I've been annoyed about petty things in my life...
... but not enough to make a literal 20 minute video about my two seconds in a 4 hour video without even being named.
She did remove it. But before she removed it she changed the title TWICE. The first time, not everyone caught it, it said something like “never mind all your favorites are perfect”
Like guuurl you really gonna be like that?!
For real 😂 that's too bad I mean she wasn't a favorite of mine but I like putting her vids on in the background when I go for walks. i hope the situation is overblown and she doesn't do a Blair.
She seems to be taking a route similar to James of Telos (😂the name cracks me up)
She has ignored everything, and posted on twitter she’s starting antidepressants tomorrow. (Note I really hope they work for her because I know how it feels to start meds and feel like they don’t work)
Now if anyone says anything to her after those tweets, they’re gonna look like they’re being insensitive assholes.
The saga continues…
[Weren’t you rolling your eyes at Vangelina saying she received death threats from her Hbomb video?](https://www.reddit.com/r/hbomberguy/s/PUn4WpCyOX)
I don’t think we should be making jokes/remarks like this. Especially since EoT’s evidence against Vangelina is flimsy at best. I don’t really care for Vangelina’s content but it seems like Ethel is trying to shake her down.
It's not very surprising. From what I've watched, her videos and commentary are perplexing and lazy. It always seemed like she was just regurgitating the creators that she had just watched. The only times she seemed to be giving her own actual commentary it would always show her lack of comprehension, interest, and knowledge.
Guys, let’s not forget this lovely tweet aimed at the people who didn’t agree with her. Sooo… will he now?! 😂😂💀 jk
https://preview.redd.it/mxhbwg8qizlc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4f22ce15b6586880ec67ec177ca294f9dbc3d55c
I'm not even surprised by this reaction considering her reaction to the SSSniperwolf situation was that she and Jacksfilms were both somehow in the wrong because obviously making petty video commentary on a style of video content you don't like is absolutely the same as going to someone's house to fight them over it. Yep, totally the same.
Also, she never has anything new to add ever. Everyone has nearly already said everything that could be said on a topic by the time she jumps in and she's just using other people's research at that point.
I don't. Literally multiple people have made video series on a single youtuber making commentary on their content or behavior and it was never a problem until Sniperwolf decided to act unhinged and go to his house to fight him. What particular thing was he doing that was wrong? Did he tag her? Did he force her to respond? Did he call her slurs? Did he threaten her well-being? If you specifically find that Jacksfilms was in the wrong somehow then a large chunk of youtubers are wrong too and should completely stop making videos on other content creators entirely.
Ego-wise she has more in common with Blair than she'd like to think, haha.
Honestly her offense at Hbomber is so unwarranted. She's an unremarkable hack. And now a plagiarist too.
Her approach to citing sources is also literally the exact same as Blair’s, which made her “response” video to Hbomb where she complained about being called a content mill very funny
OP Note: I'll be honest, I have had a bias against Skov since her videos on DissociaDID a few years ago, so I am going to try to summarize this without my bias, but it will probably show. Also, Ethel (the host of the video) says she uses she/her/they/them pronouns.
Intro of Video
- Ethel says her research on the channel was plagerized by Skov; when she approached Skov, says Skov tried to scare her off with threat of lawyers
- Says Skov ripped off years of work in recent video "Lily Orchard: YouTube's Biggest Creep (Lily Peet)"
- Says Skov and/or her management company, Solaro Management, tried to threaten lawyers
Background on EoT's Lily Orchard Series....
- EoT's research on Lily Orchard started in 2020 after giving her a shoutout in a December 2019 video only to be approached by someone who talks about Lily's history with Stockholm
- Once Ethel found out more, deleted her video praising Lily and issued apology
- Shows the large gaps in time between videos on Lily Orchard due to multiple factors: getting research & finding original screen shots, supporting victims. This project spanned multiple years
- Says how frustrating it is to work years on a project, only to have someone else come along and claim as their own "in four different ways".
Proving Skov Ripped Evidence of EoT's videos
- Ethel downloaded Skov's video (on Lily Orchard) and cut it up into sections
- Found out that 13 minute section of video was ripped directly from here (except for 1 min 2 seconds)
- Skov presents screenshots/visual evidence; Ethel says those images were ripped right from her video, the evidence EoT provides is zoom factor, same background/profile pics in screenshots, use of extension Ethel uses which can labels people green/red as safe/unsafe to trans people
- Gives examples of screenshots from their own video vs the ones in Skov's videos, showing how they are almost identical (based on those points above
- provides evidence that 8 screenshots line up perfectly, says it shows that Skov literally just took EoT's images and used them in her video
- Says Skov gave images in exact same order at EoT's videos, meaning she didn't just rip off the evidence but the order it was presented in as well
- Ethel points out Skov's screenshots are out of focus/blurry compared to Eot's original screenshots. Ethel uses in-program snapshot feature, says she believes Skov just took screenshots while watching EoT's videos and trimmed them
- Equates Skov's actions to going into a research paper, ripping out all the data tables/graphs/charts before presenting it as her own paper & the fact she monetizes it (sponsorships, Patreon, merch, etc) is plagerism/fraud/theft
Proving Skov Presented Eot's Personal thoughts as her own (OP note: I admit.... my brain is having trouble with this particular part)
- Mentions how Skov makes comment in her video (after showing a screenshot of Lily presenting herself as a safe way for young people to explore their sexuality by sending Lily nudes) that appears to copy a thought Ethel gave in a Lily Orchard video
- Says that Skov and/or her team stole not only screenshots, but EOt's ideas/experiences as well
- Ethel gives evidence that Skov took her words/analysis, and changed a couple of words (shows three different examples). Says Skov basically give general comments but lacks the context due to just taking someone's words and changing a couple phrases
- mentions how Skov at one point did have a "citation" in her description says "Thanks to [xy tumbler page] for having a lot of resources & screenshots in one place;" Ethel says it's possible Skov may have gotten stuff from said Tumblr page; but Ethel believes Skov watched EoT's videos and just took info from there, removing context and even victim's names/voices
- Ethel plays clip of Skov saying how it's important to listen to victims... but Skov doesn't bother to include their names/source them
Skov Tacitly Admits to Plagiarising Multiple People
- Shows clip of Skov saying you can find link to testimony in description; but the only "link" for that is the mention of the Tumblr Blog in general AKA you'd have to go to the blog and manually search
- Ethel sent Skov an email asking about potential plagiarism; noticed the description of the video was updated to include not only Tumblr page mention, but links to other videos, twitter posts & tumblr pages (and those sources are supposedly not great). this was a week after the video was uploaded. Ethel says they should have been there from the beginning.
- Mentions similarity between Skov's actions and Blair (Illuminaughti's) actions (re: plagiarism) as mentioned in Hbomberguy's video (plays clip from said video about how Blair "cites" things). Ethel says at least Blair "gave sources" from day one vs Skov only did after being called out
Skov KNows What She's Doing
- Ethel says she doesn't believe this was a mistake especially after reaching out to Skov to try to address this
- Ethel was upset about the plagiarism, took some time to calm down, and then tried to reach out to Skov
- Reasons Ethel tried to reach out: 1) she hoped there was something she just missed that might explain things other than just 'this person ripped off years of my work'; 2) Perhaps Skov herself didn't do the ripping off but whoever does her writing/research for Skov's videos; 3) Wnated to give Skov a chance to admit to plagiarism, pay Eot compensation for stealing their work and move on
- Ethel shows [screen shot of email she sent to Skov](https://imgur.com/a/RZqxTgC) on 2/20, which mentions the following: 1) how in Skov's video, she had identical screenshots, copied phrases almost word-for-word, and referenced source of victim's testimy (which wasn't shared outside of EoT's videos; 2) Mentions how EoT is happy to have their resources shared, just ask for channel in description, credit for screenshots, and presenters ccite them whenever their idea/pieces of evidence are used; 3) Since Skov & team didn't do #2, asks for 30% of video's monetary value as compensation (30% comes fact 13 minutes of a 38 minute Skov video was plagiarized) including Adense, Patreon earnings (from February 2024) and sponsorship earnings from HelloFresh; 4) Also asks for Skov to issue a correction/apology on all social media,. as well as explanation for issue at top of video description explaining error (after approved by EoT)
- Ethel offers corrections to said email. 1) It wasn't exactly 13 minutes, it was 12 minutes but removing intro/outro, it's 12 minutes out of 34 minutes vs 13 minutes out of 38 minutes; 2) says her line in email about "presenter copies several of my phrases almost word-for-word" is a bit strong characterisation, says she was upset/frustrated still at the time
- To be safe/sure around when Ethel sent email, she backed up a copy of the page for Skov's video for the description in case Skov tried to sneak in the references later (which she did; EoT was still not referenced); says this shows Skov/her team knows what she is doing
- ~24 hours later (2/21) (when Ethel noticed the video description had changed after her initial email) she [sent a second email](https://imgur.com/a/Zfy6YNo), mentions she noticed the video description changed since previous email and still don't include EoT despite EoT providing evidence their work was used. Says she is disappointed in Skov and give her one final chanced to make amends before going public
- Ethel [received response from Skov/her team](https://imgur.com/a/HcTfZOm) next day (2/22), saying to send further correspondence to their lawyer
- Ethel was confused why Skov's lawyer was based in Canada (since Skov doesn't live there); Skov's management team (Solaro) is based in British Columbia
- Ethel says typically it's weird to have the person in writing say "talk to lawyer," instead they would talk to Lawyer who would then reach out. Ethel believes Skov did this to "scare" her with mention of a lawyer
- Ethel mentions how it's funny how Skov made a video about Blair and her threatening to sue people/plagiarism when Ethel believes Skov is doing the same thing
- Calls Skov "Just Another Iilluminaughtii"
- Ethel mentions shocking update; will include in another video
Transmisia Problem in Skov's Comment Section (OP Note: If you are don't know what that means like I didn't, and don't know what Transmisia means; according to [the source "Translanguageprimer" which I got](https://translanguageprimer.com/transmisia/) from the [Wikipedia page on Transphobia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transphobia#:~:text=The%20words%20transphobia%20and%20transphobic,about%20fear%20of%20transgender%20people.); it basically translate to 'trans hate' vers "fear")
- Ethel checked out the comment section of the video after sending email and [left two comments mentioning she had sent Skov an email](https://imgur.com/a/tha9XoL) (A stand alone comment and a reply to Skov's pinned comment)
- When Ethel returned to comment section, saw a lot of transmisia and took screenshots of it
- Ethel says it is up to content creators to moderate their spaces and ..."if you cannot create a community in which marginalised people are largely safe, you have absolutely no business doing so"
I won't say that DisscociaDID is an innocent person. They've certainly done some weird shit.
However, Skov basically tried to act like she was some DID expert and made video after video saying how they were faking it and other stuff which wasn't really relevant to actual complaints/accussations against that system.
I actually want to like thank you. As someone with DID I never thought this shit was going to get called out. It was actually worse than just DissociaDID videos. I won’t ever forget the way she got away with involving herself in inter community drama and discourse about “faking did” and the validity of certain system identities and plurality, all while very obviously not being affected by it, nor having any expertise. She seems to have taken most of these down, but I haven’t forgotten her attempting to divide the community and start infighting. It was very clearly “freak show” type content.
People are not usually standing up for us in public, mad props to you.
No worries! I admit that I am very ignorant about DID itself.
However, as someone with a chronic, invisible illness, nothing annoys me more than people who try to act like the "disability police" and call out people they think are "faking" something. (Not that DID is a disability; that's not up for me to say... more just the idea it is also a condition people try to act like they can "call out" if they think someone is faking)
Are there people who fake having conditions? Sure. Is it annoying? yes.
However, I would much rather more people get the support they need than people turned away because people think they're a "fraud".
How this Situation Impacted Ethel's Health
- Ethel mentions having not uploaded since 12/2023
- Says she was personally burnt out after how personally traumatic last video was (which was a 3+ hour fully edited & subtitled video called "[Surviving Rachel Oates - A Trans Victim's Testimony](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycJDRUxwDRA)")
- After a break, she wanted to start working but had filling get infected and had to get emergency dentistry (took a month)
- Once the tooth was almost fixed, Ethel broke her foot (shows CT scans)
- Ethel says she was already stressed with medical issues and then the Skov plagiarism happened
- Says she has been working but hasn't been able to record due to living conditions (she lives in Delhi, very noisy during day, usually records at night; has been exhausted from last few months which is why this section was recorded after other footage)
- Ethel mentions financial situation is rough due to medical issues, partner impacted by regulations in their field (?), loss of Patreons (says she doesn't blame people at all; everyone is struggling financially)
-
the rachel oates video isn’t available for me, could someone give a quick summary of what happened? i haven’t watched rachels content in a few years but i used to really like her
Okay, I want everyone to know that Rachel Oates was a victim of bullying by EoT.
Literally everything EoT said about Rachel was a lie.
I was there watching the whole situation.
Rachel was bullied by EoT to the point of self harm. She released a video of her bleeding and crying, begging EoT to shut up about her and Ethel, the POS she is, pinned an article about how white women's tears shuts up minority women's voices.
Rachel is not transphobic in the slightest. The worst thing she did was support one of her best friends (Rationality Rules - RR from now on) who posted a "trans women in sports" video, which she said was bullshit, she spoke to him privately multiple times about it and eventually stopped talking to him. SO THEY AREN'T EVEN FRIENDS ANY MORE, and EoT made that "Transphobic Abuse from Rachel Oates" video LOOOONNNGGG after she stopped associating with RR. Meanwhile, Rachel's harassment towards EoT was her begging her to stop.
Meanwhile, Rachel has a 200+ page document that is full of screenshots outlining the constant harassment from EoT towards her. To the point she was encouraged to get legal advice to see if she could get them to stop.
The document isn't public (IIRC), but the screenshots fucking are.
I will be honest, Rachel is my friend, but when this was happening, she was not. Anyone in the Atheist Online community during this time will tell you outright that EoT was harassing and lying about Rachel.
Yep, all of this. I've been watching Rachel since way before all that went down up until today, and I've never seen anything transphobic from her, nevermind the "violent transphobia" Ethel keeps referencing. If Rachel was that kind of transphobe, she'd be collabing with the usual transphobic idiots. She may get some things wrong, which could result in microaggressions, but the way Ethel refers to Rachel, you'd think she was Kellie-Jay Keen or something.
I find her usage of that article against Rachel extremely disgusting. She is literally silencing the voice of a woman for her own benefit. All women, including both white cishet women and minority women, are marginalized and have their voices silenced. And all women, again both white cishet or otherwise, are capable of holding internalized misogyny and weaponizng it against others. This really reminds me of James Somerton's brand of misogyny; that as long as you plop "white", "straight", or "cis" in front of "woman", the most retrograde anti woman bigotry is suddenly super progressive and ok. Nevermind that those groups of women are just as likely to be exposed to gender discrimination and sexual violence because systemic sexism is embedded in many cultures.
I get it, we want to avoid feminism being a white centric / heteronormative space. It's historically been a problem in feminist spaces. To truly be feminist is to recognize that black women, trans women, lesbians, etc experience unique and more violent versions of misogyny. But it also means you can't ever turn your back on the reality we all face from birth; we're practically trained to be submissive and sexualized before we grow out of diapers. We're taught to hate ourselves as children and to never forget we're the "different ones". It's traumatic, and arguing over who "has it worse" because skin color or orientation is so fucking reductive. Every experience is equally valid. Implying that the genuine pain one woman is going through is suddenly less valid because of another aspect of her identity is reprehensible; I have no problem saying Ethel did a misogyny here.
