Chrissy Teigen Addresses Past Cyberbullying: “I Was A Troll, Full Stop”

Chrissy Teigen has returned to the internet after a brief hiatus, sharing a long letter to the public that addresses her documented history of cyberbullying and trolling on the internet.

In May, Teigen was outed as one of the many celebrities who had cyberbullied model Courtney Stodden when they were just a teenager. After Stodden’s name topped headlines because of their controversial marriage to man almost forty years their senior, they revealed that had Teigen allegedly sent them a number of troubling private messages on social media. The Cravings writer responded to the claims with a public apology on Twitter at the time, calling herself an “insecure, attention seeking troll.” She stepped away from the internet shortly after.

Weeks later, Teigen is speaking to her trolling in a new blog post on Medium. In the piece, titled “Hi again,” she traces the roots of her online misbehaviour. After “sitting in a hole of deserved global punishment,” Teigen was able to identify that her need to act out on Twitter was connected to her own insecurity.

“I was insecure, immature and in a world where I thought I needed to impress strangers to be accepted,” she wrote on Medium. “If there was a pop culture pile-on, I took to Twitter to try to gain attention and show off what I at the time believed was a crude, clever, harmless quip. I thought it made me cool and relatable if I poked fun at celebrities.”

As she became more popular and more famous, Teigen continued, she began to see the error of her ways — especially as she herself started receiving some of the same negativity that she’d dished out in the past. The model and television personality added that she’s no longer the troll of yesterday because she’s learned how to be more empathetic after going through struggles in her own life. More importantly, she had to change because she needed to be a role model for her two young children, Luna and Miles.

“The truth is, I’m no longer the person who wrote those horrible things,” Teigen explained. “I grew up, got therapy, got married, had kids, got more therapy, experienced loss and pain, got more therapy and experienced more life. AND GOT MORE THERAPY.”

"John tells me almost every day how much our daughter Luna reminds him of me," she continued. "Every day, I try to make sure she’s all the best parts of me, all the things I aspire to be all the time, but fail at sometimes. And we preach kindness to her and Miles every chance we get. Will they eventually realize there is some hypocrisy there? I certainly do. But I hope they recognize my evolution."

While she didn't address Stodden's claims that they'd been blocked on Twitter after the online firestorm, Teigen did write that she was hoping that victims of her cyberbullying would be willing to talk with her and let her apologize. Teigen then went on to thank her fans and supporters, also saying that she was sorry for "letting them down."

"I won’t ask for your forgiveness, only your patience and tolerance," she concluded. "I ask that you allow me, as I promise to allow you, to own past mistakes and be given the opportunity to seek self improvement and change."

The open letter might be too little, too late for some, as the consequences of Teigen's trolling played out rather quickly after Stodden's interview with The Daily Beast went viral. Though belated, Teigen's apology hints that she is taking the feedback to heart — only time (and future tweets) will tell just how different her timeline will be.