This week a seemingly distraught and heartbroken Katie Price (nee Jordan) took to Twitter to announce her divorce from husband of just over a year, Kieran Hayler, declaring he'd been "having a full on sexual affair" with her best friend Jane Pountney for the past seven months.
She was met with little sympathy but instead a barrage of abusive tweets hurled like rocks. Within hours of her first disclosure, the digital stoning was still going strong. It left me irked and ultimately feeling sorry for the glamour model.
To say she's been unlucky in love would be a gross understatement, I mean this woman's list of exes includes an absent father, a man with a secret sex dungeon and an underwear model she could only communicate with via Google Translate.
Like most of us she's made some bad choices - the only difference is she's been pretty vocal about it. Living her life publicly seemed to be a disastrously bad idea particularly after her split from Peter Andre. Imagine a relationship going bad. Now imagine you'd recorded a cover of 'A Whole New World' with the other half of said relationship. It's shudderingly hideous, and yet she continued to be an open book.
But why does this grant the Twittersphere permission to lay blame at her door? Why do we have zero compassion for a woman who: a) has been cheated on by her husband and b) is six months pregnant?
If someone like Holly Willoughby or Amanda Holden did what Katie did would the world react in the same way? Would tweeters declare: "She's [a] silly c**t! Lol embarrassing", "Somone should set her up with Oscar Pistorus #haha (sic)" and "Guarantee she's in someone else's bed & remarried within the next year". Would male comedians feel the same need to tweet a shit joke? Would Jameela Jamil retweet it?
I highly doubt it.
We all have a friend who's made some pretty effed up decisions when it comes to men. We all know a girl who is happiest when she's got a boyfriend, even if said boyfriend is a complete and utter troll. And we've all had at least one truly awful relationship. None of us deserve to be berated for it, so why is Katie fair game?
Did she bring the bile on herself? Did she let out a rallying cry when she, a woman who - god forbid has been married and then divorced more than once - dared to share her hurt on Twitter?
"Nobody cares, you attention-seeking woman," one Twitter user wrote. And perhaps she was seeking attention, perhaps she wanted a little bit of sympathy, but I fail to see why this should be met with such hatred.
If anything, we should feel saddened by her need to turn to social media to express her pain. If nothing else, this is clearly a woman in need of a good friend.
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