- Hello you. We haven't spoken in a very long time. I haven't made a video on this
channel since April, I think. And there are many reasons for that. And that's what I'm going
to talk about today. I am going to address
what happened that led me to making an apology video. What happened after I made the
apology video and why I took a very long break from making
English teaching videos and an even longer break making vlogs. And I'm also going to
talk about how I massively messed up with Black Lives Matter as well. I did something really stupid and I'm really embarrassed about it. And I would like to talk about
it so that maybe other people can not make that same mistake. This is not going to be
like my normal vlogs. Normally I'm really happy in my videos and I'm not going to lie. I have not been happy recently. Don't misunderstand me. I'm not unhappy all the time. And I have had moments of happiness, but compared to how I used to feel. Yeah, mental health took a
bit of a bashing recently, but I'm sure many people
have been struggling with this as well. But yes, this video is
me by my windowsill. It's raining. I didn't even plan for it to rain, but it's just adding so much. But no, I'm making this video for you. And for me obviously, but definitely for you
because when I follow someone and I follow a lot of people on YouTube, I like to know about
the ups and their downs. And, you know, I portray
this really happy, lovely image of life in
the English countryside. And everything's great. And it was great. It wasn't me lying or anything, but. But I've had a rubbish time and now it's time to talk about that. So let's start off with the apology video and what led up to that. And basically I had made a video called 10 Words That You Should
Avoid Mispronouncing If You Want to Sound Professional, This video has now been removed just in case you're looking for it. It's gone. And a famous online newspaper had made an article about this video. Then on Twitter, a group
of social linguists saw a big problem with it. I didn't see at the
time, but I do see now, which is the implication that
if you do not pronounce things with my accent, I speak with modern Received Pronunciation with a hint of Estuary. If you don't speak like me, then you're not professional. And I could see how that could
be taken from that video. So anyone with a Northern
accent who pronounces the words that I was talking about in a different way, not professional. And the issue is that that
is a hot topic at the moment. For a long, long time, newsreaders in the UK had one accent, the RP, Received Pronunciation accent. And when people with regional
accents would speak on TV, there would be complaints. If you find a regional
accent, hard to understand, I kind of think it's because
you haven't listened to a diverse enough range of accents. There's a reason why in
English listening exams, they use a variety of
accents because it's your responsibility to make sure that you understand that variety. And you know, when you've got the whole of
the UK listening to one accent every morning on the
news, yeah, of course, they're gonna find other accents unappealing or difficult to understand, and that's got to change
and it is changing. So I can see the links
from my video to that. Someone also found a video that
I had made years ago when I had just started the
channel in 2016, with Anna, from English, like a native. Anna is a good friend of mine. And that was the first time we'd met. We decided to make a video on Northern versus Southern accents. And Anna, if I'm, if I remember correctly and I'm sorry, Anna, if I get this wrong, is from Manchester. But when she was training
to become an actress, she adapted her accent
to be more Southern. And the way we did this
video was just so wrong. We were kind of, we thought we
were making a fun comparison. You know, Northern say it like this, Southerners say it like
this when actually the tone of it was really off. It was like saying, don't worry. If you've got a nasty Northern accent, you can change it to
a lovely Southern one, which is not what we are not
what we meant to say at all. But it definitely came across that way. And I can imagine any, I mean, my sister in law to be is Northern. And I'm just feeling, if she ever watched that,
how would she feel about me? And about the way I seem to feel about Northern accents? I hadn't watched that
video since I uploaded it. And when I saw clips of it
on Twitter, I thought, oh, my word, I am, I need
to talk to these people. And I also saw some other
comments, people saying, you know, have you brought this up with Lucy? And people were saying, you know she makes a fortune off it. She wouldn't care. And I do care. I do care a lot. So I reached out to them, the person that was really
angry and he was a very, he is sorry, he's still with us. He is a very well respected
academic, works in a university. And I contacted him and said,
I totally agree with you. These videos completely missed the mark, especially the Southern
versus Northern one. Would you be up for the meeting
on Zoom and having a chat about how I can continue
to teach pronunciation? Because that's what I love doing. And that's what I know my students love, but without belittling or
dismissing regional accents. And, and he said, yes, and
we had this wonderful chat. I learnt so much from him. Lots of other people reached
out to help me as well. Just really nice, a really nice result. We apologised to each other. He said, you know, he should
have contacted me personally. He shouldn't have called me
out in that way without even because this was a days old
conversation that I only saw later because I wasn't
tagged in any of the tweets. And these presumptions made
about me and the way I am. And, and it was just an
experience I really learned from. So yeah, I loved the way that ended. I didn't like the way it started, but I loved the way it ended. And I remember just going up
