Whitney Way Thore is opening up about the impact online bullying had on her during “one of the worst times of [her] entire life.” Ahead of Tuesday’s premiere of Season 12 of My Big Fat Fabulous Life, the TLC star, 40, told PopCulture.com that she was “almost suicidal” after being harassed online last season.
“The online hate, which I’ve dealt with for a decade now, just really took a turn,” Thore shared. “It was the worst it’s ever been, and it was a lot focused on my family.” Thore admits that even after previous cyberbullying experiences, she was shocked that the December 2022 death of her mother, Barbara “Babs” Thore, intensified the hate coming her way.
“That shocked me, and almost nothing shocks me. I read the most deplorable things about myself on a daily basis. So, that was really difficult,” Thore said of comments she received about her and her mother. And while the reality personality knew the comments had no basis in her real life, it didn’t make them less hurtful.
“I’ve never questioned whether what a random stranger on the internet says about my personal life is true. Luckily, I’ve still got my feet on the ground enough to know that. I know what my real life is,” Thore told PopCulture. “But I will say that people always tell you to just ignore [the comments], and I don’t think that’s possible, and I don’t think you should.”
“I don’t think you should ignore those kinds of horrific things, because it does matter. Words matter,” she continued. “I mean, I was literally almost suicidal. I’ve dealt with depression since I was 15 and this was the worst I’ve ever felt in my entire life. It’s really scary, actually.”
Going into filming for Season 12, Thore revealed she questioned returning to television at all, “but ultimately, I don’t think that quitting reality TV would really lessen any of that for me.” She explained, “I mean, the internet is forever. TV is forever. It’s out there, so I’m going to stick with it.”
Seeing the way that leaving hateful comments on the internet is being “normalized in our society” is disturbing to Thore, who told PopCulture. “I just wish that I was more naive about the general public. I just wish I didn’t know how s—ty people are.” And while the TLC star doesn’t have an answer as to how to end online bullying, she does want to change the concentration from victim to perpetrator.
“I think the onus really should be less on how do we deal with it and more on how do we regulate it? How do we hold people accountable for this?” she shared. “Because if you think about in real life, if somebody harassed you to your face the way they do online, it would be illegal. It would be harassment, literally. You could get a restraining order. … I don’t think people need to understand how to cope with it, I think we need to understand how to stop it.”
