A woman left feeling “humiliated” after appearing in a TikTok post by German football giants Borussia Dortmund has said she has refused their offer of free tickets as an apology.
The clip showed influencer Jessie Yendle struggling to pronounce a sound as she stammered, before the repetition transitioned into the start of a popular TikTok dance track playing over footage of striker Serhou Guirassy.
A similar video was also posted by triathlon organiser Ironman, but despite their apologies Ms Yendle said she’s been left feeling like “they were using my speech for clickbait”.
“To be mocked on a public stage like that, I was like, ‘no thank you, you can keep your football tickets’,” she said.
Ms Yendle, from Pontypridd, Rhondda Cynon Taf, said she was first alerted by a friend to the clip of her posted by Ironman, before online criticism of the reel led to it being deleted.
Borussia Dortmund had also posted a similar video in early August to their 17.3 million TikTok followers, which had 765,000 views before it was deleted.
“I’ve spent so many years raising awareness, I’m on social media because I’ve been misunderstood my entire life,” said Ms Yendle.
“And to see these corporations mocking my speech – I just felt, in the pit of my stomach, truly humiliated.”
Getty ImagesThe football club said it was “deeply sorry”, and invited Ms Yendle to a UEFA Champions League match of her choice “to convince her on-site that we at Borussia Dortmund are good people”.
Ironman admitted they had also made a mistake, adding they “should have done proper research before jumping on what we thought was a social media trend”.
But Ms Yendle, who is known online as Mimidarlingbeauty with 3.5 million followers on TikTok, said she was unimpressed.
“They’ve sent me a private apology, but the apology is like when you go somewhere and have bad customer service,” she said.
“I didn’t even respond to them, because I just thought that’s not good enough, you haven’t shown a true interest… to educate your team on speech impediments.”
Ms Yendle routinely gets millions of views on her TikTok videos raising awareness of speech impediments, which affects an estimated 450,000 people in the UK.
Since 2021, she has set herself challenges and posted them online, including ordering new items from menus in drive-throughs and asking for recommendations.
She has also called for the introduction of a universal symbol to help people with speech impediments be able to indicate that in public settings.
But her recent experience has left her wary of social media, and feeling “we’re going back in time”.
“I felt like they were using my speech for clickbait, and that’s not what I’m about at all,” she said.
“I want them to give my community an apology, because there’s so many people who’ve got speech impediments and they’ve had to view that video.
“You’ve got young children and teenagers, they’re scrolling social media and they’ve seen that clip, and they might have a speech impediment.”
Companies and social media users, she added, should take a moment to consider the impact of viral trends before posting them.
“I feel like if you’re using someone’s face and you think it’s a trend, and it’s disabilities, religion, race, people’s sexuality, I don’t think it’s a trend at all and you shouldn’t jump on those things,” said Ms Yendle.
“This has definitely made me more determined to shine a light, and to show people why it’s so important to have these conversations in 2025.”
