[dropcap]O[/dropcap]ver the last several weeks, in the United States and in Britain, a disturbing number of celebrities have reportedly taken their own lives just when it seemed they had everything going for them. Just three weeks ago in the UK, Sophie Gradon hanged herself at her parents’ home in Newcastle. In 2016 she had been on the highly successful sex-oriented reality-TV show Love Island. It has now emerged that she had depression-related issues at the time she joined the show. The popularity she gained as part of the cast seemed to be, if only for a time, just what the doctor ordered. According to people close to her, Sophie could not handle the relative obscurity that followed her departure from Love Island. The passing of a very close friend only made things worse.
Four days following her funeral last week, her boyfriend Aaron also committed suicide. According to UK press reports, he had tried to take his own life four years earlier. Moreover, that Internet trolls had contributed to both suicides. Throughout Sophie’s stint on Love Island, they had made her life a living hell, calling her ugly and useless and immoral. The trolls were relentless, even when the young woman was no longer on the show.
Instagram messages from her boyfriend signaled his own demise. In the hours before he hanged himself the young boxer from Northumberland was taking on bullying Instagram trolls, one of whom accused him of desperately courting attention and seeking to cash in on his association with his deceased girlfriend. In one instance, Aaron fired back: “It’s scumbags like you who drive people to suicide.” He also posted this message just days before his death, obviously referencing his departed 32-year-old girlfriend: “I will never stop loving you and my heart will be yours until the day I join you. I will see you very soon, my angel.”
In TV interviews she gave after leaving Love Island, and on social media, Sophia described having “sold my soul to reality TV” and the terrible anguish afterwards, exacerbated by online abuse. Citing her torment, she told one reporter: “The harsh reality is it can end with a person taking their own life.”
According to one mental health expert and contributor to a popular UK magazine: “Contestants on talent and reality shows sometimes seem naïve and mentally vulnerable, especially when it comes to coping with instant fame.” There was Susan Boyle who, despite having learning disabilities, appeared on “Britain’s Got Talent” in 2009 and became an overnight singing star. What is not generally known is that just days after winning the BGT final she suffered a breakdown and was admitted to a psychiatric clinic.
As far as is known, no suicide in Saint Lucia has been attributed to the rigors associated with being a Carnival Queen Pageant contender. Or with being a contestant in a bitch-bites-bitch Miss World or Miss Universe event. But it can’t be easy jumping from behind a Massy check-out counter or some government department desk onto a lit-up stage somewhere in Europe, the United States, China or Japan.
Imagine face-offs with far more experienced contestants who’ve been preparing all their lives for an event, most of them generously sponsored by world-famous names in the fields of cosmetics, swimwear, women’s footwear, dentistry and formal wear. That is what awaits our candidates, some with just one pageant under their belts, never having stood—let alone performed—before an audience of more than 300 people, mainly friends and relatives.
Miss St Lucia-World is expected by the folks at home to exude movie-star self-confidence while competing overseas, no matter that in her Gregory Lorde creation she feels more like Cinderella at the moment that fabled clock struck midnight.
Imagine yourself in high-jumper Levern Spencer’s shoes as she starts the run she hopes will end with her soaring with the grace of an egret over the bar. She knows millions of foreign eyes are upon her but what she actually feels is the heat emanating from the relative few eyeballs on the faraway rock that is her homeland. Regardless of how well she may have performed on her previous two or three outings, all of that will be instantly forgotten should she fail to rise to the particular occasion—for whatever unavoidable reason.
Yes, so consider the killing stress our star high-jumper must endure before and during every meet. Picture yourself as Levern Spencer, a Carnival Queen contestant or a Miss World fantasist fallen short of the local expectation. Imagine the social media comments from know-alls who know not that they know shit! Perhaps now you begin to understand why so many desperate young people, all of them permanent Internet residents, eventually decide there is only one way out of their troll-besieged world.
We can only conjecture about the shocking suicides reported right here in Saint Lucia, without official comment. Do we have any idea how a vulnerable young woman or man might feel after their sicko former BFF has threatened to share with the whole wide world what was meant to be between two individuals who cared about each other? Blackmail, whether merely threatened or carried out, is among the most dangerous of serial killers.
