Shane Dawson vs. Bree Essrig: the Changing Culture of Complaint.

everyone's just so focused on my past
relationships and friendships that aren't even relevant to my videos but it's like I'm trying really hard and no what do you even cares you know bree essrig born on the internet died on the internet you are much more likely to recognize her face than you are to recognize her name Shane Dawson accuser and gossip monger bree essrig was heavily promoted by the young turks network of news and current events commentary youtube channels for years so even if you have no interest in internet drama even if you have no interest in the sub-basement of youtube edgy dark humor it's really quite likely you've seen brief essex face before may not know the name here she is on the reuben report yes yes y'all seven years ago back when the rubin report was a left-wing show before it's remarkable and inexplicable transformation into being a right-wing talk-show 3's rig was there and yeah she also got in on the ground floor on the shane dawson phenomenon the single most viewed video on her own youtube channel is featuring shane dawson and she appeared in at least one video with him on his channel that reached millions of viewers it was a huge part of her meteoric rise to fame eggs I'm on an anti-anxiety so yeah I would literally die but he didn't have this with all that in mind here she is saying that Shane Dawson ruined her life and drove her to the brink of suicide quote he honestly ruined my life at the time I was suicidal and he got all my friends to completely abandon me he lied to all of us and constantly made us turn on each other in our friendship group so twisted and wrong and yes he's racist AEF always has been can I can I just ask if if AF is an abbreviation shouldn't it be in capital letters shouldn't it be capital a period capital F period no just no just okay we're not really questioning the difference between true and false here nor the difference being proven and unproven with a statement like this we have to ask if this is reasonable or unreasonable bree essrig is someone who has bragged about her mental problems on the internet for many years she's someone who boasts about the mind-altering drugs she uses in order to cope with her mental and emotional problems some of the prescriptions some of them not so much as we've just seen in the clip I played you you know now I can imagine that this story she's telling is in some sense true and yet he doesn't seem like a reasonable version of events that there were there were just no other complicating factors as to why she and her friend group were fighting amongst themselves why her friends abandoned her why they were gonna it really does sound like there's more than one side of the story it just doesn't seem possible that this is a reasonable or well-intentioned account of what happened if really anything happened at all if there really is anything worth gossip about at the basis of this story of this allegation true or false reasonable or unreasonable what would motivate bree essrig to come out and make a public statement about this concerning something that happened close to ten years ago you know I don't care what people think I care what I think I like my videos so I'm gonna keep making whatever I want to make and people can just deal with it Esther it was a co-host on The Young Turks News Network and then became a writer slash host on SourceFed from 2015 to 2017 can anyone remember SourceFed can they want to remember the wave of optimism when it was announced that SourceFed was starting with an investment of over 100 million dollars that you know YouTube was no longer gonna be a trivial nagging distraction in people's lives was going to become something really meaningful and and then they produced nothing but this kind of trivial nagging distraction now I just want to say I am NOT in any way opposed to bree essrig making use of her beauty and sex appeal offering people humor related to that side of human life on planet earth but it's it's a very strange sort of contrast to the position she was put in by seemingly respectable news networks and multi-million dollar corporations The Young Turks included just you know if they were gonna hire anyone to do news analysis and political commentary why would it be her when her top rated videos are things such as yeah what you see here at any rate bree essrig does have reasons to lie she does have reasons to suddenly become passionately involved in this seemingly trivial controversy around Shane Dawson and the optics of his past dark edgy comedy career a career that overlapped with her own dark edgy comedy career if you look at the number of views per video on her own channel to say it has been a downward curve since the old days of her collaboration with Shane Dawson would be an understatement yeah there is one exception there in our second two most recent video where she made a sexually suggestive video that got a considerable number of views but in general 6,000 views 7,500 views is what you're looking at and by the way there is one bar for each video on this bar chart so we're not generalizing this is a video by video total a video by video breakdown as she's gone through this downward spiral in every row the optimists among us would like to say that this is just a coincidence and it may well be but if you're as pessimistic about human nature as I am you probably will not regard this as coincidental only just at this moment just within the last few weeks bree essrig has been trying to promote her only fansite bree essrig wait this isn't porn sad face now I am not criticizing her for making that choice she is trying to make the transition from being a comedian and a political analyst political commentator she's trying to make a transition from that background to being a full-time sex symbol a full-time fetish model foot model sexually provocative mom and you know what it's probably a great choice for her like I really do not hold this against her in any way whatsoever however however however the motivation for her to make the most unreasonable and extreme statement possible about her past history with Shane Dawson rather than giving a reasonable and balanced account that could be linked to the fact that this controversy right now is drawing the attention of millions of people not thousands but millions and there's the potential for her to gather a tremendous following of interested heterosexual men and you know some percentage of women who would like to see these images of her and most of the potential audience for herself as she's trying to do be a sexy near nude fetish model so most the audience will be people who as I said at the beginning of this video vaguely remember her face they've seen her in some video somewhere but don't particularly remember her name but the potential for her to be massively successful is there and wouldn't it be tempting wouldn't there be a motivation knowing away at you at just the moment when you're trying to promote your only fans trying to promote this new period of your own modeling career that you could jump on this controversy with Shane Dawson bree essrig so much ambition so little talent quote he ruined my life at the time I was really depressed he made all my friends turn on me and I became extremely suicidal again I'm not really questioning true versus false I'm questioning reasonable or unreasonable alright I have been through a very difficult divorce but you would never hear me make this kind of unreasonable statement about my ex-wife who did terrible things to me did terrible unforgivable things terrible person blah blah blah but you know what the truth is to make a statement like this that you became suicidal because of someone else that you became depressed because of someone else or even that your friends turned on you because someone else you know come on we're we're all fully grown adults here it doesn't take a whole lot of self-awareness to just reflect and say hey there's not a simple cause-and-effect relationship between this other person's behavior and my depression or my feeling suicidal or even the behavior of my friends towards me and my favor come on come on even if this is in some sense true there is no way that this can be reasonable or well motivated as a public statement as a public allegation and accusation at oh yeah this one closes also with the statement he's manipulative AF not capitalized and most definitely racist he was also racist behind the scenes as well he used to make fun of his brothers fiance all the time who wasn't white when I called our friendship off because of this he tore me apart online made up a bunch of BS about me and his fans bullied me for years he was extremely manipulative he has a way of making you feel special well he's secretly damaging you behind your back the worst part about it was he would say quote my fans are of all different races and they think it's funny and tell me I'm allowed to do it and that's actually true hundreds of thousands of people did enable that behavior and those jokes at the time I'm glad I ended the friendship when I did I closed this video by asking you in the audience to think twice before you make public statements before you make private statements really ask yourself not just about the difference between true and false ask yourself reasonable or honorees so I was talking to my manager for a little while today and he said something that really stuck out to me three who are you who are you as a brand how can we sell you to people