Abbie Chatfield Says Misogynistic Trolls Take A Toll

There’s a moment, mid-conversation with Abbie Chatfield, where she shrugs off the idea that her radical honesty is some kind of carefully crafted brand. “People always ask, ‘how are you so brave to share everything?’” she tells Refinery29 Australia backstage at DomeFest. “And I go, I just have ADHD. I just don’t have a filter.” It helps explain why she continues to resonate with audiences online, even as the internet becomes a tougher place to exist publicly. Fresh off a live set at DomeFest, where she unpacked a bizarre, outdated men’s self-help book she picked up from an op shop years ago, Chatfield is buzzing. The show was unmistakably her: funny and chaotic, but grounded in something sharper. “I’ve been thinking about how to use it for years,” she explains of the book. “And this just felt perfect.”