UK based influencer, Elle Darby had spent the last 5 years to build up her social media career, accumulating over half a million subscribers on YouTube.
Her content was watched by thousands of fans across the world, as she grew increasingly popular for her content that featured lifestyle vlogs, insights into being a new mum & beauty content.
However, Elle Darby’s career came to a sudden halt as previous tweets, from when she was a teenager resurfaced.
In those tweets from 2011, Darby wrote highly racial remarks about Polish, Chinese and Indian people whilst expressing her “hate” towards foreigners.
As those tweets emerged just last year, Elle Darby hit back with a very ‘insincere’ apology video titled “i’m sorry”, which now has 1.2M views on her channel.
This was the last time anyone had seen or heard from the influencer, up until just a few days ago.
Elle Darby’s social media return post
Darby returned to Instagram on Sunday, saying she’d taken time to “re-evaluate” and “re-visit areas that need deeper healing.”
Elle Darby’s latest full statement reads:
“There are few times in life when it makes more sense to just stop. To take a breath, to re-evaluate, to revisit areas that need deeper healing, and to return when you have the right message: rooted in authenticity and truth.
There are so many countless thoughts and feelings I have, too many to write in one caption or say in one video or they have instead been translated into values and lessons I have been fulfilling in my life offline and will be enforcing in my presence online.
For the sake of this post, in a nutshell: my thoughts surrounding my resurfaced tweets and the storm surrounding them in January, simply always come back to the people I hurt with the hate and anger that I held. I am sorry.
My own heart has been completely broken knowing I had broken yours. I will never be able to apologise enough and I will forever take responsibility for the pain that I inflicted.”
At the time of the resurfacing of the tweets, Elle Darby was trending on social media and receieved major backlash, resulting in losing over 100,000 followers and causing her to deactivate her Twitter account.
More than 100,000 followers have liked the post she shared recently, with many users claiming they’re pleased Darby has decided to return to the platform.
One person wrote:
“Elle this was so well written ❤️ It is so admirable how you have handled this situation, to recognise what your younger self did wrong and acknowledge it now even though it was clear how much you had grown anyway, to do that inner work privately and deal with all the nastiness of cancel culture online at the same time, you’ve handled it all with grace and I think everyone can appreciate that and agree that we all deserve a second chance from time to time. There are so many of us looking forward to having you back in this space ❤️❤️❤️ sending lots of love.”
Elle Darby’s partner and father of their baby, Connor Swift, has still to write anything on his Instagram profile since two written apologies appeared in January following the discovery of additional racist tweets written by him.
Following Elle’s statement yesterday, she posted two images of herself, Connor, and their young son Saint on the beach. “A forever thing,” she captioned it, as fans again gave their support again for making a comeback.
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