Shallon Lester's Book is DISGUSTING

carry baby I love you be teaching that twice and so disgusting so recently a certain name has been all of my YouTube feed and that is Shallon Lester this woman is someone who I had never heard of before and part of me wishes I still hadn't but it all started when Daniel Wallace ooh it's fantastic I love his videos made a video pointing out that she's done some pretty awful stuff both in the past and fairly recently to be honest these pretty awful actions include making racist remarks mocking and belittling mental health issues particularly in men and being generally sexist misogynistic and Mis and rest' she tells the most weird outrageous probably didn't happen stories which isn't the worst thing she's done and she definitely has a thing for teenage boys despite being nearly 40 but it's okay because she lies about her age no wait that still doesn't make it okay anyway I don't really want to go into that stuff here but it's safe to say she's done a lot of crappy stuff and most of the stories in her videos sound like something straight out of are slash that happened and you'll find that is also the case in the book of tears that we're gonna be looking at in today's video I felt it was important to talk about this woman because she's done a lot of really bad things I didn't wanna make the same video as everyone else so I did a little bit of research into her and it says how she's written a couple of books and you know me reviewing youtuber books is kind of my thing at this point she wrote to one of them is teen fiction which I haven't read yet but I can do if it's something you guys are interested in the other one is a book called X's and O's at downtown girls mostly awkward tales of love lust revenge and a little Facebook stalking which is actually a really great title because it does tell you pretty much everything you need to know about this book and why you should be avoiding it it's kind of like an autobiographical series of essays and stuff you can't call these an essay so am I kidding book of stories from her life and things that actually happened and so on it's bizarre that's that's the only thing I can say in summary of this it's really really bizarre like in my notes here I've got this thing now it's like give summary of book I don't know how else to summarize it other than bizarre it's just genuinely odd it's almost like she's set out to write a book about herself to make herself as unlikable and unsympathetic as possible and if that's what she set out to do she definitely succeeded but I don't know the thing is it's not poorly written like a lot of youtuber books are and I think it's not well written either but it's not poorly written it's just I don't get it I don't get the point of it okay here's the thing right I'm actually a big fan of biographies and autobiographical books and books full of personal essays and stuff things by people like David Sedaris and Jamie Morrison like I really barely often I really like them I enjoy them hello gorgeous girl you know if we're talking about books written by strong women about their lives and their experiences then and take yes please by Amy Poehler I have Bossypants by Tina Fey loved them furiously happy by Jenny Lawson is probably one of my favorite books of all time it's hilarious heartbreaking real raw wonderful Caitlyn Moran's how to be a woman could not put it down there are some fantastic books out there written in this style I was kind of autobiographical personal essays you know stories of people's lives and some of them are wonderful but there's also a lot of these books are terrible so for example I'd say lena Dunham's not like the other girls it's probably one of the worst books I've ever read and it's only rivaled by like Amy Schumer's girl with a lower back tattoo just equally as awful so with this in mind I guess what I want to say is I'm a huge fan of this kind of book but I know how easy it is to do it badly with this in mind I wanted to go into Shaolin Lester's book X's and O's with an open mind you know regardless of what she's done in the past I thought she might still have some interesting experiences to share maybe this book would explain a lot of things maybe redeeming maybe she could still at least write a funny entertaining book maybe the reader can still get something out of it I wanted to judge it as a standalone thing and not based on any of the other things she said or done in videos and her career and so on that said hello gorgeous judging this book as a purely standalone thing if I knew nothing else about the author so here's the thing knowing she'll muster wrote this does it surprise me if anyone else has wrote it and I read it I would probably be shocked and appalled but knowing it shall in Leicester I'm like ya know it's exactly what I expected you know I'm first opening the book and glancing at the chapter titles I was immediately filled with dread you know I mean what gems are we really gonna get in Chapter two giant douche rides again or Chapter six called dignity on sale aisle five I don't know maybe I'm being cynical perhaps we will learn something deep and meaningful something profound in Chapter eight and needle in a haystack well maybe we'll learn that Shaolin isn't quite so bad maybe she'll redeem herself and tell us a really fun heartwarming story in Chapter 14 stoked over Fest okay yes I'm being snarky yeah but once you hear some of the content in this book you will understand why are you kidding guys quick