You know things are bad when Lizzo decides she’s had enough. The “Truth Hurts” singer announced via Twitter that she’s taking a hiatus from Twitter because of online cruelty and bullying.
But she appears to still be keeping it real on Instagram (with comments active), where she also targeted her trolls in her most recent post.
Unfortunately, online trolls are a fact of life for everyone, but they do seem to target women in disproportionately larger numbers, and women of color even more and plus-sized women of color perhaps the most. And while Lizzo has usually been strong enough and empowered enough to face down her detractors and take them down with one epic clapback after another, she apparently has reached her breaking point.
Or perhaps she’s ready to use her creativity and strength for more positive pursuits than taking on pathetic losers online who’ve nothing better to do than put down other people. Lizzo definitely has plenty of better things to do.
Yeah I can’t do this Twitter shit no more.. too many trolls… ✌🏾
I’ll be back when I feel like it.
— Feelin Good As Hell (@lizzo) January 6, 2020
“Yeah I can’t do this Twitter shit no more.. too many trolls,” Lizzo wrote with a peace-out emoji. “I’ll be back when I feel like it.”
Meanwhile, on Instagram, Lizzo directed her latest post at those same people who drove her from Twitter. “Confidence is comin back… it’s over for u troll bitches,” she wrote accompanying a sultry video of her flipping her hair in slo-mo to her own track, “Lingerie.”
So which is it? Did they run her off, or is she ready to take them on?
Lizzo certainly isn’t the first woman of color run off of Twitter by trolls. “Star Wars” star Kelly Marie-Tran was trashed so cruelly after “The Last Jedi” — her first in the franchise — that she deleted her whole account.
And former “Saturday Night Live” alum Leslie Jones, who is also famously strong and empowered, backed down after a veritable onslaught following the gender-flipped “Ghostbusters.” It’s worth noting that none of her white, female co-stars received nearly as much abuse as she did.
As for Lizzo, she’s been trashed almost non-stop for living genuine body positivity and wearing whatever she wants, no matter the haters. Most recently, she was slammed for wearing a bizarre getup to an NBA game that had a booty cut-out that revealed a whole lot of thong — and a whole lot of Lizzo — as she twerked.
The singer has addressed her haters before, telling Billboard in an interview last year, “I’ve always had to turn haters into congratulators. That’s the thing with my songs and my live shows: I’ve never lost that mentality of ‘I have to win you over,’ and I’m never going to, because I didn’t learn that way.”
Her farewell tweet has been retweeted and commented upon in the thousands, far more than any of her more recent tweets, so clearly this surprise message hit a chord with her followers.
It also unleashed a whole new torrent of haters, with many of the comments exactly the sort of thing that Lizzo was opting to excise from her life. It’s always recommended to periodically detox from social media, because it is such a cesspool of vile behavior and out-of-control, infantile people lashing out over their own insecurities.
But for every hater in the comments, Lizzo has her supporters, too, fighting the good fight on her behalf, sending love and wishing her well as she clears her head and gets ready for her next achievement (perhaps at the Grammys) which will surely enrage the haters even more. In the meantime, she may well continue the fight herself … just on Instagram.
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