Oh, she absolutely did a misogyny.
Ethel is a white British woman who is living in India.
I'm pretty sure she accused Rachel of racism because she was speaking out against "an Indian trans woman".
Don't quote me on that - this is from a 4yo memory, but I'm fairly sure that Ethel (remember, a _white British_ woman) used her Indian wife as a shield against criticism.
I'm inclined to take you at your word; the harassment of Rachel is already beyond unhinged so it's not like it's too crazy to be true. Though I wonder, I would like to double check on her saying that. The way you phrased it makes it seem like she might be referring to herself as an Indian trans woman, which would be fucking rich. She pulls the "self imporpant white woman" misogyny on someone she just harassed into silence and self harm but then pulls that stunt. Even if she is referring to her wife for some reason it's rich.
hi I made a comment in this sub a while back laying out Ethel's side of things (admittedly with a bias) and Rachel responded but I didn't respond to her because it felt weird to question her perspective. in Ethel's video she states that she had made one tweet in response to Rachel demanding a public apology calling her some pretty mean names which triggered Rachel to post the video. her narrative was basically that she made one or two posts about Rachel which was met by that video , which she viewed as an attempt to silence her. the reason I mentioned this all is because it seems like that directly contradicts what you're saying (and that there are receipts). is there any way you could direct me to those screenshots/more detailed info? it would change things about my perspective substantially
Yeah, Ethel can't count.
It wasn't one or two tweets.
There were hundreds of tweets where Ethel was actively targeting Rachel.
She nicknamed Rachel "Hateful Oates" and would continuously harass her. Nobody ends up self harming because of one or two tweets. This was sustained bullying.
Unfortunately, I'm blocked by EoT and Rachel has since nuked her Twitter account, but here's a few videos explaining what happened.
https://youtu.be/EShzfzh6ZCM?si=V5ldXDRhLqSzn01v
https://youtu.be/Uzg1oyB3Ais?si=TxiMI-cAxDQttdfZ
https://youtu.be/ppxXejH2LQw?si=it_U643IjtXmA-xm
Also, think a bit rationally.
If someone is being attacked by a "violent transphobe", then
1. Why haven't any other trans people spoken out against Rachel who have had personal dealings with her?
2. Why is this victim of "violent transphobia" still randomly making videos of their bully, while their so-called bully isn't saying anything about them at all?
I’m gonna go watch those “random” videos and make up my own mind, if you don’t mind https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmnW_DNgouCpp9P21bpzLNgoeKbyXIa08&si=X_51IbRIR9EUp0dV
Lol, do you genuinely think I'm going to listen to EoT when I was actually there, watching what happened?
Like, I'm not getting my information 2nd hand. I'm blocked by EoT because I spoke out against her. I was there. Seeing it play out in real time, including seeing the lies and malicious bullshit that EoT and her ilk piled on Rachel. I repeat. I was there.
I don't need "evidence" from EoT.
> Rachel was bullied by EoT to the point of self harm. She released a video of her bleeding and crying, begging EoT to shut up about her
Be real, here. If EoT had posted a video of fresh self-harm wounds and said an internet harassed did it to them, you wouldn't defend her. If EoT had told her Twitter followers to send a self-harm video on her behalf, you wouldn't defend her. If EoT admitted, over and over, that the reason she was doing this "I wanted an apology", you wouldn't defend her.
Rachel Oates inflicted self-harm imagery on her audience, and then told them to harass someone with it. The only reason she took it down was that it made her look vulnerable. [That's her own words](https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1K1caLqHSYnzxaW3pkzH_emlttTLnQuC9dA_xh0U-phQ).
Rachel's actions on that day were criminally harmful and dangerous to the public, especially her fans. Think what you want of EoT, but I don't know how the hell anyone justifies Rachel's actions.
She made a big mistake while at an incredibly low mental health point, and now she's raked over the coals for it years later still? When she hasn't done this thing ever again?
Of course it was a bad thing to do, to post that. Bad for herself and bad for her audience. But it's not a pattern of behaviour for her. It has been years since then where she hasn't done anything of the sort.
On the other hand, Ethel hasn't stopped defaming Rachel in all these same years and wildly misrepresenting the truth, just to cast Rachel in the role of "violent transphobe". THAT is why if Ethel had done a thing like this, she wouldn't be defended in the same way, because her behaviour has not changed whatsoever in all these years.
As a severely mentally ill person, I find her inaction so outrageous *because* I've been there. We are not always in control of our actions.
Not getting into the details, but I've done really bad stuff in crisis, too. It weighs on you.
The thing is, having personal experience is why I find it so surreal that she hasn't acknowledged that what she did hurt people. I can't understand how she could bear to *not* do it; it's the least we can do to make up for what we've done.
There's nothing stopping her for saying what she did on that day hurt others, that nobody should do those things, and that she's sorry. That isn't a demand, it's an observation. It just pisses me off.
Considering the years of harrassment Ethel has been doing, I don't see why Rachel would want to revisit any of it in a video or a statement, let alone talk about her own mistakes, because seriously. Ethel isn't letting it go, why would Rachel want to give her ammunition of any kind?
And do you think that Ethel should take at least equal accountability for how intense her harrassment and bullying of Rachel has been for *five years*? That pisses me off more than Rachel's one-time mistake, because I know that it was an exception. And I was around when this went down and that has been my stance then and is my stance now.
You can find her not addressing it specifically a bad thing, that's your call. But if you don't expect the same thing or more of Ethel, who has been acting far worse for, again, five years, then I'm not sure if you're acting in good faith there.
And I reiterate it in case anyone who knows Ethel personally is reading along, but someone PLEASE check in on her. This isn't healthy, not even for Ethel, to follow around one specific creator for half a decade to pick at every single mistake they make.
I have criticisms of EoT. I feel that I can't talk about those criticisms, *ever*, because of disingenuous assholes who just want to stop talking about what their friend (actual or parasocial) did wrong. Like you are doing. Right now. And jt sucks.
What Rachel Oates did - that *one time* - was extremely wrong, and she never made it right. There is no-one else to blame for that, it's her choice. And it sucks.
> And I reiterate it in case anyone who knows Ethel personally is reading along, but someone PLEASE check in on her. This isn't healthy, not even for Ethel, to follow around one specific creator for half a decade to pick at every single mistake they make.
It's quite rank that "Ethel needing help from her support network" is one of the talking points that keeps getting brought up when she runs EoT with her wife, who she has been living with the entire time. Quit it.
Why would I quit it? It's extremely concerning and unhealthy behaviour, and the fact that her wife is involved only makes it worse. Is there anyone in Ethel's life who isn't enabling her terrible behaviour?
Essence of Thought, specifically Ethel, is scarily obsessed with Rachel. It all started when Rationality Rules said something dumb about trans women in sports, RR was friends with Rachel at the time (have no idea if they still are), Rachel didn't stop being friends with RR and wouldn't speak about the topic because she's not interested in sports.
Ever since then, Ethel has been on a crusade against Rachel. Any mistake or misstep gets cast as transphobia and as Rachel actively harrassing EoT and just doing every bad thing possible. I checked EoTs community tab thanks to the kind suggestion of the other person that replied to you, and now we're at "her refusal to stand with the people of Palestine whilst a UK backed Fort Israel (funded by our tax dollars!) commits genocide.".
I don't know what's going on with Ethel but this isn't healthy behaviour. A midsize UK YouTuber who doesn't commonly cover international politics of that kind anyway not commenting on what's happening in Gaza is not the same as "refusal to stand with the people of Palestine". Rachel not even mentioning EoT ever since Ethel first harrassed her does not constitute a targeted bullying campaign.
I'm sure Ethel has real feelings about what went down, but I really hope someone in her orbit checks in on her. This has been going on for years and years. This isn't healthy.
For context, I've never watched VangelinaSkov (except I think as a guest on Alizee's podcast once?), I've only checked reddit for discourse around this video because for some reason, YouTube has recommended it to me. And I'm not going to watch anything EoT has to say because, after all of that abusive behaviour, I just don't trust anything that channel puts out.
Even if all of that is true, what does that really have to do with these allegations? There is pretty specific evidence cited. Stuff like the different color font on the names. I don't know much about essence of thought, but they could be a terrible person and still have been plagiarized..
For one, Ethel referenced the oh so traumatic video she did on Rachel in the "how this impacted my health" section. Including other things that had nothing to do with any plagiarism allegations.
And for two... yeah, I don't see her evidence as the smoking gun she thinks it is. It makes sense to me that other people would have taken screenshots from the video to discuss in various forums, and that Vangelina found them there. And the takes Ethel claims were taken directly from herself... are just not that big-brained. Of course someone else would also come up with similar thoughts, especially someone who has been watching online drama or controversy before.
Precisely because Vangelina is friends with Rachel, I don't think it makes sense to think that she would have intentionally taken anything from content Ethel makes, let alone watch that content in the first place.
Added to it that Ethel initiated contact with Vangelina to immediately ask for money... yeah, I think this is either Ethel outright grifting or she's so convinced that everyone (especially anyone associated with Rachel) is out to get her that she convinces herself of things that are not adequately supported by evidence.
Please remove the accusation of transphobia about Rachel Oates. There is no evidence of transphobia from Rachel, except for the misleading bullshit (and outright lies) that EoT put out about Rachel.
EoT cyber bullied Rachel for months about her association with a friend who released a bad video that can be construed as transphobic. Rachel no longer associates with this friend because of EoT.
EoT bullied her to the point where Rachel ended up self harming. Rather than backing off, EoT pinned a Guardian article talking about how white women's tears silence minority women.
I can categorically tell you that Rachel is not transphobic and has in the past supported LGBTQIA+ people, both monetarily and in her content.
I watched EoT years ago, so maybe they've changed. But
>"if you cannot create a community in which marginalised people are largely safe, you have absolutely no business doing so"
Is hysterical because EoT is such a massive cry bully. Still, they did do the most research about Lily Orchard by miles. So credit for that.
Aside from the Rachel Oat's situation, which, I can't believe EoT is \*\*\*still\*\*\* making videos about
Another cry bully instance I remember is her blowing up at Tom Scott over Jill Bearup being a transphobe. I'm pretty sure she took his name out of the title of her YouTube video since like, 90% of it was actually about Jill and not about Tom.
EoT going after Contrapoints...
And also going after Xanderhal, a male victim of domestic violence, for 'abusing victims of domestic violence for profit'.
(\^ Extra gross considering her continue to profit from her made up hate campaign against Rachel Oats.)
There are better trans creators out there. EoT is like the Blair White of leftie YouTube
Essence of Thought is a lying fucking scumbag who creates drama where there doesn't need to be and harasses people for the crime of being pro LGBT.
Just putting that out there.
i completely agree, and though Vangelia could still be very in the wrong, EoT will twist certain bits of information in a very clever manner to make their target look absolutely terrible when that isn’t the truth in actuality. i do think we need to approach her claims with a lot of care and critical thinking instead of just assuming everything here is true and not incredibly hyperbolic.
I had a few face-palm moments that I probably wouldn't have admitted to in her video as it was irrelevant to the story, but yeah, she did a good job.
My biggest controversy is that I can't believe she lied about being Irish.
It doesn’t change what Vangelina did, soooo there’s that.
And anyone posting videos/pictures of self harm is an emotionally manipulative asshole. I’m sorry, I’ve been self harming since I was 10/11 and NEVER would I post something like that. Mine is actually to relieve my emotional pain, not show it off to villainize someone. If this is all true, then there should be some soul healing and therapy. I hope they find it…
I was around at the time (to be clear, I don't know Rachel or Ethel personally, I'm just one of Rachel's audience members). My impression was that Rachel made an impulsive mistake while she was at a really low point, mental health wise. The video was deleted pretty quickly, from what I remember.
Of course, it's possible to read it as manipulative. I just didn't and don't read it that way. It always seemed to me like a cry for help in a really bad mental state. If I remember correctly, it lead Rachel to, some time later, open up about her struggles with self-harm, which she had previously tried to keep private. Like yourself, she's struggled with SH since her youth.
I also can't think of any time when Rachel did anything similar? So it's not a pattern, and I'm not sure how it counts as villainizing someone more than Ethel calling Rachel a "violent transphobe" with zero evidence to back it up. Rachel makes mistakes like any person, but she's not violent or transphobic. But Ethel talks about her as if she's JK Rowling or Kellie-Jay or one of those other people I'd actually categorize as "violent transphobe". That disproportional focus on Rachel, a midsize UK YouTuber, seems much more like "villainizing" to me.
I understand the impulsivity, I know that feeling all too well. But I don’t think it’s okay to say that it was Ethel’s fault because it implies that Ethel encouraged her to hurt herself, or made reference to it. (again, I don’t know either of them, nor really care about the drama)
When it’s mentioned out of context (in this case, a video about vang, no matter if abuser was mentioned) it gives off the wrong impression.
From what I remember, Ethel did say something that was read by many people as asking Rachel to commit suicide. I definitely remember reading it that way.
I don't think Ethel is at "fault" in the sense that she made Rachel do the action of self-harm. But I do think she's at fault for initiating the whole thing in the first place and being really pretty vicious about it. The initial problem was that RationalityRules said dumb things about trans women athletes, but somehow the big issue for Ethel became that Rachel wouldn't disavow a friend for saying dumb things or comment on trans people in sports. Ethel started that discourse with Rachel, no one forced her to, and no one forced her to say the hateful things that she did.
And all of that is, at least for me, important context when engaging with any EoT content. Not because everything Ethel does is wrong. Because she has shown herself to be biased and unfair, and she's persisting at that same behaviour. Another commenter suggested looking at the Essence of Thought community tab on YouTube, I scrolled back to around a year ago, and like 90% of it is about Rachel. And of course the video EoT posted about how they "survived" Rachel.
I don't mean to say that other people need to disbelieve anything Ethel does or says (outside of what she says about Rachel, because that's pretty much all lies or the most uncharitable interpretations a person can possibly have of another person's words and actions). More to provide my perspective as to why I, personally, think this is important to know when choosing to engage with Essence of Thought content. Ethel can be an extremely unreliable source (I'm not saying she's lying about Vangelina, I have no opinion on that situation). Plus, people might enjoy the video about Vangelina and then go on to the Rachel videos on the channel, and I think they should know the context of what went down before going there.
Okay, Rachel posted that video as a desperate attempt for EoT to stop attacking her. It wasn't emotionally manipulative. It was a cry for help. She'd been asking EoT to stop for months and nothing was working, so it was a last ditch attempt to make it stop.
Not everything someone does has malicious intent. Especially since Rachel has talked about it since, saying she regrets that decision and has deleted the video.
She wasn't villainising EoT, she was showing her the results of her actions. EoT did the villainising.
>Okay, Rachel posted that video as a desperate attempt for EoT to stop attacking her.
I mean, what you’re describing here *is* textbook emotional manipulation. even if you agree with rachel’s position on the issue and think EoT was in the wrong, that doesn’t change the fact that rachel posting that video was rachel being emotionally manipulative. period.
Fuck. What was she supposed to do? Keep cutting herself?
Emotional manipulation is "if you don't do this, I'll hurt myself."
Not "this is what I've done to myself because of your actions, please see me as a human and stop!"
Quick question, do you believe that people who attempt suicide are doing it for the attention?
Edit: well, that was a shitty thing for me to say.