Of course, not all victims of blackmail and character assassination—chief among the assassins being the earlier cited anonymous Internet trolls—commit suicide. Some simply become other than they had been before the trolls took their lives away from them. Some inexplicably turn on themselves and on innocent others. Some become withdrawn, hateful, having taken permanent residence under an impenetrable cloud of depression . . . with only one way out.
I am reminded of a recent Whatsapp exchange with a man I’ve never met. We’ve been texting each other for over a year now, usually about what he refers to as “affairs of state.” I hesitate to call him a friend, even though by today’s standards he qualifies. For me, friendship demands one face-to-face encounter, at the very least. In our last convo he expressed touching sadness over what he considered “more evidence that the local malaway will never amount to anything in this country, regardless of which party is in office. He has to leave Saint Lucia to get somewhere.”
His tale of woe went something like this: A CXE student in Trinidad had done well at math and the appreciative authorities over there had made “a real big thing of that.” Meanwhile, in Saint Lucia there was this young girl from Saltibus who had scored 100% in math.
“I understand she was not the only one on the island to score as high,” said my Whatsapp friend via VN (voice note), “but why didn’t the Saint Lucia government say something about her achievement? Is it because she comes from a rural community?”
I had no useful response to his final question. Not that it mattered. He’d already manufactured his own. “If she was from some school in Castries,” he went on, “you’d have heard all about it. She would’ve been on TV, they would have everything nice to say about her and her school.”
I couldn’t argue with that but I had a question of my own: “Why would it matter to the government which school produced the year’s best math student? I imagine the government would brag about the quality of education it provides, regardless.”
His response: “Lol. That’s true.”
He had another question: “I was told that for a cricketer to make it to the West Indies side he must first attend the cricket academy in the north of the island. This kind of discrimination is what’s holding back our country.”
My response: “Have you verified that story about the cricketers?” He had not, he admitted, “but now that you mention it I will check,”
“Good idea,” I said.
He returned to his starting point: “I know the parents of the young Saltibus student. I know them well. They are nice hard-working people. Just because they come from a rural area . . .”
“You’re doing it again,” I pointed out, “getting all emotional about things you’ve not bothered to verify. Is it just possible there are workers at the education ministry who can’t be bothered to carry out instructions? What’s stopping the parents from publicizing their daughter’s achievement? They can call the TV stations, they can call a reporter. Have they done that?”
“Lol. You have a point there, true. I will ask them.”
I pounced again, this time with vicious intent: “Are you telling me you know them well, that you are concerned about their daughter but you’ve not bothered even to find out whether the Saltibus couple want the publicity you say their child has been denied?”
His reaction: “Lool. You have a point there, true. What more can I say?”
Half an hour later he texted again: “You know, if I was the prime minister of this country, first thing I would do is borrow the money to pay the public servants off and send all of them home, even if I bankrupt the country.” I didn’t have the heart to tell him Saint Lucia had long been, and will remain bankrupt for the foreseeable future. Instead, I responded with a one-word text message: “Lol.”
There you have it folks, the anatomy of fake news. It could’ve been worse, however. My Whatsapp, er, correspondent, might’ve called Newsspin. Or What Makes Me Sad. Or that other show famous for helping the helpless. Next thing you know, some organization would be babbling all over the airwaves about race and victimization and nepotism and meetings with the prime minister canceled at the last minute. In the melee the doubtless proud parents of a Saltibus math whizz would, willingly or otherwise, be undergoing a red or yellow make-over.
The Fakebookers, armed to the teeth with mindless memes and clips egregiously edited, would soon be putting new faces on the pretend issue. For the trolls, it would be open season on the presumed most vulnerable at the education and sports ministries, special attention reserved for Allen Chastanet. Before you know it, the whole mess would’ve metamorphosed into altogether unsubstantiated stories about who slept with whom, on how many occasions, under whose house . . . Was there ever a more exciting time for snakes in the bush? By the way, a troll is defined as “a mythical, cave-dwelling being depicted in folklore as either a giant or a dwarf, typically having a very ugly appearance.” These being the days of miracles and wonder, it is conceivable that trolls now inhabit their caves only when there’s nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. At any rate, so I read on the Internet!
