The husband of an Armagh TikTok star and social media influencer is taking a break from the very platforms that support their livelihoods due to the amount of “hate” he was receiving.
Ruairi McGivern – who married Annalivia McGivern (nee Hynds) in a glitzy city-based wedding ceremony in July of this year – has over the years accrued a strong social media following of his own, boasting an audience of over 300,000 followers on TikTok alone.
At the start of October of this year, female-led marketing agency ICON Management announced the father-of-three as their newest signing.
However, in a new update published via his platforms yesterday evening (November 3) Ruairi said he will be stepping away from the platforms in a video that has now reached more than 1.1m views.
Said Ruairi: “I have decided that I am going to take some time away from TikTok. Why? Like, I try to use my platform to spread a bit of positivity and a bit of craic.
“Recently I’ve just got an influx of hate. Now, I don’t know whether it’s just my personality people don’t like or whether it’s having me and Annalivia both in the limelight, or whatever you want to call it.
“People have been using it as an excuse to come for me, my appearance and other things and look, while I say it doesn’t affect me and put on a brave front, like I’m a normal person and eventually it breaks you down.”
Continuing, he explained that he wanted to take some time to “reset”, and allow his new wife to “fire away”.
In a word of thanks to those who have engaged in a positive way with his accounts, he added: “This isn’t a ‘pick-me’ or anything I just want to come on and thank everyone who has supported me, who has showed me love.
“I really appreciate it and yea, we will see what happens. I’ll take a few weeks and see where my head is at but it is what it is. You put yourself out there and you have to be open to taking a bit of schtick but there’s a line from a bit of schtick and then, you know…
“But anyway, remember be kind, spread positivity where you can and I’ll see you later.”
Annalivia also took the time to publicly discuss the issue, starting with a few “tips” about what to do if you don’t like the content you see.
She said: “If you come across someone who is annoying and you don’t like, or you don’t want to watch, you can hold the screen and then up pops these little things you can do.
“You can hit ‘not interested’ and then when you hit that it means you won’t see their videos anymore, you can also hit block, you can also just scroll past someone you don’t like. You don’t have to leave a nasty comment.”
Addressing Men’s Mental Health Awareness month this November, the influencer added: “Honestly, I am just so sick of people having fake accounts and honestly… there’s nothing you can do about it. But I’m so sick of people having fake accounts and using it as a way of bullying, right… so we are going to say bullying. It’s not trolling, it’s not the other words people say… it’s bullying online.
“The thing that frustrates me the most is people just like leave these comments, these nasty, f**king horrible comments and then they scroll on, they go on about their day but they don’t think about the impact that will have on whoever is reciprocating [receiving] those comments and I would have talked to so many people about this recently because everyone is feeling it. It’s so rife right now. But I just always think what happened to ‘If you don’t have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all?'”
Recalling the social media hype surrounding her wedding of just two months ago, Annalivia explained that, sadly, a lot of what she viewed online was negative and hurtful.
“Like two days after my wedding I as finally back on my ‘for you page’ and someone had put up a video of my wedding, of my dress or something and it had like 11k likes and loads of comments,” she said. “Then under the comments, every single comment was talking about how much weight I’d put on, how fat I looked.
“I was like, I just got married and I picked that dress and obviously thought I looked amazing in it – obviously because I picked that dress – and that was what I was hit with and this is not just about me this is about everyone.”
Regarding her husband’s experience, Annalivia said: “Ruairi has been on the receiving end of it now for like a good while and obviously you saw that he’s like breaking point a bit with it and I just think we all need to do better and if you don’t have something nice to say, you don’t have to say anything.
“I could go on and on. I just think social media used to be a really positive place and used to be a really good outlet for people but now it’s just turning into bullying.”