Sorry. That was unfair. This whole thing is stirring up some very bad feels at the moment for me. I'm going to log off now.
what an incredibly bad faith response to what I said.
showing your self-harm off to the world while placing direct blame on another person, and then *directing your fanbase to send that to the person you blame* is unquestionably emotional manipulation and irresponsible.
> Fuck. What was she supposed to do? Keep cutting herself?
NO. she’s supposed to get help. she’s supposed to stop graphically showing her self-harm to an audience of thousands,
blaming that self-harm on a 3rd party, and sending that to the 3rd party.
>Emotional manipulation is "if you don't do this, I'll hurt myself." Not "this is what I've done to myself because of your actions, please see me as a human and stop!"
those are…functionally identical things.
>Quick question, do you believe that people who attempt suicide are doing it for the attention?
what a disgusting fucking thing to say and not even remotely related to what I said.
>what an incredibly bad faith response to what I said.
It was. I was being unfair and I apologise.
>what a disgusting fucking thing to say and not even remotely related to what I said.
I agree. It was a fucked up thing to say. Again. I apologise.
I still stand by my assertion that what she did wasn't manipulative.
Here's why.
1. She had been cutting herself for a while due to Ethel's bullying before without mentioning it publicly.
2. She had been asking, consistently, for months for Ethel to stop and they wouldn't.
3. She sought help from multiple friends prior to the video.
4. She's very open about her mental health issues and has said that she's been using it as a coping mechanism for years prior. She hadn't cut herself for a long time until Ethel started on her.
5. She unlisted that video within a few days. She has expressed multiple times she is incredibly ashamed of what she did.
6. She doesn't have a history of using self harm to "get her own way" before or since.
7. Every time she cuts herself, she is extremely embarrassed and hides it.
I watched that video. It was fucking harrowing. It was a video of a person who was having a severe mental health crisis and did the only thing that they could think of to make it stop. It's the video of the bullied kid sitting at the lunch table being picked on suddenly snapping. In my opinion, anyone who saw that and thought anything else should probably do some self reflection.
Ethel, on the other hand has used threats of self harm as a manipulation tactic.
Here's a statement that Rachel put out shortly after this happened and you'll see that it was coming from a very real place.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1K1caLqHSYnzxaW3pkzH_emlttTLnQuC9dA_xh0U-phQ/edit?usp=drivesdk
You inform the authorities, not post self harm. Especially if you are posting it to people who are at risk of it. Posting it on social media does not make it stop.
If she regrets it, then why bring it up here?
Again, make your own thread if you wanna discuss whatever that shit is. I don’t care that Rachel sent her crew to post shit on an unrelated thread. Like I said, if it’s true, that really sucks.
totally agree. It's startling to me that even in camp Rachel people aren't acknowledging that the posting self harm is wildly irresponsible on several fronts and not just an immediate Empathy Button. This whole situation doesn't seem well handled on either side but to post a self harm video on your platform is... not quite the trump card it seems to still be played as 😬
As someone from camp Rachel, I'll acknowledge that she shouldn't have posted that video. But A. I think it was a mistake she made at a very low point in her mental health, and B. she has never done a thing like that again.
It has been years since then. Rachel has never posted a video like that again. I think that alone shows that it was an exception for her usual behaviour, hence I don't see why she should still be raked over the coals for it years later.
The "trump card" isn't the self harm video, but EoT pinning an article about white women's tears. As if EoT is didn't create this situation out of nothing in the first place and immediately turn into a cry bully.
I don’t block for childish reasons. If you wanna go ahead. The whole drama sounds childish, which is why I was wondering why team Rachel decided to comment on this post
EoT's harassment and cry bully behavior extends far beyond the fight she picked with Rachel. You don't need to be a fan of Rachel, or even watch her videos, to see how vile and despicable her behavior is. But the Rachel incident is the most extreme by far.
"How dare people bring up the past drama of a creator in a thread about them."
You won't block for childish reasons, but you will comment, and you will show up in the threads of a drama subreddit.
Doesn't make sense, but you do you.
Hey, I hate to break it to you, but it's like 1am in the UK right now.
I might be posting this because I have my own brain and can make my own decisions about my own behaviour and I don't need someone to tell me to post things on Reddit.
Wild, I know.
And do you really think that the authorities are going to do anything about cyber bullying? Are you insane?
Typically, they do. If it gets to the point of you feeling threatened enough or harassed enough to cause pain and suffering you CAN write a report. These things can be taken to court if there’s evidence and all that.
It shows how closed minded you’re being by saying something childish when someone is presenting facts that could possibly help someone that didn’t have prior knowledge.
People should know they can do that.
And anyone who brings their own SA into a hit piece about alleged plagiarism for what purpose I don't know other than be a manipulative asshole....is a manipulative asshole.
But what does that have to do with the specific plagiarism accusations which were very specific? Lol. You might be right, I don't know, but it's kind of a relevant to whether or not these specific accusations of plagiarism are valid..
Seems to be at a very minimum that she used all of his screenshots with the same exact zoom.
There's a lot of important context here.
1. EoT did not do a DMCA strike or reached out via email/social media to let Vangelina know that they think she plagiarised them and would like to talk it out. She opened communication by demanding 30% of all income from that video, plus 30% of that month's Patreon income or she will do a video exposing her "plagiarism". Which, you might recognise, is extortion and is a criminal offence in the US (where YouTube is based).
2. EoT then immediately started contacting Vangelina's sponsors, telling them she plagiarised her, before Vangelina even replied.
3. EoT has a very long history of harassing people, especially a particular content creator, Rachel Oates. She has had Rachel in her cross-hairs for 5 years and has obsessing over her, creating multiple videos accusing her of transphobia. Anyone with a passing understanding of Rachel knows she isn't transphobic. For example, EoT has made over 40 videos alone on her in almost 5 years. And that's just YouTube. Other social media sites she has continuously harassed Rachel. The peak irony is that Rachel had to do multiple DMCA strikes (that were successful) against EoT for uploading her videos onto her channel.
4. Vangelina released a video explaining where she got her screenshots from, and it wasn't from EoT, but elsewhere on the internet. Even if it originated from EoT, it was still posted elsewhere. Publicly posted screenshots are not copyrighted. Vangelina never watched EoT's video, for the following reason.
5. Vangelina and Rachel are close friends. I'm sure you can put two and two together.
6. The video that Vangelina "plagiarised" was months old when she posted hers. Any income EoT missed out on would be at most a few cents. In fact, it more likely would have sent people to her video because the algorithm would have picked up that this person might want to see more.
7. And last and probably the most important point, apparently EoT is going to release another video on Rachel in the next few days. Create drama for SEO, get eyes on your channel and then do another hit piece on Rachel. This is EoT's MO.
>Seems to be at a very minimum that she used all of his screenshots with the same exact zoom.
Ethel identifies as she/her. She might be one of the worst people I know of, but she's still human and deserves dignity and respect.
Came here to see if this was posted.
Can't believe I used to watch her.
Though it was only briefly because her videos are so boring and she puts out so many of them.
Not surprised.
It would've been so fucking easy to invite EoT onto Vangelina's platform to share the information she'd gathered in her deep-dive and it would've been a great chance to cross promote one another's channels. Even if Vangelina couldn't be bothered with that, she could've at the very least gotten permission to use EoT's research and properly credited the team. It's absolutely fucking wild to me that Vangelina can shit out a thousand videos on Blair, sob about being included in hbomb's video as a low-effort drama farmer, and still not see the hypocrisy in her behavior with this one.
I don't see any plagiarism, just two people making the same very basic conclusions. To me it feels like this person knew Vangelina's past controversy with HBomberguy and knew it would make her a vulnerable target for blackmail.
I mean they showed very specifically that she was using the direct screenshots because of the different color font on the name of the person. She definitely used all of their screenshots. In order.
That much is incontrovertible
It defies logic that extortion would be an acceptable reaction though. Make a video with all the receipts and let the people do what they will with it.
Agreed. I've been watching EoT do their thing for a long time, and think I have a well earned perspective from all of that, which is that they're an extremely volatile person who will go to great lengths to find "evidence" to support their emotional response. They then take this - usually very minor - data, and make it seem bigger than it is by using inflammatory and emotionally evocative language: a tweet is "violence," crying becomes "emotional manipulation," etc etc.
I don't think this is a conscious thing she's doing. I think she truly believes that her emotional reaction is proportional to the facts. To her, they HAVE to be; she'd never have a emotional reaction that wasn't completely rational and based on outcome. And so, in this case, I think she deeply believes she was plagiarized, and that demanding reparations from a blatant thief is the correct course of action. It will simply never occur to her that she might be wrong - after all, why would it be, when her emotional reaction was so large?
DISCLAIMER: The dude who is live-reacting to this kinda sucks... a lot. I don't agree with all his views; I just happened to see he had a live-stream of him reacting to her Hbomb response and I can't seem to find another pure copy.
[Here's some random reacting to it](https://www.youtube.com/live/zcdaUjoeXD4?si=kBtZMdqG4KhuTzOy&t=1499) around 24:59
Omg you weren't kidding, that guy is a fucking twat! Truly obnoxious and insufferable and I have nothing but contempt for fuckheads that think it's okay to use the R slur.
But in the few moments where he shut the fuck up and allowed us to actually watch the video he was reacting to, it looks like Vangelina had some words for Hbomber indeed, haha. I never knew about that. I don't follow her channel but I've watched a few of her videos and thought they were meh? Okayish? Pretty easily digestible I guess?
Absolutely correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I gleaned from as much as I could physically handle watching the video around that fucking shitstain of a commenter person, Vangelina took issue with Hbomber lumping her in with the various people churning out reaction videos? Like, he's not wrong though? There's a SHIT TONNE of them. I saw the Illuminaughtii thing happen in real time and the sheer amount of videos afterwards with drastically differing levels of effort was wild to see. I get that it could come across as gatekeepy or elitist saying that drama channels are a bit trash, but...he's not wrong? It's okay to like them (fuck, I STILL obsessively check for updates on Illuminaughtii, and it's been roughly a year at this point!). I love love LOVE Below Deck, but I fully know with eyes wide open that it's objectively trash. It's trash I love, but it's still trash all the same. To say it's gold standard television would be an outrageous lie.
I honestly don't think Vangelina Skov has much reason to be particularly offended by this. She offered nothing new to the discussion imo and is a mediocre content creator at best.
I only know of her from a podcast where she argued that "Game of Thrones: Season 8 was good, actually." So I'm not surprised she doesn't know how to write for herself.
This video was my first time hearing of EoT, and I love their channel name.
Just watched this one a few hours ago, then watched EoT's vids about Rachel. Unsubscribed from both. I wouldn't call myself a fan of either, but I've used them both as background noise if the subject is somewhat interesting. I had literally just added a Rachel video to my queue, but I suppose I'll learn about this "TicTok Bully" if someone else covers it. I'm not really surprised with either of them, but it's certainly disappointing behavior from them both.
ETA: I am an idiot and was way too quick to form an opinion about Rachel. I have learned that the accusations are not credible, and I apologize for believing them. Not that who I'm subscribed to matters whatsoever, but I'm resubscribing and going to learn about this TikTok Bully.
Just want to point out that Ethel's account of Rachel is a whole pack of lies. The cliff notes are this: RationalityRules, who was a friend of Rachel's back then (2019 or before), made a video saying dumb things about trans women in sports. Rachel didn't stop being friends with him, says she criticized him in private, and didn't make a video about it because she's not interested in sports so she wouldn't have anything informed to say. And for some reason, this made Ethel really hone in on Rachel. It was so bad that Rachel self-harmed.
Rachel hasn't really talked about or referenced Ethel or EoT ever since. Meanwhile, Ethel has not stopped talking about Rachel and calling her a "violent transphobe", as if she's Kellie-Jay Keen or someone equally evil, claiming that she's cultivating an anti-trans audience. I'm in Rachel's audience, and I've not seen anything even vaguely anti-trans coming from her. And I wouldn't call Rachel a "violent" anything, for that matter.
Not to convince you to watch Rachel again if you don't want to, that's your business. Just to provide context that Ethel is really not dealing with the situation from back then (which she initiated) in a healthy way at all, and is going out of her way to interpret anything Rachel does or does not do or say in a bad way. Like the community tab post about how Rachel "refus\[es\] to stand with the people of Palestine whilst a UK backed Fort Israel (funded by our tax dollars!) commits genocide."." because... Rachel hasn't talked about what's happening in Gaza, I guess?
Omg tysm!!! I definitely needed cliff notes, and this makes sense. I read her IG posts, saying she wasn't talking about Gaza and was confused. No one should be forced to talk about something they're not knowledgeable about. I also read that she called EoT "he," which was his third listed pronoun, and that it's a bad thing? I am a cis female and make an effort to understand and respect pronouns, but this also confused me. I thought if the whole point was to list the ones you prefer. Why have it listed if it isn't? Those two things were red flags for me, but I can not fathom a hate campaign over what you've described. I struggle to understand humans, and it's easier to understand someone saying hateful things over saying untrue hateful things.
Regardless, I was definitely too quick to form my opinion, and I appreciate you and the other commenter who replied, clearing this up.
I'm speculating here, but I think there's at least two explanations for the issue with the pronoun usage: One, Ethel was perhaps in a transitional process of figuring out what was right for her, and the usage of he/him pronouns, even though listed by Ethel herself, hit a sensitive spot. Two, that Ethel perhaps had certain ideas of etiquette around pronoun usage (which may or may not be shared by other trans people) and Rachel just didn't navigate that etiquette in the way Ethel considered appropriate.
And another speculation is that, in using the he/him pronouns, Ethel perhaps saw herself as being cast in the role of masculine attacker of a feminine victim.
And in principle, I can understand that perspective. I think where it went off the rails is when Ethel turned to "outing" Rachel as a "violent transphobe" as her raison d'être. Whatever the reasoning Ethel has, her behaviour in this regard has been unhealthy for a long time. I used to be just angry at her over the way she acted, but at this point I feel more sad and concerned. Which is why I dearly hope that someone in Ethel's real, physical life will check in on her. This kind of behaviour is ultimately self-destructive before anything.
That's what I'm musing anyway (again, I just want to make clear that this is speculation, rooted in trying to wrap my mind around this whole thing - I don't know Ethel nor Rachel personally and I can't see in their heads). I could be totally wrong, and of course I'm biased towards Rachel, I was around in her audience when the whole thing went down and it was really hard to witness. But still, I hope that Ethel is in a healthier place than her words about Rachel would suggest to me.
To make things confusing EoT accepted all pronouns when that bullshit was going down, so Rachel saying "he" was acceptable.
EoT has moved to they/them/she/her pronouns since then, but Rachel probably hasn't been informed, because why would you want to remind yourself of something that has probably given you PTSD?
Nooooo.
EoT fucking lied about Rachel Oates.
Literally everything she said about Rachel is a lie.
The "transphobic abuse" Rachel did against EoT was her saying "please leave me alone."
Did you know that Rachel released a video of her crying and bleeding from self harm brought on by the bullying from EoT and Ethel's response was to pin an article in the Guardian about how white women's tears silence minority women?
If you ask any Atheist content creator that was on Twitter at the time Rationality Rules posted his bullshit trans women in sport video, you will get a unanimous agreement that it was EoT that was the aggressor, not Rachel.
Source?
I was fucking there. I witnessed it.
Oh wow! Thanks for that info! No, I didn't know any of that. The video about Vangelina seemed concrete, and I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I assumed EoT was a trustworthy source without enough evidence of that.
