Married at First Sight’s Amanda Micallef started a GoFundMe page on Thursday asking fans to pay for her (and her cat’s) move from Melbourne to the Gold Coast.
The news was met with much criticism online, with many people saying they’re also struggling amid COVID-19, so we called Amanda to see what she makes of the backlash.
Here’s what she told The Wash….
‘I feel like my post was a target for everyone’s frustration. And because I finally put my hand up to ask for help, which I never usually do, people started saying I was a cheapskate. These people don’t know my life. I don’t talk about my struggles online. If anything I use it as a way to uplift everyone else but deep down there are nights where I will have a quick cry, I’m not showing this online. People think because you’re in the public eye, that you need to be perfect.’
She continued: ‘I have had that many personal struggles, I was living in my best friend’s property recently and was a target to her partner .. who was like the devil. I had to leave that property and now I’m staying with a good friend of mine. I am living out of boxes at the moment which I have never done. I’ve always been financially independent, but I’m so broken by this whole [COVID-19] situation, I have just run out of ideas to survive.
‘I wanted to use my platform as a way to be honest and speak to the people that aren’t nasty to ask for help. No I’m not living on the streets but me wanting to move to the Gold Coast because I have no chance of my business surviving in Melbourne I saw as a huge opportunity for me. So to cop this backlash, I was dumbfounded! This is the society that we live in, it’s disgusting. They want to kick you when you’re down.
Amanda finished of by giving the online trolls a piece of her mind.
‘You’re not a keyboard warrior, you’re a keyboard coward! Everybody needs to take a good hard look at themselves for picking on a complete stranger that has done nothing personal to them, and do they sleep well at night knowing that they have emotionally damaged a stranger? If the answer is yes, than they have to take a good hard look at themselves. It’s terrible.’
