Online Hate Trains: A Lesson In Internalised Misogyny (2024)

I am a chronically online person, over-aware of trends, micro-celebrities and in turn, hate trains. Hate trains are a recurring theme of the social media app, TikTok. Its easy ability for algorithms to be built and videos to go viral, means that users get stuck in echo chambers of hatred. Almost every hate train that has taken place on TikTok has been targeted at a woman and often excludes the man in the narrative or even praises them, for doing very little.

Despite the Me-Too movement encouraging women to speak up about the misogyny, abuse or ill-treatment that they had experienced, it is painfully difficult for women to exist in this political climate.

In small corners of the internet, female micro-celebrities, and more established celebrities, are villainised and ripped apart in ways a man would never be. Old interviews and out-of-context clips get millions of views with no regulator to provide the context and give an unbiased view. So today I want to explore this topic and attempt to provide an overview and explanation.

I’m not trying to act above this internalised misogyny, in fact, I am writing this to address my own. I know I have spoken badly about other women and have probably been outwardly misogynistic against them. I have, like every woman, been brought up with the male gaze sewn into my own psyche. As I attempt to unlearn these habits and internalised thoughts, I want to address them head-on.

Recently I listened to ‘Shameless’, one of my favourite podcasts, and their segment on the hate train that has been created against actress Blake Lively. At first, I was frustrated at how they were ‘making excuses’ for her and weren’t also angry at her like the rest of the internet. It hadn’t taken long for me to jump on this train and go into long rants to my family about how out of touch she and her husband (Ryan Reynolds) were. However, they very clearly broke down each part of the hate and press tour that had been causing a commotion online with a reasonable and unbiased view.

In summary, Blake Lively signed on to star and produce on the film ‘It Ends With Us’ back in 2023. It was already a polarising casting choice, since she is a lot older than her character Lily is written in the original book. The book itself is also polarising, it is both loved and hated across the internet, as is it’s author Colleen Hoover. She has her own controversies, but if you want more on that I would recommend listening to the Shameless episode.

Before the PR mess began, people were already standing ready with their pitchforks.

As soon as press clips began to circulate, it was the beginning of the end for Blake Lively. It Ends With Us released a week after Deadpool and Wolverine, the film starring Blake and Ryan. The back to back release seemed to be intentional (It Ends With Us had been pushed back twice to get the August release date) so the Hollywood couple could capitalise on their relationship. It was an attempt at last summers Barbenheimer, but did not land the same.

Old interviews of Blake being snarky to an interviewer and her using a transgender slur were brought back up during these past few weeks. I of course disagree and condemn her behaviour and choice of words in these interviews. However, does everyone really care that she was snarky to an interviewer during a long press tour whilst pregnant? Have any of us ever cared when a man was snarky during an interview, one who doesn’t get the excuse of pregnancy hormones?

*Spoilers for It Ends With Us*

The original book, which It Ends With Us is based on, follows a young woman Lily, who falls in love with a successful neurosurgeon Ryle. Over the course of the book, as the reader falls in love with Ryle just as Lily does, we find out that he is abusive. The book also covers intergenerational abuse, since Lily’s father abuses her mother. It is a book with very heavy content but many who have experienced these issues in their real life, have found it important and praised Colleen Hoover who has also experienced abuse herself.

As the press tour began, these topics didn’t seem to be at the forefront of conversations. Instead, it seemed to be the costumes and soundtrack, both of which Blake was heavily involved with. Whilst this is wrong and many of Blakes clips are beyond millennial and cringe, the sudden intense hatred that came from the internet didn’t seem authentic. Everyone jumped on the hate train and ripped her apart, whilst uplifting her costar and director Justin Baldoni.

Baldoni has curated an online presence which pushes men being feminists. He has done a famous Ted Talk named ‘Why I’m done being man enough’ and has a loyal following online. Despite him never declaring a ‘feud’ between him and Blake, reports from the media fuelled this. Before the film was even out the internet was divided- Team Justin or Team Blake.

Justin’s ‘side’ felt that he had been the only one in the cast putting DV awareness at the forefront of his answers. In a way yes, he has been vocal. However, after breaking out of the echo chamber of clips on TikTok, I found that much of the cast, including Blake, had been discussing DV also.

After listening to the Shameless podcast, I felt like the wool had been removed from my eyes. I had been blindly hating on Blake and praising Justin and as usual in these hate trains, fuelling the misogyny in us all. Blake’s answers were bad, the PR was bad, but was it worth tearing her down and uplifting Justin? Especially after Justin has hired the PR crisis manager who worked with Johnny Depp during his own Domestic Violence trials? Slightly hypocritical.

Overall this situation was a mess but I watched the film twice and actually really enjoyed it. I found that Blake and Justin and the rest of the cast played the characters I had read perfectly and it was exactly how I pictured it. I wonder if the PR mess had never happened, if the Lettterboxd reviews would be so harsh…

Anyway, this obviously isn’t the only hate train of its kind. Currently, two New York City based influencers are having an online squabble over one going on a date with the others ex. TikTok is full of viral sounds, some declaring their hate for Sophia La Corte using the sound ‘I hate that little ginger bitch’ or reminding Halley Kate how much her boyfriend hates her. No one is addressing the fact that the man in question went on a date with Sophia days after dumping Halley and played both the women. As usual, the hate trains ignore the man and whip up girl on girl hate.

A recent Substack post I read by Eliza McLamb, explored the niche corners of Sub Reddits snark pages. They are pages dedicated to fuelling hate and evening building a community from it, “The snark page is dedicated to a woman, or multiple women. It’s always about women, even when it’s about men. Go ahead and look at the top posts on r/TimotheeChalametSnark — they’re all about Kylie…There are pages dedicated to women with any amount of followers, not just the big-fish pariahs that know better than to search their name online.”

