Why it's a bit rubbish having a viral mental health tweet
This newsletter contains talk about suicidal ideation
The thing no one tells you about a viral tweet is it’s actually extremely annoying.
More often than not, it’s the dumbest tweets that get the most attention. I’ve tweeted some really inane stuff which has rendered my app unusable for a few days if it happens to catch the viral spark du jour.
Those are the fun viral moments. If you tweet about something more serious - like mental health - virality can put you in a pressure cooker of anxiety. The last time I had a popular tweet about mental health, right-wing commentator Katie Hopkins set her then-sizeable Twitter following on me, cueing a day or so of aggressive, sometimes violent, replies.
The moral of the story really is never tweet, but I can’t seem to help myself. In the latter months of the pandemic, Twitter has become an addictive compulsion - and not a good one. Without my real life connections, I’ve retreated more and more to lower cap, low effort, jabs on the toxic bird app, like it’s 2016 again.
Such was the case on Monday, when I awoke to a BBC Breaking alert that Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, had opened up about her suicidal thoughts during her worst moments as a working royal. I read some truly unhinged tweets, felt a surge of rage and tweeted off a sentence while still in bed.
I wasn’t going to write about this because it feels weird, like I’m bragging about having a viral tweet off the back of someone’s despair. But I think it would be strange to have a mental health newsletter and not talk about this.
It’s not even the most original thought - I’ve seen variations on the theme a few times over the years. That’s the thing about virality - I’ve meticulously crafted tweets which have died a death with two favs from my group chat. It’s never the thing you put the most thought into. It’s always the missive you sent while still half awake.
Sensibly, I muted it immediately, (top tip if you ever have a viral tweet) so I missed a lot of the gross arguments from people who seem to hate Meghan Markle with such a ferocity, they can’t have much else going on in their lives. It didn’t stop one of them from emailing me to make sure I knew their thoughts, though.
I started getting messages from friends who’d seen it reposted elsewhere - sometimes with my name cropped out, other times still with the angry knife furby in my profile picture staring menacingly from the corner of the screengrab. Someone from Riverdale shared it in their Instagram stories.
Sitting at the same desktop I’ve been stuck at for the last year, watching it spread, I started to feel a bit sick, which puzzled me. My entire job used to revolve around Twitter, after all, this wasn’t something I wasn’t used to. My friends told me to delete the app and step away, but even when I did, it would follow me and drag me back in to the circus all over again.
People on Instagram would slap it on a pretty pastel background for aesthetics, only tagging me when people in the comments would ping my username over. The first video I saw when I logged on to Tiktok that evening was some dude pointing at my tweet, beheaded of my username, looking serious while The Wombats played in the background. One news video quoted it almost verbatim (sans my name but more importantly, without the knifey furby, more’s the pity). Wherever I turn on the internet, it’s there. Again, this is all stuff I’m used to. A viral tweet hits a point where it’s not really yours anymore.
But something kept gnawing at me, seeing a missive I sent from bed being remixed and repurposed across the internet pop up everywhere I looked. Even after I muted the thing, someone would ping me on another tweet or an insta post. My chest has felt tight for the last two days at the thought of even acknowledging it, my palms are sweating right now. Why?
It’s for the same reason it went viral in the first place, for the same reason Meghan Markle felt like she had to talk about this in her interview. Because when Meghan started talking about her darkest moments, I saw my deepest pit of shame reflected in her words. Clearly, millions of people around the world have seen it in themselves too. And perhaps I was shying away from all the viral weirdness because I myself wasn’t ready to publicly put a name to it.
“I share this because there's so many people who are afraid to voice that they need help. And I know personally how hard it is to—not just hard it is but when your voice is silenced, to be told no”
The last year has been horrendous. We’re still dealing with the scale of loss from a pandemic that is far from over. Last summer for me was the most difficult. Isolated alone in my house for that first lockdown, I thought I was doing fine, until things started easing up and something cracked.
What I remember most clearly is lying in bed, not being able to sleep, thinking everyone I knew would just be better off if I wasn’t around. I don’t know how to reconcile those moments with the person I am normally. You need a mental toughness in the ring and it’s hard to admit to those moments while still giving off that facade of a strong and capable fighter. But I don’t think those two parts of me - the fighter and the depressed - are irreconcilable. In fact, I think it takes a certain kind of strength to admit to it.
Meghan and I are not the same - I’ve not married a prince for one and I’ve never had the bigoted British press hounding my every single decision because of the colour of my skin. But what she did on Monday was open a conversation about something so many people have been struggling with. We were already in a mental health crisis before this pandemic. NHS services already couldn’t cope with demand. I’m scared about where we’re going.
Much as I wanted to walk away from that conversation, the tweet kept dragging me in, because what Meghan said touched a nerve after a year of trauma and loss. And what I tweeted half-dazed, half-furious from bed touched a nerve for everyone who, like me, knew what it was like to be in that pit.
And if you feel that way too, The Samaritans are available to talk any time.
I’m still obsessed with Jackie Buntan
On a lighter note, did I not tell you Jackie Buntan v Wondergirl Fairtex would be a fight to watch? It was such a joy to see Buntan reach the world stage with such a masterclass in striking. Please go watch it if you want to see the best of what women’s Muay Thai has to offer.
According to Wondergirl’s Instagram, she broke two bones in her face in the first round. I knew Buntan had crisp hands on her, but sheesh. And for Wondergirl to get up, reportedly seeing double, and still see the fight out til the end, is just a testament to what an incredible athlete she is too.
Buntan’s teammate, One Kickboxing champ Janet Todd, fights Australian Alma Juniku on the event airing on March 19. This should also be a great fight. Both Todd and Juniku have fought the two-sport champ Stamp Fairtex in the past. Todd, of course, lost the Muay Thai match but won the Kickboxing title last year. Juniku gave Stamp a really tough fight when they met but lost narrowly on points. She’ll be chomping at the bit for a win, especially as her last match against Anneline Hogstadt didn’t go her way either.
But Todd’s coach Bryan Popejoy has clearly been doing some excellent work with two of his star fighters, so I wouldn’t count Todd out if I were you…
Support this documentary about women in Muay Thai
Finally, if you’d like to see a documentary about women in Muay Thai, please do consider ordering a pair of Muay Ying shorts. Money from the sales of the shorts will go towards a project documenting women in Muay Thai. As I’ve said before, we’re in a real golden age for women’s Muay Thai. This is a great opportunity for that to be immortalised in a documentary.