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Home / Lifestyle

Mummy blogger Clemmie Hooper unmasks herself as an Instagram troll

By Hannah Paine
news.com.au·
11 Nov, 2019 01:27 AM6 mins to read

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Clemmie Hooper has unmasked herself as a secret troll who attacked her rivals. Photo / Instagram

Clemmie Hooper has unmasked herself as a secret troll who attacked her rivals. Photo / Instagram

In the online world of "mumfluencers", UK mother-of-four Clemmie Hooper was a queen.

The midwife turned to blogging after welcoming her second child and in 2011 joined Instagram, where her Mother of Daughters account has more than 660,000 followers.

But Mrs Hooper's future in the lucrative world of Instagram influencing now looks in doubt after she admitted to leading a secret double life as an online troll — even reportedly attacking her own husband Simon Hooper, whose Father of Daughters account has more than one million followers, reports News.com.au.

Together, the couple documented their idyllic-seeming family life online that included luxurious trips overseas, photos of their Pinterest-worthy home renovations and, of course, Instagram ads.

It all seemed perfect until Thursday when Mrs Hooper admitted that she was Aliceinwanderlust, an account on UK gossip forum site Tattle.life that had a reputation for its withering take-down of other influencers, the Telegraph reports.

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Frequent targets of Aliceinwanderlust were rival mummy bloggers, including Bethie Hungerford (@Hungermama), who the account labelled "desperate" for fame.

Aliceinwanderlust was accused by some of being racist. The anonymous account labelled one mummy blogger "aggressive" and accused them of bringing everything back to race.

Laura Rutherford, who has 23,000 followers on That Mummy Smile, even addressed the Alice account in an Instagram post in which she called for it to stop encouraging "trolls to tear my reputation apart".

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View this post on Instagram

Dear Alice I don’t owe it to you to remain quiet. You’ve goaded and encouraged trolls to tear my reputation apart for the last 8mths. Mine and a handful of other influencers- and for what gain? No I won’t talk to you or discuss with you your justifications for online bullying. There is absolutely no justification for this behaviour. As someone that is on this platform to support other women, talk about accountability and stand up for myself when people attempt to bring me down, I won’t stay silent. How can I? That contradicts who I am and why I’m on here. It’s not even about the words that have been said. It’s the betrayal of trust. To say I’m hurting is an understatement. What gives you the right to play with people’s mental health? For so long I’ve had to grin and bear the derogatory comments, the angst of what people think of me, where the malice has come from. You’ve looked me in the eye and asked me how I’m doing when I’ve been at my lowest. How dare you? I haven’t and never would wish anything bad on anyone. You yourself have been at the hands of trolls and you know exactly what that does to you. This is your time to come forward and start doing the right thing by everyone that is affected . . 📷 Image taken from Pinterest. From Alice in Wonderland 🤔

A post shared by l a u r a r u t h e r f o r d (@laura_rutherford_) on Nov 6, 2019 at 5:37am PST

Soon some on Tattle.life became suspicious that Mrs Hooper was behind the account, as while it spoke derogatively of other mum influencers, it had only glowing comments to say about the Mother of Daughters account.

After one of Aliceinwanderlust's posts referenced her being on holidays in the Caribbean at the same time as Mrs Hooper piqued interest, the trolling account issued a blistering denial.

Defending her positive views of Mrs Hooper, screengrabs appeared to show Aliceinwanderlust slamming Father of Daughters, writing: "Her husband on the other hand is a class at (sic) t**t. I can't believe she puts up with his nonsense."

View this post on Instagram

many people may celebrate hitting a number of followers but I prefer to celebrate the number of posts and today I reach 1000 posts precisely. 1000 smiles. 1000 arguments with @mother_of_daughters about bedtime routines and who's turn it is to read stories. 1000 hours of lost sleep. 1000 lost hair clips. 1000 snap shots of our attempts into being half decent parents. 1000 rose tinted glimpses into our journey, with an infinite number of memories still to be captured. And if I had to do it all again, there's only one person I'd want by my side through it all because without Clemmie, these 1000 moments would have been so much harder to navigate. Bringing up girls is challenge, I'm just glad I have a partner in all of it. On to the next...... #squarememories #1000 #makingitupaswego #fatherofdaughters #dadlife #instadad #fod

A post shared by Simon, also known as FOD (@father_of_daughters) on Nov 1, 2019 at 1:39pm PDT

But the pretence ended last week when, in a lengthy statement on her Instagram account, Mrs Hooper admitted to leading a double life online as Aliceinwanderlust.

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The 34-year-old said she started the account after seeing thousands of negative comments about herself and her family on the website.

"Reading them made me feel extremely paranoid and affected me much more than I knew at the time," Mrs Hooper said.

"I decided without telling anyone else that I would make an anonymous account so that this group of people would believe I was one of them, or that I could maybe change their opinions from the inside to defend my family and I."

Mrs Hooper said the "situation escalated" when she began writing negative comments about other bloggers in a bid to cover her tracks.

"When the users started to suspect it was me, I made the mistake of commenting about others. I regret it all and am deeply sorry – I know this has caused a lot of pain," she said.

"Undoubtedly I got lost in this online world and the more I became engrossed in the negative commentary, the more the situation escalated.

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"Engaging in this was a huge mistake. I will take responsibility for what happened and I am just so sorry for the hurt I have caused everyone involved including my family and friends."

Mrs Hooper's husband has since issued his own statement on Instagram, writing that he was "in a crap position" as he could only "stay silent" to protect his wife or "comment on something I had no knowledge of".

"I'm feeling both angry & a bit sad. I can't condone or fully understand why Clemmie did what she did. Make no mistake about it – she made some bad choices – I just wish she could have spoken to me about this before it all got too much," he wrote.

Mr Hooper added that while he was not here to "defend my wife's actions or provide excuses", he had seen the "dark places" she had been in after being attacked online.

"What I do know is that online actions have real world consequences – this has impacted our family & it will take some time to recover," he wrote.

Last year Mrs Hooper temporarily quit Instagram after she was attacked on another online forum, Mumsnet.

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Users there slammed her for the "ethically dubious" use of her four children in sponsored Instagram posts.

Mrs Hooper herself joined Mumsnet to defend herself, denying she had been selling out her children.

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