manipulating your audience's emotions
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 20 พ.ค. 2024
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So a youtuber decided to shake it up and come back to youtube with a controversy to launch their channel. Today we talk about Caroline Konstnar, a youtuber who has been off platform for a year came back with a pregnancy announcement...and it was a complete lie. To...launch her patreon?
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#fakepregnancy #prasocial #swellentertainment - บันเทิง
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Have u gotten cancelled?
You look so beautiful here! 🌸
Also I was hoping you’d talk about this- I only saw one other TH-camr talk about it.
Not sure if it matters but I think there was editing mistake in the ad read around 1:28 (an outtake line read was left in)
Just to let you know, I stopped playing the video once your ad came on. I don't want to waste my time, 1) I'm not American so the product won't apply to me, 2) I don't have extra money to waste on something a TH-camr recommends, especially because they are paid to promote the product, 3) I already know about this whole drama but I wanted your opinion on it, but before you really get into the video, you interrupt it to promote something that most of your viewers can't afford and don't need.
This isn't directed at you, but I'm doing this with all the TH-camrs. There are so many videos and creators to watch that I need to make choices about what to watch. The first 10%of your video was filler. So, instead of having to choose between what to watch, your first few seconds have made me switch off.
We are bombarded with ads and influencerd and social media and videos. It has reached a crazy point.
Lastly, in the first two minutes you did not beg for likes and subscribers. Thank you for not doing this, I can decide for myself if I like something and would like to subscribe (this is especially infuriating if done at the beginning of a video - you need to earn that like and following).
@@serpentsfistliterally came here to say the same thing 😂
To me pregnancy, miscarriage, and cancer, are the trifecta of things one should never lie about having.
PLUS jokes about these type of topics hit harder and are actually funny from people who have experienced them, not from people who are chasing attention
Honestly feel like any medical stuff shouldn’t be joked about unless you’ve experienced it. It’s a part of life that a lot of people have to deal with and I feel like joking/making fun of people for it is always punching down
There’s people who still don’t get glasses/contacts because they think it makes them less due to jokes about glasses being for dorks
@@alliew31I totally agree with this sentiment. Like, if someone who hasn’t experienced cancer and what cancer treatments are like starts cracking jokes, that’s kinda uncomfy. However, if you have someone like Hank Green who recently went through battling cancer and is currently in remission, so he has a good understanding about the nuance of that situation, those jokes are gonna be hilarious.
Agreed!! I feel like as humans we naturally should have things that we shouldn’t lie or joke about, which is anything medical in my books. It just feels so blehhh and eww when people take things like that and lie about it to get views or to “prove a point”.
As well as sexual assault
"Pseudo-intellectual" is right. The whole thing had a very "I'm 14 and this is deep" vibe to it.
Exactly. Very immature and severely lacking in critical thinking. But her ego is too big for her to feel any real sense of embarrassment. She really thinks she's that smart. I'd be mortified. You'd have to be holding me against my will for me to put something like that out.
If this was for a hypothetical college project/paper, trust, she would not get a passing grade.
That's the thing though. That was literally her content before taking a break. I think she's smart enough to know that she is going to get a ton of those creeps paying 50 bucks and she can feed them whatever bs she thinks they want to hear in a controlled environment
I dunno. It's very Andy Kaufman. I never liked Andy Kaufman, but it's very Andy Kaufman.
The idea that paywalls will result in a more “normal” audience is bizarre to me. Like to me a paywall would attract only your most obsessive fans
Yeah, especially after saying the people who aren’t upset are her real fans and she’s going to share more of her personal life with them. Her patreon will be a breeding ground for obsessive weirdos
Maybe she's saying that tongue and cheek. Have you considered that possibility?
@@dooshmastawasn’t conveyed well at all. maybe you’re reaching, just like she is. have you considered that?
@@aubreyplazasuncle That's part of the humor, the awkwardness of ambiguity
@@dooshmasta In the words of Kandi Burrus, ”You just made that up!”
Charging $50/month to "weed out the weirdos" that you tell your deeply personal information to feels like you're just inviting the weirdos specifically.
