Twitter Ruined My Life

What happens when one simple mistake leads to hundreds of thousands of people hating you?

There are a few moments in your life when you realise you have screwed things up. Most of the time I can pinpoint them and realise where I went wrong, where I made the mistake. Most of the time, somewhere deep down, you know you’ve done something a bit reckless. But the weird thing about this story, is that I had no idea I had made a mistake until I was so deep into it there was no way to leave. It’s funny how such a normal mistake can alter the direction of your whole life. 

I adore rugby and being english it is one of the few sports that our country can actually play. It’s the reason I am the sole girls in a pub full of burly men. 8 pints of cider in and the game was drawing to a close, only for New Zealand to be given a free kick out of nowhere. It was completely pandering from the referee and everyone in our local pub were furious, myself included. We were all way over the limit and decided to rant about it on the way home, merely fuelling the flames of our anger. 

I got home just after 11pm, thankfully it was a Friday night so I did not have to get up the next day for the kids at school. I’m a nursery teacher, not long out of school myself! It’s a fantastic job, but there is nothing worse than walking in with a hangover to 26 screaming toddlers. 

I got stripped and into bed, head still spinning. As with every night, I do my routine scan of social media before I go to bed. I can see all the guys from the pub venting their anger on Twitter, already in heated drunken debates with their Kiwi friends. I’m definitely team England so I need to get involved with this. The best way to do so is get in on one of the lads conversations. I typed “God, I hate the All Blacks players. Given every opportunity to be successful. #getthereonmerit”. The hashtag was extremely difficult to do when the whole room was spinning. Before I knew I could take a second look I was out like a light. 

I woke up to my phone ringing sometime after 10am. “Hello, is this Stacey MacLeish?” said an overly sweet voice on the other end. I tried to get my head together and realise where I was, never mind who I was. 

“Yes, this is she. Can I help you?” 

“Well miss MacLeish, I was wondering if you would be free for an interview later on today. I understand all of this is quite overwhelming but the quicker you get on top of it the better.” 

I was completely confused. Phoning someone up early on a Saturday morning for a job interview was a new one from the recruiters. “I’m sorry but I have a job. I’m really grateful for the call though.” 

“Oh. Eh, sorry dear but I’m not offering you a job. I am from the Channel 4 news and we want to put your side of the story on our website.” 

“Side of what story? What do you mean?” 

“Well… Your comment on Twitter last night has gotten quite a lot of attention. Don’t you know this Stacey?” I had no clue what this woman was on about. I tried to rack my brain as quickly as I possibly could to understand what I had said, had I been that rude about rugby? “What? Do you mean my comment about the rugby? Surely you can’t care all that much about that?” Clearly a slow news day on Saturdays. 

“Rugby? No Stacey. The comment I am referring to is the tweet from last night. I’m calling to understand why you felt the need to write such blatant racial comments. Surely a girl of your age doesn’t think it’s appropriate to say you hate all black people?” 

The moment she said racial I was nearly sick. Had I been hacked? Was this a practical joke from one of the guys? I know I had a few Kiwi friends that would’ve loved to wind me up at this time. “I’m sorry madam, but I don’t know what you are talking about. But I have plans today and really don’t have the time for this.” I mustered up enough courage to say. 

“Stacey, I’m sorry but denying this isn’t going to work. We’ve had a few stories like this and you need to come forward quickly. If you change your mind please give me a call back on this number.” Again the voice seemed sickly sweet and only the right amount of judgement. 

I hung up the phone and sat for a second to wonder what on earth was going on. It was then I looked at my phone, notification after notification from Twitter, text, email. Ok, so this wasn’t just a practical joke anymore. I quickly went onto Twitter to see what all this was about. I disregarded the messages that I had received and looked at my profile of comments. I had to hold back the tears when I saw what I had written. There it was my drunken typo changed from rugby anger to vile racial hatred. “God, I hate all black people. They are given every opportunity to be successful. #getthereonmerit.” It wasn’t even in the conversation I was trying to write in, I had stupidly just posted it straight to my 398 followers. The message had been retweeted 12,987 times and had over 4000 replies to it. I couldn’t bring myself to reading them, I could already see some of the hatred I was receiving. 

I spent the next 6 hours calling my mum and reading over the messages I had received. I had deleted the comment, but it didn’t stop the abuse. I tried deleting my Twitter but still kept receiving messages on everything from Facebook to Snapchat. I repeated the same story every time my friends text or called, it was an accident pure and simple. They had to believe me! I was complaining about New Zealand, not black people! But there is absolutely no way to make yourself sound less racist after a message like this. Even some of my friends didn’t sound convinced, or maybe wanted to distance themselves from the toxicity that was my life. 

It was around 6pm I just sort of broke down, no one was really believing what I was saying and the abuse was getting more and more online. I had now deleted all of my social media accounts, years of pictures and memories lost due one single typo. How was I going to get myself out of this? I was a villain to hundreds of thousands of people throughout the world for nothing. Absolutely nothing. Yet the fear and ever present panic wasn’t going away. I spent the rest of that night alone, ignoring messages from friends and family alike. I didn’t move from my bed until 2am when I heard an almighty smash coming from downstairs. 

