Gwyneth Paltrow has compared reading online comments about herself to facing the ‘dehumanising’ state of being in war.
The actress, who was speaking at the inaugural Code Conference in California, was sharing her experiences of working with her weekly Goop newsletter and her e-commerce business, when she opened up about online trolls.
Speaking to Re/code tech news website, Paltrow addresses the culture of trolling:
“The Internet is an amazing opportunity, socially. We have this opportunity to mature and learn, which is the essence of being on Earth—to being the closest person we can be to our actual, real, truest self.
“But the Internet also allows us the opportunity to project outward our hatred, our jealousy. It’s culturally acceptable to be an anonymous commenter. It’s culturally acceptable to say, ‘I’m just going to take all of my internal pain and externalize it anonymously.’”
The actress continued to say that she has become almost immune to the comments, referring to the hateful messaging as ‘an interesting social experiement’ that is only someone putting their own projection of hatred on her.
Paltrow didn’t stop there though, and compared the annomynous attacks to experiences of going through war:
“You come across [online comments] about yourself and about your friends, and it’s a very dehumanizing thing. It’s almost like how, in war, you go through this bloody, dehumanizing thing, and then something is defined out of it.
“My hope is, as we get out of it, we’ll reach the next level of conscience.”
The actress recently came under fire following comments she made implying that working as an actress was more difficult than having a regular 9-to-5 job. The interview was met with a strongly worded response by a mother published in the New York Post that went viral.
