The mainstreaming of revenge trolling

Simone Biles, Suni Lee, Taylor Swift and Beyoncé are winning to make their ops cry

Flexing on your haters has never been more acceptable thanks to a raft of women motivated by their critics then taunting them with their success.

Revenge trolling came into sharp focus in the last week after Simone Biles took to Instagram to celebrate her first gold medal of the Paris 2024 Olympics. She had much to be happy about that day as winning the women’s team final made her America’s most decorated gymnast. It was also a giant step forward in her competitive comeback following the mental injury she suffered at the Tokyo games in 2021. But rather than focus on her career-defining success, Biles marked it by dragging a former teammate who’d criticised the team.

Under jubilant images of the five-strong team Biles wrote, “lack of talent, lazy, olympic champions ❤️🥇🇺🇸” and in doing so took a clear swipe at MyKayla Skinner, a former US gymnast.

Skinner, who won silver at the 2020 Olympics, had recently questioned - and in many minds disrespected - the American team’s abilities and w…