These snark pages show us, how desperate we are to let out our innate hatred, jealousy and misogyny. Overall the snark pages are their own kettle of fish, which Eliza explains, but one quote really stood out to me, “They needed her to be simultaneously pathetic and all-powerful. They need her to be so bad they can be righteous.”

Online hate trains give so much power to the women they are hating. In the same breath they are both out of touch, evil, self centered, pathetic, egotistical losers. The comments under Sophia La Cortes posts range from evil, to delusional, to iconic, to unbothered. People believe she is dragging out the drama, but they keep coming back for more.

Like Eliza explains in her post, “I also think that caring about these things has become a convenient cover for regular, natural cruelty. We have to pretend that we are not jealous or resentful or even hateful for no good reason. We have to pretend that we are not human beings, stuck in the late-stage capitalist push to objectify and sell ourselves and be more perfect, more skinny, more rich, and it’s making us all crazy.”

A few years ago, the internet was deep in a ‘feud’ between actress and singer Selena Gomez and model Hailey Bieber. Selena was in a long term relationship with singer Justin Bieber, who Hailey is now married to. Fans cannot rest with hating either woman, even when they have both told people to stop. Every week a thread on X goes viral, rehashing anything bad either woman has ever done. Justin is conveniently always silent in these conversations, and never held accountable for dating them both within a short time frame.

The same could be said about singers Shawn Mendes, Camilla Cabello and Sabrina Carpenter. They have all been thrown into a love triangle due to both of the women releasing music that seems to have overlapped and suggests they both dated Shawn within a short space of time. Both the women’s fan bases have begun to hate on the other, again, Shawn is nowhere to be seen.

These online hate trains are fuelled by our pent up rage and natural jealousy. Sophia won’t back down to the cruel comments, so they keep coming. The internet won’t stop until they see someone disappear, or breakdown and admit defeat.

Arguably the worst case of ‘the hate train’ was during the defamation case between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard. I was completely sucked into this and was again blinded by the echo chamber of misogyny and online hate. This is still a tricky subject to address since not enough time has passed for people to understand the serious damage that court case did to women’s rights and the overall Me Too Movement, but please bare with me.

In a Guardian article named ‘The Amber Heard-Johnny Depp trial was an orgy of misogyny’, Moira Donegan wrote, “In text messages to friends, Johnny Depp fantasized about murdering his then-wife, the actress Amber Heard. “I will f*ck her burnt corpse afterwards to make sure she’s dead,” Depp wrote. In other texts, he disparaged his wife’s body in luridly misogynist terms. “Mushy pointless dangling overused floppy fish market,” he called her…Over the past six weeks, as the trial was live-streamed online, many of those who have tuned in to watch have treated Heard with the same contempt that Depp did in his texts. A broad consensus has emerged online that Heard must be lying about her abuse.”

I remember so clearly, it is like it was yesterday, how easy the internet and TikTok brushed off these text messages. There are hundreds more and all easily accessible, but they were ignored and deemed ‘jokes between friends’. Many between Depp and actor friend Paul Bettany and to singer Marilyn Manson, who too has been accused of assault and grooming.

The internet deemed Amber Heard a liar and suddenly all bets were off. As Moira explained, “In the service of this myth, any cruelty can be justified.”

I am deeply deeply ashamed for the way I believed this and how easily I was convinced the woman, recounting the alleged brutal rape and abuse she experienced, was a liar. That of course, since she was an actress (but apparently a bad one), she was lying through her ‘fake tears’. I cheered when she was told she had defamed Depp and was to pay him $15 million in damages (later reduced by the judge to $10.35m).

Many people during this time, and still now, believe that the case was an abuse case. They believe that this was a guilty and non guilty verdict for abuse. In the swirl of hate, there was no one there to ask…'Does anyone actually know what this is all about?’

In 2020, Depp sued The Sun over them naming him a ‘Wife Beater’ in their paper. A British Court heard the evidence and testimonies, one given by Amber as a witness, and believed what The Sun said to be ‘substantially true’. The trial found that Depp had physically abused Heard on at least 12 occasions. Johnny Depp was a wife beater.

However, once Depp sued Heard in the United States and the trial could be televised, things changed. Testimonies were clipped, lawyers were idolised and praised for their cruel tactics and manipulation and a misogynistic hate train was created.

“When Heard took the stand, she became emotional as she recounted how Depp allegedly hit her, manipulated and controlled her, surveilled her and sexually assaulted her. Afterwards, ordinary people, along with a few celebrities and even brands like Duolingo and Milani, took to social media to mock or undermine Heard. They took screenshots of her weeping face and made it a meme. Many performed mocking re-enactments of her testimony, lip-syncing along as she recounted the alleged abuse. The audio of her crying became a TikTok trend.”

The unregulated corners of the internet (X, TikTok and Reddit), where anonymous bots can push misogyny, are extremely detrimental. This is not only to women, who are able to find a place to express and quantify their internalised misogyny, but even more so to men.

We are already experiencing an epidemic of misogynistic incels, bred by people like Andrew Tate. But these hate trains fuel the already misogynistic mindsets of men.

This is still a simplified explanation of Internalised Misogyny, but I think it is very relevant and is something we should all question within ourselves. We all live in a patriarchal society, built on misogyny and hatred of women, so it isn’t that unlikely that we have this mindset built in.

It is more important than ever to learn to have nuanced conversations, and leave room for mistakes, explanation and growth. I’m not sure how this post will land with everyone, but I hope it makes you question how you have moved around these examples of misogynistic hate trains. Have you participated, have you let them fester inside you?

It is never too late to address your own internalised and maybe outward misogyny. It is never too late to grow.