so horrific that Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey reached out to Jones directly.
Twitter also published a statement admonishing the comments, which read in part:
"No one deserves to be subjected to targeted abuse online, and our rules prohibit inciting
or engaging in the targeted abuse or harassment of others."
As Jones told Seth Meyers in 2016,
"What scared me was the injustice of a gang of people jumping against you for such a sick
cause."
Twitter ultimately decided to ban Yiannopoulos from the platform.
In 2017, Emma Watson became a target for the worst kind of online trolls.
It's kind of mind-boggling that anyone would mess with an actress who's so unbelievably
likable, but the Harry Potter star has indeed fallen victim to a number of nude photo hoaxes.
Watson experienced her first nude photo threat in 2014, after she landed the position of
UN Women Goodwill Ambassador.
What caused all the fury?
The star spoke up about women's rights, prompting a website to lob threats her way.
Watson knew that the nasty website didn't have any scandalous photos, because she knew
that no such photos existed.
In a conversation at Facebook HQ, she admitted:
"I was just raging.
I was just…
It made me… so angry."
But the nasty campaign certainly didn't break her spirit.
As she went on to explain:
"Actually if they were trying to put me off of it, it did the opposite."
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