as mothers dressed yeah so let's take a look she begins this book as all good works of nonfiction do by proclaiming no trust me this really really did happen I know it sounds stupid but it totally did so yeah we obviously have absolutely no reason to doubt her all the fact that any of this did totally 100% legit happen now the opening sentence or sentences of a book of this nature can tell you a hell of a lot about the author the opening sentence of any book can tell you a lot about the narrator of the story its direction the book is going but these kind of autobiographical collections of personal essays can tell you a lot about the author the narrator and who you're gonna be reading about and Sheldon's book is no different give you some examples from books that it well or rather books that the opening sentence tells you a hell of a lot about the rest of the book you know Lily Allen who opened her book with growing up I felt like the outsider and my family Caitlin Moran opened how to be a woman with so I'd assumed it was optional I know that women bleed every month but I didn't think it was gonna happen to me even Amy Schumer's opening line gives us a pretty decent summary of the whole book and open letter to my vagina first of all I'm sorry second of all you're welcome opening lines tell you so much about the book which is why she'll and Lester's opening line which contains zero self-awareness is very very telling after one particularly heinous day as a gossip reporter I stopped in to my local bakery on the way home I needed a cookie to cheer myself up the irony and the irony is the only thing I can point out yeah because it's not really interesting it's not really exciting it doesn't really grab my attention but just the irony I can't be the only one who sees this right shannon lester i gossip reporter someone whose actions are often described as heinous themselves because you know they're ruin people stays is complaining about a heinous bad day herself karma i mean and if you think i'm over exaggerating here i'm not because later in the book she even describes the her job herself as snitching on the famous might sound easy even fun stirring up trouble for the most ungrateful people on the planet why not screwin and for a while it was delightful I'll call and brought in stories about celebs who cheated on their wives and did lines of cocaine of Brazilian hookers and one hunky actor who bragged about giving girls herpes I felt like the sword of justice slicing through pretension and exposing the ugly coked up truth the pressure at work was unbearable for a whopping forty thousand a year I was expected to ruin the lives of celebrities I'm sorry but with that when you choose to do that for a living I'm sorry if I don't have a lot of sympathy for you having a heinous day at work by the second paragraph she's already throwing out some lovely racial stereotypes which you'll find is a theme throughout this book a recurring motif racism in this case she talks about the Romanian lady teaching her gypsy cursors and attempting some imitation of an accent in how she writes at just yeah she's given 20 free bagels because you know she's suck shell and luster and she's awesome and this is where the story gets honestly bizarre for the first time let me read you some of the highlights just a select few eventually I found a better place for excess food than Western to me the homeless in the manicured suburbs of Orange County we simply didn't have hobos if one popped up police would drive him outside city limits and drop him off in a more poverty friendly town growing up with a single mom I was all too familiar with life on an extreme budget so I began donating to charity whatever way I could when I got old enough to drive I would scour our house to meet care packages for the homeless i raided the bathroom closet for pilfered Hotel soaps and large unwanted t-shirts from this 5k all that student council event I cook up a Costco sized box of macaroni and cheese and divided into alt margarine tubs then write inspirational notes on napkins you are loved have faith believe in yourself I believe the house with a trunk full of goodies smugly optimistic about my goodwill mission inevitably three pointless hours later I be in tears like I said the homeless were in short supply in my area finding them was damn near impossible I'd waste a whole tank of gas driving around random parks hoping to find some sign of in Dickens indigent in in Dickens I never know how to pronounce that word basically poverty and helplessness once I got to New York so the homeless were much easier to spot I went back to the handouts though she works in a restaurant at this point she's a waitress and she begins stealing food and customers leftovers gross taking them to homeless people okay whatever but then she writes plot twist once my fat [ __ ] manager Alexis caught me we hated each other and she was probably delighted to confront me about pilfering food scraps I I give them to the homeless I peeped she still told me I had to stop because if something I've had them made them sick they could sue Houston's the restaurant she worked out obviously that was even more incentive to keep it up I hated that restaurant I would have loved to have a poor person get rich off its back i started including her business card with every potato this whole thing is honestly one of the most bizarre things I've ever read and you'll hear me say that a lot throughout this review I'm one talking about this book