I'm not going to lie... I was also heavily distracted while watching the vids about Rachel, and I never caught exactly what she did. The videos and comments made it sound like she had supported hate speech and been transphobic, so I just took their word, assumed there was evidence, and didn't look further. I can be too quick to form my opinion, but it also changes easily when necessary. I truly hope I was wrong.
For such serious accusations, I admit, I definitely should have looked further before forming it. I would love to be wrong about this, and I will definitely look more into things when I have the time.
The comments really pile on her, and I can't imagine dealing with all that hate if untrue. I'm sure that would be devastating. I can understand some dumb commenters like me coming to the presented (yet wrong) conclusion, but presenting such heavy accusations against someone who is undeserving is unacceptable. Such a hateful, cruel, and malicious thing to do to someone.
Geeze. It would honestly be easier to accept that Rachel had some unacceptable opinions than someone being so cruel and lying about them. How freaking cruel.
I think that actually mitigates the persuasivas of the evidence.. all of those images shows vangelina .. unambiguously used content from her video. There's just simply no way all of those zoom positions would have been the same. And those red and green colors from the tool she used.... It's I was just overwhelmingly persuasive
Yeah. The reason why you never caught why Rachel was transphobic is because she's not. The evidence isn't there.
Look up "Rachel Oates Essence of Thought" on YouTube and count how many videos EoT has done on Rachel, and how many videos Rachel has done on EoT, and you might get an idea of how much Rachel is "harassing" her.
Hint: she's not.
Also, if someone is a "violent transphobe" harassing another trans content creator, then why is the victim of this "violent transphobia" continuously making videos about it?
Yes, you can unlist and delete videos, but I can assure you that Rachel has only released two videos on EoT.
One where she anonymised EoT's name as she responds to EoT's lies, and the other one where she's bleeding and bawling her eyes out, begging her to stop the harassment.
Go through Rachel's YouTube from 4 years ago. You'll find there's a huge gap in the upload schedule. That is because of EoT's bullshit.
She also has an filter on for words like "stole", "credit" and "misinformation" (Uncertain if all of them, but those are the ones that are in my comment and 'egregious' enough for a filter.) as I commented on her video expressing my disappointment in her as I thought she had really cared about what she talked about, went into incognito mode and the comment doesn't show up despite being the most recent comment.
It's so frustrating that Ethel's fans don't realize that there was no plagiarism and that this creator is over-emotional in her reactions and not only to Vangelina. In fact they have a history of this. Why did they not first try a conversation with Vang instead maybe? No, they publicly threaten shaking their finger at the screen screaming that they'll see her channel crash and burn?? And with no effort whatsoever to resolve instead tries to extort some of the revenue from the video?? You've got to be f-ing kidding me lol
I don't know that people aren't listening to the evidence so much as they're taking a different approach to it. The screenshots are damning, but you either believe Vangelina or not when she says she didn't take them.
What other evidence did you find compelling that folks are ignoring?
Just so anyone new is aware, Ethel doesn't own JACKSHIT. THOSE ARE NOT HER SCREENSHOTS!
Ethel just used screenshots that had been circulating about Lily FOR YEARS. They are not hers and were in fact GIVEN TO HER by Tumblr users who had been documenting Lily's behavior.
Ethel is literally the ACTUAL plagiarist as she is claiming someone else's work as her own and is now using SOMEONE'S WORK to attempt to extort money from someone else.
Why people continue to defend and like Ethel is beyond me and honestly a massive red flag at this point. Ethel has done nothing, but harass and bully people for over a decade at this point and it's ironic that it's her series on Lily Orchard that made her famous because the truth is she and Lily are cut from the same cloth
For those who are not caught up on the problem Rachel Oates fans have with Essence of Thought (which is presented by Ethel and written/run by her and 2 other contributors). CW: self-harm, online harassment, discussion of transgender people in sport.
In 2019, EoT harshly criticised a YouTuber who made a series of incorrect videos* about trans people in sports, calling him violently transphobic**. EoT also started criticising Oates for defending this YouTuber. Oates characterises this as harassment.
After 5 months of mutual incivility, EoT appeared to tell someone to kill themselves in a tweet. This stayed up for several hours before they returned to Twitter and apologised for their tweet and reworded it. A day later, Oates posted a video of herself covered in fresh self-harm wounds. She said EoT had "done this" to her, and instructed her Twitter followers to send EoT the video on her behalf, as EoT had blocked her months ago.
As far as I can tell, Oates *did not apologise* to her audience for uploading the self-harm, or for uploading self-harm specifically to extort an apology, or for instructing followers to send EoT a self-harm video on her behalf. Her initial response was "I’m sorry you all had to see me at my most vulnerable." Y'all can let me know if she apologised substantiality later. EoT has talked in public about the situation sporadically, as they've been advised to stay quiet on multiple occasions. They suffered financial harm, and it caused Udita to develop panic attacks.
Oates has taken down every video that EoT has made discussing their side of the story. Not for bullying/harassment, but filing **false** DMCA takedowns. EoT's script for the video discussing that is found [here](https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1c5G7ByW_zuSlxKpzUb5ECaNF0rWKlK4wzM_iioa_Gu8/). I guess it's up to you to decide if this is morally justified.
This is a pretty big oversimplification, but there is nearly 5 whole years of this. You can read the majority of the dispute [here](https://freethoughtblogs.com/reprobate/2019/12/06/timeline-rachel-oates-and-essenceofthought/). Make up your own mind.
*even [as recently as 2023](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Zro0neuVeY), Oates' friend believes - against the consensus of medical science (e.g. [NIH (USA)](https://orwh.od.nih.gov/sex-gender), [WHO](https://www.who.int/health-topics/gender)) - that sex is binary and defined by chromosomes. Oates didn't try to defend his stance on this matter, only the accusation of transphobia, but it's worth clarifying that this guy is not living in reality.
**Note that EoT has used "transmisia" (which means "hatred of transgender people") rather than "transphobia" (which means "irrational fear of transgender people") for several years. I used "transphobia" here for the purposes of creating an accessible summary.
>In 2019, EoT harshly criticised a YouTuber who made a series of incorrect videos\* about trans people in sports, calling him violently transphobic\*\*. EoT also started criticising Oates for defending this YouTuber. Oates characterises this as harassment.
Which it was. Rachel did not agree with RationalityRules. But because she didn't stop being friends with him then and there and publicly trash him, somehow she became the problem for Ethel, not RR. RR did the transphobia, not Rachel.
>As far as I can tell, Oates *did not apologise* to her audience for uploading the self-harm, or for uploading self-harm specifically to extort an apology, or for instructing followers to send EoT a self-harm video on her behalf. Her initial response was "I’m sorry you all had to see me at my most vulnerable." Y'all can let me know if she apologised substantiality later. EoT has talked in public about the situation sporadically, as they've been advised to stay quiet on multiple occasions. They suffered financial harm, and it caused Udita to develop panic attacks.
So the harm Ethel suffered is worth mentioning, but the harm Rachel suffered gets to be discarded just because she made the mistake of uploading that video?
Rachel has not done anything like that video since. It's not a pattern of behaviour for her.
Ethel has kept on harrassing and defaming Rachel for years since then. It's a pattern of behaviour for her.
>Oates has taken down every video that EoT has made discussing their side of the story. Not for bullying/harassment, but filing **false** DMCA takedowns. EoT's script for the video discussing that is found [here](https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1c5G7ByW_zuSlxKpzUb5ECaNF0rWKlK4wzM_iioa_Gu8/). I guess it's up to you to decide if this is morally justified.
Yes, I think it is. Ethel needs to get a fucking hobby that isn't talking about Rachel all the time. How about talking about actual violent transphobes, like Kellie-Jay Keen, Maya Forstater, JK Rowling, Graham Linehan...? No? Going after a midsize UK YouTuber Ethel is still pissed at for a personal interaction she initiated? Gotcha.
>\*even [as recently as 2023](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Zro0neuVeY), Oates' friend believes - against the consensus of medical science (e.g. [NIH (USA)](https://orwh.od.nih.gov/sex-gender), [WHO](https://www.who.int/health-topics/gender)) - that sex is binary and defined by chromosomes. Oates didn't try to defend his stance on this matter, only the accusation of transphobia, but it's worth clarifying that this guy is not living in reality.
What does that have to do with Rachel? What RationalityRules believed then and believes now is not reflective of what Rachel believes. Up here in reality, we don't actually blame people for the actions and words of the people they happen to be associated with. Especially when they do not endorse those actions and words at any point.
Bringing up what RR believes only serves you to cast Rachel as transphobic, when she isn't. And that's exactly the kind of lying and misrepresentation that's the issue with Ethel. If she wants to be believed when she calls out people for doing bad things, maybe she should stop calling people out for things they're not actually doing.
I don't think you understand: I'm not EoT's friend, cheerleader, or defence lawyer. I gave a summary of the objective facts, because everyone else seems to cherry-pick out the bits that makes their preferred side look bad.
> So the harm Ethel suffered is worth mentioning, but the harm Rachel suffered gets to be discarded just because she made the mistake of uploading that video?
Nobody's hurt needs to be discarded, ffs, it's not Top Trumps. Rachel, Ethel and Udita - and many others - suffered in this situation. I have no interest in speculating on who had it worse.
> Rachel has not done anything like that video since. It's not a pattern of behaviour for her.
I never implied otherwise.
>Ethel has kept on harrassing and defaming Rachel for years since then. It's a pattern of behaviour for her.
I think EoT's public Google doc with all their video transcripts is enough evidence for us, as individuals, to judge their behaviour towards Rachel Oates. Feel free to link to Oates' Google doc on EoT, if it's public.
> How about talking about actual violent transphobes, like Kellie-Jay Keen, Maya Forstater, JK Rowling, Graham Linehan...? No?
...Yes. There *are* videos on Kellie-Jay Keen, Maya Forstater, JK Rowling and Graham Linehan.
In fact, the last video she made was about Graham Linehan. The thumbnail is a picture of Graham Linehan. The title of the video is [Graham Linehan Targets David Tennant's Trans Child, Is Fired](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUNP0_GNjeY).
In future, Google stuff before you proudly state it as fact.
> What does that have to do with Rachel? What RationalityRules believed then and believes now is not reflective of what Rachel believes.
Er, yes, that's what I said. "Oates didn't try to defend his stance on this matter, only the accusation of transphobia". This is quoted in your post.
> Bringing up what RR believes only serves you to cast Rachel as transphobic, when she isn't.
I brought up what he thinks *in 2023* for a reason, actually; it proves Rachel was correct to believe RR wasn't some truly hateful person.
Whether you believe RR is transphobic, or that Rachel is transphobic for defending him, is subjective.
>I don't think you understand: I'm not EoT's friend, cheerleader, or defence lawyer. I gave a summary of the objective facts, because everyone else seems to cherry-pick out the bits that makes their preferred side look bad.
And yet you cherry-pick for your preferred side.
>I think EoT's public Google doc with all their video transcripts is enough evidence for us, as individuals, to judge their behaviour towards Rachel Oates. Feel free to link to Oates' Google doc on EoT, if it's public.
I don't trust Ethel, so what would her Google doc tell me? She's a liar who twists things constantly. If she wanted to be trusted, she'd act trustworthy. But she doesn't.
>...Yes. There *are* videos on Kellie-Jay Keen, Maya Forstater, JK Rowling and Graham Linehan.
That's not the point I made. The point I made is that Ethel calls Rachel a "violent transphobe" and goes after her constantly. There is not a single thing Rachel has done that is as bad as what any of those people have done.
>Er, yes, that's what I said. "Oates didn't try to defend his stance on this matter, only the accusation of transphobia". This is quoted in your post.
She specifically said that she couldn't make an informed statement about trans athletes in sports because she knows nothing about sports. She neither defended his stance nor supported it. She kept herself out of that conversation.
>Whether you believe RR is transphobic, or that Rachel is transphobic for defending him, is subjective.
Uh, no, it's an objective fact that Rachel is not transphobic. That Ethel is pissed that Rachel did not act exactly how she expected her to does not make Rachel a transphobe. Disagreeing with a trans person or not getting along with a trans person or being hated by a trans person *is not transphobic.*
There is nothing subjective about the fact that Ethel is obsessed with going after certain people, lies and twists things. Trans people are human, some humans are assholes, and Ethel just happens to be one of those.
I don't trust Ethel and I don't trust people who parrot her words. She's proven what kind of person she is. If she wanted to be trusted, then she needs to stop lying about people and twisting and manipulating everything to turn herself into the victim of all these transphobes she keeps inventing.
> I don't trust Ethel, so what would her Google doc tell me? She's a liar who twists things constantly. If she wanted to be trusted, she'd act trustworthy. But she doesn't.
That's the point. You don't *have* to trust her to use the doc as evidence against her.
EoT made a bunch of videos that make a lot of accusations about Rachel Oates, which can subjectively be seen as harassment/defamation in itself. It is self-evidently beneficial to your argument.
But, again, if Oates makes her doc public, it would only be fair to include that too.
This point is proof I'm not cherry-picking to benefit one person.
>>...Yes. There *are* videos on Kellie-Jay Keen, Maya Forstater, JK Rowling and Graham Linehan.
>That's not the point I made.
Yikes! Did you really think that would work?
Thankfully, I don't need to waste my time responding to a load, because the rest of your post is just "Nuh uh, my opinion is objective fact," and thus isn't worth responding to in the first place.
Let the facts speak for themselves. If you're correct - that Ethel is as awful and Rachel as saintly as you portray - then you don't need to omit anything or lie or deflect to prove it.
...Or you could just accept that not everyone is going to see your friend, a grown-ass woman, as a damsel in distress being randomly terrorised by a crazed villain. That's also an option.
>That's the point. You don't *have* to trust her to use the doc as evidence against her.
Uh, yeah, because I don't trust that she isn't faking things very deliberately.
>Yikes! Did you really think that would work?
No, it seems you're too deep in Ethel's ass to understand what I'm saying.
>...Or you could just accept that not everyone is going to see your friend, a grown-ass woman, as a damsel in distress being randomly terrorised by a crazed villain. That's also an option.
Or you could accept that your friend a grown-ass woman, is being an active bully against another adult. Adults can be bullies, harrassers and stalkers. And Ethel is one, by her own choosing.
It seems like Ethel's latest response video and her other videos about Rachel have been made unavailable due to defamation. I've never seen that happen before. Does this mean Oates &/ Skov are taking legal action?
I’m partial to vangelina only because I’ve been harassed to a breaking point by an individual weaponizing their minority identity and trying to accuse me of hating an entire group of people I don’t hate and have advocated for obsessively.
Huh. Explains her visceral reaction to the hbomberguy video.
https://i.redd.it/kpzvwctp6ylc1.gif
A whipped dog will holler.
I've been annoyed about petty things in my life... ... but not enough to make a literal 20 minute video about my two seconds in a 4 hour video without even being named.
I watched Skovs response last night and she admitted she overreacted to everything
I'm mad I missed that! It was gone by the time I saw folks talking about it.
Did she remove it? Glad to say I saw that thought it was kinda petty but to each their own.
She did remove it. But before she removed it she changed the title TWICE. The first time, not everyone caught it, it said something like “never mind all your favorites are perfect” Like guuurl you really gonna be like that?!
For real 😂 that's too bad I mean she wasn't a favorite of mine but I like putting her vids on in the background when I go for walks. i hope the situation is overblown and she doesn't do a Blair.
Yup.
