I humiliated myself in front of 120,000 people on Facebook Live for Valentines Day, and the insults have stayed with me

I suddenly feel alienated from the digital space I love – a place that kept me alive in the depths of my mental illness. There’s no way anyone could know this watching that video. I don’t think they would have cared anyway – I was a fat girl who’d offered herself up to be pilloried in public. Who cares who I was beneath that?

'Going on a date on Facebook Live was obviously a bad idea' (Getty)

On Tuesday night, my date was live-streamed to 120,000 people.

I’d like to say it sounded like a good idea at the time, but even then it didn’t. Going on a date that would be broadcast on Facebook Live was definitely a terrible idea – as evidenced by the number of people who smiled at me, bewildered, when I told them my plans for Valentine’s Day, and said, “Oh, you must be very brave.” I raised an eyebrow, and nodded: “Or mad.”

The logistics of the scenario went as follows: it was a Cilla Black-meets-First Dates deal where they’d picked three girls to have 15 minute dates with their writer, all to be broadcast on Vice’s Facebook. Everyone involved was suitably lovely, but I was warned by them (and my friends) repeatedly: “Don’t. Read. The Comments.”

Naturally I did – it’s human nature to do the exact thing you’ve been told not to do, and having already debased myself by doing this whole thing in the first place, I couldn’t see how anyone could say anything about me that I haven’t already thought: fat, ugly, awkward, stupid. Things I’ve been told I am for as long as I can remember.

I’ve lived most of my life on the internet. I was eight when my family got their first computer, and from the second I signed up for my Neopets account, I was hooked. The internet is where I’ve met my best friends, discovered myself, and in the depths of crippling depression, it allowed me to escape to another place.

At some point everyone is subject to a hateful anonymous comment or two – when I was a teenager, Ask.Me and FormSpring were all the rage. Tumblr became a hotbed for anonymous aggression – I had a death threat from someone once after we got into an argument about (what else?) Marvel superheroes. For the most part, I’ve made my peace with people turning to personal attacks because they don’t like what I’ve written. It’s easier to call someone a fat pig than put into words why you disagree with them.

My reasons for taking part in the Vice date were unremarkable – after 10 years of battling crippling depression and anxiety, I’d decided to do more things that challenge me. I’ve put myself in the public domain before, but this time the vitriol stayed with me – Facebook Live is where it got personal.

As I scrolled through a list of insults directed at me and the other people in the video, what struck me was the lack of anonymity. While some of the commenters were doing so from fake accounts behind pictures of memes, the overwhelming majority were happy to use their real name, their own photo, their accounts that showed where they lived, worked, went to school.

They were all too happy to be identified and berate me in a public space for having the audacity to be in a video that they didn’t have to watch in the first place.

Facebook Live is unique in that respect – it exists as a digital coliseum, where spectators sit and publicly humiliate other people for the sake of garnering likes from each other. The anonymous hatred (while still hurtful) is always easier to deal with than that which has a name and a face and a Facebook profile. These tools designed to bring people together have been optioned instead as tools to crowdsource hatred – for the first time in years I feel alienated from the digital landscape I’ve grown up with and always felt safe in.

If it were as simple as logging off and stopping caring I’d do that, but it shouldn’t have to be either/or. I am a shameless champion of the power of the internet for good, and indeed without it, I doubt I’d be here today – I think my mental illness would have won out a long time ago.

There’s no way anyone could know this watching that video, where I talked about liking dogs and Jason Statham films. I don’t think they would have cared anyway – I was a fat girl who’d offered herself up to be pilloried in public. Who cares who I was beneath that?

Fair enough – it’s 2017. Who’s got time to run a background check before they fire off their creative insult about someone’s weight or appearance? Why hide behind a pseudonym or avatar when you can receive instant gratification in the form of others’ ‘Likes’ on your comment?

We live in a culture that fosters contempt. At a point in time when everyone could and should strive to be a little kinder, the venom that was once reserved for anonymous trolls has become norm. We look at the medieval stocks as cruel and unusual punishment, but deriding strangers online? Why, that’s just good sport.