(gentle upbeat music) - Hey guys, it's Kat, and I thought that I would give you guys
my opinion and thoughts on the CreepShow Art situation, and I'm going to be doing
a little speed paint while I do so. This is going to be a sketch
that's very much inspired by some of the art that has
been made by other folks during this time during this conversation. I saw some Medusa drawings, I saw a lot of Shannon's
orange and black hair so I got very inspired and this is kind of what I came up with. It's sort of a poopy sketch, but whatever. But anyway, we're here to talk about the CreepShow Art discourse because for those of
you guys who don't know, there are quite a few
things to unpack within it. So CreepShow Art is a creator who makes a lot of content
calling people out, she does a lot of stuff
about accountability, and she tends to align
herself fairly strongly with standing up for
minorities, LGBTQIA+ folks, standing against racism, et
cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and a really big central part
of the stuff that she makes is calling out child predators. Well, recently it came to
the surface that on Lolcow, which is basically a 4Chanesque site where people talk shit about people. Shannon was pretending
to be somebody else, trying to be anonymous while
on one hand promoting herself and on the other hand
talking shit about herself, and this is actually
against the rules of Lolcow so the moderators revealed
her identity on Lolcow and revealed that she had been speaking quite a few negative things about people that she really publicly has
said positive things about, she was being transphobic,
she was saying things that some people consider to be racist, she also was talking shit
about other people's art. And I have a lot of things to say about that particular
aspect of this conversation. This video will not go
over all of the receipts, that's really not what I'm here for. If you are curious about all this stuff, I will link a couple of very
handy videos that go over it in the description box. I'm just gonna assume that because there've been a million videos that have been watched at this point that you kind of already
know what's going on, and for those of you guys who
are new to this conversation and wondering how people
know that it's her, Shannon came out and said that she was dealing with a
stalker who was spoofing her IP, and we now understand that first of all, that's probably not the case. Somebody would have to be
incredibly invested in her in order to actually spoof her IP, but more so than that, there have been people who have come out and kind of confirmed that
Shannon very much does this, including her own
sibling, who, by the way, identifies as non-binary,
whom Shannon has misgendered throughout a couple of
these conversations. So you guys know I am an
artist who is transgender, who makes YouTube videos for a living, and has for 15 years, so
I have a lot of opinions about this entire situation and I just wanted to
share them with you guys because I am sort of baffled by some of the reactions
to this conversation. So let's get into it. But before we get into this video, I wanted to let you guys know that it's sponsored by CuriosityStream. CuriosityStream is an
online subscription service that's all about expanding
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now on CuriosityStream. CuriosityStream has also teamed up with the Streamy Award-nominated
streaming service, Nebula, that's all about empowering
independent creators just like myself, to create the things that they would like to create but can't quite create on YouTube. Right now, if you go to
curiositystream.com/KatBlaque and put in the code KATBLAQUE in checkout, you'll get 26% off of an annual membership of both Nebula and CuriosityStream. That's 14.79 for a year's worth of CuriosityStream and Nebula. Anyway, back to our regularly
scheduled programming. So I'm gonna first start out by saying that I used to follow a
lot of Shannon's stuff. I followed her pretty
early on I wanna say, I feel like I've been
following her for a while, and I feel like I also remember, and maybe somebody else has
a shared experience of this, but I feel like I remember
watching her earlier videos and they were really sort
of straight to the point, straight forward, personable, you know, they were different basically. And at some point, a lot of her videos were her starting with
this very long monologue about how she doesn't like
herself or this or this or that, just speaking really, really
poorly about themselves, and I don't know if anybody
else feels this way, but you know, I think that
it's very normal for people, especially artists to be
slightly self-deprecating, but personally, I register
people who self-deprecate to the degree at which
Shannon self-deprecated as just as kind of full of themselves, as people who publicly
are self-aggrandizing. To me, it just always sort of sounds like you're just really, really into you, which, you know, hey, you
should be or whatever, but I don't know why we always
needed to hear about this all the time, but maybe
that's just my personal taste. But long story short,
that particular approach really, really turned me off, and so I used to have her videos
going on in the background all the time whenever there
was just some long video that she would post because
that's the kind of stuff that I like to consume,
long commentary videos, and then at a certain point for me, a lot of the stuff became unwatchable. And not only that, but I personally felt like some of the ways that
she handled certain topics expressed that she was potentially not as invested in the
conversation as she had presented. This was kind of a big thing for me because she's talking about
some really, really important, very, very hard hitting
things, and I just truly feel like those topics need
to be handled with care, and there were a couple of situations where she didn't do her research, where she clearly was going off of a couple of he-said,
she-said sort of things, and being very, very severe to