to my room and thinking, God, those were an intense couple
of days receiving a lot of criticism from people I
respect, a lot of academics. People who work in universities, people who have dedicated
their life to linguistics and social linguistics, people who are far more
educated on the topic than I am. And I went to bed a
couple of evenings after, cause this happened over a
couple of days and just thought, oh, I'm so glad that's over. And I'm also glad it's happened. And I felt good. I had some great videos planned. I was really excited about them. I had been promising a haircut
to one of the guys who works on the farm, and poor guy. He's got really thick blonde
curly hair that was just getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And it was really, really hot. And he had been asking, you know, would you mind giving me a haircut? Would you mind? And I'd been promising it. And then when this Twitter
thing happened, I put it off. And then I was there in the
barn getting my stuff ready to give him a haircut. And I got a text. Have you seen this video on YouTube? And I thought, well, no. And someone said, you
better go and watch it now. So I said, I'm so sorry. Let me just, give me
five minutes just to see what what's going on. And it was another English YouTuber who, I will be so upset
if anyone goes to him and says anything nasty
because we have sought out our differences. Now we are in frequent contact
and I really understand why he did what he did. And I have spoken openly
with him about how, I don't like how he did it. And I would be surprised
if he did something in that way again. I think we all deserve chances to learn from what we do. I think everyone deserves
a bit of freedom to, to make mistakes and not
just be ruined for it. Ah, so this video had me in the thumbnail. It's a picture of me, it had why I'm angry
with Lucy in the title. And it was a video all about this, this video that I had made about Don't avoid, Avoid
Mispronouncing These Words, If You Want to Sound Professional and how it could make people feel. And, and just the issues
related to that video. And when I saw it, I was devastated. I was really, really devastated. And one of the big, big things I felt at the
beginning was why didn't he come and talk to me about this? And then I realised I have made
it literally impossible for anyone to contact me directly
because when you've got lots of followers, it gets really overwhelming. If anyone wants to contact me, they have to go through my manager. I don't have a personal
email that you can use to contact me. My private messages
are closed on Instagram and Twitter and Facebook. If you if you want to contact me, you have to do it publicly. And I'd always thought that
that was just something that was protecting me when actually
it failed me because this guy had reached out to me in the past and I never got that message. And I never replied to him, obviously. And I'm sure lots of other
English teachers have also reached out to me and not had
a response and felt ignored when actually, well they
just weren't getting through. And I imagine I've made loads
of people feel, you know, that I think that I'm better
than them and that they're not worth my time. And that's just not the case. It is so challenging to manage everything. It really is. And I got completely overwhelmed
a couple of years ago, and that's why I don't
handle my emails anymore. I can't tell you how
many emails I was getting and direct messages and Facebook messages. I was getting a lot of
collaboration requests and I was finding it quite awkward because I didn't always
want to do collaborations. I just got to the point where I thought, right, that's it, I'm switching
off no more collaborations, unless it's my idea, basically,
which I know is wrong. I know is wrong, but it was overwhelming. And, and I found it really 'cause you can't tell what someone's intentions are when they send
you a random message and you don't know how many other
people they've sent it to and whether they just want to, you know, get followers basically. I've done some amazing collaborations that have just been so much fun. And I've had some situations
where I have got myself into a collaboration and then I've
removed myself from it because I've realised this person
is trying to use me. So yeah, this guy had contacted
me and I had never seen it. He'd hadn't contacted me
directly about this video as far as I'm aware. And something else that
was really hard to see was other English teachers sharing
this video and taking a lot of pleasure in it because I didn't think, I didn't think
our industry was like that. I really didn't. I've seen all the rivalry and
kind of the beauty and makeup communities and sometimes
in the gaming and commentary community as well. My word and I just, I didn't think our
community was like that. I really didn't. And I was really sad, sad to
see it and don't get me wrong. I have done my fair share of
talking behind people's backs. I absolutely have. It's something I really
try not to do anymore. I have said horrible things
behind people's backs. And a lot of it came from envy
or from a place of wanting to protect my, myself and
my channel and my business. And it's definitely something
that I'm really not worried, not as worried about anymore. And if I feel worried or, you know, annoyed or frustrated with
something that I've seen, maybe someone has ripped
off one of my videos or something like that. Then I just talk about it with, Will, and that's it, that's as far as it goes. When in the past I
would really take things like that to heart. It used to really annoy me
when people would replicate my videos and then contact
me for collaboration. When now I understand it. I get it. It's the way YouTube works. There's a scale of it. And I've definitely gone up
and down that scale myself. It's just a learning journey, but yeah, that was the hardest thing about it all. Oh hey.. Future Lucy here. I'm just editing this video. And I realised that I've
