Jack Saint
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Difficult Feelings.
🕑 Added 2023-12-13 11:03:52 +0000 UTCSo I’m in the process of putting finishing touches on a video that should be out in the next few days, but there is something that has taken over all my thoughts for the last 24 hours and I feel is important to express here both for audience knowledge and my own sanity. This is a very complicated issue and I feel this is one of the only spaces I can expect people to read what I say without jumping to judgments and hot takes.
The Information
Sophie From Mars has been a longtime friend of the channel, and if you keep up with videos you’ll have seen her pop up in several videos. You may notice that I really don’t have that many cameos from other creators in my videos especially in recent years and that’s because I rarely do so with channels that are not also close personal friends - maybe not the best move for 'growth', but whatever. In fact, Sophie was one of the first creators I grew close to when I started making video essays, appearing on YouTube around the same time and covering similar subject matter. I am not typically a very outgoing person and it is only through meetups with Sophie that I formed most of my real-world connections with other creators (I probably wouldn’t really know Big Joel, who has also appeared quite a few times, if not for her). Bear in mind that these meetups were very sporadic often separated by years due to me living in Ohio for most of the time we knew each other, so the majority of our interactions were always online and I rarely knew much about her personal life. If you’re on social media, you will understand this as the lead-in to speaking about recent abuse accusations that have emerged from several people.
I won’t go into detail about the nature of the accusations other than to implore my audience to read Alice’s full thread, and express my full support for the victims who have made this public. I am sure making this decision was not easy for many reasons, some of which I will be getting into, but the important thing for me is to take responsibility for my own promotion of someone who has now been accused of these offenses.
The Post
There’s an obvious immediate pain that comes when someone you’ve known closely has been exposed for horrible actions which I’m sure isn’t hard to understand. It makes you reflect on all your attachments and, especially when you are an introverted person as I’ve mentioned, feel a strong desire to recoil away from a lot of people you felt you could trust. Trust is something that generally comes easy for me - I don’t really know why as I’ve been let down plenty of times before, but when people seem to approach me sincerely I find it very hard to write them off. Most of the time, this just leads to a lot of wasted time on social media trying to argue in good faith with malicious people who had made up their mind at the start of the conversation. At the worst times, it can lead to a situation like this.
Another part of you feels a more petty and defensive kind of pain, a feeling like you are a perpetrator by association even when you had no clue about anything that had happened. When you’re a public figure, this is amplified - my feelings that people are eager to connect me to this aren’t paranoia, but plainly observable reality among a lot of fandoms hungry for blood. I share in Alice’s disgust at the people who have regurgitated this all into just another vessel for online drama content, to feed some pathetic feud between “wokescolds” and “dirtbags” or “video essayists” and “debatebros”, or Exposing BreadTube, or whatever else they can crudely funnel this into that benefits their own personal narratives. When the random e-celeb you dislike for being dumb and annoying is finally outed for a legitimate reason to dislike them, it’s very gratifying, and when has the internet ever rewarded having the slightest bit of tact? It only becomes so much easier when the people you like will do everything they can to smear or silence an accuser until they are finally beaten down into a nominal confession, while the people you dislike will freely support victims when they emerge with their stories.
It’s a reality that if one man commits rape or domestic violence and nine men quietly protect him, this says nothing about men, but if a trans person is revealed as abusive and nine trans people out them for the safety of their community, this clearly reflects horribly on trans people. Situations like this will always be co-opted by the kinds of people who are dying of thirst to justify their own bigotries, even if they are also the last people to typically believe any accusation. Even Andy Ngo has jumped in on this situation, and I’m sure many will join him. Chud Logic, someone I remember having positive associations with years ago to the point of taking part in live streams they hosted, is now openly an online drama grifter who conducts regular ‘Rape Reviews’ to weigh out his belief in victims - weirdly, in his hasty reporting on “BreadTube Content Creator Sophie From Mars”, all of this skepticism seems to have vanished. It’s frustrating to see this double standard, and to feel like even you will be accused of it, not because you aren’t willing to call out someone within a community that is known for hypervigilance of wrongdoing but exactly because you are. I am certain that Alice and other victims were fully aware of all of this when they made their statement, and this only makes it more clear why it must have been so important to publicize it in the first place.
The fact is, I feel hurt and betrayed by someone who I put a lot of trust into, but I am not a victim and I have felt like I am in survival mode from the moment this statement was released. I’ve done everything in my power to make this situation and my feelings on it known, which I hope this post has made clear, but I still feel the overwhelming sensation that I haven’t done enough. There is so much leftover confusion and frustration - after all, I am like most people and know almost nothing in terms of details about what has happened. All I get to see is the statement, and the immediate shockwaves of that, and how this is immediately ripped from the victims to be reshaped into another weapon in an ongoing culture war. This, again, is a feeling that I share with the victims in this situation. I feel tired, and isolated, and more bitter about the state of online discourse than I think I have ever felt before. The only thing I can latch onto is the knowledge that none of this is my doing, and my belief that there is still value in what I have to say.
If, despite all of this, anyone here still feels uncomfortable at the associations I have had with Sophie, it is well within your right to withdraw support. I am thankful to all of you who have provided that support up to now, and any of you that have made it through this rambling essay of a post. I truly hope for a world where situations like this can either be resolved in a constructive and considerate way or prevented completely. I feel that an important first step in that is to speak honestly and openly about them.
Jack
Comments
Blue Cicada
I am both a fan of Alice's and Sophie's respective work, but I'm not on twitter, so didn't know until I stumbled on this post. The situation seems very complex, and empathy must go to the victims first. But I wouldn't blame anyone for having associated with Sophie, because it seems like red flags were not visible even to people very close to her. And since the victims clearly say that they don't want her career destroyed, I don't want to join in the feeding frenzy (and maybe throw away all the work she did yet). Maybe i'm wrong. But I think at least some nuance is warranted. Just to clarify, I don't think any reasonable person could blame you in this.
A K
Wow. I am totally heartbroken. Sophie's work has meant so much to me over the years. Her video about Mushrooms at the End of the World is one of the pieces that's helped transform my climate grief into hope. I know Alice stated it isn't her goal to destroy her work, but it's hard, especially as someone who has been abused, to knowingly consume work by an (alleged) abuser. I need time to think. I can't imagine how you must feel, and it's alright to have a lot of complicated feelings. Even though you are the primary victim you are still effected by this and it says nothing about you other than you being a thoughtful and caring person to feel harmed by this as well.