Exactly! Because it's not like weirdo's spend a crap ton of money to be close to their obsessions
ESPECIALLY now that she's alienated everyone empathetic!! what a recipe for a strange auidience
With Caroline, I'm pretty sure even that is a psyop. They'll pay and she will make up more stuff.
Onlyfans by another name
theres a $300/month tier for the extra normal fans
Having compassion for a young pregnant person who’s facing potential fertility issues is parasocial but paying to have access to a person’s personal life isn’t?
Being connected to a level were you feel negatively effected and betrayed but this, yeah there's an issue there. Paying to have access to bts content, pretty normal of almost every content creator
@@tinygreencreature5167honestly what is her point here? does she not want any type of support from her audience? empathy is a normal human trait and can be extended to literal strangers. i feel empathy when the people i watch go through something horrible. i also feel empathy when i see a news headline of a stranger going through the same thing. compassion isn’t parasocial. obsessive behavior is.
@@tinygreencreature5167Is there an issue there? Just feeling emotions from media is an issue? I cry when i watch shows or read books does that make me in a parasocial relationship with the creators or authors? Media is supposed to elicit emotions. TH-camrs create videos to get emotional reactions. thats not the problem with a parasocial relationship. The problem is when fans are unable to form proper boundaries with those creators.
Feeling empathy for a person talking about going through a hard time and then feeling manipulated when it comes out that the person was, in fact, manipulating you is not parasocial.
@@tinygreencreature5167omg heyyyyyy twin!! stop meat riding someone who faked a miscarriage bozo🫶
I was skeptical the moment I heard a 20 year old struggling with fertility issues, she was too young to go through that long journey, and that's why she went through with this because she has no real experience with these life events. Obviously not excusing this but we're witnessing unfiltered experiments without any long term thinking because she didn't consider the repercussions or thought of the real people to do a stunt like this.
Perfect example of a hiatus not effecting views is Jenny Nicolson. Her last video was from a year ago. She recently posted a video 2 days ago and already has over 2 million views
thank u for letting me know there's a new jenny nicolson vid 🙏🙏🙏
She has a very loyal fanbase
@@itovenaar6920I don’t even watch out of loyalty. Her videos are actually good, thorough and interesting. When you’re that skilled people will wait for you.
Amazing video too! Also Primink the other day, after 3? year hiatus
She posts monthly on her Patreon which I think maintains a core audience. And her videos are so high quality I think a lot of fans are okay with it because they know they’re getting an amazing video when she does post
“The joke is you connected to something that isn’t real” girl what do you think movies are? Humans connect to stories that aren’t real all the time. This isn’t special, it was just manipulative
Yes EXACTLY you put it so well like people cry over movies knowing full well it's not real and people LOVE emotionally connecting to a piece of media. They can still feel pissed about expending their energy, time, and emotions to someone who turns out to be a piece of s---. Like when the author of ender's game turned out to be homophobic
decades ago - at this point maybe 50 years ago, and it KILLS me I can't remember it more precisely - some dude said something like "if we put a potato on TV at 6pm it would get fanmail" and there's dozens of pages devoted to seeing faces in inanimate objects. we don't even need good stories or characterisation, we just want juuust enough glamour to get us familiar with something and then we're like, oh this is family now.
i think there's an important conversation to be had about how we're struggling to connect despite so many versions of social media, and how this makes us quite exploitable in new and scary ways, but lord this was not it
The thing is. Women with fertility issues and scary pregnancies are probably the #1 group of people who will have empathy for what you’re going through and take what you're saying seriously. It is SO hard to be a woman with fertility issues, and that community is so willing to cry with you and cheer you on. And it's not in a parasocial way, it's genuinely a "I understand what you're going through and it is so hard" way. A lot of the people that video was reaching were a new audience who related to her announcement video. She wasn't getting one over on people who were obsessed with her, she was tricking a vulnerable audience.
We're looking for people to not screw us over. Surprise. Another woman backstabbing us. Sick of it.
