Meghan McCain Opens Up About Depression Over Vitriolic Twitter Attacks: ‘We’re Living In an Absolutely Toxic Time’
Meghan McCain delivered an impassioned, personal response to her online critics on Thursday as The View held a conversation over social media toxicity.
The segment revolved around Chrissy Teigen’s decision to shut down her Twitter account because she no longer wants the platform’s negativity in her life. The announcement drew sympathy from The View as Sunny Hostin and Sara Haines acknowledged Twitter’s vitriol and lamented that it drove her positive influence off of the platform.
McCain agreed with her colleagues’ points, but she explained that she loves Twitter because of the venue it provides for journalism, online conversations, and other positive ends. As for Twitter’s negative side, McCain spoke about that in personal terms by commenting on how she became a trending topic for her commentary on Senator Tammy Duckworth’s (D-IL) ultimatum to the Biden administration.
McCain reiterated that she’s not looking for people to feel bad for her, but she empathized with Teigen by speaking about how online negativity has impacted her life as well:
I was trending on Twitter yesterday. I don’t think it’s ever been positive. It’s always something negative. It’s not just random people. It’s people with blue checkmarks and I don’t need a pity party. I said yesterday there’s no crying in baseball. I’ve chosen to do this work, this is not indentured servitude. I’m the one conservative woman in all of mainstream television. I’m the only one left. With that, I’m saying things that are not said in an echo chamber. I say things that people just don’t want to hear, and if they disagree with me, it automatically becomes personal about how fat I am, I’m a disgusting white woman of privilege, I only get anywhere because of my dad. Everything you guys have already said, it’s not anything I haven’t thought and felt and been insecure about for my whole life.
The problem is that every time I say something political that people don’t like, it becomes deeply personal, and now it’s involving my child. So I get it. I get why Chrissy Teigen can’t do it. It has 100 percent impacted my mental health. I have suffered from depression because of things people have done to me on social media, but I don’t feel like I’m in a place where I can’t quit social media because I need it for my job. It’s a Catch 22. We’re living in an absolutely toxic time.
McCain concluded by telling viewers that instead of feeling bad for her, “feel bad for the teenagers and young people who are being bullied in school and think there’s no other freaking option except to kill themselves.”
“If someone like Chrissy Teigen, who is married to John Legend and has what looks like a perfect, beautiful life, can’t take the toxicity anymore, maybe we have a problem,” McCain said. “And I’ll probably trend on Twitter after this because of that too.”
Watch above, via ABC.
