Tiffany Haddish has been calling up her haters

The new Tiffany Haddish profile in The Los Angeles Times covers a lot of ground—past trauma, sexual assault, sobriety, infertility, and more—but nothing will raise eyebrows more than Haddish’s admission that she occasionally calls up her haters. This comes after she claims she’s “working with a therapist to learn how to set better boundaries.” Apparently, those are professional boundaries (turning down the occasional project, for instance), and not personal boundaries, like creating a fake Instagram account to argue with online trolls.

Haddish has faced backlash in recent years, most prominently after a child sexual abuse lawsuit was filed against her and comedian Aries Spears over inappropriate comedy sketches filmed in 2013/2014. Though the lawsuit was dropped, the reputational damage was done; Haddish says she’s blocked the phrases “setback,” “pedo,” and “not funny” on Instagram. If blocking some words or accounts was the extent of it, that might indeed qualify as normal and healthy boundary-setting behavior. Given the extreme nature of some of the hate she’s received, it’s also sort of understandable that she hired a digital forensics analyst to research where her death threats were coming from (75% were apparently bots in Malaysia and Iran, “which made her feel better”).

But things get dicey when Haddish reveals she has an Instagram alter ego named Sarah who will “destroy” haters by “deploying details from their personal lives.” Haddish says, “I’ve learned how to find people’s information—like I pull up the credit report, police records. You can do that for $1.99. Sometimes, I get so mad that I’ll get they phone number and I’ll just call them.”

The comedian continues, “Oh, I have called people, honey. They be shocked that I called. They’ll be like, ‘I can’t believe you even saw that.’ You did a whole video, [bitch]! You made a full, five-minute video! On the internet, people think they can just say whatever and you not gonna say anything. I try my best not to, but I’m a human being.”

Sure, it’s human to want to defend yourself from attacks, no one can blame Haddish for that. It’s just that what she’s describing sounds a little extreme, and perhaps not a very good use of her one wild and precious life. It’s not particularly fair that celebrities have to deal with a tidal wave of scrutiny at all times, but conventional wisdom says not engaging with the haters is the best course of action. The block button (or how about the “delete app” button?!) might be a better way to go here!