After 10 years, Chrissy Teigen is saying “goodbye” to her Twitter account.
She posted a farewell on Wednesday and then deactivated her account, writing that it “no longer serves me as positively as it serves me negatively and I think that’s the right time to call something."
“For over 10 years, you guys have been my world. I honestly owe so much to this world we have created here. I truly consider so many of you my actual friends,” Teigen wrote. “My life goal is to make people happy. The pain I feel when I don’t is too much for me. I’ve always been portrayed as the strong clap back girl but I’m just not…”
“My desire to be liked and fear of pissing people off has made me somebody you didn’t sign up for and a different human than I started out here as! Live well, tweeters. Please know all I ever cared about was you!!”
"For years I have taken so many small, 2-follower count punches that at this point, I am honestly deeply bruised," she wrote, adding that she hasn't learned how to "block out the negativity."
"I'm just a sensitive s--t, okay!? I don't wanna be this way! I just am!" she concluded. "But I love you guys and I cherish our time together, I truly do. I also hate you."
Teigen is no stranger to online trolls and has been a target for them over the years. In recent weeks, she posted several times about the hate she was getting online.
“do u ever feel like everyone hates you? I feel like everyone hates me,” she wrote on March 19. “I’m not looking for you to tell me you don’t, I swear, please don’t!!! it is just overwhelming. i keep seeing ‘how has she not disabled these comments’ across all platforms on anything I say and it sucks.”
That same day, she added she didn’t feel she could do “anything well enough or right. I dunno. Maybe just a rough patch.”
Oftentimes, Teigen used her account to share food and jokes with her fans but also heartbreak. Last fall, after she shared that she’d experienced a devastating pregnancy loss, she was accused by online critics of seeking attention.
Later, in a post on Medium, she told her critics she was unbothered by them.
"I cannot express how little I care that you hate the photos. How little I care that it’s something you wouldn’t have done. I lived it, I chose to do it," she wrote at the time.
Teigen’s departure from the online platform comes as the treatment of female celebrities has come under scrutiny in recent months. Notably, celebrities have flocked to Britney Spears’ defense amid the #FreeBritney movement and a New York Times documentary reminded fans of the “breathless, wall-to-wall coverage” in the media of Spears before, during and after her 2007 public breakdown.
Former child actor Mara Wilson even recently wrote an op-ed about how women in the spotlight have to endure undue criticism.
"The way people talked about Britney Spears was terrifying to me then, and it still is now," she wrote. "Her story is a striking example of a phenomenon I’ve witnessed for years: Our culture builds these girls up just to destroy them.”
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