A model claims she was so stressed out from the abuse she’d receive from online trolls that it resulted in her having a heart attack.
23-year-old Anna Sugar from London says she’d receive hate mail on a daily basis through a modelling page she used to advertise her work.
Here’s the kind of shit she had to deal with:
What a bunch of absolute fucking creeps.
Anna is speaking out about this now to raise awareness of online bullying, though it’s too bad there doesn’t appear to be a way of naming and shaming these bullies.
The messages started pretty much as soon as I was modelling (four years ago).
People would even research me and then send me information about myself – and some would tell me what I’d been wearing that day because they’d been watching me.
Most of the time I think people just see an image and don’t even think that there’s a person behind that image that they’re going to upset.
All I really wanted to know is what I’d done to deserve all of this hate, but everyone gets it, and there’s no reason for it – for people to say I looked better when I was so ill was just a double hit for me – it was exhausting.
Images VIA
After her heart attack, she began receiving messages like this (why did she keep reading them??)
Your death couldn’t come soon enough, the world will be better without you.
And:
You look pretty hot now you’re about to die.
Maureen Talbot, senior cardiac nurse at the British Heart Foundation, says:
Stress is not a direct risk factor for heart and circulatory disease, but it’s possible that it may contribute to someone’s risk level.
Often a person’s coping mechanism for stress can include behaviours such as smoking, drinking too much alcohol or overeating, which could increase the chances of someone developing heart and circulatory disease.
Sounds like those messages are coming from people Anna already knows, if you ask me. I don’t know that a complete stranger (let alone multiple complete strangers) would go to the trouble of harassing a random person to this extent. Then again, you never know with the Internet these days.
Either way, I’d suggest not reading the hate mail at all if it gets her down so much. As soon as you clock it’s a counter-productive message, just delete it. Delete it so quick it doesn’t even have time to form into a thought. Boom — heart attack averted.