how can someone talk about charity work a doing charity work and still manage to come across as so unlikable I mean it is a skill let's be honest how can you say I want to help people and at the same time he's so insulting and stereotypical and just it's bizarre bizarre that is the only word I'm gonna keep saying it azar so what happens next and she's back to all these bagels but she's just been given from this Romanian woman and you know that seems fine they seem like a nice safe thing to hand out to homeless people nice use of free bagels but then well this happens she goes to a supermarket and she decides to make them into sandwiches and for some weird reason instead of buying the stuff she decides to just steal meat and she tries to justify it because she hates the supermarket well like three pages into the book here and she's already got a fat [ __ ] manager she hates in a local supermarket she writes I didn't exactly buy the meat I stole it I'd never stolen anything in my life but then again I'd never hated any grocery store chain more than this one it was a ratty literally rodents everywhere overpriced cesspool always full of the rudest employees available one cashier called me a white [ __ ] when I tried to return a carton of rotten milk plus I was a staunch vegetarian I considered stealing meat a little fu to both the grimy store and the vile meat industry I have no words so she makes me some sandwiches with the free bagels and stolen me and she goes out to hand them to homeless people and then gets like weirdly jealous of one of them that's another like recurring motif in this book shaolin's insecurities deep rooted in security like we'll get to that in a minute one woman said she didn't like whole-wheat bread pardon me your majesty while another lady clearly a crackhead was looking for more than a sandwich you seen my boyfriend she said suspiciously peering into my basket like had stuffed him betwixt the pastrami um no can't say I have I mumbled holdin out the food hesitantly and of course she had a boyfriend and I didn't of course and then online I am NOT gonna repeat and so eventually she becomes friends with this one homeless man and she gets into this habit of stealing sandwiches for him every time she sees him yeah and then one day he's drunk and he's recognized her so she says and again this is not normal behavior i slunk away embarrassed and hurt and depressed and proceeded to do the only thing I know how to do when it comes to men who aren't appreciating me make him jealous the next day I struck up a friendship with a straight woman named Cheryl I had seen her before bloated and filthy and figured she was too mentally ill to approach but that's the thing with the poor they surprise you she was actually perfectly normal almost tragically so so here we have this weird manipulative behavior we have her treating people like belongings insulting a homeless woman's appearance belittling mental illness and weird stereotypes about poor people like that is a lot wrong in a little bit of tact so then she moves on to Amit and she goes on to another story of a day when she goes into a shop after hockey practice she plays hockey that will come up later as well and she makes some weird remarks about the cashier being racist yet pot-kettle I know how she knew this cashiers name I have no idea but she apparently does and she includes it in the story so Charlaine lester is either the most observant woman in the world with a photographic memory or she's making this whole thing up I'll let you decide which so she writes that I love that into the store and immediately attracted attention never a good thing thanks to my god can't ruin hockey sat a hockey bag and stick the hell she got there the cashier tameka's me into the bag boy he shook his head I don't effing know he drawled eyeing me with vague suspicion prolly a body or something you know how them white folks are totally believed this happened yes this is definitely a thing people say so she gets caught stealing cuz she's just stuffing eggs into a bag in the middle of an aisle as you do and somehow she still tries to make the cashier who caught out to be the bad guy this cashier who was just doing her job since there were no customers for Tameka to annoy and berate she had plenty of time to watch me steal not because she has fault so the cashier confronts her asks her like what's in your bag and she just straight-up lies to her face and then this exchange happens because this is definitely how grown adults talk to each other no Tameka hollered leaning over the juicy-fruit display to thrust her pudgy accusing finger at my bag get them eggs out Joe bag [ __ ] [ __ ] I rode back don't you dare call me a [ __ ] you trash so the security card comes over and she threatens him and the cashier with her hockey stick literally holding it up threatening them and she says it's because she plays hockey I would punch a [ __ ] anytime anywhere with zero forethought or regrets classy woman right here then because totally that happened the homeless guy who she's been trying to make jealous for months by stealing for the homeless woman instead of him swoops into the shop and saves her and and he tells her I did that because you're like my guardian angel and I was happy to be one for you and then she ends by giving us the morals a story which is she won her next hockey game yeah I don't know it's super bizarre it makes us seem like this really weird person not like awful awful I guess because she is still