Screenshot of online news report about Princess Dickson’s death. Credit: Daily Mail
It was early Monday morning when I received a message telling me that 16-year-old Princess Dickson had ended her life. Her suicide came after years of being relentlessly targeted on the “gossip forum” Tattle Life.
Tattle Life describes itself as “a commentary website on public business social media accounts” allowing “commentary and critiques of people that choose to monetise their personal life as a business…” It is, more simply, a forum that enables online abuse. Descriptions of influencers in the titles of current trending threads include “Comparing herself to Kim K, not with an arse as flat as that…” and “Room full of tat, kid is a brat “
Tattle Life’s owner and moderator, Sebastian Bond, continues to make enormous profits from the site by placing Google Ads in between the abuse, stalking, harassment and doxxing of children and adults alike. Despite being taken to the high court in Northern Ireland, and being publicly held accountable at a parliamentary roundtable I hosted in September 2025 – and despite a deep-dive analysis I submitted to parliament and regulators of more than 100 cases of stalking, harassment and abuse – the site is still up, alive and kicking.
When I found out about Princess’s death, I knew that it was necessary to collate real-time evidence of how posters on this site abuse Princess and her mother, Sophie May Dickson (who was not an influencer but gained attention on Tattle Life for her appearance in a 2015 documentary series - Blinging Up Baby - on C5).
Through tears and rage, I started monitoring the threads about Princess’s death immediately.
My research has shown that its users are not weirdos in their mum’s basement, as some like to imagine. They are over 90% women, most of them professionals. Teachers. Nurses. Solicitors. Managers. Academics. Charity workers. Social workers. Therapists. Psychologists.
The patterns of commenting mirrored the rhythm of a busy working mum’s day. I watched as the thread surged. Abuse. Mocking. Lies. Speculation. Then it went quiet for the school run. Afterwards, it kicked in again.
Psychologist, author and campaigner Dr Jessica Taylor.
There were new posts blaming Sophie for Princess’s death. Lies about her cause of death. Comments about Princess’s clothes, appearance, body, mental health and childhood. Posts calling for Sophie to kill herself next. Grown adults chatting about how they watched all of Princess’s TikTok Lives. Screenshots of private social media accounts belonging to family and friends – stalked, captured and reposted for sport.
I captured everything. Every word. Every post. Until the afternoon school run and dinnertime, when it dipped, only to ramp back up in the evening.
I watched users embolden one another. Comments that Princess’s mother should just “open her legs” to afford the funeral. That the funeral would be “high heels and skirts up their asses”. Laughter. Entertainment. A child was dead, but they were enjoying the game and the digging.
People who stalk and bully children do not live in dark corners of the internet. They live among us. They manage teams. They are your sister and your cousin and your mother
Mixed in with the abuse were users claiming that Tattle Life was the only place where Princess was ever cared for, that they were devastated to have “lost her”. A quick scroll back showed past posts from the same accounts claiming Princess looked like she was on drugs, admitting they had been stalking her TikToks, ridiculing her outfits and makeup, dissecting her self-harm scars while mocking her clothing.
And then the posts that made my blood run cold.
Posts directly addressing Princess: “Princess, we know you read here …” “Princess, if you still read here …”
I found posts written in the same tone to her 12-year-old sister.
These are adults who knew they were targeting innocent children to get at their mother. Adults who knew those children were reading threads about themselves. Adults who carried on anyway.
And it’s not just the users. On 12 May 2025, the moderator temporarily closed the thread because it was “targeting a minor” – only to fail to act when a new one was set up to target her again.
The comforting myth is that people capable of such behaviour must be monsters. Deviants. Outsiders.
But they are not.
They are probably sitting here right now, reading this on their phone. At work in their nice job. With a cup of tea. About to screenshot this piece and share it back to Tattle Life to mock as well.
Twelve million users a month.
People who stalk and bully children do not live in dark corners of the internet. They live among us. They work alongside us. They teach our children. They treat our patients. They manage teams. They sit in safeguarding meetings. They are your sister and your cousin and your mother.
And the owner of the platform that enables it travels the world on the money generated by the abuse.
Princess Dickson is dead. The threads are still live.
The ads are still running.
Sebastian Bond has failed to respond to all invitations for press comment and to an official written request to take down the threads while the family grieves.
And unless we are willing to look directly at who is doing this – not monsters, not faceless trolls, but ordinary adults who choose cruelty in their spare time – we will continue to pretend this is shocking, rare, or unpredictable. Technology has not caused these behaviours: it only enables them.
It is organised. It is habitual. It follows the school run.
And it is profitable, isn’t it, Sebastian?
Dr Jessica Taylor is a chartered psychologist specialising in the trauma and abuse of women and girls. She is chief executive of VictimFocus and the author of several books exploring abuse and victim-blaming
In the UK and Ireland, the Samaritans give confidential support on freephone 116 123, or via email: [email protected] or [email protected]. A list of international helplines and contacts can be found here