Samantha Brick's Column

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Overview

Samantha Brick's Column is an article written by freelance writer Samantha Brick^[9] in early April 2012 for the British daily tabloid The Daily Mail, which claimed that while her physical beauty had provided some advantages in life, it had also made other women jealous of her.

Background

On April 2nd, 2012, The Daily Mail^[1] published a column titled "There Are Downsides to Looking This Pretty" by Samantha Brick. In the piece, Brick revealed that her looks had a profound effect on how she was treated in life, giving her increased attention from men and causing other women to dislike her out of jealousy.

Notable Developments

Upon its publication, the article was immediately met by incredulous reactions and comments from the readers, many of whom thought the article was either an April Fool’s joke that arrived one day too late or a conspicuous attempt at trolling for readership.

Online Reaction

Soon, a lengthy debate ensued in the comments section of the article, generating over 5,000 comments in the first 72 hours of publication. The majority of readers outspokenly criticized Brick for being “delusional” and “against feminism,” while a minority few came to her defense by saying she had a right to freedom of expression and being honest. One of the most up-voted comments in the article was posted by Rebs from Dublin, Ireland, who wrote:

"We don't dislike you for thinking you are beautiful, that's fine. It's your arrogant deluded attitude that is annoying."

The most down-voted comment in the article was posted by Christine from Salt Lake City, Utah, who wrote:

"This women has what every women wants !! SELF ESTEEM!!! Every women should be able to look at themselves as the most beautiful women in the world .You go girl!!!!"

Meanwhile on Twitter, her name “Samantha Brick” instantly became globally trending topics and continued through its second day. In addition, people began tweeting absurd statements about the power of Brick's beauty with the hashtag #samanthabrickfacts^[12]

On Facebook, nearly 50,000 people shared the article with their friends in the first 24 hours and several pages were created in response to the column, including "Samantha Brickisms"^[5], "Beautiful Samantha Brick"^[6], "Being Beautiful as Samantha Brick"^[7] and "Samantha Brick you are an ugly human being."^[8]

News Media Coverage

The buzz was instantly picked up by other British tabloid magazines and news sites like The Daily Telegraph and The Independent, as well as major news publications overseas from ABC News to the fashion magazine Stylist.

The following day, another article by Brick in response to the comments was published on Daily Mail, which became another site of arguments for the readers. In another Daily Mail article summarizing the online reaction to the column, the tabloid news site reported that the column article has accumulated more than 1.5 million views in the first 24 hours and with Brick’s response taken into account, the articles generated over 8,000 comments in less than 72 hours.

The Gawker site Jezebel^[11] published an article titled "Yes, Samantha Brick is Obnoxious, But the Daily Mail Is Trolling Us All", which argued that The Daily Mail used Brick as link bait to drive traffic to the site. On April 4th, The Guardian^[2] writer Tim Dowling published a satirical article titled "Like Samantha Brick, I have been hated for my good looks", which provided a male perspective of being ostracized for being attractive. On April 5th, Brick appeared on the British morning talk show This Morning^[10] and expressed her reaction to the Internet backlash.

Image Macros

A Quickmeme^[4] page for Samantha Brick was created on April 3rd, which featured arrogant and vain captions about Brick's physical appearance.

On April 4th, an image macro of Brick reached the front page of the women's meme subreddit /r/TrollXChromosomes^[14] with the caption "Think women hate her for being pretty / turn out she's just really dumb."