technically giving stuff at the homeless which is an okay thing to do but the weird racism and stereotypes and treating people like objects and shoplifting is pretty bad this story as a whole I don't get why she told it it didn't have this cohesive narrative it didn't really have a point to it I didn't find it funny I found him extremely judgmental and and as someone who worked in retail for a long time myself I find shoplifters awful they just rubbed me the wrong way can't stand them so the whole story yeah wasn't a fan the next chapter is a story about her running into her ex who she only refers to as giant douche because that isn't incredibly mature way to handle any breakup so the story is about hovering into him while she's at work as a waitress she works with a guy who she only refers to as gay James because apparently gay people have no other defining characteristics other than their sexuality being a stereotypical joke in Charlotte's story her ex is on a date with a girl and Charlaine being a mature woman decides to go after them and say hi how you doing good to see you again hope you have a great night no I'm joking that would never happen because this is Charlotte Lester instead she decides to hide in the storage closet and calls her ex estate and I quote a chubby blonde too plain to even be considered ugly and then calls her friend because she's hysterical again she complains about her vile manager making her actually do her job and you know go out there and do what she's getting paid for and she's super embarrassed because she smells her bacon and she says I'm a little bit disgusted even reading this maybe a texan would have found that alluring but giant douche was jewish and found nothing charming about a pork scented woman how many strange offensive stereotypes does she want to fit into one book actually don't answer that now many many more to come I hope you're ready in the end he didn't even see her at work and so this whole story was essentially pointless the next few chapters are really odd but forgettable one of them in particular caused her obsession and I'm not using that word lightly with celebrities she literally gets obsessed actually talks about how as a 25 year old woman she would date teenagers and cry uncontrollably when they broke up with her normal not weird at all and and then she talks at how she completely changed herself and her wardrobe because she got a crush on the guy from My Chemical Romance despite being a woman in her late twenties she just changed her entire identity for a celebrity crush again this whole insecurity thing is really showing one of her colleagues at one point says to her why don't you just date in turn he kind of looks like him I guess meaning Gerard Way and the collie goes on to say and he's young just how you like him he turns 19 next week her reply was simply gimme if this doesn't highlight a pattern of creepy potentially predatory behavior against teenage boys I don't know what does but this is where the story take an even more bizarre turn because she decides that when things don't work out with this almost literal child of just 19 that she was dating that this whole thing has happened not because she has a crush on the My Chemical Romance guy but because she actually wants to be him she riots Jared and I were very much alike we had both been dorky teenagers were oddly close with our grandmothers and cared a little too much about the x-men but the one disparity I couldn't get around our skin tone and then she starts to complain about her skin not being pale enough and this bit is just like it's a lot okay i slathered my French Italian skin in SPF 70 at all times being blonde I looked good pale like an Aryan propaganda poster remember that but even at my New York winter whitest I was no any Jared's ghostly pallor he looked like the underside of a deep-sea fish I had a lot of work to do if you want to get pale said my trainer Reggie you talk to the Porto Ricans those girls hate their skin and they've got all sorts of creams to whiten themselves up I took a train out to Spanish Harlem that night and chatted up the around the way girls at the local beauty shop mani what you need is this right here said one handing me a jar of NAT enola faked fade cream this'll get you white in no time you know what I'm saying how many racial stereotypes and caricatures does she want to put in this book also site no I like her back to her things they she looked like a pale she looked good pale like an Aryan propaganda poster the number of references in this book to Hitler the Nazis but even the KKK are a little worrying I'll be honest now I have a dark sense of humor I'm all for risky jokes I'm all for making light of uncomfortable situations but let me just read you a selection of passages from this book I'm fair and blonde and green eyed average high and average weight physically I don't stand out very much unless of course you're Hitler in which case and what you see when you daydream I would rather have run into him at the drugstore while trying to buy an assault augment with foot stir for with food stamps or perhaps on my way to a KKK rally literally anything would have been better than the pink sequined dress I chose to wear a turban an SS uniform escort anything the number of references here just yeah so she starts bleaching her skin and people tell her she looks ill and she's like no I wouldn't be paler and then she goes and gets a chemical peel on her face and she's happy with it end of