convictions of other people, and this was all really serious stuff. This was all really, really intense stuff. And I guess I got turned off because I think when you handle
some very heavy topics, you have to handle them very, very lightly and I felt like some of the
ways in which she discussed some of these things did not express that she was handling them
with the degree of care in which I expect for people to. And so I kind of just lost
interest in her content, and so with all that in mind,
when it was kind of revealed that she was making these posts on Lolcow, I was genuinely not surprised. I was genuinely not
shocked at all, whatsoever because the way that she
speaks about herself on Lolcow is the way that she speaks
about herself in her videos. So that's that. You know, I was not surprised
that it turned out to be her and I don't buy into the this Amy person stalked
me narrative personally, just because it is so implausible, especially when you think about the idea that she befriended her stalker, something that I would never do. I think most people
who've dealt with stalking would never do. And, you know, I'll get into this later, but even in that narrative, there's a lot of things that
Shannon said that were always, you know, she would speak
poorly about herself, but she would say things like this person who stalked me
for years, I befriended her, and please don't attack her
because I care about her, and she has kids, all these things that are kind of like constructed to make you feel like she's a good person. And I've always personally
felt like, I think people, you know, I've always
hated the fake shit, okay? I've always hated the fake shit, you know? You will never catch me being
overly positive and nice to somebody who I don't
actually care about or care for, and as revealed in these Lolcow posts, there was some fake
shit that was going on, and I just personally
was not shocked by it because the way that she
phrased a lot of stuff seemed like fake shit. And I personally digested
almost every time when she fawned over a creator,
especially D'Angelo Wallace, as a form of love bombing, you know? This sort of like, you're overdoing your
adoration of this person and she would do this a lot
with even smaller creators who had far less notoriety. And it just, I don't know, it just often felt you know, super false. And I think partially
because half the time when she would do the sort
of love bombing thing, she would very rarely mention super, super specific
things that she liked, it was always just a copy
and paste of adoration, and maybe a couple of
videos that she watched, but you know, never this
full, deep understanding of who this person is and
why exactly you like them, but that's personally my reading of it. People can read it a different way, but that's personally how
I digested a lot of it. So one of the things I wanted
to talk about in this video, and I think this is
one hell of a hot take, and I don't know if
people are gonna hear me when I say this, but one
of the aggravating aspects of this conversation is that you know, I've been sort of dancing
around this conversation of sort of performative
activism on my YouTube channel because this is something that I actually find quite bizarre. You know, it is very common for me, especially within my Los Angeles scene to see people who, their
performative activism says one thing, how they act in their
personal life says another. And I've always been really
frustrated with people who speak out of both sides of their mouth because especially as
somebody who is a minority in so many ways, I don't
want to be in a situation where I've given you all
of this love and support for being on my side, but it was all something
that you were doing so that you could look a certain way. And unfortunately, I think
that a lot of the things that CreepShow Art did, a lot
of the stuff that she created was her latching onto
certain conversations that definitely have
some validity to them, to make herself look like a good person. And that super, super, super turns me off. I would like for people to understand that even rapists in
prison hate pedophiles. Some people, there's a
lot of people on here who have created content in
the past couple of years, calling out child predators, and I don't think that's a bad thing. I think that we should
call out child predators, I think that we should
call out the normalization of pedophilia and things like
that in certain contexts, I think that that is something
that we should definitely definitely, definitely,
definitely talk about, right? That all being said, I think people don't understand that standing
up against a pedophile does not make you a good
person in every other context. It doesn't. And I've sort of seen this
thing where people will do that, and then when they're called out, they'll point to well, I stand
up against child predators, which is kind of a universal evil that everybody hates, right? And I'm not gonna say
that, you know, again, it's good to call this shit out, and I think that a lot of
stuff that Shannon called out in that vein, she was
right to call out, right? But my argument here is
that doing that on its own does not make you a good person. There's a lot of people who make really shitty stuff on this website who are really, really,
really hard on pedophiles, and people give them a lot of credit for being a good person for it, but I think that people
forget that once again, even rapists in prison
hate pedophiles, right? If you do something to a child and your inmates find out about it, you're going to get messed up. That is something that people who've done the
worst things in the world will still come at you and
mess you up because of that. So I don't really believe in giving people all of this support simply because they called out pedophilia. I don't believe in that. And personally, what I've seen with even the Chris Hanson stuff, which was Shannon has talked a lot about, there's a lot of people who
have created this career on calling out child predators, and for some people you can
