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Every day, Brittany O’Brien walks the social media tightrope.

The Olympic diver enjoys making videos and posting them to her platforms where they are enjoyed by hundreds of thousands of fans.

It allows her to indulge her creative passions, share her sporting journey and monetise her following by promoting commercial products and partners – a crucial financial lifeline for an athlete whose training regimen is like a full-time job and otherwise would have to exist on meagre grants.

But it also opens her up to the dark side of social media abuse. Uninvited messages, many of them sexually explicit, misogynistic and downright creepy, flood into her comments and DMs.

Plenty had warned the Birmingham Commonwealth Games medallist not to read the comments after she posted.

“But I can’t help myself,” O’Brien said.

“I’m always looking. I don’t get much actual hate ... but I do get a lot of just disgusting messages.

“I think I’ve learned to ignore it. At first it really got to me but it shouldn’t have to be something that I’m learning to kind of just accept.”

The messages? Really disgusting.

Lewd. Salacious. Kinky. Moronic.

Uninvited commentary on her body, her breast size, her outfit choices. And then, what people are thinking about doing when reflecting on that.

“Oh, this one’s gross,” O’Brien said, sharing a message she had received only days before talking to Insight Sport.

“It says: ‘Lick your h** v***** and deposit my huge loads of s**** in you and get you pregnant’.

“Why?

“You wouldn’t say that in real life. You wouldn’t just come up to a person and say that.

“I also do get a lot of lovely messages, though. So I guess they kind of outweigh the gross ones.”

JUST LOOK AT THE SPORT

Most of O’Brien’s feed is about diving. Training at the pool and in the gym, competition, camps, new moves.

Given the nature of the sport, most videos feature O’Brien in swimwear or gym wear – much of it revealing – but it’s essentially her workwear.

“I don’t know why people seem to think that they can do that kind of thing.”

Outside of the diving videos, O’Brien often appears in swimwear, or other revealing clothes.

“I do try to monetise myself and my sport through these platforms and I need to do it in a way that’s going to appeal to different audiences,” she said.

“It’s just hard to manage that side of things to get the views in, but then also not get that kind of (sleaze).”

O’Brien almost accepts that the creeps will come.

But why should she have to? In 2023 can a woman not wear what she wants without it inviting sexualised commentary?

“I do personally enjoy showing myself and my little swimwear, like all that kind of stuff,” she said. “And if I could just have a following of women and people who aren’t going to make those comments, I would love that.

“But it’s inevitable that I’m going to bring in the kind of creepy male audience with the stuff that I post. It is a fine line for sure.”

It doesn’t stop the comments from irking her though.

“I get a lot of comments about my body ... why don’t you just look at the sport,” she said. “My body doesn’t affect you.

“I’m lucky I have quite a high confidence, I guess. In the past when I was younger, I really struggled with my body image.

“I think if I was posting this kind of stuff back then I probably wouldn’t have been able to deal with it. But I’m in a good headspace now.”

WHEN IT CROSSES THE LINE

Mostly, O’Brien can has become “numb” to the commentary.

In the past, she has occasionally responded to the trolls. But she now follows a familiar pattern: block, delete, move on.

Every now and then though, things cross the line.

O’Brien has only been scared once. And for good reason.

Out for dinner with her family, O’Brien was wearing what she describes as a “shortish skirt” and received a message from a “fan”.

“He described what I was wearing, and he was like, ‘I love the way your thighs look in that tiny little skirt’ and then said something so disgusting,” she said.

“It was just very obvious that he was watching me in real life. It was so uncomfortable.”

Most posters are anonymous – but not all.

“The amount of messages I get from people who are clearly in relationships – like married with children – (you think), what are you doing?

O’Brien has occasionally taken to her platforms to call out the trolls, exposing their messages for all to see.

“Usually I get a lot of women and people who think it’s funny – and it is funny in a sense,” O’Brien said of the messages.

“It’s just a bit of a laugh to show how messed up some people are, I guess.

“I’m at the point now where I’m honestly numb to it. I’m very used to it.”

USE IT, DON’T LET IT USE YOU

O’Brien hasn’t considered taking a social media break from the trolls, saying they haven’t “driven me to the edge”.

As much as anything, it’s the competitor in her coming out.

She’s not going to let the one per cent – or, given she has a TikTok following of almost 700,000 and more than 100,000 on Instagram, a fraction of a per cent – force her from doing something she loves.

“I love making videos,” O’Brien said.

“I’ve always done it even when I was younger. I didn’t post them anywhere but it’s such a fun platform for the most part.

“It is (a good tool) if you use it and don’t let it use you, I guess.

“It’s such a powerful tool. You can literally make an entire career just from your phone. It’s crazy.

“If you know how to use it and not let it affect you too much, then yeah (it’s good).”

And as an athlete in a non-professional discipline, being able to leverage her social media following will be important for O’Brien in life after sport.

“I’m in the very early stages of starting a business and I want to use my social media to push that as well,” she said.

“I’m trying to just use it to my advantage while I can, I guess.

“I know so many people who will quit the sport and then feel so stuck and have nothing really ‘theirs’ and they end up coming back to the sport.

“So I’m trying to just build what I have now so that it’s ready for me when I’m done.”