interview
Transcription
The podcast discusses homophobia and online harassment. Maddie, a content creator, shares her experiences with body image critiques and negative comments. She handles it by not engaging with direct messages and not addressing negative comments. Social media platforms and organizations like Playboy can create a safer environment by filtering and deleting hate comments and raising awareness. Intersectionality affects Maddie's personal and workplace life, with higher standards for women and ongoing hate towards LGBTQ+ in glamorized settings. Her advice is to delete hate comments and focus on the support from followers. She enjoys her job and appreciates the supportive community. We're doing a podcast on homophobia and online harassment, and I'm here with Maddie Pebbrell, if you just wanted to give a brief introduction. Yeah, so basically, I'm a content creator, my main platform is Instagram, but I also work with Playboy. So, I'm just going to be asking Maddie some questions about her personal life and experiences, so can you share any personal experiences you've had with online harassment or cyberbullying and how you handled that? Yeah, so, obviously being in the media, people are always going to critique when I post body image, especially being in an organization like Playboy, obviously it's about models and things like that, so obviously I do get a lot of DMs critiquing my body and saying that I don't belong in Playboy or things like that. I kind of handle it like, you know, I put myself out there, I love being in the media, so I try not to let it get to my head as much, obviously it's a lot harder to say that than actually do it, but obviously having all my friends in the Playboy community, they really support me with all of that. So, as a public figure, you likely have a following on social media, as we can see. How do you balance your engagement with fans and addressing negative comments or harassment without compromising your own mental health? I don't reply to any direct messages that are in my hidden folder, I don't really look at them, I try not to look at them, because if they're in the hidden folder, it means that Instagram has banned them almost, so I try not to look at those, and I don't really address any really negative comments because bringing myself into those negative comments is going to make me think about it and fight with people online, which is something I don't want to do and something that Playboy tells me not to do. I also have an agency that runs pretty much everything, so I don't even really get to see any negative comments and it doesn't affect my mental health. So what steps can social media platforms and organizations like Playboy take to create a safer and more inclusive environment for LGBTQ plus individuals and allies, as well as protecting others from hate comments about body imaging? While Playboy does filter their comments, any negative or hurtful comments, they do go through and delete them. There is their first transgender funny that just got posted, and there was a lot of homophobic comments, and they did go through and filter them, but I feel like that still isn't enough because they still were allowed to comment those things, and that could affect her mental health. So I do think that they could post a lot more awareness on their stories, like this is a place where we don't tolerate those kinds of comments and things like that. So now we're going to switch over into the intersectionality aspect of the topic. So how does intersectionality affect your personal life, as well as your life in the workplace? In my personal life, intersectionality plays a significant role when it comes to how I get treated because of the job that I have, and I guess in my workplace, as a content creator, being a woman, there's more standards and expectations compared to the male content creators. On top of that, in society, there's an ongoing issue with LGBTQ plus, especially in a setting like Playboy, where it's supposed to be pretty glamorized, and unfortunately, there is still ongoing hate towards that. And so what advice would you give to people that are facing similar challenges with online hate? I would just say that there are people behind screens just watching you. I mean, obviously, it's a lot harder to just not listen to them, but I would delete all of the hate comments and the filtered comments that go through on Instagram, they have a filtered section, you know, be you and try to, you know, obviously, there's people out there that like you, or the reason you have that following, there's people that like you. So try not to let the hate get to you, I guess. And overall, do you enjoy your job and your work environment? Yeah, I really enjoy my job. Everyone that I've been working with, my agency, my following on Instagram, Playboy in general, they're a really great community, and they're very supportive. If I need anything at any time, they're on top of things. They make me feel very safe. And yeah, overall, I love being in the media. I'd just like to thank Maddie for coming on today and sharing her experiences and being so open and helpful in getting an insight on how these things really affect other people in our day-to-day lives.