see in the way that they act that it's way more about the money than it is about anything else. One of the interesting
things that has come out about this particular topic is that Shannon had expressed at one point that she was over YouTube, she didn't wanna make YouTube videos. And one of the things
that she talked about in her Lolcow posts
that was also confirmed by a voicemail that she had was that she was wanting to leave YouTube, but she was making
$20,000 a month on YouTube and she couldn't walk away from the money. And I think that that was
a really interesting thing to acknowledge because
she, in her Lolcow post and in her conversations with Repzilla, was talking about making
all of this money, but you look at the
content that she's making and it's her calling people out for doing things that are messed up, IE pedophilia, you know? And there's something
that's always made me super, super uncomfortable
about people who make content purely for income,
purely for personal gain. You know, I get sponsors all the time and I'm not gonna act like that's not nice and that I don't enjoy money,
but when I call stuff out, I'm always calling it out because I actually give a fuck about it. I don't call stuff out
because it makes me money, in fact, calling stuff out is not often a popular thing to do. People do enjoy watching
people get called out, people do enjoy the sort of
mob mentality on the internet, and dragging people down, especially if it's for something just, like fighting against
child predators, yes, but I think that people are
ignoring that for some people, this is a business. And that's why in certain situations, it's really not important that you get all of the details right. That's why in some situations Shannon added a little bit of
spice to some of her stories, didn't quite check facts, even
when she was fact checked, kept videos up because for a lot of people at the end of the day, this is money. This is all about money. And I think that you can
have your happy medium of calling stuff out and making money, but when you're pumping
out that many videos about this many things
that requires so much focus and so much understanding,
so much full understanding, I don't trust that you're
always dotting your I's and crossing your T's and
minding your P's and Q's because how could you? How could you? How could you make so
much content back to back, to back, to back, to back about something as sensitive as assault and
abuse, and all this other stuff, and always know that you're
getting everything right? Now, something that came out is that a lot of Shannon's posts were about a YouTuber named Emily Artful. There's a lot to talk about here, I'm gonna talk about the stuff
that's personally relevant to me and just my own feelings, especially as a survivor and
as an artist, so here we go. I don't know Shannon, I don't
know Shannon's situation, but Emily apparently
used to date her husband. And Emily in her video
about the situation, claimed that Shannon's
husband, potentially husband, we don't know if they're married or not, but Shannon's husband raped Emily. And it's very interesting to know that and to understand that because so much of what CreepShow made was calling out stuff like that. And I don't know how this
is gonna sound really, but you know, one of the things
I'm not crazy about online, especially as a blogger,
is that so many people expect for us to all do things
that are 100% consistent, and sensible, and
rational, and reasonable, but human nature kind of
isn't that way, you know? Again, I don't know all of
what Shannon's been through, but it's fairly common for
people who have been through shit to be in situations with people
who are abusive in that way, who assault in that way, and make excuses in your mind
for why this is an exception, why this person isn't that bad. And one of the issues that
Shannon had with her sibling was that her sibling,
you know, I'm assuming after hearing Emily's
stuff, rightfully so, was calling out her
husband for being abusive and was being protective of her, and Shannon didn't wanna hear that. She didn't wanna hear that this person she was probably deeply in love with was potentially not a great person. And I've been there. You know, I've spoken openly
about being in a relationship with somebody who I later
found out was accused of rape. And when I was in that situation, I didn't really know what
to believe, you know? It's you know, just based
off of what Emily said about her ex, I can imagine that he very much established
who Emily was to her. And this is one of the reasons
why I think it's so important for women to talk to each other because men will do this all
the time where they will say she's just this crazy,
drug-addicted person who did X, Y, and Z to
me, and that's who she is. You don't hear about all the other stuff, you don't hear about all the abuse 'cause he didn't tell
you about that stuff, you don't hear about the assaults. But you hear that she's
this terrible person, that's why she's saying this and dah, dah, dah, dah,
dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. You would think that somebody
in her position would say, well, we need to listen
to and believe women. But sometimes that's not as easy as I think a lot of us
would imagine it to be. And especially if you've
been in situations like that, it seems like an obvious thing
to not want to be associated with somebody who could
even be accused of that, but you probably intimately understand in your own processing of
trauma that things get mixed up and you start making excuses
for maybe this didn't happen, or maybe this wasn't
something that was true. You start kind of like, you know, because of your own processing
of trauma, making excuses for why this might not have
actually been the case. And I'm not gonna say that
it's a-okay for her to doubt, I'm just gonna say that I kind of get being somebody who calls
stuff out like that, who ends up in a
relationship with somebody who turns out to do that. And you don't really have
much of a recourse because of just the way that you've
