I Watched a Stranger Tear My Friend Apart Online and It Revealed an Uncomfortable Truth About All of Us

There is something particularly heartbreaking about watching women tear other women apart.

This morning, scrolling through TikTok (that mindless ritual most of us do before we're even fully awake), I came across a video that made my stomach drop. A girl I've never met was sharing her "ick" about a friend of mine who's been building her business from scratch. She wasn't just critiquing the product—which she admitted she'd never even tried—but picking apart my friend's appearance, her voice, the way she presents herself.

I felt that immediate rush of protectiveness and anger. My first reaction? Record my own video calling her out. But halfway through filming, I stopped and deleted it. Why give her exactly what she wanted? More views. More engagement. More attention for tearing someone down.

Instead, I want to talk about something that's been on my mind: Why is it so normalized for women to publicly tear each other down?

Let's be honest with ourselves for a second. It takes almost no effort to point out what we don't like about someone else. To roll our eyes at someone's enthusiasm. To decide we're "above" someone else's passion project.

My friend….She's spent countless nights refining her business plan. She's invested her savings. She's faced rejection, picked herself up, and kept going when most people would have given up. She's built something from nothing.

And it took this girl what—two minutes to film a video dismantling all of that?

There's a profound asymmetry between the courage it takes to build something and the ease with which others can tear it down. This imbalance doesn't sit right with me, and yet we see it play out every day.

I need to get real with myself too. I've been that critical voice before. Maybe not in a public TikTok, but I've definitely sat with friends and picked apart other women. I've questioned someone's motives or talents or appearance.

And I've also been on the receiving end. I know what it feels like to hear through the grapevine that someone thinks you're "too much" or "trying too hard." It stings in a way that's hard to explain but impossible to forget.

So why do we keep doing this to each other?

Maybe because we've internalized the very judgments that have been used against us. Maybe because criticizing other women provides a temporary feeling of control or superiority. Or maybe because it's simply what we've been shown, again and again, is acceptable—even rewarded—behavior.

There's something particularly troubling about doing this online, though. When we share these takes with thousands of strangers, we're not just expressing an opinion—we're inviting a pile-on. We're saying, "Hey, join me in making fun of this person you've never met."

And for what? A dopamine hit from likes and comments? The satisfaction of feeling like the cool, discerning critic who's above it all?

I'm not saying we need to love everything every woman does. That's unrealistic and honestly a little fake. We're allowed to have opinions. We're allowed to not vibe with certain people or products.

But maybe we could just... not make content about it? Maybe we could just scroll past? Maybe we could remember that on the other side of that screen is a real person with real feelings who's probably just trying her best, just like we are?

When we encounter a woman's work that doesn't resonate with us, we can simply move on rather than publicly dismantling her. When we have substantive criticism to offer, we can deliver it with the care we would want extended to our own vulnerable offerings.

Most powerful of all, we can actively celebrate other women's successes, knowing that each woman who breaks through makes the path slightly clearer for all who follow.

The truth is that building a culture of women supporting women requires more than hashtags or performative praise. It requires the accumulated weight of our daily choices—the small, seemingly inconsequential decisions about how we speak about other women, how we engage with their work, and whether we choose to build up or break down.

When I saw that video this morning, I felt momentarily hopeless. But beneath that reaction was a deeper truth: we always have a choice. We can always, at any moment, decide to step outside the cycle of criticism and invest in something better.

I'm making that choice today. Because at the end of the day, I think we all have enough voices in our heads telling us we're not enough. We don't need to be that voice for each other too.

So here's to doing better. Not perfectly—just better. One scroll, one comment, one interaction at a time.