SHE'S the mummy blogger with more than half a million followers and a picture perfect Instagram life.
But Clemmie Hooper's world came crashing down this week when she was outed as a troll who attacked her own friends and family using a pseudonym on online forum, Tattle Life.
But the Mother of Daughters blogger, who owned up to her shady tactics last week, is just one of 40,000 members of the forum.
The gossip site, believed to have been created last July and used mainly by women, was ostensibly set up as a message board to constructively hold Instagram influencers, YouTubers and even royals including Harry and Meghan, to account.
But it has been accused of cruelty and bullying, and this summer beauty blogger Sali Hughes made an emotional statement on Instagram about the abuse she'd suffered on Tattle Life and how it had affected her mental health.
A post shared by Sali Hughes (@salihughes) on
On the site users chat about well-known internet celebs like Zoella and Mrs Hinch in public threads, some of which have thousands of entries.
And the site – which has become the b*tchiest corner of the internet – has drawn a number of ex-Mumsnet users who've ditched the old forum because of a row about transphobic content on the site.
But in its brief existence, Tattle Life has been accused of being a vicious gossip mill where mums gang up and gossip about other women – and a petition has been launched to have the site banned.
'Sellers of daughters'
Clemmie Hooper created a fake persona in order to go onto Tattle Life and defend herself from trolls.
In one post, she even shared negative comments about her own husband Simon to keep her cover intact, calling him “a class A t**t”.
Hooper claimed she'd been drawn into the trolling after joining Tattle Life to “change the conversation” around her family after seeing they were being targeted in numerous threads.
But the backlash against her dirty tricks has led to a stream of vicious threads about Hooper on the site, some of which have over 1,000 comments.
One user called Hooper and her husband and "t***s" and "sellers of daughters" — a reference to Hooper and her husbands Instagram handles ("Mother of Daughters" and "Father of Daughters", respectively).
Another said "I have no sympathy for her or her creepy husband".
And on the latest thread, one member called the parents “a couple of not very bright arses” who have, “zero likeability factor”.
'Mummy blogging has a dark underworld'
Vicious personal attacks are par for the course on Tattle Life – and Hooper is just one of the many influencers members have tried to take down.
They are normally taken to task for making money from social media advertising and receiving too many free gifts and holidays.
And the online personalities most frequently under attack are – naturally – the ones doing the best.
Mummy blogger Honest Mum – real name Vicki Psarias – tells Sun Online: “I’ve been targeted on there myself with cruel jibes written about my children as well as myself.
"It seems to have become a site that allows people to hurt other people, venting their own issues and prejudices onto others. There’s a dark side to mummy blogging.”
The Coastal Mummy has also written about how Tattle Life has affected her.
“It is a place where hate starts and spreads,” she wrote on her blog. “There are personal comments and things that are just not uncalled for.
"I have experienced comments about my children, where I live and about my family. These comments brought me down. Made me feel awful about myself and made me doubt myself as a mum. But comments like these are normal for Tattle. They are every day chat on there."
A lack of regulation
Stacey-Lou Woodfield — who has 17.9K followers on Instagram under @allthatdreamsglitters — is lambasted in a thread entitled “All that Dreams Glitters – Stacey the notebook and planner slob, time to get a proper job.”
She is lambasted by a member called Booshiz who says: “Can’t cope with her one-handed manic cleaning and false positivity.
"It’s like she’s had a line of coke for breakfast”.
On the same thread, another calls her, “a complete and utter moron” while Popcorn9 tells her to, “f*** off.”
In the “About Tattle Life” section, the forum proclaims it has a zero-tolerance policy for messages that contain hate speech, threatening behaviour, abusive language, or incite violence, harassment or derogatory remarks and states that when these rules are broken the content will be swiftly removed.
But the thread on Woodfield has 596 comments and 39,000 views so far and breaks many of these rules and yet still remains firmly up on the site.
Some have criticised the lack of regulation on the site that has allowed so much hate to be published.
Helen Whatley, MP for Faversham and Mid Kent, has even called on the Home Secretary to investigate the site, saying: "No one should have to put up with this kind of abuse."
A constant stream of hate
The site also has a problem with members threatening violence.
One thread pouring scorn on homemaker influencer Beckyhomesweethome who has 70.5K Instagram followers has comments including: “I swear if I ever met her I’d slap the wasteful selfish beggy b****.”
The site has threads on Mrs Hinch, Zoella, Mrs Bavington and even Harry and Meghan under a thread entitled “Harry and Meghan #3 the Duke and Duchess of Narcissism”.
And the level of hate is astonishing.
While users believe they are nobly holding people with large social followings to account by monitoring their integrity and honesty in relation to advertising and the detail of their lives, their descent into online bullying invalidates their original purpose.
Influencers try to fight back
In June this year, Rebecca Meldrum – aka Mrs Meldrum who posts videos about family life with her three kids and has 116,000 YouTube subscribers and 100,000 Instagram followers – posted a video in floods of tears.
She candidly explained how the trolls criticising her on Tattle Life had affected her mental health after they made unfounded accusations about her taking drugs and being unfaithful.
But despite the video pleading for the trolls to stop, messages on the forum still claimed she was “disingenuous” for posting the clip.
Just a few months later, beauty expert, journalist and author Sali Hughes – who has a successful YouTube beauty channel with over 55,000 subscribers – took a deeper swipe at the “bullying” website, explaining how this group of women wanted Hughes to lose her job because they “hated” her.
She went on to say how they discussed her children, criticised her parenting, mocked her marriage and made personal insults about her husband.
Hughes ended the video referring to the “deep trauma” caused by everything that had happened and asked her followers to sign a petition that called for the closure of Tattle Life.
Bullying that could lead to suicide
The petition now has over 25,000 signatures and was originally started by Michelle Chapman, otherwise known as You Tuber Mummy Chelle, who claims she was also abused on the site.
In her petition message, Chapman called Tattle Life, “a forum full of bullying, harassment, discrimination and more."
“I’m suffering terribly with my mental health over this,” added Michelle, who was forced back onto antidepressants after being off them for two years after seeing threads about her on the site.
“Bullying can lead to suicide. Is that what it’s going to take before this forum gets removed?”
In response to the petition, Helen McDougal, an administrator on the site, told Kent Online: "Tattle Life has a zero tolerance policy towards content that is hateful, abusive, threatening and we take the privacy of social media influencers far more seriously than they do themselves in many cases.
"We're far more stringent with our rules and moderation than any of the big social media companies.
"We allow commentary and critiques of people who choose to monetise their personal life and release it into the public domain.
"Like all social media sites anyone can join and post a comment and we encourage people to report any that overstep the line as we take all reports very seriously.
"People who come to post abusive and hateful content are banned."
As for now, the number of of users on the site is going up by the hour – ad whether the petition to have it banned is successful is yet to be seen.
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