Family trip sparks online abuse against Olya Tira
Singer and television presenter Olya Tira, who once represented Moldova at Eurovision, has faced a wave of online abuse after simply travelling with her son to visit his grandmother.
It was an ordinary family trip, with no political motive. The singer merely posted on Facebook that she had arrived in St Petersburg. That alone was enough for hundreds of comments to appear under the post, including calls for her extradition, demands that she be stripped of citizenship, and a stream of aggression and wild demagogy.
In response to the attack by online bots, Olya Tira recorded a video message.
“Ignorance is not simply when a person does not know something. Ignorance is when a person knows nothing about your life, your circumstances, your choices, your feelings or your path, but still considers themselves entitled to pass sentence on you. And it is especially telling that most of these ‘brave people’ come from accounts without names, without photographs, without faces. Seriously, guys? Do you really think that a person who is living her life and walking her own path should be afraid of you? No, you can forget about that.”
The artist addressed these words to the authors of the insulting comments, making clear that she would not be intimidated by anonymous abuse over a family trip.
Singer rejects online hatred
Tira said that people who have life inside them do not spend it hounding strangers. Unfortunately, she added, such people exist in every country, every society and every era.
“There are those who inflame hatred, support aggression, sow fear and multiply chaos. Because of people like them, the things that happen do happen. And there are those who choose something else: to preserve peace at least within themselves, not to transfer their anger onto loved ones, not to hurt others because they themselves are hurt. To create, to love, to support, to raise children not in hatred, but in respect for people, and through their own state of mind to make the space around them at least a little brighter. So I choose the second,” she said.
The singer described the attackers as “shitbots” and told them to leave her alone.
“Get out of my page, my space and my life. Nobody invited you here. And I am certainly not going to be afraid of you, stay silent because of you, or adjust my life to your ideas of what I am supposed to be. I decide for myself where to be, what to say, where to go, whom to communicate with and what kind of energy I want to leave behind,” Tira said emotionally.
The abusive comments were, of course, removed from the singer’s page, while her fans expressed their support. We also support Olya Tira. But it must be acknowledged that this evil is taking up more and more space in our lives, and not everything can be so easily avoided by simply banning persistent bots on social media. The reaction to one family trip has shown once again how quickly private life can become a target for organised hatred.
