The trolls came for us.

Hello everyone, happy Friday!

Big week here at Béa HQ. We had our first troll 🧌

It was only a matter of time before someone decided we needed to be schooled on fertility, and what a glorious schooling it was. The troll in question took issue with our post on sperm DNA fragmentation (a very real, well researched issue in fertility), saying that we needed to (and I quote), “stop lying and be quiet about Men’s health”. Capital M men, obviously (I also love being told to be quiet by men on the internet). The comment went on to accuse us of belonging to the Bitter Feminist Symposium. Yes we do, my guy, yes we do. And over here at the Bitter Feminist Symposium what do we do with trolls? Clap back. Obviously. But we value only gentle escalation here (hello ICI before IVF), so we clapped back in a sassy and only moderately salty manner.

Now, we were laughing about this, because frankly it was an outrageous and amusing trolling (see below for full sass). But I spent a little time reflecting on the experience of getting schooled by a troll on fertility, and I think it’s worth sharing those thoughts, because we’re all a lot more impacted by this stuff than I think we’re aware of.

When someone pops up in the comments of a medical post and says “stop lying,” it might seem harmless. It’s one person (and frankly sometimes it’s not even a person, it’s a bot). It’s just one comment. But that’s exactly how misinformation works. It starts small. It starts with a comment that sounds confident enough to make you pause. And then more comments. And then a clickbait headline that someone we know shared even though we don’t know who wrote the headline. And then it snowballs. And in a world where we’re scrolling fast and absorbing faster, the lone trolls out there are cumulatively and collectively having a profound impact on our lives.

How? Well, in both small and big ways. More than half of endometriosis patients surveyed believed that having endometriosis meant you can never become pregnant, a claim that had spread online and is simply not true. In a Polish study of medical students in 2025, one in five were self-reported vaccine sceptics, shaped by the wave of anti-vax content that flooded the internet during the Covid-19 pandemic. These aren’t people who lack intelligence or critical thinking. These are smart, engaged people who absorbed misinformation because it was everywhere, and it was loud, and it was repetitive. Put enough confident-sounding comments under enough posts and eventually, some of it sticks.

This matters so much in fertility. Because fertility is personal, it’s emotional, and for a lot of us, it involves a medical system that hasn’t always made us feel heard. When you’ve been dismissed by a doctor, or told to “just relax,” or spent months Googling symptoms at 2am because no one gave you a straight answer, of course you turn to the internet. Of course you trust the confident stranger in the comments. It makes complete sense. We hear from people all the time who are smart, who are tuned into their bodies, who are discerning and thoughtful, and who still come to us with misinformation they’ve absorbed without even realising it. That’s not their fault. It’s the environment we’re all swimming in.

So what can you do? A few things that genuinely help. First, when you see a comment that makes a bold claim, look at who’s posting it. Check the username, the profile, the followers. A username full of numbers, zero followers, no bio, no real photo? That’s not a person with a medical opinion. It’s likely a bot, or a troll. Ignore it. Second, when a company makes a claim about a product or a treatment, look for the evidence. Have they linked to a study? Have they included disclaimers? At Béa, we always include disclaimers that contextualise our claims because context matters, and anyone who skips it is hoping you won’t notice. Third, and maybe most importantly, slow down. One of the core tactics of misinformation in marketing, whether it’s health-related or not, is urgency. Buy now. Act now. Decide now. If something is pushing you to make a decision about your health before you’ve had time to think, that’s a red flag. You always, always have the right to pause when you’re making a decision about your body.

There’s a lot going on in the world right now, and when you’re trying to conceive it can make everything feel heavier and lonelier than it already is.

You’re not alone in this wild, scary and emotional journey. There are good, real humans out there who want to help. Our clinical team is always just a message away, and our very human humans will always reply. Need us? Email us.

Dealing with your own trolls? Come join us. The next Bitter Feminist Symposium starts in an hour and you’re all invited 💅

Take care of yourself this weekend.

Warmly,

Tess, Co-Founder & CEO