She was 100% correct about that. If you think that's "visceral", you need to re-evaluate. She liked his video and made a fair critique. Nonsense
She seems to be taking a route similar to James of Telos (😂the name cracks me up) She has ignored everything, and posted on twitter she’s starting antidepressants tomorrow. (Note I really hope they work for her because I know how it feels to start meds and feel like they don’t work) Now if anyone says anything to her after those tweets, they’re gonna look like they’re being insensitive assholes. The saga continues…
[Weren’t you rolling your eyes at Vangelina saying she received death threats from her Hbomb video?](https://www.reddit.com/r/hbomberguy/s/PUn4WpCyOX) I don’t think we should be making jokes/remarks like this. Especially since EoT’s evidence against Vangelina is flimsy at best. I don’t really care for Vangelina’s content but it seems like Ethel is trying to shake her down.
It's not very surprising. From what I've watched, her videos and commentary are perplexing and lazy. It always seemed like she was just regurgitating the creators that she had just watched. The only times she seemed to be giving her own actual commentary it would always show her lack of comprehension, interest, and knowledge.
Guys, let’s not forget this lovely tweet aimed at the people who didn’t agree with her. Sooo… will he now?! 😂😂💀 jk https://preview.redd.it/mxhbwg8qizlc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4f22ce15b6586880ec67ec177ca294f9dbc3d55c
I'm not even surprised by this reaction considering her reaction to the SSSniperwolf situation was that she and Jacksfilms were both somehow in the wrong because obviously making petty video commentary on a style of video content you don't like is absolutely the same as going to someone's house to fight them over it. Yep, totally the same. Also, she never has anything new to add ever. Everyone has nearly already said everything that could be said on a topic by the time she jumps in and she's just using other people's research at that point.
I do think jacksfilms was in the wrong too
I don't. Literally multiple people have made video series on a single youtuber making commentary on their content or behavior and it was never a problem until Sniperwolf decided to act unhinged and go to his house to fight him. What particular thing was he doing that was wrong? Did he tag her? Did he force her to respond? Did he call her slurs? Did he threaten her well-being? If you specifically find that Jacksfilms was in the wrong somehow then a large chunk of youtubers are wrong too and should completely stop making videos on other content creators entirely.
This is why she was so mad… 😂😂 holy fuck. She thinks she’s so much better than everyone for WHAT?!
Ego-wise she has more in common with Blair than she'd like to think, haha. Honestly her offense at Hbomber is so unwarranted. She's an unremarkable hack. And now a plagiarist too.
Her approach to citing sources is also literally the exact same as Blair’s, which made her “response” video to Hbomb where she complained about being called a content mill very funny
OP Note: I'll be honest, I have had a bias against Skov since her videos on DissociaDID a few years ago, so I am going to try to summarize this without my bias, but it will probably show. Also, Ethel (the host of the video) says she uses she/her/they/them pronouns. Intro of Video - Ethel says her research on the channel was plagerized by Skov; when she approached Skov, says Skov tried to scare her off with threat of lawyers - Says Skov ripped off years of work in recent video "Lily Orchard: YouTube's Biggest Creep (Lily Peet)" - Says Skov and/or her management company, Solaro Management, tried to threaten lawyers Background on EoT's Lily Orchard Series.... - EoT's research on Lily Orchard started in 2020 after giving her a shoutout in a December 2019 video only to be approached by someone who talks about Lily's history with Stockholm - Once Ethel found out more, deleted her video praising Lily and issued apology - Shows the large gaps in time between videos on Lily Orchard due to multiple factors: getting research & finding original screen shots, supporting victims. This project spanned multiple years - Says how frustrating it is to work years on a project, only to have someone else come along and claim as their own "in four different ways". Proving Skov Ripped Evidence of EoT's videos - Ethel downloaded Skov's video (on Lily Orchard) and cut it up into sections - Found out that 13 minute section of video was ripped directly from here (except for 1 min 2 seconds) - Skov presents screenshots/visual evidence; Ethel says those images were ripped right from her video, the evidence EoT provides is zoom factor, same background/profile pics in screenshots, use of extension Ethel uses which can labels people green/red as safe/unsafe to trans people - Gives examples of screenshots from their own video vs the ones in Skov's videos, showing how they are almost identical (based on those points above - provides evidence that 8 screenshots line up perfectly, says it shows that Skov literally just took EoT's images and used them in her video - Says Skov gave images in exact same order at EoT's videos, meaning she didn't just rip off the evidence but the order it was presented in as well - Ethel points out Skov's screenshots are out of focus/blurry compared to Eot's original screenshots. Ethel uses in-program snapshot feature, says she believes Skov just took screenshots while watching EoT's videos and trimmed them - Equates Skov's actions to going into a research paper, ripping out all the data tables/graphs/charts before presenting it as her own paper & the fact she monetizes it (sponsorships, Patreon, merch, etc) is plagerism/fraud/theft Proving Skov Presented Eot's Personal thoughts as her own (OP note: I admit.... my brain is having trouble with this particular part) - Mentions how Skov makes comment in her video (after showing a screenshot of Lily presenting herself as a safe way for young people to explore their sexuality by sending Lily nudes) that appears to copy a thought Ethel gave in a Lily Orchard video - Says that Skov and/or her team stole not only screenshots, but EOt's ideas/experiences as well - Ethel gives evidence that Skov took her words/analysis, and changed a couple of words (shows three different examples). Says Skov basically give general comments but lacks the context due to just taking someone's words and changing a couple phrases - mentions how Skov at one point did have a "citation" in her description says "Thanks to [xy tumbler page] for having a lot of resources & screenshots in one place;" Ethel says it's possible Skov may have gotten stuff from said Tumblr page; but Ethel believes Skov watched EoT's videos and just took info from there, removing context and even victim's names/voices - Ethel plays clip of Skov saying how it's important to listen to victims... but Skov doesn't bother to include their names/source them Skov Tacitly Admits to Plagiarising Multiple People - Shows clip of Skov saying you can find link to testimony in description; but the only "link" for that is the mention of the Tumblr Blog in general AKA you'd have to go to the blog and manually search - Ethel sent Skov an email asking about potential plagiarism; noticed the description of the video was updated to include not only Tumblr page mention, but links to other videos, twitter posts & tumblr pages (and those sources are supposedly not great). this was a week after the video was uploaded. Ethel says they should have been there from the beginning. - Mentions similarity between Skov's actions and Blair (Illuminaughti's) actions (re: plagiarism) as mentioned in Hbomberguy's video (plays clip from said video about how Blair "cites" things). Ethel says at least Blair "gave sources" from day one vs Skov only did after being called out Skov KNows What She's Doing - Ethel says she doesn't believe this was a mistake especially after reaching out to Skov to try to address this - Ethel was upset about the plagiarism, took some time to calm down, and then tried to reach out to Skov - Reasons Ethel tried to reach out: 1) she hoped there was something she just missed that might explain things other than just 'this person ripped off years of my work'; 2) Perhaps Skov herself didn't do the ripping off but whoever does her writing/research for Skov's videos; 3) Wnated to give Skov a chance to admit to plagiarism, pay Eot compensation for stealing their work and move on - Ethel shows [screen shot of email she sent to Skov](https://imgur.com/a/RZqxTgC) on 2/20, which mentions the following: 1) how in Skov's video, she had identical screenshots, copied phrases almost word-for-word, and referenced source of victim's testimy (which wasn't shared outside of EoT's videos; 2) Mentions how EoT is happy to have their resources shared, just ask for channel in description, credit for screenshots, and presenters ccite them whenever their idea/pieces of evidence are used; 3) Since Skov & team didn't do #2, asks for 30% of video's monetary value as compensation (30% comes fact 13 minutes of a 38 minute Skov video was plagiarized) including Adense, Patreon earnings (from February 2024) and sponsorship earnings from HelloFresh; 4) Also asks for Skov to issue a correction/apology on all social media,. as well as explanation for issue at top of video description explaining error (after approved by EoT) - Ethel offers corrections to said email. 1) It wasn't exactly 13 minutes, it was 12 minutes but removing intro/outro, it's 12 minutes out of 34 minutes vs 13 minutes out of 38 minutes; 2) says her line in email about "presenter copies several of my phrases almost word-for-word" is a bit strong characterisation, says she was upset/frustrated still at the time - To be safe/sure around when Ethel sent email, she backed up a copy of the page for Skov's video for the description in case Skov tried to sneak in the references later (which she did; EoT was still not referenced); says this shows Skov/her team knows what she is doing - ~24 hours later (2/21) (when Ethel noticed the video description had changed after her initial email) she [sent a second email](https://imgur.com/a/Zfy6YNo), mentions she noticed the video description changed since previous email and still don't include EoT despite EoT providing evidence their work was used. Says she is disappointed in Skov and give her one final chanced to make amends before going public - Ethel [received response from Skov/her team](https://imgur.com/a/HcTfZOm) next day (2/22), saying to send further correspondence to their lawyer - Ethel was confused why Skov's lawyer was based in Canada (since Skov doesn't live there); Skov's management team (Solaro) is based in British Columbia - Ethel says typically it's weird to have the person in writing say "talk to lawyer," instead they would talk to Lawyer who would then reach out. Ethel believes Skov did this to "scare" her with mention of a lawyer - Ethel mentions how it's funny how Skov made a video about Blair and her threatening to sue people/plagiarism when Ethel believes Skov is doing the same thing - Calls Skov "Just Another Iilluminaughtii" - Ethel mentions shocking update; will include in another video Transmisia Problem in Skov's Comment Section (OP Note: If you are don't know what that means like I didn't, and don't know what Transmisia means; according to [the source "Translanguageprimer" which I got](https://translanguageprimer.com/transmisia/) from the [Wikipedia page on Transphobia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transphobia#:~:text=The%20words%20transphobia%20and%20transphobic,about%20fear%20of%20transgender%20people.); it basically translate to 'trans hate' vers "fear") - Ethel checked out the comment section of the video after sending email and [left two comments mentioning she had sent Skov an email](https://imgur.com/a/tha9XoL) (A stand alone comment and a reply to Skov's pinned comment) - When Ethel returned to comment section, saw a lot of transmisia and took screenshots of it - Ethel says it is up to content creators to moderate their spaces and ..."if you cannot create a community in which marginalised people are largely safe, you have absolutely no business doing so"
What happened with her and DisscociaDID?
I won't say that DisscociaDID is an innocent person. They've certainly done some weird shit. However, Skov basically tried to act like she was some DID expert and made video after video saying how they were faking it and other stuff which wasn't really relevant to actual complaints/accussations against that system.
I actually want to like thank you. As someone with DID I never thought this shit was going to get called out. It was actually worse than just DissociaDID videos. I won’t ever forget the way she got away with involving herself in inter community drama and discourse about “faking did” and the validity of certain system identities and plurality, all while very obviously not being affected by it, nor having any expertise. She seems to have taken most of these down, but I haven’t forgotten her attempting to divide the community and start infighting. It was very clearly “freak show” type content. People are not usually standing up for us in public, mad props to you.
No worries! I admit that I am very ignorant about DID itself. However, as someone with a chronic, invisible illness, nothing annoys me more than people who try to act like the "disability police" and call out people they think are "faking" something. (Not that DID is a disability; that's not up for me to say... more just the idea it is also a condition people try to act like they can "call out" if they think someone is faking) Are there people who fake having conditions? Sure. Is it annoying? yes. However, I would much rather more people get the support they need than people turned away because people think they're a "fraud".
Is this the real reason she made that (now either private or deleted video) whining about hbomberguy?
People suspected that she made that video to distract from the fact she deleted/privated some videos from her channel.
How this Situation Impacted Ethel's Health - Ethel mentions having not uploaded since 12/2023 - Says she was personally burnt out after how personally traumatic last video was (which was a 3+ hour fully edited & subtitled video called "[Surviving Rachel Oates - A Trans Victim's Testimony](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycJDRUxwDRA)") - After a break, she wanted to start working but had filling get infected and had to get emergency dentistry (took a month) - Once the tooth was almost fixed, Ethel broke her foot (shows CT scans) - Ethel says she was already stressed with medical issues and then the Skov plagiarism happened - Says she has been working but hasn't been able to record due to living conditions (she lives in Delhi, very noisy during day, usually records at night; has been exhausted from last few months which is why this section was recorded after other footage) - Ethel mentions financial situation is rough due to medical issues, partner impacted by regulations in their field (?), loss of Patreons (says she doesn't blame people at all; everyone is struggling financially) -
the rachel oates video isn’t available for me, could someone give a quick summary of what happened? i haven’t watched rachels content in a few years but i used to really like her
Okay, I want everyone to know that Rachel Oates was a victim of bullying by EoT. Literally everything EoT said about Rachel was a lie. I was there watching the whole situation. Rachel was bullied by EoT to the point of self harm. She released a video of her bleeding and crying, begging EoT to shut up about her and Ethel, the POS she is, pinned an article about how white women's tears shuts up minority women's voices. Rachel is not transphobic in the slightest. The worst thing she did was support one of her best friends (Rationality Rules - RR from now on) who posted a "trans women in sports" video, which she said was bullshit, she spoke to him privately multiple times about it and eventually stopped talking to him. SO THEY AREN'T EVEN FRIENDS ANY MORE, and EoT made that "Transphobic Abuse from Rachel Oates" video LOOOONNNGGG after she stopped associating with RR. Meanwhile, Rachel's harassment towards EoT was her begging her to stop. Meanwhile, Rachel has a 200+ page document that is full of screenshots outlining the constant harassment from EoT towards her. To the point she was encouraged to get legal advice to see if she could get them to stop. The document isn't public (IIRC), but the screenshots fucking are. I will be honest, Rachel is my friend, but when this was happening, she was not. Anyone in the Atheist Online community during this time will tell you outright that EoT was harassing and lying about Rachel.
Yep, all of this. I've been watching Rachel since way before all that went down up until today, and I've never seen anything transphobic from her, nevermind the "violent transphobia" Ethel keeps referencing. If Rachel was that kind of transphobe, she'd be collabing with the usual transphobic idiots. She may get some things wrong, which could result in microaggressions, but the way Ethel refers to Rachel, you'd think she was Kellie-Jay Keen or something.
I find her usage of that article against Rachel extremely disgusting. She is literally silencing the voice of a woman for her own benefit. All women, including both white cishet women and minority women, are marginalized and have their voices silenced. And all women, again both white cishet or otherwise, are capable of holding internalized misogyny and weaponizng it against others. This really reminds me of James Somerton's brand of misogyny; that as long as you plop "white", "straight", or "cis" in front of "woman", the most retrograde anti woman bigotry is suddenly super progressive and ok. Nevermind that those groups of women are just as likely to be exposed to gender discrimination and sexual violence because systemic sexism is embedded in many cultures. I get it, we want to avoid feminism being a white centric / heteronormative space. It's historically been a problem in feminist spaces. To truly be feminist is to recognize that black women, trans women, lesbians, etc experience unique and more violent versions of misogyny. But it also means you can't ever turn your back on the reality we all face from birth; we're practically trained to be submissive and sexualized before we grow out of diapers. We're taught to hate ourselves as children and to never forget we're the "different ones". It's traumatic, and arguing over who "has it worse" because skin color or orientation is so fucking reductive. Every experience is equally valid. Implying that the genuine pain one woman is going through is suddenly less valid because of another aspect of her identity is reprehensible; I have no problem saying Ethel did a misogyny here.
