Tit for Tattle

Wow, when did we all get so mean? I was quite taken aback this week whilst reading an article about Tattle Life, the gossip forum whose founder/operator has been exposed after losing a defamation case. Many stories of individuals who have been trolled on this site and beyond for doing absolutely nothing wrong other than putting themselves on a social platform or just for existing in the public eye.

I appreciate that judgy and jealous thoughts must go back since the beginning of time. Which got me thinking about Adam and Eve, did they judge each other? It seems so after The Fall (& the whole eating the forbidden fruit debacle) Adam seems to blame Eve: “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit…” and then Eve appears to blame the serpent. So reading between the lines it all got a bit judgy pretty quickly.

So yes we all know we are judged, woman particularly. Judged if we marry, judged if we don’t, judged if we have children judged if we don’t, judged if we work and judged if we don’t - you get my drift. It could be a long post. But it’s one thing to be judged in silence and quite another to be judged and criticised in such a public way with such nastiness and often complete lies. It seems altogether rather tragic and a complete waste of time on this earth if you ask me. Which of course nobody has.

Is it me or does there seem to be no filter on anyone anymore? If you don’t like someone walk away, don’t make friends with them and definitely don’t invite them to a dinner party to eat a prawn cocktail with you. But more than that don’t visit a website and spend precious time coming up with a steady stream of bile and bitterness at people you barely know.

Turning 50 was annoying but I also feel grateful that I was born in an era where carving into the school desk or wall was where most hate was directed.

When you start your own business everybody asks ‘which social platforms will you be on?’, ‘how much of yourself will you put out there’ (I had to initially check the meaning of that one) and everybody tells you ‘customers want to hear and see the founder’ aka the idiot who has given up their safety net of a PAYE job and hopes to pay the mortgage through marketing all the pretty parts of their business via an app called Instagram’. What can possibly go wrong I thought. I still appear surprised when a customer asks if I have had a nice time with the family in Copenhagen or wherever I went and wonder how they know and then quickly realise because I plastered it all over the internet.. Fortunately for me Hugo the Wire Fox gains way more traction than I would ever get putting my middle aged mortified face on the internet so there really is very little point in me showing up in that way. But for Beverly’s re-fashioned shirts I’m prepared to do it.

When asked recently to run a Botanical Tile workshop for some Interior influencers I really didn’t know what to expect. To be honest I’m still traumatised from a workshop I ran for a surprise 50th and I could immediately tell the birthday girl would have preferred a Butler in the Buff than my attempt at teaching her how to make a wreath (and not even at Christmas) (wreaths are not just for Christmas don’t you know) or the time of the Hen Do when we (the bridesmaids, mother of the bride and future mother-in-law) all attempted to make a giant wreath for the wedding day which entailed each person making bunches and then passing them to quality control (me) where I placed and wired them on to the wreath base. By the second bottle of prosecco quality control was having to redo every bunch. I reckon I made 200 bunches that day….and probably for £40…

Anyway I digress from the original topic.

The Botanical Tile session for the group of interior influencers was to be held in a sofa showroom in upmarket Chelsea during Chelsea flower show. I think the thing that was keeping me awake at night before the event was whether they had been told what they would be doing on the day. Queue, the 50th surprise wreath making memory from a brain that keeps hitting replay when you least expect or want it. But this is also where a wealth of HR experience comes in handy when meeting new people for the first time and also having Beverly in tow helping me organise my mind.

Well what a lovely bunch of women (and one man) they were. So inclusive, friendly and enthusiastic about me handing them a lump of clay to bash around with no guarantee of the end result. Lisa Dawson was particularly lovely and I was able to thank her for including a product of mine on her infamous Christmas gift guide. Embarrassingly for me I only had two of the products in stock at the time of the gift guide going live so like many opportunities I have been granted along the way that one also fell very much flat on it’s face.

But back to Tattle Life. The same Influencers I met on that day who were very kind to myself and Beverly are often the individuals that are subject to ridicule via this weird website which has made a lot of money from all the comments and discussions on there. And how ironic that the founder in question is in fact a man (who apparantly never gossip, well according to my husband that is). Just people trying to make a living.

We can all say that we don’t really care what others think of us, but I think deep down we are all looking for feedback as to how we can do things better. But from an HR person who has dealt with many a poor manager, it really is what’s in the message and how has the message lands. And there really is no place for the kind of messages that existed on this site.

For those of us that were not brought up with the internet the notion that everything is classed as content and can be put to music is a hard concept to grapple with, but I’m hear for it if it means I can continue to carve out a creative career and meet lovely like-minded folk. Not twats pretending to be something they are not. A nice person.

Holiday content coming soon I promise….

Gemma