Yahoo News #BeKind: can Caroline Flack’s final plea be more than just a hashtag?
Scanning the magazine aisle at her local supermarket last weekend, Nikki Evans suddenly felt sick. She was stocking up on celebrity and gossip weeklies for her beauty salon when she realised that she couldn’t face buying them any more.
“It’s awful that it took the passing of Caroline [Flack] for people to stop and think ‘enough is enough’, but I re-evaluated and looked at all these magazines and I couldn’t see anything positive in them,” she told the Observer. “People come to my salon to feel good; we’re all about wellbeing and wellness, and I’m going to hand them magazines calling people trash? I’m done with it.”
The former presenter of ITV series Love Island and one-time winner of Strictly Come Dancing took her own life days before she was due to face trial for the alleged assault of her boyfriend. Flack’s death gave new momentum to #BeKind, a hashtag created in 2017 by Lucy Alexander, a mother who lost her son to suicide and wanted to make a stand against online trolling.
In the past week, inspired by Flack’s Instagram post from December in which she wrote: “In a world where you can be anything, be kind,” brands, celebrities and the public have been keen to express their empathy online, and #BeKind has snowballed. But what has been the real-world impact – and can the call for more kindness be more than just a hashtag?
In Devon, Evans binned every magazine in her salon and explained on her Facebook page that she would be stocking her salon with “good old fashioned books … and even some colouring books” instead. The post has now been shared more than four million times while dozens of other salons have pledged to do the same.
The news about Caroline took my breath away. It hit me really hard. I knew we had to use our platform for good
Adam Frisby, In The Style
On Friday, Flack’s former boyfriend, rugby star Danny Cipriani, said the presenter had died of “embarrassment and shame”. Publications including the Daily Mail and the Sun have taken a battering with an online petition calling for “the British media to knowingly and relentlessly bully a person” to be made “a criminal offence” gaining 800,000 signatures.
Adam Frisby, the 32-year-old founder and CEO of fast fashion brand In The Style, said he was devastated by Flack’s death and is producing a line of T-shirts to raise funds for charity. “People close to me have suffered deeply with mental health problems, and the news about Caroline took my breath away. It hit me really hard. I knew we had to use our platform for good and take something from Caroline’s message.”
By Monday evening, In The Style put Be Kind T-shirts for sale on its site, promising 100% of the profits to the Samaritans. More than 100,000 have now been sold, with an estimated £300,000 raised so far for the charity’s helpline. “We usually have 100,000 orders in a month across the site, not in four days, and we’re losing a lot of money,” said Frisby. “But this was only ever about the positive message and to raise awareness.”
In Basingstoke, baker Maxine Tollett had a similar idea and has been selling “Be Kind” cupcakes with all proceeds going to mental health charities, while a bookshop in Hastings was deluged with requests after offering to send a copy of Matt Haig’s depression memoir Reasons to Stay Alive to anyone who needed it.
A spokesperson from industry analyst Nielsen told the Observer that while, anecdotally, sales of similar books might have spiked, “it is too early to [understand] the impact on the personal development and self-help book market” as the sales of the last week would not be published until Tuesday. The Samaritans and mental health charity Mind declined to comment on the number of calls they had received since Flack’s death or funds raised.
Professor Robin Banerjee, head of psychology and director of Kindness Research at Sussex University, was circumspect about whether #BeKind would have a significant impact. “Any campaign to promote kindness has a lot of potential merit, in principle,” he said. “There is a growing evidence base within psychology and other disciplines that kindness is positively associated with wellbeing, not just for those who receive it, but also for those who give it. But creating a kind culture, whether at a school, in a workplace, or in society more generally, is not easy.”
Banerjee added: “Kindness is more than behaviour – it’s the motivation as well. Any campaign has got to be more than simply ‘telling’ people to be kind. It’s about changing the contexts in which we live and work so that there is a genuine investment in people and their relationships.”
Still, to Flack’s fans, there were green shoots to be found and positive work being done in her memory. “I’ve been guilty of being a person jumping on a bandwagon by sharing pictures and comments online for things before,” admitted Evans. “But I don’t want to be that person any more. I’ve done one small thing to change that and am shocked at how big it got. Lots of people are doing small things and it all adds up.”
• In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org.
