Doireann Garrihy Just Opened Up About Those WhatsApp Voice Notes

 

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A post shared by Doireann Garrihy (@doireanngarrihy) on Apr 3, 2020 at 7:25am PDT

Doireann Garrihy has opened up about viral Whatsapp messages which went around in 2018.

The radio host was seeing her boyfriend Joe at the time, but was accused of stealing him from another woman in a series of voice notes on Whatsapp.

Doireann opened up about the ordeal recently describing it as ‘the worst thing ever’.

Speaking on Dara Quilty’s Different Podcast, Doireann was asked if ever the fame got overwhelming for her.

Doireann admitted that she felt the Whatsapp incident was ‘one of the worse things that happened’ and that it felt ‘massive’ because she had hadn’t experienced any negativity from followers beforehand.

The social media star explains that she was seeing a guy and was leaving her slot on Zoo Crew.

“And so I was leaving the Zoo Crew on the Friday, and I knew they were going to issue a press release about it, so I was like oh it will probably be on the different sites…”

“So I was sitting in my car about to go in and do my last [Zoo Crew] show and someone wrote to me on Instagram and said, ‘Doireann is this true?’ and it was a link,”

“So I was like oh that must be the article about the Zoo Crew so I opened it, and it opened up on YouTube and it was a screen recording of WhatsApp voice notes that were about me.”

 

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A post shared by Doireann Garrihy (@doireanngarrihy) on Mar 5, 2020 at 12:27pm PST

“There was three of them… and you know that feeling when your stomach just falls out your arse?! Because I didn’t have a clue what it could be about.”

“So I started listening to the voice notes, and it was basically a girl saying that the guy I was with at the time, that I had stolen him from another girl, and that they had been borderline engaged, they were about to build a house together, all of this stuff!”

She added; “It was just this fabricated shite… the facts were so mad. It was just beyond, but it was so fabricated that I actually didn’t worry because it was so stupid,” she said, admitting that at first, she didn’t think it was a big deal.

“Fast forward three days later – I had to block the words ‘sl*t’, ‘wh*re’, ‘man stealer’, ‘farmer’, because he was a farmer, ‘Justice for Jane’, because that was the girl’s name.”

“I had to block all these comments, and I remember sitting at my parent’s kitchen table, and what was so hard about it was that my parents didn’t understand how fast these things grow online,” she explained.

“And so, they were like it’s gonna blow over, and I was like you don’t understand like I’m getting messages by the minute.”

“And whatever about the ones going ‘you’re a wh*re’, ‘you’re a sl*t’… the worst messages were, ‘Doireann I really don’t want to believe this, I’ve followed you for years, is it true?’ and that just broke my heart because I didn’t want to respond to people, because if I respond then it looks like I’m guilty.”

“I just was like, silence is the best policy, for now, I’m just going to say nothing. I just think no matter what you come out with and say you’re going to look guilty and I wasn’t guilty!”

 

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A post shared by Doireann Garrihy (@doireanngarrihy) on Apr 28, 2019 at 7:43am PDT

Doireann explains that only when her sister Ailbhe got upset in front of their parents, that they realised how serious it was.

“It was the fact that I was suffering the consequences of something I hadn’t done was actually the worst thing ever” she continued.

“Podge & Rodge was starting that week and this was all I could think about, when I should have been thinking about my first opportunity in TV.”

“It was just hell,” she confessed. “But you know what, it was the best lesson for me, because up to that point I kind of thought well if someone follows me they must like me… it was the biggest lesson in how untrue that is, how quickly people turn,” she said.

Doireann adds that she knows exactly who sent the messages and that the ‘Jane’ behind story ended up writing an email clearing up that she and Joe were never a couple.

“It taught me to take everything with a pinch of salt,” she said.

• Doireann Garrihy