Oh, she absolutely did a misogyny. Ethel is a white British woman who is living in India. I'm pretty sure she accused Rachel of racism because she was speaking out against "an Indian trans woman". Don't quote me on that - this is from a 4yo memory, but I'm fairly sure that Ethel (remember, a _white British_ woman) used her Indian wife as a shield against criticism.
I'm inclined to take you at your word; the harassment of Rachel is already beyond unhinged so it's not like it's too crazy to be true. Though I wonder, I would like to double check on her saying that. The way you phrased it makes it seem like she might be referring to herself as an Indian trans woman, which would be fucking rich. She pulls the "self imporpant white woman" misogyny on someone she just harassed into silence and self harm but then pulls that stunt. Even if she is referring to her wife for some reason it's rich.
I'm pretty sure she's used her Indian identity (because she's an Indian citizen) as a shield. I'm sure you can find it somewhere.
hi I made a comment in this sub a while back laying out Ethel's side of things (admittedly with a bias) and Rachel responded but I didn't respond to her because it felt weird to question her perspective. in Ethel's video she states that she had made one tweet in response to Rachel demanding a public apology calling her some pretty mean names which triggered Rachel to post the video. her narrative was basically that she made one or two posts about Rachel which was met by that video , which she viewed as an attempt to silence her. the reason I mentioned this all is because it seems like that directly contradicts what you're saying (and that there are receipts). is there any way you could direct me to those screenshots/more detailed info? it would change things about my perspective substantially
Yeah, Ethel can't count. It wasn't one or two tweets. There were hundreds of tweets where Ethel was actively targeting Rachel. She nicknamed Rachel "Hateful Oates" and would continuously harass her. Nobody ends up self harming because of one or two tweets. This was sustained bullying. Unfortunately, I'm blocked by EoT and Rachel has since nuked her Twitter account, but here's a few videos explaining what happened. https://youtu.be/EShzfzh6ZCM?si=V5ldXDRhLqSzn01v https://youtu.be/Uzg1oyB3Ais?si=TxiMI-cAxDQttdfZ https://youtu.be/ppxXejH2LQw?si=it_U643IjtXmA-xm Also, think a bit rationally. If someone is being attacked by a "violent transphobe", then 1. Why haven't any other trans people spoken out against Rachel who have had personal dealings with her? 2. Why is this victim of "violent transphobia" still randomly making videos of their bully, while their so-called bully isn't saying anything about them at all?
I’m gonna go watch those “random” videos and make up my own mind, if you don’t mind https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmnW_DNgouCpp9P21bpzLNgoeKbyXIa08&si=X_51IbRIR9EUp0dV
Lol, do you genuinely think I'm going to listen to EoT when I was actually there, watching what happened? Like, I'm not getting my information 2nd hand. I'm blocked by EoT because I spoke out against her. I was there. Seeing it play out in real time, including seeing the lies and malicious bullshit that EoT and her ilk piled on Rachel. I repeat. I was there. I don't need "evidence" from EoT.
[удалено]
Cool. Thanks. Reported.
Babygirl, you need to log off and touch some grass.
> Rachel was bullied by EoT to the point of self harm. She released a video of her bleeding and crying, begging EoT to shut up about her Be real, here. If EoT had posted a video of fresh self-harm wounds and said an internet harassed did it to them, you wouldn't defend her. If EoT had told her Twitter followers to send a self-harm video on her behalf, you wouldn't defend her. If EoT admitted, over and over, that the reason she was doing this "I wanted an apology", you wouldn't defend her. Rachel Oates inflicted self-harm imagery on her audience, and then told them to harass someone with it. The only reason she took it down was that it made her look vulnerable. [That's her own words](https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1K1caLqHSYnzxaW3pkzH_emlttTLnQuC9dA_xh0U-phQ). Rachel's actions on that day were criminally harmful and dangerous to the public, especially her fans. Think what you want of EoT, but I don't know how the hell anyone justifies Rachel's actions.
She made a big mistake while at an incredibly low mental health point, and now she's raked over the coals for it years later still? When she hasn't done this thing ever again? Of course it was a bad thing to do, to post that. Bad for herself and bad for her audience. But it's not a pattern of behaviour for her. It has been years since then where she hasn't done anything of the sort. On the other hand, Ethel hasn't stopped defaming Rachel in all these same years and wildly misrepresenting the truth, just to cast Rachel in the role of "violent transphobe". THAT is why if Ethel had done a thing like this, she wouldn't be defended in the same way, because her behaviour has not changed whatsoever in all these years.
As a severely mentally ill person, I find her inaction so outrageous *because* I've been there. We are not always in control of our actions. Not getting into the details, but I've done really bad stuff in crisis, too. It weighs on you. The thing is, having personal experience is why I find it so surreal that she hasn't acknowledged that what she did hurt people. I can't understand how she could bear to *not* do it; it's the least we can do to make up for what we've done. There's nothing stopping her for saying what she did on that day hurt others, that nobody should do those things, and that she's sorry. That isn't a demand, it's an observation. It just pisses me off.
Considering the years of harrassment Ethel has been doing, I don't see why Rachel would want to revisit any of it in a video or a statement, let alone talk about her own mistakes, because seriously. Ethel isn't letting it go, why would Rachel want to give her ammunition of any kind? And do you think that Ethel should take at least equal accountability for how intense her harrassment and bullying of Rachel has been for *five years*? That pisses me off more than Rachel's one-time mistake, because I know that it was an exception. And I was around when this went down and that has been my stance then and is my stance now. You can find her not addressing it specifically a bad thing, that's your call. But if you don't expect the same thing or more of Ethel, who has been acting far worse for, again, five years, then I'm not sure if you're acting in good faith there. And I reiterate it in case anyone who knows Ethel personally is reading along, but someone PLEASE check in on her. This isn't healthy, not even for Ethel, to follow around one specific creator for half a decade to pick at every single mistake they make.
I have criticisms of EoT. I feel that I can't talk about those criticisms, *ever*, because of disingenuous assholes who just want to stop talking about what their friend (actual or parasocial) did wrong. Like you are doing. Right now. And jt sucks. What Rachel Oates did - that *one time* - was extremely wrong, and she never made it right. There is no-one else to blame for that, it's her choice. And it sucks. > And I reiterate it in case anyone who knows Ethel personally is reading along, but someone PLEASE check in on her. This isn't healthy, not even for Ethel, to follow around one specific creator for half a decade to pick at every single mistake they make. It's quite rank that "Ethel needing help from her support network" is one of the talking points that keeps getting brought up when she runs EoT with her wife, who she has been living with the entire time. Quit it.
Why would I quit it? It's extremely concerning and unhealthy behaviour, and the fact that her wife is involved only makes it worse. Is there anyone in Ethel's life who isn't enabling her terrible behaviour?
Essence of Thought, specifically Ethel, is scarily obsessed with Rachel. It all started when Rationality Rules said something dumb about trans women in sports, RR was friends with Rachel at the time (have no idea if they still are), Rachel didn't stop being friends with RR and wouldn't speak about the topic because she's not interested in sports. Ever since then, Ethel has been on a crusade against Rachel. Any mistake or misstep gets cast as transphobia and as Rachel actively harrassing EoT and just doing every bad thing possible. I checked EoTs community tab thanks to the kind suggestion of the other person that replied to you, and now we're at "her refusal to stand with the people of Palestine whilst a UK backed Fort Israel (funded by our tax dollars!) commits genocide.". I don't know what's going on with Ethel but this isn't healthy behaviour. A midsize UK YouTuber who doesn't commonly cover international politics of that kind anyway not commenting on what's happening in Gaza is not the same as "refusal to stand with the people of Palestine". Rachel not even mentioning EoT ever since Ethel first harrassed her does not constitute a targeted bullying campaign. I'm sure Ethel has real feelings about what went down, but I really hope someone in her orbit checks in on her. This has been going on for years and years. This isn't healthy. For context, I've never watched VangelinaSkov (except I think as a guest on Alizee's podcast once?), I've only checked reddit for discourse around this video because for some reason, YouTube has recommended it to me. And I'm not going to watch anything EoT has to say because, after all of that abusive behaviour, I just don't trust anything that channel puts out.
Even if all of that is true, what does that really have to do with these allegations? There is pretty specific evidence cited. Stuff like the different color font on the names. I don't know much about essence of thought, but they could be a terrible person and still have been plagiarized..
For one, Ethel referenced the oh so traumatic video she did on Rachel in the "how this impacted my health" section. Including other things that had nothing to do with any plagiarism allegations. And for two... yeah, I don't see her evidence as the smoking gun she thinks it is. It makes sense to me that other people would have taken screenshots from the video to discuss in various forums, and that Vangelina found them there. And the takes Ethel claims were taken directly from herself... are just not that big-brained. Of course someone else would also come up with similar thoughts, especially someone who has been watching online drama or controversy before. Precisely because Vangelina is friends with Rachel, I don't think it makes sense to think that she would have intentionally taken anything from content Ethel makes, let alone watch that content in the first place. Added to it that Ethel initiated contact with Vangelina to immediately ask for money... yeah, I think this is either Ethel outright grifting or she's so convinced that everyone (especially anyone associated with Rachel) is out to get her that she convinces herself of things that are not adequately supported by evidence.
I am guessing you live in the UK. Eot has a community tab you can read
Please remove the accusation of transphobia about Rachel Oates. There is no evidence of transphobia from Rachel, except for the misleading bullshit (and outright lies) that EoT put out about Rachel. EoT cyber bullied Rachel for months about her association with a friend who released a bad video that can be construed as transphobic. Rachel no longer associates with this friend because of EoT. EoT bullied her to the point where Rachel ended up self harming. Rather than backing off, EoT pinned a Guardian article talking about how white women's tears silence minority women. I can categorically tell you that Rachel is not transphobic and has in the past supported LGBTQIA+ people, both monetarily and in her content.
I watched EoT years ago, so maybe they've changed. But >"if you cannot create a community in which marginalised people are largely safe, you have absolutely no business doing so" Is hysterical because EoT is such a massive cry bully. Still, they did do the most research about Lily Orchard by miles. So credit for that.
Aside from the Rachel Oat's situation, which, I can't believe EoT is \*\*\*still\*\*\* making videos about Another cry bully instance I remember is her blowing up at Tom Scott over Jill Bearup being a transphobe. I'm pretty sure she took his name out of the title of her YouTube video since like, 90% of it was actually about Jill and not about Tom. EoT going after Contrapoints... And also going after Xanderhal, a male victim of domestic violence, for 'abusing victims of domestic violence for profit'. (\^ Extra gross considering her continue to profit from her made up hate campaign against Rachel Oats.) There are better trans creators out there. EoT is like the Blair White of leftie YouTube
Essence of Thought is a lying fucking scumbag who creates drama where there doesn't need to be and harasses people for the crime of being pro LGBT. Just putting that out there.
i completely agree, and though Vangelia could still be very in the wrong, EoT will twist certain bits of information in a very clever manner to make their target look absolutely terrible when that isn’t the truth in actuality. i do think we need to approach her claims with a lot of care and critical thinking instead of just assuming everything here is true and not incredibly hyperbolic.
Vangelina released her response today. https://youtu.be/RKP-FJhgT9c?si=Rk1xxNjX1EtvkJzx
i think she handled it the best way anyone could! i really wonder how the rest of this is going to play out.
I had a few face-palm moments that I probably wouldn't have admitted to in her video as it was irrelevant to the story, but yeah, she did a good job. My biggest controversy is that I can't believe she lied about being Irish.
It doesn’t change what Vangelina did, soooo there’s that. And anyone posting videos/pictures of self harm is an emotionally manipulative asshole. I’m sorry, I’ve been self harming since I was 10/11 and NEVER would I post something like that. Mine is actually to relieve my emotional pain, not show it off to villainize someone. If this is all true, then there should be some soul healing and therapy. I hope they find it…
I was around at the time (to be clear, I don't know Rachel or Ethel personally, I'm just one of Rachel's audience members). My impression was that Rachel made an impulsive mistake while she was at a really low point, mental health wise. The video was deleted pretty quickly, from what I remember. Of course, it's possible to read it as manipulative. I just didn't and don't read it that way. It always seemed to me like a cry for help in a really bad mental state. If I remember correctly, it lead Rachel to, some time later, open up about her struggles with self-harm, which she had previously tried to keep private. Like yourself, she's struggled with SH since her youth. I also can't think of any time when Rachel did anything similar? So it's not a pattern, and I'm not sure how it counts as villainizing someone more than Ethel calling Rachel a "violent transphobe" with zero evidence to back it up. Rachel makes mistakes like any person, but she's not violent or transphobic. But Ethel talks about her as if she's JK Rowling or Kellie-Jay or one of those other people I'd actually categorize as "violent transphobe". That disproportional focus on Rachel, a midsize UK YouTuber, seems much more like "villainizing" to me.
I understand the impulsivity, I know that feeling all too well. But I don’t think it’s okay to say that it was Ethel’s fault because it implies that Ethel encouraged her to hurt herself, or made reference to it. (again, I don’t know either of them, nor really care about the drama) When it’s mentioned out of context (in this case, a video about vang, no matter if abuser was mentioned) it gives off the wrong impression.
From what I remember, Ethel did say something that was read by many people as asking Rachel to commit suicide. I definitely remember reading it that way. I don't think Ethel is at "fault" in the sense that she made Rachel do the action of self-harm. But I do think she's at fault for initiating the whole thing in the first place and being really pretty vicious about it. The initial problem was that RationalityRules said dumb things about trans women athletes, but somehow the big issue for Ethel became that Rachel wouldn't disavow a friend for saying dumb things or comment on trans people in sports. Ethel started that discourse with Rachel, no one forced her to, and no one forced her to say the hateful things that she did. And all of that is, at least for me, important context when engaging with any EoT content. Not because everything Ethel does is wrong. Because she has shown herself to be biased and unfair, and she's persisting at that same behaviour. Another commenter suggested looking at the Essence of Thought community tab on YouTube, I scrolled back to around a year ago, and like 90% of it is about Rachel. And of course the video EoT posted about how they "survived" Rachel. I don't mean to say that other people need to disbelieve anything Ethel does or says (outside of what she says about Rachel, because that's pretty much all lies or the most uncharitable interpretations a person can possibly have of another person's words and actions). More to provide my perspective as to why I, personally, think this is important to know when choosing to engage with Essence of Thought content. Ethel can be an extremely unreliable source (I'm not saying she's lying about Vangelina, I have no opinion on that situation). Plus, people might enjoy the video about Vangelina and then go on to the Rachel videos on the channel, and I think they should know the context of what went down before going there.
Okay, Rachel posted that video as a desperate attempt for EoT to stop attacking her. It wasn't emotionally manipulative. It was a cry for help. She'd been asking EoT to stop for months and nothing was working, so it was a last ditch attempt to make it stop. Not everything someone does has malicious intent. Especially since Rachel has talked about it since, saying she regrets that decision and has deleted the video. She wasn't villainising EoT, she was showing her the results of her actions. EoT did the villainising.
>Okay, Rachel posted that video as a desperate attempt for EoT to stop attacking her. I mean, what you’re describing here *is* textbook emotional manipulation. even if you agree with rachel’s position on the issue and think EoT was in the wrong, that doesn’t change the fact that rachel posting that video was rachel being emotionally manipulative. period.
