‘I have cancer,' the TikTok Star said. Then came the torrent of hate

The Star

03-05-2025

By the time Sydney Towle graduated from Dartmouth College in 2022, she had a growing social media side hustle.
On TikTok, where she posted videos, her fans watched her perform dance moves in her kitchen and lip-sync to popular songs. She modeled clothing and posed in bikinis on the beach.
Within a year, she was an influencer in full, with more than 450,000 followers.
But her content took a sharp turn in August 2023. In a pink bikini top, her face stained with tears, she spoke directly to the camera. 'I have cancer,' she said. 'I am strong, so I'll be good.' She flashed a thumbs-up and an awkward smile.
Her diagnosis, she said, was cholangiocarcinoma, a rare and aggressive cancer of the bile ducts.
Towle's social media posts grew more frequent and personal as she joined the ranks of influencers in what is known as CancerTok. She made videos of herself exploring New York City, where she said she had moved to be close to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center; struggling with exhaustion and nausea she attributed to chemotherapy; and crying in grief for the carefree life she no longer led. And her growing online fan base – before long, she had more than 760,000 followers – routinely cheered her on.
But on Reddit, in a more skeptical and caustic corner of the Internet, an army of angry critics was assembling. Towle's antagonists had concluded that she was leveraging her story of illness for public sympathy and financial benefit. They scrutinised her every word and image, building a case that she was misleading the public.
Many accused her of faking cancer altogether.
Towle, 25, is now at the centre of an intense social media collision that reveals the best intentions and worst instincts of the Internet – where isolated strangers can become support systems in times of crisis and sleuths labour obsessively to root out scammers.
But in an online economy that feeds off emotion and Internet addiction, it's not always clear who is manipulating whom.
'No Defending Syd'
'Snark pages' on Reddit, also known as 'snark subreddits,' are designated forums where people congregate under the veil of anonymity to critique and mock influencers and celebrities. In some cases, they become sceptical of the influencers they follow and fixated on exposing inconsistencies in their narratives.
A snark page devoted to Towle appeared last fall, just as she was moving from Los Angeles to Manhattan. 'Does something feel off to you about Syd Towle's cancer story?' the subreddit asked. The group's rules included 'Be respectful to each other' and 'No defending Syd.'
Six months later, SydTowleSnark had more than 1,000 members, a relatively small group but one with an active core. Mostly, the commenters focused on their certainty that she was a cancer scammer, like the frauds who have been the subject of the recent documentaries Scamanda on Hulu and Anatomy of Lies on Peacock, as well as Netflix's Apple Cider Vinegar , which is based on a true story.
Towle's critics pointed to her long hair and her penchant for travel and fitness as proof that she could not possibly have the illness she claimed. They created a 28-page timeline of medical details shared by Towle online, using it to bolster their claims of fakery. They zoomed in on photos showing a large scar on her abdomen to search for signs of photo editing.
And they accused her of manufacturing emotion on camera to manipulate sympathetic followers. One of its most active and impassioned members, a person using the Reddit handle Beginning_Field_2421, put it this way: 'No matter how innocent or saccharine she tries to appear on social media, there's still a predatory edge to what she is doing.'
Sharing her experiences publicly is Towle's way of processing the trials of life, she said in an interview, a habit that began well before she started making cancer videos. In college, she noted, she wrote for the school newspaper about her struggles with an eating disorder.
The videos, she said, give her purpose when she does not want to get out of bed. They connect her to others whom she can inspire and be inspired by.
They also help her pay the bills.
Like many influencers, Towle is sometimes paid by brands when she features their products. She also draws revenue from a TikTok program in which those who have more than 10,000 followers and meet eligibility requirements are paid a commission based on how many views their videos draw. In the past year, TikTok has paid her about US$20,000 (RM 85,480) , according to a financial statement reviewed by The New York Times .
She also works on the social media team of a large gaming company, a full-time job that allows her to work remotely and provides health insurance.
Still, her TikTok fans regularly urge her to let them contribute money toward her care, and sometimes she adds a link to an Amazon wish list to her TikTok bio for Uber Eats, Airbnb and Amtrak gift cards.
'I have not begged people for money,' she said this winter. 'I didn't start TikTok and then ask people to pay my hospital bills. I've never started a GoFundMe.'
But Towle's detractors consider any financial benefit an enormous grift.
'I find her obscene and offensive,' a Reddit user wrote recently. 'To see her manipulate people for money, when there are REAL people out there with REAL cancer juggling REAL problems, disgusts me.'
To Ghassan Abou-Alfa, all of this is madness.
He is a Yale University-trained oncologist who specialises in liver cancer and bile duct tumours at one of the nation's leading cancer hospitals. He is also Towle's doctor.
'She has cancer,' Abou-Alfa confirmed in an interview at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan.
Abou-Alfa explained the details of his patient's intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma. It started in the bile ducts in the liver, and after surgery to remove the original tumor, the cancer has recurred in her liver. The disease has also been detected in lymph nodes next to her liver. She has Stage 4 cancer.
Towle, Abou-Alfa said, is helping to shine a light on an emerging face of cancer, one that is young and is neither near death nor cured. Even when receiving chemotherapy and immunotherapy, some patients can maintain a fairly normal schedule, he said: 'Patients really can live with cancer. Not everybody should be looking as if they are dying.'