story that's it it's just an odd pointless slightly offensive story with no good lesson or meaning to it it's just that's it I'm obsessed with celebrities I got obsessed with this celebrity I decided to bleach my skin and get a chemical peel to look like him I was happy sprinkling some racism along the way how was this published the next chapter in this book is one that I thought was gonna be some stupid throwaway story about not being let into a club and and it is don't get me wrong but it also features this absolutely disgusting attempt at a joke rule number two with club going is never to argue with the bouncer unlike with sex no really does mean know just don't leave that there going on and reading the next few chapters you know there's a lot of words in this book but not a lot is ever really said it's not really any point to anything she writes so I need the story she tells most of the stories are incredibly self-indulgent and offer absolutely nothing to the reader they aren't funny or entertaining and it's not that they're badly written they aren't they're just not well written either so you can't even get that out of it you can't even just enjoy the writing and none of the stories challenge off using anyway none of them make us think about anything not wasn't teachers anything and honestly they're just kind of boring I was bored reading this book and it's a short book the only non boring bits are the offensive bit and that's only because you're too shocked and appalled and offended to be bored in those like two lines at a time there's a whole chapter in this book about her getting gift bags at charity events going to charity events just so she can get the gift bags how to get the best gift bags complaining when the gift bags at charity events aren't good enough it's both dull and a little sickening how the hell do you write a whole chapter on that in a later chapter or a couple of chapters we get a story about a boyfriend who was Canadian and she writes a lot about him and it's all very worrying and very weird but would you actually get a really intriguing insight into how Shaolin is and her insecurities and I think this does actually explain a hell of a lot about her behavior about her actions about everything you know this level of insecurity that she clearly has definitely explains her obsession with celebrities her need to date teenagers and kids half her age and her need to exaggerate all her stories have racist and xenophobic remarks everything I mean it doesn't excuse any of it but it definitely explains it you know so she writes about this guy this Canadian hockey player she's dating not really being all that into her and she says I tried to make our relationship work I thought maybe if I became more like him he'd say that I was in fact his equal so I adopted a faint yet unmistakable Canadian accent which incidentally I still have I've always absorbed accents very easily my friend Greer says it's because I'm very empathetic I think it's because I have a shaky core a self-esteem on my gladly shape-shift into someone else to avoid exposing my true personality I worked diligently to turn wise like sorry and about into sori and a boot and don't just max it they're an added awkward aid to every sentence yeah any psychologists will unpack that anyway when they do break up her in this hockey player and she decides to get really competitive about playing hockey which was his thing so that she can take that away from him or something she's really Petty and all about like weird revenge and not letting people go and it's odd again bizarre so she starts training and like playing hockey more and she goes to some teams like trials like tryouts or whatever and she's really really bad she plays really poorly and she gets into a fight with this woman who is in goal and she calls her fat she mocks awake and she ends it by saying to her so the basically like her and this woman have had this like bit of tension and she's like kind of insulting and then the woman says you really about it hockey and she'll in turns around and says you know what honey at the end of the day I'm pretty you might win at hockey but being hot wins at life needless to say I didn't make the team nor any friends I crawled home utterly defeated and thought about what a loser I was now normally when things are wrong I would say to people don't call yourself a loser no you're not a loser Lou you saw a bad day had that experience so you didn't make it no in this case she'll and you are a loser and it's nothing to do with not being good enough at hockey it's to do with how you treat people she makes me angry if you count down yeah I got this thing of like her trying to get back exes and me so I'm hope on them is this recurrent theme throughout the book really bizarre and so in the next chapter right after the whole hockey debacle and she gets really obsessive about that same ex the hockey player and she says how basically her plan is just show up at the hockey ring that he plays at while he's there because I'm like whoa I knew my very presence at the rink would be enough to send him into a tizzy and then she stalks him and that's not an exaggeration it's a little terrifying so she she makes phone calls and like fakes accents and comes up with this whole fake identity to find out his schedule she makes a map of the ice rink that he plays at and puts it up in her kitchen she goes to the venue and like takes photos of it and like knows all the ways in and out and she makes his