Mary O’Donnell
RENOWNED beautician and TraleeToday.ie contributor, Mary O’Donnell spoke of how her life was changed last weekend after she was bullied online.
Speaking to 2FM’s Ryan Tubridy earlier today, the Tralee beautician told of how a mishap during a slot on RTE’s ‘Today’ show from February, went viral online.
A vine showing the incident where she over applied liquid eyeliner first appeared back in February after the show, but resurfaced last Friday.
“People were putting up on it, ‘Let’s make this go viral’, then three Irish websites shared it and put me out there to be torn apart by whoever wanted to. The comments kept increasing and became nastier,” she explained to Ryan Tubridy this morning.
“It was eyeliner and I made a mistake. But what followed was unbelievable. Every part of me was torn apart – the way I looked, the way I spoke, how I got to the job I was doing. All the comments were just absolutely vile.”
She told how she was nervous appearing in the slot for the first time back in February and says that’s what caused the mistake.
“It was nerve wracking, it was all very new to me. My hands started to shake and shook uncontrollably. My nerves took the better of me. I made a complete and utter balls of it, I made a really big mistake and it was awful. That evening, it went on Twitter and I saw it – it was really, really bad,” she said.
But Mary came back from the setback and went from strength to strength on the show thanks to the support of family, friends and the RTE crew. Then on Friday the clip resurfaced.
“It was really cringe and awful. It looked like it went live on Friday, whereas this happened in February. I was live entertainment on Friday night, I was well up there with you [Tubridy] on Friday night. Yesterday, I was going to take some of my power back. I got in touch with the journalist who started it all. I haven’t collected my kids from school yet, I haven’t slept, I’m paler than pale. I know it wasn’t personal, but at the end of the day I am a person,” she told the 2FM star.
“This week it’s my story, next week it’ll be someone else’s and next we’ll be talking about someone who isn’t in the world anymore because of it. You don’t need to be a child to be cyber bullied, it can happen at any age,” Mary said.
