In an interview with BBC News Channel 4’s Cathy Newman, Chvrches frontwoman Lauren Mayberry opened up about online abuse.

Mayberry, who was among the artists who took part in an initiative called “Change The Tune” to raise awareness for the issue, recalled the harassment, including rape or death threats she received on the internet for about a decade and warned that the “cyber misogyny” experienced by women and girls every day is both dangerous and isolating. Mayberry recalled how she was overly sexualized by “a lot of men” online from the very start of her career.

“It’s all very sexual and sexualized all the time,” she said. “And I look at that and I’m like, I was a 23-year-old girl, trying to do my job, just to write some silly songs. I didn’t know that that was going to be such a big part of it.”

The singer spoke about the threats of violence she received online after expressing disappointment in Marshmello‘s decision to work with Chris Brown and Tyga. The comments came in light of Brown previously admitting to assaulting then-girlfriend Rihanna and Tyga being sued for sexual assault.

Mayberry said one person threatened to “bash her skull in” if she continued to make comments about Brown, leading to her hiring private security at her home.

She also said that “deepfake” pornography impacted her and added that it would have been far more powerful if she were younger.

“It just felt like another version of the same thing. It’s like a decade of intermittently receiving rape or death threats on the internet,” she told the BBC.

“Even though people say ‘It’s not real, it’s not real.’ Your brain does not perceive that, I don’t think. The impact of it on your psychology, it doesn’t really matter whether you think that’s real.”

“I don’t think the ‘just ignore it and it’ll go away’ argument is working [.] I definitely did a lot of panic crying before gigs and then I think I do remember us specifically getting to the end of that tour and it was the first time in the band,” she concluded. “I took two weeks off and went to a little remote location and cried a lot in baths.”

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