I came here to say this exact thing!!! The trigging part of this whole thing isn't the pulling the wool over her current audience; it's the pulling the wool over an entirely new audience that you brought in by your lie, and it's an audience who are already in that vulnerable and traumatic experience...whether it's their past experience(s) or one they are currently experiencing...it's so out of touch on so many levels and then on top of it all not only do you then have the audacity to ask for money, but to have members of her previous audience "bully" those who step out to say this isn't ok and make them feel even worse than they do, is just absolutely wild to me
@laurathiele9591 as someone also in the infertility games, this is such a lonely experience that being together in this in online spaces is really one perk of the Internet, no matter how f up the current iteration of social media is. And for me, having empathy to her situation has nothing to do with being parasocial about it. I know she is very young and we all know too well a lot of people are oblivious and insensitive to fertility struggles. But this was completely not what she wanted to "proof" here. I hope there will be a learning experience for her in this in the future when her brain doesn't tell her that she knows better than the rest of the world.
Agreed. I have PCOs and hypothyroidism, (didn't know about the hypothyroidism at the time.) I got pregnant and had a miscarriage in my early 20's. I didn't tell family, friends, or even the father about it. I hadn't been trying for a baby, wasn't even sure I wanted to be a mother, and I felt it was my fault I had the miscarriage because of that. As if I had somehow decided to reject the baby. I found support in an online community who had been through similar experiences. At a time I felt so alone with barely understood grief and guilt, there were people I could talk to. While I wouldn't have turned to posting like that on youtube, I understand sometimes just being able to say, 'I'm sad, confused and afraid' and have someone hear and reply, 'You aren't alone' is a relief. All I learned about her from this is 'I don't give a f about how people feel and think it's weird to, give me money and I'll probably still tell you lies, but not as awful ones.'
Why would a 16 year old even know she had fertility issues, was she trying to conceive?!!! Sounded like a really weird lie.
So the "joke" was that people have empathy? Like wth
no seriously like people care about things that aren't real all the time. like has she never seen a movie
@@zoepittengerkyriacopoulos3572right? has she not played a game, even? i cry over my games all the time. she’s never truly experienced a work of fiction, i guess.
I read it as trying to deal with complicated feelings regarding how invested her audience is in the aspects of herself she's posted to the internet in the past. Keep in mind that she went viral as a teen and then developed a pretty rabid fanbase while also have pretty serious mental health issues.
I feel like she didn't like the expectations the audience had for her but wanted to make money from content again so she's paring down the audience with reckless behavior and monetizing the most devoted fans, which is not behavior I'd endorse but it's behavior I understand coming from her.
Right? Like, has she never watched a movie? Or read a book? "Getting attached to something that isn't real" is something we do all the time
@UTTP-142oh my god??? If the shoe fits, wear it. Like the racial slur???
i think a GOOD example of a stunt to comment on parasocial relationships is when brian david gilbert teased that he would have a new look, came on screen with an obvious wig and fake mustache, said "just kidding! i wouldn't want to disappoint my friends!" then took them off to reveal his actual new haircut and mustache, saying "just kidding again. you're not my friend and you have no say over what i do with my body." and then casually carrying on with the completely unrelated main point of the video
Omg hi Abby :] (its me brick)
@@evilwizard205 omg hi!!!
i think about this often
Which video was that?
@@bronzeandsteel3344It was Unraveled, but I don't remember which one. I guess you'll just have to rewatch all of Unraveled for the twentieth time to find out
this is such bully behavior. "haha i made you believe the thing i was so sincere about and gave you no reason to not believe me. youre sooooo gullible and parasocial lol. anyways give me your lunch money" literal middle school bully behavior and its insane she thinks shes in the right for this.
Yeah the girl who is getting absolutely shit on by any commentary channel that needs to farm drama for views for making a video that says nothing mean to anyone is definitely the bully in the situation.
@@16960734 and I see we have one of her patreon subs right here in the wild!
@@16960734parasocial relationship be like:
@@16960734cope harder clown 😂😂😂
@16960734 can u simp any harder😂😂😂
lord grant me the confidence to fake a pregnancy, not apologise for it, then look dead in the camera and call my VIEWERS the weirdos with zero sense of irony.
And ask for money afterwards!