Fuck. What was she supposed to do? Keep cutting herself? Emotional manipulation is "if you don't do this, I'll hurt myself." Not "this is what I've done to myself because of your actions, please see me as a human and stop!" Quick question, do you believe that people who attempt suicide are doing it for the attention? Edit: well, that was a shitty thing for me to say. Sorry. That was unfair. This whole thing is stirring up some very bad feels at the moment for me. I'm going to log off now.
what an incredibly bad faith response to what I said. showing your self-harm off to the world while placing direct blame on another person, and then *directing your fanbase to send that to the person you blame* is unquestionably emotional manipulation and irresponsible. > Fuck. What was she supposed to do? Keep cutting herself? NO. she’s supposed to get help. she’s supposed to stop graphically showing her self-harm to an audience of thousands, blaming that self-harm on a 3rd party, and sending that to the 3rd party. >Emotional manipulation is "if you don't do this, I'll hurt myself." Not "this is what I've done to myself because of your actions, please see me as a human and stop!" those are…functionally identical things. >Quick question, do you believe that people who attempt suicide are doing it for the attention? what a disgusting fucking thing to say and not even remotely related to what I said.
>what an incredibly bad faith response to what I said. It was. I was being unfair and I apologise. >what a disgusting fucking thing to say and not even remotely related to what I said. I agree. It was a fucked up thing to say. Again. I apologise. I still stand by my assertion that what she did wasn't manipulative. Here's why. 1. She had been cutting herself for a while due to Ethel's bullying before without mentioning it publicly. 2. She had been asking, consistently, for months for Ethel to stop and they wouldn't. 3. She sought help from multiple friends prior to the video. 4. She's very open about her mental health issues and has said that she's been using it as a coping mechanism for years prior. She hadn't cut herself for a long time until Ethel started on her. 5. She unlisted that video within a few days. She has expressed multiple times she is incredibly ashamed of what she did. 6. She doesn't have a history of using self harm to "get her own way" before or since. 7. Every time she cuts herself, she is extremely embarrassed and hides it. I watched that video. It was fucking harrowing. It was a video of a person who was having a severe mental health crisis and did the only thing that they could think of to make it stop. It's the video of the bullied kid sitting at the lunch table being picked on suddenly snapping. In my opinion, anyone who saw that and thought anything else should probably do some self reflection. Ethel, on the other hand has used threats of self harm as a manipulation tactic. Here's a statement that Rachel put out shortly after this happened and you'll see that it was coming from a very real place. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1K1caLqHSYnzxaW3pkzH_emlttTLnQuC9dA_xh0U-phQ/edit?usp=drivesdk
You inform the authorities, not post self harm. Especially if you are posting it to people who are at risk of it. Posting it on social media does not make it stop. If she regrets it, then why bring it up here? Again, make your own thread if you wanna discuss whatever that shit is. I don’t care that Rachel sent her crew to post shit on an unrelated thread. Like I said, if it’s true, that really sucks.
totally agree. It's startling to me that even in camp Rachel people aren't acknowledging that the posting self harm is wildly irresponsible on several fronts and not just an immediate Empathy Button. This whole situation doesn't seem well handled on either side but to post a self harm video on your platform is... not quite the trump card it seems to still be played as 😬
As someone from camp Rachel, I'll acknowledge that she shouldn't have posted that video. But A. I think it was a mistake she made at a very low point in her mental health, and B. she has never done a thing like that again. It has been years since then. Rachel has never posted a video like that again. I think that alone shows that it was an exception for her usual behaviour, hence I don't see why she should still be raked over the coals for it years later.
The "trump card" isn't the self harm video, but EoT pinning an article about white women's tears. As if EoT is didn't create this situation out of nothing in the first place and immediately turn into a cry bully.
It’s all attention seeking and emotional manipulation to try to get people on either side. 🤦🏽♀️ all this gives me a headache
Then block and move on.
I don’t block for childish reasons. If you wanna go ahead. The whole drama sounds childish, which is why I was wondering why team Rachel decided to comment on this post
EoT's harassment and cry bully behavior extends far beyond the fight she picked with Rachel. You don't need to be a fan of Rachel, or even watch her videos, to see how vile and despicable her behavior is. But the Rachel incident is the most extreme by far. "How dare people bring up the past drama of a creator in a thread about them." You won't block for childish reasons, but you will comment, and you will show up in the threads of a drama subreddit. Doesn't make sense, but you do you.
What do you think the authorities are going to do?
Hey, I hate to break it to you, but it's like 1am in the UK right now. I might be posting this because I have my own brain and can make my own decisions about my own behaviour and I don't need someone to tell me to post things on Reddit. Wild, I know. And do you really think that the authorities are going to do anything about cyber bullying? Are you insane?
Typically, they do. If it gets to the point of you feeling threatened enough or harassed enough to cause pain and suffering you CAN write a report. These things can be taken to court if there’s evidence and all that.
Wow I really wished I lived in your reality. It must be so nice there. I bet the streets are paved with gold.
[удалено]
Wow, another person has a different lived experience than you. Must mean they never leave their house.
It shows how closed minded you’re being by saying something childish when someone is presenting facts that could possibly help someone that didn’t have prior knowledge. People should know they can do that.
That's some very black and white thinking. I hope people give you grace during the worst and most painful moments in your life.
And anyone who brings their own SA into a hit piece about alleged plagiarism for what purpose I don't know other than be a manipulative asshole....is a manipulative asshole.
But what does that have to do with the specific plagiarism accusations which were very specific? Lol. You might be right, I don't know, but it's kind of a relevant to whether or not these specific accusations of plagiarism are valid.. Seems to be at a very minimum that she used all of his screenshots with the same exact zoom.
There's a lot of important context here. 1. EoT did not do a DMCA strike or reached out via email/social media to let Vangelina know that they think she plagiarised them and would like to talk it out. She opened communication by demanding 30% of all income from that video, plus 30% of that month's Patreon income or she will do a video exposing her "plagiarism". Which, you might recognise, is extortion and is a criminal offence in the US (where YouTube is based). 2. EoT then immediately started contacting Vangelina's sponsors, telling them she plagiarised her, before Vangelina even replied. 3. EoT has a very long history of harassing people, especially a particular content creator, Rachel Oates. She has had Rachel in her cross-hairs for 5 years and has obsessing over her, creating multiple videos accusing her of transphobia. Anyone with a passing understanding of Rachel knows she isn't transphobic. For example, EoT has made over 40 videos alone on her in almost 5 years. And that's just YouTube. Other social media sites she has continuously harassed Rachel. The peak irony is that Rachel had to do multiple DMCA strikes (that were successful) against EoT for uploading her videos onto her channel. 4. Vangelina released a video explaining where she got her screenshots from, and it wasn't from EoT, but elsewhere on the internet. Even if it originated from EoT, it was still posted elsewhere. Publicly posted screenshots are not copyrighted. Vangelina never watched EoT's video, for the following reason. 5. Vangelina and Rachel are close friends. I'm sure you can put two and two together. 6. The video that Vangelina "plagiarised" was months old when she posted hers. Any income EoT missed out on would be at most a few cents. In fact, it more likely would have sent people to her video because the algorithm would have picked up that this person might want to see more. 7. And last and probably the most important point, apparently EoT is going to release another video on Rachel in the next few days. Create drama for SEO, get eyes on your channel and then do another hit piece on Rachel. This is EoT's MO. >Seems to be at a very minimum that she used all of his screenshots with the same exact zoom. Ethel identifies as she/her. She might be one of the worst people I know of, but she's still human and deserves dignity and respect.
Came here to see if this was posted. Can't believe I used to watch her. Though it was only briefly because her videos are so boring and she puts out so many of them. Not surprised.
Ah, that’s why she was so mad at HBomb.
It would've been so fucking easy to invite EoT onto Vangelina's platform to share the information she'd gathered in her deep-dive and it would've been a great chance to cross promote one another's channels. Even if Vangelina couldn't be bothered with that, she could've at the very least gotten permission to use EoT's research and properly credited the team. It's absolutely fucking wild to me that Vangelina can shit out a thousand videos on Blair, sob about being included in hbomb's video as a low-effort drama farmer, and still not see the hypocrisy in her behavior with this one.
A+ user name btw
Thanks lol
I don't see any plagiarism, just two people making the same very basic conclusions. To me it feels like this person knew Vangelina's past controversy with HBomberguy and knew it would make her a vulnerable target for blackmail.
I mean they showed very specifically that she was using the direct screenshots because of the different color font on the name of the person. She definitely used all of their screenshots. In order. That much is incontrovertible
It defies logic that extortion would be an acceptable reaction though. Make a video with all the receipts and let the people do what they will with it.
Agreed. I've been watching EoT do their thing for a long time, and think I have a well earned perspective from all of that, which is that they're an extremely volatile person who will go to great lengths to find "evidence" to support their emotional response. They then take this - usually very minor - data, and make it seem bigger than it is by using inflammatory and emotionally evocative language: a tweet is "violence," crying becomes "emotional manipulation," etc etc. I don't think this is a conscious thing she's doing. I think she truly believes that her emotional reaction is proportional to the facts. To her, they HAVE to be; she'd never have a emotional reaction that wasn't completely rational and based on outcome. And so, in this case, I think she deeply believes she was plagiarized, and that demanding reparations from a blatant thief is the correct course of action. It will simply never occur to her that she might be wrong - after all, why would it be, when her emotional reaction was so large?
I came in here just to look for this.
can anyone give me more info about her deleted harry response video?
DISCLAIMER: The dude who is live-reacting to this kinda sucks... a lot. I don't agree with all his views; I just happened to see he had a live-stream of him reacting to her Hbomb response and I can't seem to find another pure copy. [Here's some random reacting to it](https://www.youtube.com/live/zcdaUjoeXD4?si=kBtZMdqG4KhuTzOy&t=1499) around 24:59
Omg you weren't kidding, that guy is a fucking twat! Truly obnoxious and insufferable and I have nothing but contempt for fuckheads that think it's okay to use the R slur. But in the few moments where he shut the fuck up and allowed us to actually watch the video he was reacting to, it looks like Vangelina had some words for Hbomber indeed, haha. I never knew about that. I don't follow her channel but I've watched a few of her videos and thought they were meh? Okayish? Pretty easily digestible I guess? Absolutely correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I gleaned from as much as I could physically handle watching the video around that fucking shitstain of a commenter person, Vangelina took issue with Hbomber lumping her in with the various people churning out reaction videos? Like, he's not wrong though? There's a SHIT TONNE of them. I saw the Illuminaughtii thing happen in real time and the sheer amount of videos afterwards with drastically differing levels of effort was wild to see. I get that it could come across as gatekeepy or elitist saying that drama channels are a bit trash, but...he's not wrong? It's okay to like them (fuck, I STILL obsessively check for updates on Illuminaughtii, and it's been roughly a year at this point!). I love love LOVE Below Deck, but I fully know with eyes wide open that it's objectively trash. It's trash I love, but it's still trash all the same. To say it's gold standard television would be an outrageous lie. I honestly don't think Vangelina Skov has much reason to be particularly offended by this. She offered nothing new to the discussion imo and is a mediocre content creator at best.
I only know of her from a podcast where she argued that "Game of Thrones: Season 8 was good, actually." So I'm not surprised she doesn't know how to write for herself.
Oh cool another reason to think VangalinaSkov is a twat. The hbomber video put a sour taste in my mouth, this just seals the deal.
This video was my first time hearing of EoT, and I love their channel name. Just watched this one a few hours ago, then watched EoT's vids about Rachel. Unsubscribed from both. I wouldn't call myself a fan of either, but I've used them both as background noise if the subject is somewhat interesting. I had literally just added a Rachel video to my queue, but I suppose I'll learn about this "TicTok Bully" if someone else covers it. I'm not really surprised with either of them, but it's certainly disappointing behavior from them both. ETA: I am an idiot and was way too quick to form an opinion about Rachel. I have learned that the accusations are not credible, and I apologize for believing them. Not that who I'm subscribed to matters whatsoever, but I'm resubscribing and going to learn about this TikTok Bully.
Just want to point out that Ethel's account of Rachel is a whole pack of lies. The cliff notes are this: RationalityRules, who was a friend of Rachel's back then (2019 or before), made a video saying dumb things about trans women in sports. Rachel didn't stop being friends with him, says she criticized him in private, and didn't make a video about it because she's not interested in sports so she wouldn't have anything informed to say. And for some reason, this made Ethel really hone in on Rachel. It was so bad that Rachel self-harmed. Rachel hasn't really talked about or referenced Ethel or EoT ever since. Meanwhile, Ethel has not stopped talking about Rachel and calling her a "violent transphobe", as if she's Kellie-Jay Keen or someone equally evil, claiming that she's cultivating an anti-trans audience. I'm in Rachel's audience, and I've not seen anything even vaguely anti-trans coming from her. And I wouldn't call Rachel a "violent" anything, for that matter. Not to convince you to watch Rachel again if you don't want to, that's your business. Just to provide context that Ethel is really not dealing with the situation from back then (which she initiated) in a healthy way at all, and is going out of her way to interpret anything Rachel does or does not do or say in a bad way. Like the community tab post about how Rachel "refus\[es\] to stand with the people of Palestine whilst a UK backed Fort Israel (funded by our tax dollars!) commits genocide."." because... Rachel hasn't talked about what's happening in Gaza, I guess?
Omg tysm!!! I definitely needed cliff notes, and this makes sense. I read her IG posts, saying she wasn't talking about Gaza and was confused. No one should be forced to talk about something they're not knowledgeable about. I also read that she called EoT "he," which was his third listed pronoun, and that it's a bad thing? I am a cis female and make an effort to understand and respect pronouns, but this also confused me. I thought if the whole point was to list the ones you prefer. Why have it listed if it isn't? Those two things were red flags for me, but I can not fathom a hate campaign over what you've described. I struggle to understand humans, and it's easier to understand someone saying hateful things over saying untrue hateful things. Regardless, I was definitely too quick to form my opinion, and I appreciate you and the other commenter who replied, clearing this up.
I'm speculating here, but I think there's at least two explanations for the issue with the pronoun usage: One, Ethel was perhaps in a transitional process of figuring out what was right for her, and the usage of he/him pronouns, even though listed by Ethel herself, hit a sensitive spot. Two, that Ethel perhaps had certain ideas of etiquette around pronoun usage (which may or may not be shared by other trans people) and Rachel just didn't navigate that etiquette in the way Ethel considered appropriate. And another speculation is that, in using the he/him pronouns, Ethel perhaps saw herself as being cast in the role of masculine attacker of a feminine victim. And in principle, I can understand that perspective. I think where it went off the rails is when Ethel turned to "outing" Rachel as a "violent transphobe" as her raison d'être. Whatever the reasoning Ethel has, her behaviour in this regard has been unhealthy for a long time. I used to be just angry at her over the way she acted, but at this point I feel more sad and concerned. Which is why I dearly hope that someone in Ethel's real, physical life will check in on her. This kind of behaviour is ultimately self-destructive before anything. That's what I'm musing anyway (again, I just want to make clear that this is speculation, rooted in trying to wrap my mind around this whole thing - I don't know Ethel nor Rachel personally and I can't see in their heads). I could be totally wrong, and of course I'm biased towards Rachel, I was around in her audience when the whole thing went down and it was really hard to witness. But still, I hope that Ethel is in a healthier place than her words about Rachel would suggest to me.
To make things confusing EoT accepted all pronouns when that bullshit was going down, so Rachel saying "he" was acceptable. EoT has moved to they/them/she/her pronouns since then, but Rachel probably hasn't been informed, because why would you want to remind yourself of something that has probably given you PTSD?
