After writing a light-hearted post about how I didn’t get The Simpsons, I received death and rape threats. Tracking down the people who abused me turned out to be unexpectedly emotional.
Eighteen months ago, I had a really boring conversation with my boyfriend. "I've never watched The Simpsons," I said. "No way!" he replied. "Let's watch a few episodes together this weekend." "Yeah, OK," I said. "Maybe I'll write about it for BuzzFeed."
So, the following week, I did. I wrote a piece called "18 Questions I Asked Myself When I Watched The Simpsons For The First Time". This was one month into working at BuzzFeed, my first ever job. I was 23. It wasn't a groundbreaking piece of journalism. It was a list of questions. Things like, "Why is everyone yellow?" Take-it-or-leave-it kind of stuff.
Or so I thought.
Within hours of hitting publish, hundreds of people were commenting, tweeting, emailing, and Facebook messaging me.
"Your existence upsets me."
"Kill yourself."
"I would literally pay your boyfriend to rape you, you fucking whore."
And so it continued. Five months after its publication, a Californian man who writes online educational material for university students messaged me saying I was the dumbest person he'd ever read anything by. After another five months, a fashion blogger from London tweeted a #TBT link saying it was the worst thing she'd ever read. Even now, 18 months later, I receive occasional rape and death threats.
Sian Butcher / BuzzFeed
The people who spoke out about my piece fall into three camps: People who score Twitter points by directing their followers to articles they didn't enjoy, people who score commenter points by writing unimaginably cruel messages, and people who score god knows what by privately messaging me. All three have made me cry.
Over the last few weeks, I individually messaged 64 of the people who sent me nasty messages, both public and private. Fifteen replied. Some of them said sorry. Some didn't. One woman who had called my article the "dumbest fucking thing I've read in a long time" got really mad.
"If you're coming back with another article and trying to play the victim now, that's really sad," she replied via Facebook message. "Why would I talk to you on the phone? The stink you are making over this article makes me think you're just desperate for attention. Let it go. Everyone's already forgotten about you. I know I had before you sent this ridiculous message."
I Facebook stalked her. She's a mum.
A lot of the comments said I was stupid, but an equal number said I didn't deserve to have a boyfriend.
"How do you have a boyfriend?"
"Hopefully your boyfriend broke up with you after this."
"Your boyfriend really took one for the team. Go be a nun or something."
"No, you're not normal. You're what we in the rest of the world call an 'idiot'. Let me in on a little secret. You ready? You don't have a boyfriend. That's a caretaker provided by the state to ensure you don't choke to death trying to swallow a doorknob. You don't have friends. You have a circle of acquaintances that laugh at you behind your back. You are not normal, because normal people have thoughts and the ability to reason."
In my messages to these people, I asked why they felt that failing to make astute observations about The Simpsons made me not deserve a boyfriend. One guy – a Leeds uni student – replied saying, "You just don't seem particularly interesting." Another – a self-employed mechanic from America – replied saying, "You gave off the impression that you were even picky about what's on the television, in general, which isn't always good for those who may not share the same interests as you."
Sian Butcher / BuzzFeed