I'd be happy with maybe even a 10th of that confidence, I don't want to know what kind of an asshole I'd turn into if I was able to do all of that so shamelessly 😂
@@emmao6578A popular TH-camd probably.
I find all the "If you actually knew her" "if you actually watched her videos" and "you guys just don't understand her humor" ppl way more parasocial then anyone that is pissed but okay
There's a difference between being a fan and understanding a comedians sense of humor, and actually being obsessed with them.
Although I do agree with that latter part. None of her fans got their emotions manipulated so the title clickbait
i did used to watch her videos. this is not "something she'd totally do" this is weird and cruel and strange. she made like. surreal comedy videos, they're just trying to act superior
literally how can they sit there n call it parasocial to have empathy while basically saying 'you dont know her like WE do!!!'. like what level of dissonance do you even have to be on
REAL, defending people no matter the fault is parasocial as f*ck
I find all the people getting offended at her satire hilarious because they're literally proving her point about how unhealthy parasocial relationships are
Giving Cole Sprouse tumblr social experiment vibes.
spot on!
exactly! That was my first thought too. Really weird to trick people and then claim it was a social experiment the whole time
That’s exactly what I was thinking, I even commented that on Caroline’s video when it premiered
@UTTP-142 wot
@@daisyl9771 It’s a bot. They’ve commented the same thing on other videos.
To be fair to her; this stunt is actually a good method to weed out people with a developed moral compass and just end up with unconditional followers to give you money.
Yep. 50 dollars a month and a special group chat is all you need to know about they kinds of fans she is attracting
Caroline: You had empathy for me, and that makes you stupid. Now pay me.
"You're a weirdo for possessing empathy, the thing that makes us human. You're such a little weirdo and I want you to go away. Pay me."
i hate people who force being quirky and intellectual so much
God fr. She is so forcing intellectual quirkiness, it's making me nauseous
that's the perfect way to describe the vibe she gave me lmao thank you op. i hope the fact that she's just 20 means there's room for her to grow and mature. i know that age can be A Lot and your personality as an adult is still being put-together so i'm optimistic that she'll change at some point or at least look back and go "dang... why did i do all of that?"
@@gab.bee123Zero chance of that to be honest.
The self-reflection isn't going to extend beyond, "They just didn't understand the intellectual depth." Anyone that didn't like it was obviously too parasocial and it will be judged as their failure instead of reflective of her own poor choice.
@@CSpottsGaming I don't think somebody's justification for their action is necessarily impossible to be challenged and questioned by the person who came up with it so, I disagree with you on it "being completely impossible" to the utmost degree.
@@De_Selby Your comment is a little unclear but I think you're trying to say, "I don't think self-reflection is impossible" and I wholeheartedly agree. People can absolutely think critically about their own actions.
I'm saying she won't, not that she can't. The thing about pseudo-intellectuals is they try very hard to appear as though they are the smartest person in the room, and often they start to believe it themselves.
I think that's what happened with Caroline. I believe she will view the backlash from this as a failure to understand the joke instead of the reality - that people understand the punchline but don't think it's fun or funny in spite of that.
Only time will tell, but I don't expect actual reflection. She already said in her description that it's messed up to do this so it's not as if it didn't occur to her that this is inappropriate, but she did it anyway.
She thinks the punchline is worth it and people broadly seem to disagree.
“The joke is you connected to something that isn’t real.”
I cannot put into words how ridiculous that statement is. Of course people can connect to things that aren’t real. That’s the whole entertainment industry. What’s the point being made?!??
This reeks of someone who thinks they’re so smart but simply aren’t.
Yeah, I thought exactly the same.
Like: Being able of having empathy for and connecting to fictional characters, is huge part of the human experience???
Especially, if you are lead to believe, that it is in fact true and not fiction.
yeah thats just…art in general. This girl must just be pathetic and empty inside as a person. What a nasty person.
And I love how she acts, or tries to act like young pregnancies and fertility issues are not a very real thing a lot of people go through.
I feel like she wanted to go viral and made up the "social experiment" afterwards thinking it would also help drive more attention to her page. Or maybe she knew that she would inevitably caught for lying and just made it seem like it was an intentional choice.
