Tiffany Haddish Started Fake Social Media Account to Find and Call Trolls: “People Think They Can Just Say Whatever”
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
Tiffany Haddish opened a fake Instagram account to track down her online trolls and sometimes call them on the phone, the comedian said this week.
In a new profile with the Los Angeles Times, Haddish said she faces intense Internet bullying, which worsened after the since-dropped 2022 legal complaint alleging that Haddish and comedian Aries Spears had “groomed” two anonymous people.
More from The Hollywood Reporter
Haddish began by blocking key terms on Instagram to avoid the hatred, including “setback,” “pedo” and “not funny.” When death threats continued, she hired a digital forensics analyst to research where they were coming from and discovered that three-quarters of the messages were from bots in Malaysia and Iran.
Since then, she has also created a fake Instagram alias under the name Sarah, which she uses to collect the personal information of her non-robot online bullies.
“I’ve learned how to find people’s information — like I pull up the credit report, police records,” Haddish said. “You can do that for $1.99. Sometimes, I get so mad that I’ll get the phone number and I’ll just call them.”
The Girls Trip actress said the trolls are often “shocked” she’s calling. “They’ll be like, ‘I can’t believe you even saw that.’ You did a whole video, bitch! You made a full, five-minute video! On the Internet, people think they can just say whatever and you not gonna say anything. I try my best not to, but I’m a human being.”
Despite the vitriol, Haddish says her mental health has stayed strong. The biggest challenge she’s faced in recent years has not come from the Internet, but her own body: In 2023, she was diagnosed with endometriosis, which helped explain her multiple miscarriages.
“People have no idea what it feels like to have your soul falling out of your body,” Haddish said. “Because that’s what it feels like. My soul is like, ‘Oh, man. We was gonna grow that.’ You ever plant anything and then it fucking dies and you really want it to live? You try to play cool, like it ain’t that bad. But it is.”
Best of The Hollywood Reporter
