Bonnie Ryan has revealed an online gossip forum lead her mum to believe she had died in a car accident.
Speaking on the Trolled podcast, hosted by journalist Aoife Grace Moore, the influencer admitted her mother Morah was in an “awful state” after the incident.
Before she recounted the “hideous experience”, Bonnie said she had learned not to read things about herself online, after growing up with a famous father.
Her father was legendary broadcaster Gerry Ryan, who sadly died back in 2010 at the age of 53.
Bonnie said her dad always taught her to only care about the opinions of family and friends, but admitted it’s still “shocking” when she reads things written about her online.
The influencer said she lived in a bubble of “don’t read it” for the longest time, but that all changed when her mum received a terrifying phone call last year.
“I went over to my mom’s and she was in an awful state, she was like hysterical, somebody had called her and said I’d been in a really bad car accident,” she recalled.
Bonnie said the person asked if she was “alive”, and told Morah they had read it online.
The makeup artist, who recorded the podcast last year, continued: “My mom thought I had died in a car accident, called my fiancé, my fiancé was trying to get through to me, he couldn’t.”
“So there was this big drama going on. I was like, just driving my car, not answering to them because I was driving. And got over to my mum, she was in an awful state. And I was just like, where did this person see this? Where did they hear it? What the hell?”
“So I googled. Never do it. I googled, uh, ‘Bonnie car accident’ to see like where has this come from, and the first thing that popped up was this other page [which] was like a full, I’m not even gonna say the name of the thing…”
“I’m like shaking talking about it, but it was this full page about me and I really, really didn’t think there was this.”
“I thought maybe the worst if it was like the odd random DM you got or something like that. And so stupidly, I clicked on and I was like, what is this? And I, I have to say, for a few weeks, it turned my world upside down,” Bonnie confessed.
“I never went back onto it. I’ve never since looked at it and I never will again, but my whole world was rocked and I was really shocked at myself because I think I kind of prided myself on the fact that I had been brought up in this family and we’ve really been instilled to think, you know, this stuff doesn’t matter…
“So when I saw that stuff and it affected me the way it did, I was really rattled and it has now made me think, you know, the majority of people who do what I do haven’t been brought up in the family I’ve been brought up in…”
“I feel like sometimes I have a little bit of an armour, maybe, that not everybody has and I can’t imagine how badly this actually affects them if that’s what it did to me.”
“But yeah, it was a hideous experience,” Bonnie said.
“One of the things that kind of, like, shook me when I read it was people were watching me, like not online, like they were watching me when I was out and going online and writing about seeing me in certain places…
“Like walking my dog or with my fiancé, who I specifically do not post online, and I think that kind of scared me a lot that these people were like, I don’t know, it almost felt like seeking me out.”