processed your own experience. Again, I don't know Shannon's situation, but that's just what came to mind. So, on the subject of Emily Artful, she spent a lot of time talking
shit about her art on Lolcow and there was a lot of talking
shit about Emily's Art, Holly's art, several other people's art. And you know, again, when I
read through the Lolcow post, it seemed like it was fairly consistent with the stuff that I saw
and heard in her videos because the vibe that I
often got from Shannon was that she was very, how to say this. I don't even know the best
way to phrase this but. I don't know how to
politely say this at all, I'm trying, I'm struggling. Let's just put it this way. Most of the people that
I've known in the art world who talk shit about other people's art are often, like loudly, are
often not people who themselves are particularly talented. And I'm not saying that
you can't talk shit, but I'm just saying that
that kind of talking shit, I've never seen somebody who's focused and honed in on their craft
spending all that time talking about how, because I
mean, for those of you guys who obviously didn't see it, a lot of the sort of posts
she would make were comparing CreepShow's art, her art
to other people's art and saying, well, CreepShow's
art is so much better, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah,
dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. You know, and it's like, mm, I think that Shannon
has definitely improved, but I wish that she spent
half of the time she spent talking shit about people's art, talking shit about people
period, developing her skill. Because to me, that's a
more productive use of time then talking shit, you know? So that's the thing I wanted to point out only because I just, I
think that as artists we should be supporting each other. And I remember being on Go Gaia Online and Deviantart.com in the
early days of my art career, and having those weird, shitty arguments where people were talking
shit about each other's art, and this is so bad, and that's so bad, and dah, dah, dah, dah,
dah, dah, dah, dah, and pretty much none of us were
talented artists, you know? And that's just kinda how it is, I think is people should be
focusing on their own craft, honing their own craft instead
of devoting so much time to speaking about how
somebody else's craft is the worst, of the
worst, of the worst, right? So something else I want to talk about is her transphobic comments. Now on this note, she
did indeed say tranny. You know, she did indeed say what a lot of people
consider to be a slur. I've never really understood
fuckboy as a slur, though I've read those
Tumblr posts several times. I know that some people
consider it to be that way, I can see how people are
trying to make it into that, but that's not how I've
ever heard the term used, but I'm gonna respect
the fact that it's used, that some people digest it
that way, and that's that. I think tranny is definitely
a more gratuitous example of her being transphobic. But Shannon would do stuff where she would be very, very preachy about respecting trans folks publicly, while privately calling people trannies. And that's probably very
surprising to a lot of people, but it is not surprising to me. You know, I've talked a lot
about trauma on my channel and one of the things that
I've learned about my trauma is that I have a very, very hard time registering compliments as
truthful because of the fact that I have known all throughout my life, people who say one thing
to me publicly to my face, and another thing privately
out of my earshot, you know? I know people right now
who in their public life are Mr. Wokey McWokerson on Wokenson Lane, and they're all about
supporting trans folks, and respecting their pronouns,
and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, but when they're not in the earshot of one of their people in
their life who is that, they're misgendering them,
they're fucking up pronouns, they're arguing why their
identity isn't valid, and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, and I think this is a good
time to point out that again, Shannon's sibling is non-binary. Shannon's sibling who
she doxxed is non-binary. And I know that there was
a lot of that sort of talk around them specifically, right? And so, you know, I guess really
what I'm trying to say here is that as shitty as this sounds, and I know that this isn't fair, I tend not to buy into the cis person loudly speaking against transphobia, especially in this kind of way, especially in a way where
it's one thing to say ladies, gal, gals, and non-binary
pals in your introduction because you know that that's something that people in the
audience will appreciate, it's another thing to really
radically shift your mindset to where you understand
that not everybody you meet is a cis person, where you have learned to have
true empathy for trans folks. Some people only show
support to trans people when there's money attached. Some people only show
support to trans folks when it makes them look good. There's other people who
their inclusion of trans folks is just such a central portion of their way of navigating
through the world, that, of course, when
they have conversations about really anyone, they're
going to be inclusive of trans people, and
it's going to be genuine. And going back to what I said before about a lot of this stuff that she said feeling disingenuine to me, I think it was because there
was such a intense focus on discussing that in this way, but you can tell by the way
that she discussed other stuff that she didn't quite feel that way. I mean, and I think I
kind of felt that way when I watched her video about
that racist Tumblr artist because obviously I understood why some people were uncomfortable with a lot of the stuff
discussed in that video, but there were other things
where I was just like, I don't know if this is really your place to invalidate people. Of course, there are going to be trans men who don't like the idea
of being seen as feminine. Of course, there's going to be trans folks who don't like the idea of
being fetishized in that way, but there are also plenty of trans men who enjoy being feminine and