But on Reddit, anonymous commenters ignored Towle's truthful dispatches that spoke to such matters and decided they did not believe her.
The anger soon leaked out of the Internet and into real life. Beginning_Field_2421 urged people to complain about Towle to the companies whose products she endorsed and suggested that Reddit commenters show up at a cancer research fundraiser in New York that Towle would be attending. Someone else suggested sending her photograph to cancer hospitals, implying that they need to be alerted to a potential fraudster.
Towle felt stuck in a cycle she had helped to create. If she quit social media, she feared her followers would believe she had something to hide. If she continued to post emotional updates, they would say she was cravenly seeking sympathy to gin up engagement. If she stopped talking about cancer in her videos, her detractors would say she was too upbeat.
'I'm sorry that they are so angry that living with cancer can look different than they think it should,' she said. 'No matter what I do, these people move the goal posts.'
Snark vs. SnarkSnark
But the Internet loves a fight, and eventually an anti-anti-Sydney contingent began to gather steam.
In late February, a new Reddit group – SydTowleSnarkSnark –was created in part to criticise Towle's critics.
Several people reported the original snark page to Reddit administrators, flagging various comments and specific people whose posts seemed alarmingly aggressive, including Beginning_Field_2421.
Reddit told them the content of the snark page did not violate any rules. It also warned at least one person that she was 'abusing' the reporting tool. (After Reddit was contacted by the Times , it removed some comments it considered 'harassing,' according to a spokesperson who said that administrators were 'in error' when they originally said there had been no violations.)
One woman in the Midwest became so disgusted by the venom directed at Towle and by Reddit's apparent apathy that she took action. She spent hours trying to glean the identities of the most frequent anonymous critics, all of whom communicate on Reddit via cryptic handles, such as No-Veterinarian6552, Spirited_Coach7832 and FarTransportation152.
The woman, a nurse who has worked with cancer patients, spoke to the Times on the condition of anonymity so that she did not open herself to online bullying. She sleuthed out the real identities of nearly a dozen active Reddit skeptics of Towle by cross-referencing personal details they shared in comments with information on Google, Instagram, LinkedIn and even the interior photographs of a home seen in a Zillow listing.
Beginning_Field_2421, among the most persistent critics, was a woman named Connie Wright, the privacy officer for Valley Health System, headquartered in Bergen County, New Jersey, where she shapes and manages the organisation's patient privacy practices, according to her LinkedIn profile.
In a message sent to the Times on Reddit, Wright, 53, said, 'I've remained anonymous to avoid backlash or reputational harm from a public figure with a large and active online following.' She then deleted her account.
The Times also contacted several other participants in the snark page. Those who responded asked not to be included in this article. Some stopped posting or deleted their social media accounts altogether.
'Lessen the load'
In April, Towle was a featured speaker at a conference of the Cholangiocarcinoma Foundation in Salt Lake City.
'The things that people say behind the protection of their phone are horrifying,' she said in her speech. 'I never thought that I would receive the level of hate that I have in sharing my journey.' She received a standing ovation from a rapt audience.
But her return to the drudgery of chemotherapy several days later was a difficult comedown.
'I'm so overwhelmed,' she sobbed in a worrisome TikTok video. 'I'm so tired.'
There was no sympathy on Reddit – where even Towle's speech at a cancer conference had not persuaded many that she had cancer.
But on TikTok, fans expressed concern. Supporters left more than 3,000 comments, many of them asking if they could sit with her during chemotherapy, send her food or give her money.
'Syd – I see you,' wrote actress and activist Alyssa Milano. 'We all love you. Start a GoFundMe so you can take care of yourself and not worry about work. Lessen the load.'
The next morning, via video, Towle announced a decision that stirred up her fans and critics alike.
'I'm starting a GoFundMe, a very small one,' she said, stifling tears. She said she intended to raise US$2,500 (RM10,688) for a birthday vacation for her mother, a federal employee recently laid off by the Department of Government Efficiency.
Donations poured in. The Reddit community lost its mind.
'Vile,' wrote one commenter. 'I thought I'd heard it all until now.'
'Her followers are some of the most gullible people out there,' another said.
In less than 24 hours, supporters donated US$41,000 (RM175,295), and Towle stopped accepting contributions.
After taking her brother and mother to the Grand Canyon, she said, she would use the remaining money to pay travel and hotel expenses for her mother to be with her in New York when she had chemotherapy.
On TikTok, many people urged her to reopen the fund. In an interview, Towle said she felt torn between her followers' enthusiasm and the fact that she did not truly need donations.
'It's hard to say that I wish I hadn't done it, or that I wish I hadn't started this whole life on social media,' she said. 'It's obviously brought so many good things. But there's just so much stress behind the scenes that people don't see.'
A day after shutting down the fundraiser, she made another video. 'After talking to my mom for a while,' she said, 'I've decided to reopen the GoFundMe.'
After five days, her TikTok fans had donated more than US$75,000 (RM320,662).
The grousing on the snark page was short-lived. Last week, a day after the Times sent Reddit a detailed inquiry about its inaction, the company abruptly shut down the group. In its place was the image of a gavel. SydTowleSnark, the company announced, was officially banned. – © 2025 The New York Times Company
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.