WHEN I APPLIED for The Traitors UK season three, I had no idea the show was so huge. In Ireland, it wasn’t big yet, and none of my friends had watched it. I’ve never had a Twitter or Reddit account, so I hadn’t seen online commentary play out, nor had it yet entered my TikTok algorithm.

I came across the show late, after both of the first two UK seasons had aired. I was instantly hooked, devouring both seasons in a week.

After I took part in the game for its third season, I was so excited for the show to air, as were my castmates. None of us had ever done TV before and we were naive to what they call ‘the edit’. None of us had ever been perceived by the public, and as someone who had never previously engaged in online commentary, I hadn’t given it a huge amount of thought.

On 1 January, the day the season aired, my phone was set alight with notifications, which was exciting at first. But as I scanned through the messages, I noticed some nasty ones. “Why was Anna cast? She’s so boring and annoying.” “She looks like she gets dressed in the dark.” Those kind of messages.

I didn’t pay them too much heed. But as the show progressed, so did the nasty messages, and their severity. They started to creep into my inbox and appear as comments on my TikToks. My sister rang me one evening to warn me not to look myself up on Twitter or Reddit.

I opened my phone one afternoon to find a paragraphs-long message from a stranger in my inbox, detailing how he found me to be “the most insufferable human he had ever watched”. The message went on to detail how disturbing he found not just my personality, but also my appearance, in great detail.

Blocking accounts and deleting messages became like a full-time job. I once opened TikTok to find a viral video on my feed of a girl making fun of me and three of my castmates for being “narcissists”. The girl in the video said she was impersonating what she referred to as “the most annoying girls on the traitors”. It had thousands of likes and comments. I cried my eyes out.

The crazy part of this is that I was not even much of a controversial character. I wasn’t even one of the most hated players. Many of my castmates were in the trenches with me, or even further in, in fact. It felt so crazy to us, who all loved each other so dearly and had such a fun, special experience playing the game together.

When I was on the game, no one had felt like a villain and no one felt like a hero.

This is not to say that we did not also receive an abundance of love. However, unfortunately, it’s the hate that stays with you.

I don’t say this to moan or complain about my own lot, as I’ve learnt that comes with the territory of doing a television show. I’ve dealt with it and moved on. But I wanted to shine a light on it because I have seen the same sentiment online happen to our fabulous Irish cast. And it breaks my heart.

A few of them have been in contact with me to discuss online hate, expressing their struggles.

The Traitors is a fantastic show. It is so interesting to watch humans interact with each other in a high-pressure environment with thousands of euro on the line, and I love more than anyone to discuss gameplay and tactics.

But when doing this, we need to keep in mind that these are humans. Regular individuals with no media training or experience who are playing a murder mystery game. Getting to watch less than an hour of the castmates’ day does not give us a true reflection of who they are and taking to the internet to type out nasty messages about them should not be normalised.

They play a game of ‘treachery and deceit’, but it’s just that: a game.

Getting to play The Traitors was undoubtedly one of the best experiences of my entire life, but I could not predict the thick skin I was forced to grow to get through it. I urge anyone who likes to engage in this style of content to pause and think whether they would say their comments to a castmate’s face before typing them.

The best advice I received was from a Blindboy podcast and I would pass it on to the new Irish contestants: To never believe what’s written online, whether it be validation or hate. Maintain your own opinion of yourself and protect that at all costs.

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Let’s enjoy this show together, without tearing anyone down, as it is undoubtedly one of the best things to happen to Irish television.

We’re halfway through the show now and the cast and creators have done an excellent job of creating a compelling series.

It’s interesting to see how strategies tried out in the Irish game compare to previous seasons from abroad. Some players have come on to the Irish season trying to be leaders, but that only works if other contestants want to be led, and so far, that strategy mostly hasn’t gone according to plan on this season.

There was tension between the original three traitors since early in the game. During the season I was on, we saw traitors turn on traitors quite early on, but it played out a little differently, with others traitors sitting back and letting the faithfuls do the work to banish their fellow traitors, whereas here we saw the traitors battle it out at the roundtables.

One of the best examples of a faithful putting the clues together that I’ve ever seen on The Traitors is Oyin. She has sat back and watched the other players and has her own opinion instead of only listening to what other people are thinking. I would have been very interested to see what she had done if the traitors had tried to recruit her.

On my season, the traitors tried to recruit me, but I turned it down. It’s a tricky position to be in. I felt like my back was against the wall – I’d only survived that night’s roundtable by one vote and I felt that the traitors were trying to scapegoat me by recruiting me. At the same time, nobody who has turned down recruitment has ever won the show! It’s all of this kind of intricate gameplay that makes the show so interesting.

These castmates have given us the best Irish television I’ve seen in years. Let’s enjoy the show and analysing game strategies – without trying to tear people down.