A pristine off-white shelf with neat rows of books is not the kind of image that usually sparks hateful comments.
But the latest interior design trend – backwards books – has started a social media frenzy so vicious that a British blogger received aggressive threats from strangers.
Lauren Coleman suggested reversing books on the shelves – leaving the pages facing out – to stop colourful spines dominating the decor.
But the minimalist concept led to Mrs Coleman receiving dozens of abusive messages online. The 35-year-old was stunned by the backlash after Ideal Home magazine ran a snap of her bookshelf – or a ‘shelfie’ – headlined: ‘Lauren keeps the look neutral by stacking books back to front.’ She has since been threatened and mocked, with one man saying via social network Facebook that he would ‘kick her head in’.
Londoner Mrs Coleman, who was inspired by a similar design on picture-sharing site Pinterest, said: ‘People started being extremely abusive … people started threatening to come round my house to kick my head in. I can take a joke, but I did not anticipate that level of abuse’.
Despite contacting Facebook, the stylist said no action was taken. She told The Times: ‘I got an auto-generated reply saying my complaint did not meet the required criteria.’
Mrs Coleman runs lifestyle blog Rock My Style, which has more than 17,000 Facebook followers. The backwards-books idea appears to have originated in October on a US design blog. Mrs Coleman explained: ‘Too many books of different colours can make a shelf look cluttered … It was better than storing them in a cupboard.’
– Daily Mail