really like detailed plan to casually bump into him with her friends and she gets so obsessive about it like she gives her friends like scripts and like things to say in front of him and she makes them well like wicks and carry walkie-talkies it's weird it's not even funny it's just weird and then at the end of it none of it really matters because she bumped into him and turns into this like weird mess and he's all cold and mad at her because even though he cheated on her she then went and publicly like bitched about him and shamed him on her blogs and it's just so weird and it's just it's all extremely toxic and juvenile and the weird confrontation is toxic and juvenile and no one feels good everyone's uncomfortable and unhappy especially you the reader reading this interaction it's just bizarre there's no real point of the story I don't know why she included it other than to make herself look bad other highlights from the end of this book include the lines lying too drunk boys is my speciality it helps to keep my mind sharp kind of like Sudoku does for regular people it includes a story about how she pretends to be hillary Duff in clubs and saying things like I decided to retire my Hillary impersonation for good I could hardly become a legitimate celebrity if I was constantly pretending to be a different one and normally books like this the last chapter ends with some kind of like I know inspirational story or something looking towards the future or something emotional la climactic or whatever shaolin's does not shaolin's book ends with her going to see a psychic the psychic is terrible and gets everything wrong so Shaolin gets a little racist and then sits in chewing gum and that's it it just ends abruptly it's so weird and the fact that she decides it's like one of the last things she writes in this book this is one of the things it's gonna stay with the reader and this is gonna be like one of the last impressions they get of Shaolin before the book ends is this some people think that the term gypsy is derogatory but that's because they're clearly never met one gypsies are indeed a shifty deceitful Bunch all nomads are there are just certain sectors of the population who are not to be trusted redheads for example maybe some gypsies have the gift but the rest of them try to chip people into elaborate and expensive candle rituals to cleanse their cloudy auras which was clearly what was happening now in the lair of money-grubber II how the hell was this book published and then Shaolin sits in gone there you go and it's weird it's bizarre bizarre is the only word for this it's offensive it's just yeah so I think this book X's and O's by Charlaine Lester definitely gives us an insight into who she is and her life and have used her actions and her major insecurities I think this explains a hell of a lot of her behavior over the last 20 years of her career which is on the whole extremely problematic and I can't really think of one good redeeming thing she's done and I don't say that about a lot of people so that's where I'm gonna end this video thank you for watching today please let me know your thoughts on this book and on shell and Lester in general if you wanna find out more about who she is and what she's done I'm gonna link D'Angelo wallace's D'Angelo Wallace is video down in the description below I'm getting overhyped here and slurring my words bit yeah I do that sometimes when I'm like talking and get excited or passionate about things I also get kind of like a little insecure about it and I end up just like slurring all my words together or structuring a lot or like yeah anyway I'm shutting up you don't need to hear all this and thank you for watching today I appreciate you guys so much thanks for sticking with me through my break on YouTube and stuff like that while I was waiting for the new computer it has been ordered it has not arrived yet but obviously by the time you are watching this it will have because I'll finally managed to edit this video and I just I cannot thank you enough to everyone who helped me and supported me and helped me get this new computer so I could get back to editing and making content and doing what I love and hopefully giving something back to you guys and I cannot thank you enough like you're all so generous and wonderful and I have to give a huge special thank you to Nevada who helped promote this to Thomas to Neil and to I think Dave helped promote it as well too and I think Paul and who else oh my god I can't remember Nelson top of my head I'm so sorry but to everyone who I've mentioned the name who I haven't to everyone who gave to everyone who shared the link to my stuff to everyone who just helped promote my channel in general just thank you you guys are amazing wonderful people and I hope I can continue creating content that you enjoy and that you love and that one day I'm going to be in a better position to give back to more people and help more people and yeah thank you okay I'm gonna get emotional stopping this now I'm gonna shoot and see you again at very very soon and thanks for watching love you guys bye

Channel: Rachel Oates

Views: 461,337

Rating: 4.8852921 out of 5

Keywords: rachel oates, shallon lester, d'angelo wallace, dangelo wallace, downtown girls, shallon lester book, book review, shallon lester is awful, why people hate shallon lester, shallon lester exes and ohs, shallon lester wrote a terrible book

Id: znWaY9ag-X8

Length: 33min 12sec (1992 seconds)

Published: Mon May 18 2020