There is no denying that bullying is rampant nowadays and social media is a place where we can see a lot of people attacking one another for no apparent reason.
Melissa Blake, a freelance journalist, and a disability blogger is a victim of online bullying. After sharing a blog post she’d written about Donald Trump, people are quick to comment not on her article but on her appearance.
Melissa has what we called, Freeman-Sheldon syndrome – it is a condition where it affects muscles of the face and skull but frequently involves problems with the joints of the hands and feet. Because of that, she was mocked because of her appearance.
Online trolls are saying that she looked like a ‘blob fish’, a ‘whale’, a ‘parade balloon’, and a ‘potato with a face’ amongst other things. But what hurts her the most was when one commenter said that she should be banned from posting a photo of herself online because she was too ugly to do selfies.
What Melissa did afterward is truly remarkable. She decided she would not let the trolls get the better of her so she went on to Twitter and posted 3 photos of herself with a caption:
“During the last round of trollgate, people said that I should be banned from posting photos of myself because I’m too ugly. So I’d just like to commemorate the occasion with these 3 selfies …”
That tweet went viral with over 256,000 likes and was retweeted 22,000 times. Melissa’s following on Instagram went up from 7,500 to 100,000 in an instant.
She used her platform to educate people that her disability is not getting in her way of living her life to the fullest.