The Rise of the Mean Girl Mafia

Public shaming and social humiliation…the way some women now fight online is actually more painful than the punches thrown by men (and there’s science to prove it). Here’s how to arm yourself… 

- Will Storr

'You have been removed from the group.’ As the words blinked on to the screen of Laura’s iPhone, she felt it like a punch to the gut. “I’d worked with Charlotte* for a few years,” says 32-year-old copywriter Laura. “But after I couldn’t attend the surprise dinner she was hosting for her fiancé, she ditched all digital contact with me.” As well as being removed from various WhatsApp groups and shunned on Twitter, Laura soon realised she was being cast out from social gatherings too. “I started noticing pictures on Facebook of my colleagues on nights out. I just hadn’t been invited,” she recalls.

As well as being confused and hurt, it was the humiliation that smacked the hardest. “I felt like a five-year-old again, being told I couldn’t play hopscotch with the other kids in the school playground. But the worst thing was that this was all happening on a public forum, and others could see my pain simply by scrolling through their social-media feeds.”