also enjoy some of the fetishes that were discussed in that
particular Tumblr blog, and it's sort of strange
to me to take that and extract that idea,
and make it so that like this is all bad because of some
understanding that you have of trans folks, and not a
general larger trans discourse that is going to have very
different opinions about this, if that makes any sense, you know? And so, I'm not totally surprised that she was saying transphobic shit. That's kind of par for the course if I'm being fucking honest with you. I kind of anticipate that most cis people are gonna only sort of do the
tolerance thing to your face and talk their honesty behind your back, and plenty of people feel like, oh my God, we can't just say what
we feel publicly anymore. You know, especially as a trans person who tends to be read as cis, I've had people say
transphobic things to my face not knowing that I was trans, and it's interesting because you know that there are trans folks
in that person's life who very much would assume
that because this person says nice things in front of them, that they actually are nice
and do actually support them, but so frequently, that's not the case. You know, all in all for me,
this was just a situation where somebody was ousted
for being disingenuine, while building a platform on being genuine and being real, #real, you know? And I just, first of all, I'm
surprised that so many people saw Shannon as like a motherly figure because my mom does not
whine nearly as much. My mom does not whine nearly as much so I personally don't understand that particular reading of
Shannon, but that being said, I understand that people do
form parasocial relationships, Shannon was a person who people
droned through their house for days on end through
several different videos for hours on end, so, I
get why she was important and why you were disappointed
by who she turned out to be. I really do. You know, I will also say
that most of us put on a face. Most of us present one way and are a different way
in our personal lives. Most of us are curating our personality. I'm very real, I'll
just say I'm very real, but you know, I'm sure that you would notice
different things about me if you spent time with me in person for long periods of time, and
I might even do some stuff or not care for certain
things that might surprise you because you mostly hear of me in the context of caring
about certain things, right? And so, I'm not totally
shocked that Shannon didn't turn out to be
who she said she was. I think the talking behind people's backs is really, really shitty, but also I guess I sort of
anticipate that as well. I don't know, I've not known trust and
protection in my life, so I don't often just take
people for who they are until I see that they are
who they say they are. That's again, trauma talking. But I would really encourage people to just always be critical of
the people whom they follow, and to always avoid putting
anybody on the pedestal because, you know,
again, I don't understand why Shannon was put on the pedestal. I think that she said a lot of things that she knew people wanted to hear. I think that she expressed herself in a way that she knew would be popular. I think that she rubbed
shoulders with people who certainly were going
to not call her out. There's a reason why she got to know so many commentary channels
and things like that, like, I think she was very deliberate in not only the way she presented herself, but also the people that
she associated with, and, you know, that's calculated and that's business, and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, but I hate the fact that it was mixed into so many really
important conversations. But yeah, like I said, I think
that people should just avoid putting people on pedestals. One of the things that
I really appreciated off of Emily's video is
when she talked about being somebody who was an anti-feminist, who said a lot of really
pick-me type stuff, she didn't try to push
herself away from that image. She didn't try to push herself away from her past as an addict. She was like, no, this is me. I'm not gonna act like that's
not me and that wasn't me, this is me, I've grown beyond that, and I am who I am today, but this is still part of the timeline that creates me, right? And personally, I think that for Shannon, this is part of the
timeline that creates her, and I think that she has made decisions to be a certain way in life now, but she doesn't have to do that forever. I think that as long as
Shannon kind of lies frankly, that's gonna just be much,
much, much, much, much harder, but I think that it's
very, very possible for her to take a step back, take some time and come back with more
fervor and with more passion, and I think that she can actually, I think that it's possible
for her to come through and for her to come back. But I don't think she's
gonna be able to do it without like, acknowledging
what she was doing. Everybody loves the redemption arc, okay? People love a redemption arc. And I don't think that Shannon can be the same person she was before, but I think that she
can possibly come back, but she needs to start by
admitting that it was her, admitting what she's done, and I think that that's how she can grow. And even if she doesn't do that, I hope that she admits to
herself what she's done. Because in my opinion,
these are real screenshots, these are things that she actually said, there's really not a lot, there's only so much forgiving
you can really do truly. But yeah, I think that's my opinion. Anyway, on that note, I'll
talk to you guys later. This is my drawing. You know, I'm rusty, I haven't made art in a really long time. I am working on some
art videos for you guys. Hopefully I'll be able
to get those to you guys before the end of the month, but you know, y'all know
I'm going through burnout and it's been a journey, so we're just trying to
make fun stuff right now and we'll come back with the
harder hitting stuff soonish. All right, I'll talk to you guys later. Bye.