1 Week Later

I was just leaving the Channel 4 studios after finally having the courage to give my side of this story. I don’t think the reporter believed a single word I said about how it had happened, constantly asking “Well deep down you must have these views if that’s what you said?”. I tried to explain to him that as sorry as I was, right now I was the victim of abuse and hatred. I was now living with my Mum as every window in the bottom floor of my house had a brick thrown through it, starting with my kitchen window on the very first night. 

The panic and fear was still there but there isn’t much to panic about when all of your worst fears have come true. Everything I was afraid of happening had happened. I was fired from my job, although our Head of School did seem to take pity on me just a little bit. Bar my close friends and my family he’s been the only one who actually believed me. Yet still the image of me is controversial that parents were threatening to take their kids out of school if I was there. It’s heartbreaking, and that isn’t an exaggeration me losing my job broke my heart, but I understand why he did it. 

I’m in a weird place where the initial panic and drama has subsided but I’m now just left with a wrecked life. It’s weird because when you hear people say their life was in tatters you always think there is a bit of exaggeration there. As if to say, “Oh come on, things can never be that bad”. But right now it feels like a bomb has gone off and destroyed everything around me, I have no clue where to go or what to do. There is something truly terrifying about being so hopeless and not seeing a way to get out of this. 

I’ve thought about just jumping off a bridge and be done with it. Maybe someone would see things from my side eventually. I couldn’t do that to my mum, she deserves more. She can’t be the mother of a racist and have to arrange her funeral as well. 

3 Month Later 

Things were finally starting to calm down, I had still not managed to move back into my flat however. But it was official, I was yesterdays news. It was so very strange, at the same time that it wasn’t a big deal anymore, if someone found out who I was that anger came back in a flash. I had thought about changing my name, even getting plastic surgery. The saddest part was I was getting offers for celebrity shows and talks shows, people in news and media throwing thousands at me to be a “z lists celebrity”. That was the most disgusting and degrading part of the whole experience. I make a mistake, a genuine and honest mistake, and I am now hated and offered insane money to be that villain for life. I still had enough morals to say no and keep quiet. 

I’ve been trying to get my life back to normal, although job interviews are going horrendously bad. If I even get to the interview stage you can see the moment they finally realise who I am. Their eyes change from friendly to suddenly disgusted. It’s amazing to literally watch that happen in front of your own eyes. I want to scream it wasn’t my fault, or I didn’t mean to write that in the slightest.  But it doesn’t matter. As they say the damage is already done. 

I even felt good enough to go on a date, from Tinder as my social circle has almost vanished. I stupidly didn’t mention anything about the tweet, which was my first mistake. There’s something really wonderful about someone you like looking at you as if you are the best thing on this planet, and then once that vile little part of their brain finally clicks and realises who you are it hurts more than 100 job interviews possibly could. 

As much as things were calming down I really felt like I was at my lowest. There is only so much a person can take before they break and I felt like I was at that point. It was as if nothing would ever fully return to normal, which it wouldn’t. But this point was truly the worst. It was like being trapped in a cave, you knew were you came from and how that was bright and full of life. However, there was no way of getting back there. You just had to navigate yourself through the darkness in hopes that it would get better. Always hoping, sometimes pointlessly, that it would get better. 

1 Year Later 

I opened the door to my flat for the first time in close to a year. I had my mum go round a few points since then to clear but any glass or repair any windows that needed fixing. But this was the first time that I had stepped into it. There was something very warm and welcoming about it, it felt like the other end of that cave. For so long I had been terrified of returning here, that crash I had heard on day one had been recurring in my head constantly. I’d had nightmares of that like clockwork. That brick was like an invasion on my privacy, completely shattering any safety I had felt. 

I went round and fixed things up, mum had done a brilliant job of making it look exactly as I had left it. It was my old life, thankfully coming back to me. 

I spent the next few hours making myself back at home, putting my clothes back in the wardrobe and just making my house my home again. There was a sense that this was the start of something. The start of my life going on a different tangent, the abuse had stopped and the media offers were long gone. I even rekindled with a few friends and told them the true story, cue tears and apologies. My life wasn’t the same life it had been, but it was as normal as it would ever get. 

As I stood in the kitchen looking into the blackness of the night, it dawned on me how much that tiny moment in my life had such a massive impact. It nearly ended my entire life. I wasn’t afraid to say that I actually contemplated ending it, more times than I can count. There is something about being in that black cave of depression that you just don’t think you will ever manage to get out. The easy way is to just end all that pain, but sitting here now in my own home it really felt like I had made it. I was through the pain and the anger and it was time to finally get the chance to be normal again. 

The phone went and I nearly jumped out of my skin. It must be mum as not many people knew I was back in this house. “Hello…” I asked. There was no answer on the other end, although it sounded like someone was calling from somewhere outside. I could hear the wind quite clearly. I said hello again and the line went dead. I thought nothing more of it and went back to the sink to clean up. 

I raised my head and looked out into the blackness in the garden and almost intuitively winced at the sight of something coming hurling towards the window. The brick came smashing straight through the window and crashed into my face just above my left eye, with glass covering my face milliseconds afterwards. I flew to the ground. All I felt was wetness just streaming from my face and my whole consciousness was dwindling away. I wasn’t sure if this was the end or not, it certainly felt like it. All that went through my head before I finally slipped out of consciousness was how sorry I was and how it would never ever be enough. 

Author's Note

I am still trying to get used to the actual formal aspects of writing, so there may be issues there. Any and all feedback, the more critical the better, welcome.