Alison Sullivan
It’s been a real wild one for Chrissy Teigen on Twitter lately.
For years, she has dominated conversations online, clapped back, and accrued millions and millions of followers, only to watch her popularity tank in 2021. Though she is wildly popular, it’s pretty impossible to have such a huge platform and not be noticed by people who hate you. Teigen has faced a lot of vitriol online, so much that she decided it was time to leave Twitter…only to return 23 days later.
Shortly after this brief hiatus, an interview with Courtney Stodden came out, in which they announced they were non-binary and where they absolutely dragged Chrissy Teigen. Stodden was best known for being a 16-year-old married off to a 51-year-old man, Doug Hutchinson. At the time, a lot of people took swings at Stodden, even though we were essentially watching statutory rape as a reality show. Old tweets of Teigen’s reveals she went especially hard, literally telling Stodden to die.
A few weeks ago, Teigen issued a semi-apology on Twitter, though Stodden says they had not heard from Teigen personally:
After that, Teigen’s account went quiet again.
On Monday, she came back with a full Medium post about her past actions and offensive tweets. She begins by saying it’s been a “humbling few weeks.”
I know I’ve been quiet, and lord knows you don’t want to hear about me, but I want you to know I’ve been sitting in a hole of deserved global punishment, the ultimate “sit here and think about what you’ve done”. Not a day, not a single moment has passed where I haven’t felt the crushing weight of regret for the things I’ve said in the past.
Teigen doesn’t mention anyone by name, but says again that she is trying to reach out to people she tweeted mean sh-t to and about in the past. But she also wanted to offer an apology to her fans:
There is simply no excuse for my past horrible tweets. My targets didn’t deserve them. No one does. Many of them needed empathy, kindness, understanding and support, not my meanness masquerading as a kind of casual, edgy humor.
I was a troll, full stop. And I am so sorry.
She went on to say how much she’s loved Twitter for the most part, and how she feels bad for having used it for evil instead of good. To be fair, a lot of people use Twitter for evil, but Teigen has a particularly large platform for spreading bad ideas.
She says she has changed over time, especially with lots of therapy. And promises to do better:
I have so much love to give if you are open and willing to accept it. And if not, that’s okay too. That’s something I work on being more okay with every day. I know I let you down, but I hope I can make you proud. It’s been a heavy few weeks, so I’m going to take some more time to focus on things that are most important — being with my family and taking care of myself.
You can read the full Medium post here. It should be noticed that in the past few weeks, Teigen was dropped out of her surprise role on Never Have I ever, and it seemed like her cleaning supply brand released with Kris Jenner is doing pretty bad. Teigen’s regret and reflection may be very sincere, but there have been some material consequences for her actions. That’s always very motivating.