So you think becoming ‘clickbait’ on the biggest social media platform in the world would be great, right? your face plastered all over millions of peoples screens, everyone thinking you’re an inspiration? Well no, when millions of people are believing a re-written, completely made up interview that had been posted on Facebook pages that exist solely to make ad revenue, it becomes a bit of a nightmare. If you recognize me, yes, I’m the girl that ‘was dumped by her boyfriend when he saw her without makeup on’ that got shared on Facebook constantly for months, well that didn’t actually happen, but we’ll get to that later.

So it all began when I was 19, I began to get psoriasis on my face and instead of people calling me out for looking different without makeup on, I thought I’d just let everyone know that I was dealing with this and not to judge anyone with a skin condition -Its incredibly sad that I had to do this in the first place, but unfortunately in my town and probably in many other towns and cities, people aren’t very open minded and accepting. After posting this, I got so much support from not only friends and family, but from fellow psoriasis sufferers so I decided to carry on posting, not only to inspire, but it also helped me grow and gain confidence within myself.

I began gaining more and more support with every photo I posted, and then when I was aged 21 I got a direct message from a journalist asking if he could write an article about me and how I cope with having a facial skin condition and how people in my life have treated me, this is where I said that I had an ex boyfriend that wasn’t very supportive, I was 17 when we was together for a year, halfway through the relationship I broke out in psoriasis but ONLY small patches on my body, he told me he thought it was disgusting and was nasty about it but we ended up staying together for a few months after that and breaking up for completely different reasons, but in absolutely no way did I intend on the whole thing becoming a sob story, I wanted it to be about my journey in finding self confidence. Then the British newspaper ‘The Daily Mail’ bought the article, and well, things got a little insane.

I was in one of the most read papers in the UK, which I was pretty proud of. It was overwhelming more than anything, of course I got a lot of unnecessary hate comments, but a lot of people find it a lot more difficult to be supportive and nice rather than mean, comments like ‘This is why you should take a girl swimming on the first date’, but I didn’t find anything offensive, if anything it made me laugh. The article that was featured in the papers was lovely and inspiring, but within that article they quoted me saying:



‘My ex-boyfriend didn’t stick by me and it broke my heart at the time, he didn’t appreciate me for who I was’



From this, clickbait news websites thought this would make the perfect article for Facebook and they wasn’t wrong, but instead of using the article as an uplifting, inspiring piece of writing like it was intended, they changed the headline to ‘Teen with disease gets dumped when boyfriend sees her without makeup on’ and that’s when the messages came at their hundreds and the followers came in their thousands, as much as I am grateful to have these people supporting me, I cant help but think that its for the wrong reasons, I never wanted anyone to feel sorry for me.

Now I don’t know about you, its fairly obvious when I see a clickbait news article on Facebook but it doesn’t stop me clicking on it, even if I don’t agree with it, my curiosity always gets the better of me. With an article like this, i’d definitely click on it even if I knew i’d be spammed with ads or have to click next 50 times because i’m curious, not because I believe it. But there are so many people out there that believe that everything you read on Facebook is true, especially if its on a news website -But I’m here to tell you that its not true, I was never ‘dumped’ and I didn’t get psoriasis on my face until i was 19 years old, It’s all completely false.

Well after hundreds of Facebook pages had spammed everybody’s front page in the UK, it began to travel across the world, from India to Australia and I started receiving hundreds of messages and followers every day, showing support, marriage proposals, declarations of love, everything you could possibly think of. I know many people got upset that I wasn’t replying, but I wasn’t sure how to reply, I was so overwhelmed by the constant messages and comments that I just stopped posting, I got extremely anxious about everything and ignoring it all was how I chose to deal with it at the time.

I have thousands of messages on my personal and business Facebook, Instagram, email and twitter, as much as I appreciate the support there is also a lot of strange requests that have completely gotten lost in translation, Im sorry that I have not flown to India to marry anyone who requested.

The clickbait articles went on for months and months, and so did the messages. After quite a while they died down and I had gained thousands of followers and even though thousands of people believe these made up articles about me, I was then contacted by a Journalist that writes for Glamour Magazine and asked for an interview for the November 2017 issue about inspiring women and skin problems. I am very proud of myself for being able to inspire men and women and hope to continue to for as long as possible. I am glad to have had this experience, I have definitely grown as a person and become more aware of how you can be exploited online. Just please don’t believe everything you read on Facebook, Its more than likely there to make someone money.