I don’t know much about Caroline Flack. I don’t watch Love Island and I haven’t been aware of much of the fall out of recent events. This weekend’s tragic events are no less affecting despite my lack of knowledge. I’m not going to pretend I know all the ins and outs of what led to this young woman taking her own life, but I’ve read enough to know that there were probably several contributing factors.
Kind of hypocritical as I’m sharing this via social media, but a combination of vile red tops creating exaggerated salacious press stories combined with vicious trolling via several social media outlets surely would have had an impact on her state of mind. It would impact the best of us.
As I say, I don’t want to go into her situation in too much detail. I’m don’t know her and I, like the various news outlets who relate their tales to sell papers, don’t know enough about what goes on privately to comment.
What it does raise (again) is the fact that mental health is something that can impact everyone, no matter your status or public profile, and that we are all guilty in some way of feeding the media machine via the many sources of information and uncensored and uninhibited ways at our fingertips that can allow any keyboard warrior to share their opinions and thoughts, regardless of how unacceptable or downright vile that may be.
The worst of celebrity culture is at a peak. You don’t need to be a time served star of stage and screen these days to be classed as a celebrity, you don’t even need, as Andy Warhol once stated, your 15 minutes of fame to be someone who can be the target of abuse through the media – both printed, online and social.
We have probably all been guilty of oiling the machine at some point. We click on a clickbait story. We make a comment about some celebrity or other online. Even debating with online “friends” and making our opinions known.
I know personally how aspects of social media have impacted my own state of mind and mental health, overthinking comments made or received, endlessly internally debating why someone said something or did something, worrying, not sleeping, making myself ill…and that was due to relatively innocuous situations. Imagine how that feels to someone in the public eye who has fragile mental health, dealing with the hideous headlines fabricated to sell newspapers, the online stories complete with trolls’ comments following them, and presumably personal attacks on social media pages.
The problem doesn’t just lie with the media outlets though. The only reason they still sell papers is because there is a demand. There is an element of the problem that lies at the very core of our society. People like to revel in the misery of others, they like to take the focus away from their own tawdry lives and shortcomings. If it means bringing someone else down, then so be it.
It is up to us all as individuals to make a change.
Do you really want to buy that “news”paper and support their abhorrent views and methods?
Should you click on that story online and get drawn in exactly as they want you to?
Should you stop and think before you share that online news story on Facebook.
You’re about to have an online argument with someone, do you know what is going on in their life?
Do you need to make that “comment” on a public post?
Unfortunately, Caroline Flack will not be the last to be hounded in the way she had been, with the tragic circumstances we witnessed. There need to be wider laws controlling press intrusion and monitoring online trolls. The likes of Facebook and Twitter need to have better methods of governance instead of focussing on maximising profit and returns. In the short term though, we can all personally stop and think about our own actions and consider their impacts.