But how is Nathan?

The situation with the aggressive online trolls grew through the night, as the American knitters got involved and started to leap onto what they perceived as a ripe carcass. The thing that suddenly struck me about online bullying is that it’s actually not just about the things people say but the sheer weight of comments you receive when one of these situations erupts. If you respond to just one comment, another fifty people reply to that, and so it goes on, snowballing out of control with everyone assuming you’re reading everything. Within a single thread, rumours start to develop, which become fact the moment someone writes them down. I, personally, was accused of keeping a list of people who could expect my vengeance in a particularly bizarre twist to the story. It really did feel like I’d entered Looking-Glass Land. I felt like Alice talking to the White Queen, with every scrap of logic being twisted, just not in a particularly witty manner: “Jam tomorrow, jam yesterday, but never jam today.”

Someone actually suggested that Nathan should be “cancelled”. Quite a specific comment. For a long time, I debated whether or not this was a death threat and decided it probably wasn’t. I like to see the best in people, even if they are bat-shit crazy.

Nathan disabled comments when the sheer weight of them became too much, but the following morning, his other Instagram posts, and then his Twitter feed had been hijacked by the haters. The taunts continued. He was a white supremacist, a Nazi apologist...

He started obsessively reading the posts but became increasingly worked up, then more and more erratic and then suddenly he snapped, screaming like a terrified animal, smashing boxes and thumping himself. I was forced to wrestle him to the ground and hold onto him for dear life as the waves of pain surged through his body. He made a run for the car keys. He said he wanted to drive at 100 miles per hour until he crashed.

I called our doctor and they could hear him screaming in the background and said I was to immediately take him to A and E, where he was instantly assessed and put on suicide watch pending a decision about whether or not he needed to be, well, I suppose the word is sectioned.

We were there about six hours in total. Nathan went numb, then cried a lot, then laughed a lot, then cried and then went numb again. I got angry and started replying to the cowards on Instagram. I opened a new post on Nathan’s account, explaining that he was now in hospital, that their anger had been registered and that I would appreciate only messages of love for the time being.

And many, many wonderful messages of support and love came through, which, I firmly believe, kept Nathan from entirely tipping over the edge in those dark, dark hours. I am so grateful to the people who messaged me and him. Old friends. New friends. People whose lives he’d touched in his knitting career. The overwhelming message which came through was how many people Nathan had geed up, enthused, made smile. To begin with Nathan was terrified to hear what was being said in case it was barbed or sarcastic. He was scared and I felt utterly helpless to protect him from the mob. Put yourself for a moment in that position. Your husband is potentially going to be sectioned and you can’t stop the people who are putting him in that position from making things worse.

And sure enough, in amongst the outpourings of love and respect, the aggressive trolls popped up, largely taking me on as their new public enemy, but the most despicable were actually trying to suggest that Nathan’s being hospitalised was a publicity stunt and that the “snowflake” privileged white men in us were attempting to turn ourselves into victims to hide our “hatred.” Only the sickest of people would not have backed off in these circumstances.

One woman was talking about the need to collect evidence, another suggest that Nathan disabling comments on his original post had destroyed a lot of the hard “educational” work that the BIPOC community had carried out (like he was burning manuscripts or something), then someone else was demanding Nathan close down comments on the NEW post, because BIPOC people were being attacked by a whole other set of trolls.

See how much it’s like Alice Through the Looking-Glass?! Then they all started to suggest that unless we were prepared to provide them with screen grabs proving that Nathan had been called a white supremacist, it had to be assumed that he was lying.

There are now 3000 messages on the post. I have taken myself entirely off Instagram.

Being brutally and candidly honest I would say that, barring a few notable and vociferous individuals, the absolute majority of trolls “educating” me in BIPOC etiquette were white. And with allies like that, who needs enemies?




I had a spat with one woman who argued that, in some cases (implying Nathan’s) it was okay to accuse someone of Nazi apologising. I responded that 6 million Jewish people hadn’t died at the hands of actual Nazis just so that she could blithely use the term on social media to make her point. Oh she didn’t like that. Another woman said that Nathan had been very good at instructing people about homosexuality and AIDS but it was now his turn to listen. I told her that it wasn’t called AIDS any more, proving that we’re all on a journey to discovery. I could see her lips turning to lemon as she begrudgingly thanked me for educating her.




I screen-grabbed just one vitriolic remark, which came from rfw330. I may frame it one day alongside my shockingly awful Sibelius report from university.




“Stop weaponising every single detail about yourselves. No one who spoke up on Monday directly caused his admission to the hospital. For you to say otherwise is harmful, violent and flat out abhorrent. I hope after a night’s sleep you can realise that you are as complicit in this shitshow as your husband.”




So, in summing up, these people are unstoppable online, and seem to have endless tragic hours to spend whipping each other up into a frenzy. The good people ignore them, but they shout so loudly that they begin to look like they’re the official voice of BIPOC folk - and this is deeply dangerous because it plays into the hands of the far right.




A group of knitters are now setting up a new version of the yarn website, Ravelry which they have very nicely asked Nathan to join. These are the people who have been alienated by Ravelry’s decision to ban any talk of Trump because Trump supports right wing hate speech. But, because Ravelry refuses to ban hate speech from the left, it merely becomes a playground for those who shout loudly in that particular area. And the new site becomes a playground for the right, and no one dares to criticise anything. Polarisation of society complete.




And that’s what frightens me. And in these 100 year cycles that we’re in right now, we have to brace ourselves for anything.




But most importantly how is Nathan three days on? He’s okay. I think. Buoyed up by every message of support. Wiped out. Fragile. Frazzled. He was not sectioned but he has been referred for further investigation. Please continue to send love and warm thoughts.