mentioned, you know, the teachers that I felt
really took pleasure in, in the criticism. But I also haven't mentioned
all of the amazing people that did actually reach out to me. People I've never spoken to before, but I've seen on YouTube and
people that agreed with the criticism and people that
said openly to me, you know, I have thought some of your
videos missed the mark in the past, but they did it in such a nice way. And it's put me in contact
with so many more amazing linguists, teachers, professionals. That I just wouldn't have met otherwise. So naughty me for just
looking at the negative there. That is a habit that needs to end because really good things came of this as well. So I apologised to the farm
worker and said, I'm so sorry, I can't cut your hair. I'm having a bit of an emergency. And he just walked off with hair. He actually did it himself in the end. And he did a really good job and I feel so bad for letting him down, but I decided that I wanted to make an apology, public apology. I know that I could tell by the comments on the criticism video, that a huge percentage of
people didn't agree with the contents of the video and by the comments on my apology video, I can see that 98% of people
thought that I didn't need to make it and thought it was ridiculous, but that apology video wasn't for them. I think half a million people
watch that pronunciation video that I took down. If 1% of people that watched
that video were made to feel less than or offended by it,
that's still 5,000 people. And imagine them standing in front of you, 5,000 individuals that felt
rubbish about themselves because of something I've made. I had to apologise. The issue was that the following
day was Will's birthday. And I had, I had spent quite a long time
planning it and I had his parents coming over
and his brothers and I, I just didn't want to
ruin the day for him. So I filmed the apology video
at two o'clock in the morning. And I meant every word I said. If I could change one thing about the apology video I
would add in that, you know, if you weren't offended
by the video, that's fine. But this apology isn't for you. Because I think a lot of
people were confused by that. You know, why are you apologising to me? I wasn't ever offended. It doesn't mean I'm disregarding
you or your feelings. It just means that the apology was directed towards someone else. And that the next video will be for you. The guy who made the criticism
video and I met on Zoom and we had such a good long conversation. It was like two hours. It was so needed. I needed to talk about
all of these things. And I brought up my issues
that I had with his video and how he did things. And, you know, he brought up his issues with my content and things like that. And, and that was a private conversation. So I'm not going to go into it, but I can say that I like this person. I think he is a good person. And I think he was trying
to make a difference. And I think my face and name
were used to make an impact, which was hard. I understand why. Yeah, I understand it. I understand it. I was very open with him. And so I think you could have
done that in a better way. And, but hindsight is a
wonderful thing, isn't it? So after all of this, I just felt really sad,
really, really sad. And I know that I am too sensitive, but you just, you can't choose what, what affects your mental health. And this really hit me hard. It was the realisation that
some people really wanted to see me fail and 'cause I just never, I'd been so naive and I'd
really protected myself whenever you go to a YouTube conference
and there's always a section on how to deal with trolls,
how to deal with haters. They say, block them out. Don't read them, add filters
with the worst words. Like, I don't know, fat, ugly,
for example, block them out. And so I did and just made it so that the time I spent on the internet, interacting with my viewers
with good positive time. And of course the odd ones get through, but I actually think I took it too far, 'cause I didn't see necessary criticism. And I just carried on doing
my thing without listening to what people had to say. What people didn't realise
that was going on at this time was that one of Will's relatives who we both care very deeply for. She was someone that was
really looking forward to our wedding and we tried everything
we could to make the wedding not be postponed so that
she'd have a chance to come and she passed away really quickly. Will just got, and Will was just able to nip in to the home once to
say goodbye for half an hour. It's just so cruel. It was just so cruel. That was going on as well. So that was another reason
why I didn't want to blog because I didn't feel like it was fair to wave a camera in Will's face whilst this was going on. And whilst he was grieving
as well afterwards. I, so a lot of things are
not quite back to normal yet. So, you know, I love cooking. Well, when this all happened, I kind of hit this rock
bottom of feeling really sad. It was my birthday and I
just couldn't stop crying. I went to see my parents and
I was just trying to hold it together for them, and it
was just rubbish and yeah, so I love cooking and I
just couldn't, it's not, I couldn't be bothered. I just didn't have the energy. And I still don't love cooking
yet, which is worrying me, because that's one of my passions and that's part of my, that's like my character,
Lucy loves cooking. Well, Lucy doesn't love
cooking at the moment, and I'm just trying to call it back. The pleasure was kind of
taken out of running as well. And I just felt like I was
doing it just 'cause it's what I do rather than what I love. Really weird. And I'm just, and I'm sure that anyone who
has struggled with their mental health will be able to relate, just losing passion for
things that you used to enjoy. Will was amazing throughout all of this. He picked up where I let go basically. A huge thing, it was anxiety from my
