At first, Alisha Aitken-Radburn was excited to see herself as a contestant on Australia’s The Bachelor. But by the season’s midway point, it was clear she wasn’t getting the edit she’d hoped for.
Along with two of her friends in the cast, Aitken-Radburn was being painted as a “mean girl”. In the scheme of reality television villains, her behaviour was not particularly egregious – a rude remark here, a heated argument there. But the 2018 season she was featured on – with former rugby union player Nick “The Honey Badger” Cummins – reached a mammoth average national audience of 1.25 million, many of which turned against her. As each episode aired, her social media was flooded with comments and messages calling her a “dog”, a “turd”, a “bully” and a “putrid rat”. It was relentless, and felt, she recalls, like an “existential crisis”.