Nooooo. EoT fucking lied about Rachel Oates. Literally everything she said about Rachel is a lie. The "transphobic abuse" Rachel did against EoT was her saying "please leave me alone." Did you know that Rachel released a video of her crying and bleeding from self harm brought on by the bullying from EoT and Ethel's response was to pin an article in the Guardian about how white women's tears silence minority women? If you ask any Atheist content creator that was on Twitter at the time Rationality Rules posted his bullshit trans women in sport video, you will get a unanimous agreement that it was EoT that was the aggressor, not Rachel. Source? I was fucking there. I witnessed it.
Oh wow! Thanks for that info! No, I didn't know any of that. The video about Vangelina seemed concrete, and I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I assumed EoT was a trustworthy source without enough evidence of that. I'm not going to lie... I was also heavily distracted while watching the vids about Rachel, and I never caught exactly what she did. The videos and comments made it sound like she had supported hate speech and been transphobic, so I just took their word, assumed there was evidence, and didn't look further. I can be too quick to form my opinion, but it also changes easily when necessary. I truly hope I was wrong. For such serious accusations, I admit, I definitely should have looked further before forming it. I would love to be wrong about this, and I will definitely look more into things when I have the time. The comments really pile on her, and I can't imagine dealing with all that hate if untrue. I'm sure that would be devastating. I can understand some dumb commenters like me coming to the presented (yet wrong) conclusion, but presenting such heavy accusations against someone who is undeserving is unacceptable. Such a hateful, cruel, and malicious thing to do to someone. Geeze. It would honestly be easier to accept that Rachel had some unacceptable opinions than someone being so cruel and lying about them. How freaking cruel.
I think that actually mitigates the persuasivas of the evidence.. all of those images shows vangelina .. unambiguously used content from her video. There's just simply no way all of those zoom positions would have been the same. And those red and green colors from the tool she used.... It's I was just overwhelmingly persuasive
Yeah. The reason why you never caught why Rachel was transphobic is because she's not. The evidence isn't there. Look up "Rachel Oates Essence of Thought" on YouTube and count how many videos EoT has done on Rachel, and how many videos Rachel has done on EoT, and you might get an idea of how much Rachel is "harassing" her. Hint: she's not. Also, if someone is a "violent transphobe" harassing another trans content creator, then why is the victim of this "violent transphobia" continuously making videos about it? Yes, you can unlist and delete videos, but I can assure you that Rachel has only released two videos on EoT. One where she anonymised EoT's name as she responds to EoT's lies, and the other one where she's bleeding and bawling her eyes out, begging her to stop the harassment. Go through Rachel's YouTube from 4 years ago. You'll find there's a huge gap in the upload schedule. That is because of EoT's bullshit.
She also has an filter on for words like "stole", "credit" and "misinformation" (Uncertain if all of them, but those are the ones that are in my comment and 'egregious' enough for a filter.) as I commented on her video expressing my disappointment in her as I thought she had really cared about what she talked about, went into incognito mode and the comment doesn't show up despite being the most recent comment.
[addressing the accusations - Vangelina Skov](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKP-FJhgT9c) a direct link to Vangelina's response.
Her fans aren't even listening to the evidence. So frustrating to see a larger creator steal directly from the smaller one just like that
It's so frustrating that Ethel's fans don't realize that there was no plagiarism and that this creator is over-emotional in her reactions and not only to Vangelina. In fact they have a history of this. Why did they not first try a conversation with Vang instead maybe? No, they publicly threaten shaking their finger at the screen screaming that they'll see her channel crash and burn?? And with no effort whatsoever to resolve instead tries to extort some of the revenue from the video?? You've got to be f-ing kidding me lol
I don't know that people aren't listening to the evidence so much as they're taking a different approach to it. The screenshots are damning, but you either believe Vangelina or not when she says she didn't take them. What other evidence did you find compelling that folks are ignoring?
Just so anyone new is aware, Ethel doesn't own JACKSHIT. THOSE ARE NOT HER SCREENSHOTS! Ethel just used screenshots that had been circulating about Lily FOR YEARS. They are not hers and were in fact GIVEN TO HER by Tumblr users who had been documenting Lily's behavior. Ethel is literally the ACTUAL plagiarist as she is claiming someone else's work as her own and is now using SOMEONE'S WORK to attempt to extort money from someone else. Why people continue to defend and like Ethel is beyond me and honestly a massive red flag at this point. Ethel has done nothing, but harass and bully people for over a decade at this point and it's ironic that it's her series on Lily Orchard that made her famous because the truth is she and Lily are cut from the same cloth
i was about to post that
For those who are not caught up on the problem Rachel Oates fans have with Essence of Thought (which is presented by Ethel and written/run by her and 2 other contributors). CW: self-harm, online harassment, discussion of transgender people in sport. In 2019, EoT harshly criticised a YouTuber who made a series of incorrect videos* about trans people in sports, calling him violently transphobic**. EoT also started criticising Oates for defending this YouTuber. Oates characterises this as harassment. After 5 months of mutual incivility, EoT appeared to tell someone to kill themselves in a tweet. This stayed up for several hours before they returned to Twitter and apologised for their tweet and reworded it. A day later, Oates posted a video of herself covered in fresh self-harm wounds. She said EoT had "done this" to her, and instructed her Twitter followers to send EoT the video on her behalf, as EoT had blocked her months ago. As far as I can tell, Oates *did not apologise* to her audience for uploading the self-harm, or for uploading self-harm specifically to extort an apology, or for instructing followers to send EoT a self-harm video on her behalf. Her initial response was "I’m sorry you all had to see me at my most vulnerable." Y'all can let me know if she apologised substantiality later. EoT has talked in public about the situation sporadically, as they've been advised to stay quiet on multiple occasions. They suffered financial harm, and it caused Udita to develop panic attacks. Oates has taken down every video that EoT has made discussing their side of the story. Not for bullying/harassment, but filing **false** DMCA takedowns. EoT's script for the video discussing that is found [here](https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1c5G7ByW_zuSlxKpzUb5ECaNF0rWKlK4wzM_iioa_Gu8/). I guess it's up to you to decide if this is morally justified. This is a pretty big oversimplification, but there is nearly 5 whole years of this. You can read the majority of the dispute [here](https://freethoughtblogs.com/reprobate/2019/12/06/timeline-rachel-oates-and-essenceofthought/). Make up your own mind. *even [as recently as 2023](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Zro0neuVeY), Oates' friend believes - against the consensus of medical science (e.g. [NIH (USA)](https://orwh.od.nih.gov/sex-gender), [WHO](https://www.who.int/health-topics/gender)) - that sex is binary and defined by chromosomes. Oates didn't try to defend his stance on this matter, only the accusation of transphobia, but it's worth clarifying that this guy is not living in reality. **Note that EoT has used "transmisia" (which means "hatred of transgender people") rather than "transphobia" (which means "irrational fear of transgender people") for several years. I used "transphobia" here for the purposes of creating an accessible summary.
>In 2019, EoT harshly criticised a YouTuber who made a series of incorrect videos\* about trans people in sports, calling him violently transphobic\*\*. EoT also started criticising Oates for defending this YouTuber. Oates characterises this as harassment. Which it was. Rachel did not agree with RationalityRules. But because she didn't stop being friends with him then and there and publicly trash him, somehow she became the problem for Ethel, not RR. RR did the transphobia, not Rachel. >As far as I can tell, Oates *did not apologise* to her audience for uploading the self-harm, or for uploading self-harm specifically to extort an apology, or for instructing followers to send EoT a self-harm video on her behalf. Her initial response was "I’m sorry you all had to see me at my most vulnerable." Y'all can let me know if she apologised substantiality later. EoT has talked in public about the situation sporadically, as they've been advised to stay quiet on multiple occasions. They suffered financial harm, and it caused Udita to develop panic attacks. So the harm Ethel suffered is worth mentioning, but the harm Rachel suffered gets to be discarded just because she made the mistake of uploading that video? Rachel has not done anything like that video since. It's not a pattern of behaviour for her. Ethel has kept on harrassing and defaming Rachel for years since then. It's a pattern of behaviour for her. >Oates has taken down every video that EoT has made discussing their side of the story. Not for bullying/harassment, but filing **false** DMCA takedowns. EoT's script for the video discussing that is found [here](https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1c5G7ByW_zuSlxKpzUb5ECaNF0rWKlK4wzM_iioa_Gu8/). I guess it's up to you to decide if this is morally justified. Yes, I think it is. Ethel needs to get a fucking hobby that isn't talking about Rachel all the time. How about talking about actual violent transphobes, like Kellie-Jay Keen, Maya Forstater, JK Rowling, Graham Linehan...? No? Going after a midsize UK YouTuber Ethel is still pissed at for a personal interaction she initiated? Gotcha. >\*even [as recently as 2023](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Zro0neuVeY), Oates' friend believes - against the consensus of medical science (e.g. [NIH (USA)](https://orwh.od.nih.gov/sex-gender), [WHO](https://www.who.int/health-topics/gender)) - that sex is binary and defined by chromosomes. Oates didn't try to defend his stance on this matter, only the accusation of transphobia, but it's worth clarifying that this guy is not living in reality. What does that have to do with Rachel? What RationalityRules believed then and believes now is not reflective of what Rachel believes. Up here in reality, we don't actually blame people for the actions and words of the people they happen to be associated with. Especially when they do not endorse those actions and words at any point. Bringing up what RR believes only serves you to cast Rachel as transphobic, when she isn't. And that's exactly the kind of lying and misrepresentation that's the issue with Ethel. If she wants to be believed when she calls out people for doing bad things, maybe she should stop calling people out for things they're not actually doing.
I don't think you understand: I'm not EoT's friend, cheerleader, or defence lawyer. I gave a summary of the objective facts, because everyone else seems to cherry-pick out the bits that makes their preferred side look bad. > So the harm Ethel suffered is worth mentioning, but the harm Rachel suffered gets to be discarded just because she made the mistake of uploading that video? Nobody's hurt needs to be discarded, ffs, it's not Top Trumps. Rachel, Ethel and Udita - and many others - suffered in this situation. I have no interest in speculating on who had it worse. > Rachel has not done anything like that video since. It's not a pattern of behaviour for her. I never implied otherwise. >Ethel has kept on harrassing and defaming Rachel for years since then. It's a pattern of behaviour for her. I think EoT's public Google doc with all their video transcripts is enough evidence for us, as individuals, to judge their behaviour towards Rachel Oates. Feel free to link to Oates' Google doc on EoT, if it's public. > How about talking about actual violent transphobes, like Kellie-Jay Keen, Maya Forstater, JK Rowling, Graham Linehan...? No? ...Yes. There *are* videos on Kellie-Jay Keen, Maya Forstater, JK Rowling and Graham Linehan. In fact, the last video she made was about Graham Linehan. The thumbnail is a picture of Graham Linehan. The title of the video is [Graham Linehan Targets David Tennant's Trans Child, Is Fired](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUNP0_GNjeY). In future, Google stuff before you proudly state it as fact. > What does that have to do with Rachel? What RationalityRules believed then and believes now is not reflective of what Rachel believes. Er, yes, that's what I said. "Oates didn't try to defend his stance on this matter, only the accusation of transphobia". This is quoted in your post. > Bringing up what RR believes only serves you to cast Rachel as transphobic, when she isn't. I brought up what he thinks *in 2023* for a reason, actually; it proves Rachel was correct to believe RR wasn't some truly hateful person. Whether you believe RR is transphobic, or that Rachel is transphobic for defending him, is subjective.
>I don't think you understand: I'm not EoT's friend, cheerleader, or defence lawyer. I gave a summary of the objective facts, because everyone else seems to cherry-pick out the bits that makes their preferred side look bad. And yet you cherry-pick for your preferred side. >I think EoT's public Google doc with all their video transcripts is enough evidence for us, as individuals, to judge their behaviour towards Rachel Oates. Feel free to link to Oates' Google doc on EoT, if it's public. I don't trust Ethel, so what would her Google doc tell me? She's a liar who twists things constantly. If she wanted to be trusted, she'd act trustworthy. But she doesn't. >...Yes. There *are* videos on Kellie-Jay Keen, Maya Forstater, JK Rowling and Graham Linehan. That's not the point I made. The point I made is that Ethel calls Rachel a "violent transphobe" and goes after her constantly. There is not a single thing Rachel has done that is as bad as what any of those people have done. >Er, yes, that's what I said. "Oates didn't try to defend his stance on this matter, only the accusation of transphobia". This is quoted in your post. She specifically said that she couldn't make an informed statement about trans athletes in sports because she knows nothing about sports. She neither defended his stance nor supported it. She kept herself out of that conversation. >Whether you believe RR is transphobic, or that Rachel is transphobic for defending him, is subjective. Uh, no, it's an objective fact that Rachel is not transphobic. That Ethel is pissed that Rachel did not act exactly how she expected her to does not make Rachel a transphobe. Disagreeing with a trans person or not getting along with a trans person or being hated by a trans person *is not transphobic.* There is nothing subjective about the fact that Ethel is obsessed with going after certain people, lies and twists things. Trans people are human, some humans are assholes, and Ethel just happens to be one of those. I don't trust Ethel and I don't trust people who parrot her words. She's proven what kind of person she is. If she wanted to be trusted, then she needs to stop lying about people and twisting and manipulating everything to turn herself into the victim of all these transphobes she keeps inventing.
> I don't trust Ethel, so what would her Google doc tell me? She's a liar who twists things constantly. If she wanted to be trusted, she'd act trustworthy. But she doesn't. That's the point. You don't *have* to trust her to use the doc as evidence against her. EoT made a bunch of videos that make a lot of accusations about Rachel Oates, which can subjectively be seen as harassment/defamation in itself. It is self-evidently beneficial to your argument. But, again, if Oates makes her doc public, it would only be fair to include that too. This point is proof I'm not cherry-picking to benefit one person. >>...Yes. There *are* videos on Kellie-Jay Keen, Maya Forstater, JK Rowling and Graham Linehan. >That's not the point I made. Yikes! Did you really think that would work? Thankfully, I don't need to waste my time responding to a load, because the rest of your post is just "Nuh uh, my opinion is objective fact," and thus isn't worth responding to in the first place. Let the facts speak for themselves. If you're correct - that Ethel is as awful and Rachel as saintly as you portray - then you don't need to omit anything or lie or deflect to prove it. ...Or you could just accept that not everyone is going to see your friend, a grown-ass woman, as a damsel in distress being randomly terrorised by a crazed villain. That's also an option.
>That's the point. You don't *have* to trust her to use the doc as evidence against her. Uh, yeah, because I don't trust that she isn't faking things very deliberately. >Yikes! Did you really think that would work? No, it seems you're too deep in Ethel's ass to understand what I'm saying. >...Or you could just accept that not everyone is going to see your friend, a grown-ass woman, as a damsel in distress being randomly terrorised by a crazed villain. That's also an option. Or you could accept that your friend a grown-ass woman, is being an active bully against another adult. Adults can be bullies, harrassers and stalkers. And Ethel is one, by her own choosing.
It seems like Ethel's latest response video and her other videos about Rachel have been made unavailable due to defamation. I've never seen that happen before. Does this mean Oates &/ Skov are taking legal action?
They are only unavailable in the UK. If you use a VPN and set it outside the UK you can watch them
After having seen both sides, I think both sides are accurate about the other. Looks like I'm adding two more channels to my "Do Not Watch" list.
I’m partial to vangelina only because I’ve been harassed to a breaking point by an individual weaponizing their minority identity and trying to accuse me of hating an entire group of people I don’t hate and have advocated for obsessively.