social media notifications. I felt nervous every
time I opened Twitter, just in case there was something else. I felt really nervous on
Instagram, for example. So I didn't post anything for a long time. I did post for Black Lives Matter and I of course stand by that post. Another thing that
happened was my mistakes with Black Lives Matter. Ugh, this is really awkward to talk about, it's really uncomfortable. But I had been reading all of
these posts on social media saying, you know, amplify,
melanated, voices, share black creators,
you know, do your bit. I was thinking, yes, I want to do my bit. I want to help out. And I just went about it
in totally the wrong way, And looking back, ugh,
why was I so tone deaf? I reached out to three
black English teachers and I said to them, I would love to share
your work on my Instagram and social media. And I was thinking, I'm
doing something nice here. Something helpful when actually
it really wasn't at all. That was tokenism. As far as I understand the term, it wasn't that I just
picked three creatives because they were black. These were three creatives
that I thought were awesome. And, and they're very unique, very unique. Each does something completely different. And they were people that I
wanted to get to know as well. And one of the creators came
back to me and said, you know, yeah, that's really nice. Thank you. And then we did talk later on and I said, just want to broach the fact
that I actually approached you in a really rubbish way. And I'm really sorry. And he was honest and
said, yeah, to be honest, I did kind of do a bit of a
double take when you contacted me like that, but I could see
it came from a good place. So I really appreciated that. And then the second
creator politely declined and I can understand why. And then the third creator was
really upset, really upset. And I understand why. And they basically said, look, there needs to be stages here. I've gone ignored for ages. And suddenly you want to share my stuff. I totally understand that,
I would be offended too. I would be so offended and
I didn't even think of that. So I'm gonna be honest, that experience kind of made
me scared to do any more. And I've just ended up
having lots of conversations with creators from all over the world, but making sure that I
definitely include conversations with black creators as well. And just seeing how I
can do things to help, not just right now, because it's a fad but
long term over time. And that's what I want to do. And that's what I'm planning to do. Plans are already in place. I don't want to just do something
for the sake of it because it's in the news. What I would like to achieve
is something steadier. Something that is just positive
over time without tokenism. I want people of colour to have
fair opportunities and to be seen more and to be heard more. But I also don't want to just
make people feel like I'm talking to them because of
the colour of their skin. So yeah, I'm trying to work through that. So that's my story. I'm really embarrassed. And it was uncomfortable
to talk to you about this because I feel like an idiot, basically. I was trying to do something
nice and I just did it in such a bad way. So how are things gonna
change going forward? Well, not too much. Twitter is too much of a scary
place for me at the moment. People just seem to be jumping
on people and attacking people without knowing the full story. And that really scares and upsets me. People are just so quick
to judge and to shout and to bring someone down. It's like doing a crime and
asking for forgiveness rather than doing the right thing. People are quick to attack
and then apologise rather than just knowing the full story
and doing the right thing. I'm using Instagram slightly less. I'm thinking of setting up
a separate English teaching Instagram to keep that
apart from my, at Lucy one. 'Cause I know a lot of people
go to my Instagram and they're disappointed that there's no
English content there when perhaps they are looking
for that kind of thing. And then I'm still uploading
once a week to YouTube on English with Lucy and have
no plans to change that. The break was good for me because I wouldn't have
been much fun on camera, I tell you that. And I'm feeling a lot better. I am feeling a lot better. I have some exciting things
happening that I can't wait to talk to you about, really nice things. And I'm going to continue working hard, continuing, continue trying to
vlog and trying to be honest with you as well. And I'm going to try to be
less afraid to share how I feel because sometimes I don't share
how I feel because I don't want to make someone else feel bad. Like for example, the
guy who made that video, I didn't want to tell him how
sad it will make me because I didn't want him to feel bad. But I thought about
that and I thought, oh, that's just silly, I've got to be honest. I'm also trying to strike
the balance between ignoring people who just have only
negative things to say and allowing criticism to be
made that I can listen to, because I just put down a wall and nothing could get through. And I'm trying to make, I'm trying to come up with a
way of making a filter so that the right criticism can get through. And I think that might involve
having some help from someone who can just pass me the criticism
and maybe we'll do like a weekly round up of it or something. It sounds ridiculous. But can you think of a
better way because I can't, I can't sit and read
everything every evening. I think I've said everything
that I need to say now. And the next vlog will be
back to documenting my life and telling you things about that and my exciting announcement. That will play a big part in this channel. Not on my English with Lucy channel. And yes, if you're watching this, thank you for sticking around. Thank you for all the messages. You know, asking me where I
am, asking me if I'm okay. Anyway, I will talk to you soon.