@@sarahbarabe4990 I honestly don't see any other way. She just can't be that tonedeaf, can she?
The real baffling thing (ironic even? maybe?) is that she thinks that by putting her more personal content behind a paywall will filter out the "weirdos" - when in fact its the weirdos who will pay top dollar for anyones deepest, most personal insights to someones life, especially if they're parasocially obsessed with that person. Its the normal people who will just walk away.
She definitely knows exactly what she's doing. Making the weirdos pay by baiting them. I guarantee you there's nothing worth knowing behind that paywall.
This is the most "I'm 20 and think this is deep" shit I've seen in a long while
More like 15. Most 20-year old have already outgrown this phase
Big year for youtubers instantly destroying all trust between themselves and their audience
Am extreme exaggeration
ngl I doubt she will lose that many followers.....as someone who has watched her for a while now, she will prolly persist through and absolutely nothing will change
@@manishpaudel5084what a shame
@@manishpaudel5084 yeah I watched her for a long while too. She'll be fine
As someone who's watched her videos in the past, it's on brand for her to do this.
Imagine some dude coming out at the end of a movie saying "Hey, you cried watching this fake story? Hahaha you're so dumb, they arent real, we wrote them, we know you have emotions and thats why wrote them that way... anyway give us more money".
Worse, though, because we know going in that a movie is fiction, yet it can still tug at our heartstrings. When someone straight up LIES about things that are very personal and sensitive to many and then jerks people around because it's all fake. That's SICK.
Marvel movies
Who cries at a movie
@@Vislow People who have watched Up or the Iron Giant
@@catsplat1272 Weaksauce
The unhinged AUDACITY to basically say “Not only do you have no idea who I really am, but with this stunt, I’m pretty much proving that I might be a psycho. …Now pay me a monthly fee, please.”
It's a weird take, has to be said
Her own point is ruined after her own fans are like “if you really knew her like me you’d have known this was fake!” Like……
Exactly, her fans still believe they know her better than anyone else. The "weirdos" are still there and will follow her every step through Patreon.
I like how she tries to justify this whole stunt by criticizing how her audience fell for a fake pregnancy, as if she wasn't the one controlling the information. That's not a social commentary, you're just straight up lying to your audience
Yeah her being surprised that the pregnancy she presented and acted like was real was treated by other people as real is…something alright
Yeah, like, what even was her point? If the parasocial relationship was her point, then it doesn’t make sense because people could react the same to a literal stranger announcing their pregnancy or miscarriage. Like, you don’t need to *know* someone to express empathy.
"Parasocial" somehow became a way of saying "I think I'm smarter than everyone else online and I desperately need everyone to see that"
exactly. it's always the fake deep misunderstanding of 'parasocial' coming from people who make an unpaid career out of trolling in forums/comment sections lmao
It’s making me realise a lot of influencers don’t know what empathy is because they don’t experience it
I don't think what's going on here. Caroline started her channel as a teenager and got millions if views on her stuff. I wasn't in the best place as a teenager in high school and a TH-cam channel would not have helped. I believe she has had some mental health struggles on top of that and I think she has reached a point in her life where she decided the best thing to do was self sabotage. She has been worried about trying out TH-cam again and completely fucking things up or having to deal with an audience of strangers that hate her just for existing so she decided "fuck it. I'll give them a reason to hate me! If I'm gonna fuck up I should at least choose how to fuck up!"
I saw people do this shit all the time with friendships back in college. They let their fears and insecurities get the better of them and say "I know they are gonna abandon me so I might as well get it over with!"
Of course she did something stupid and weird like this to piss people off. She wants people to hate her because then every insecurity is vindicated.
@@IronWangCreatesor are able to have any sort of cognitive empathy either. Not everyone is born being able to understand and give out empathy, but most people can get cognitive empathy.
@@IronWangCreatesits genuinely insane to see like.... iunno, maybe its becus im autistic and i have Big Emotions as a result if it, but the idea of not being able to extend basic empathy to others on some level and assuming that feeling it towards others is somehow wrong is wack. hell, i understand folks who struggle w empathy, oftentimes how they experience emotions is just different and they have their own versions of feeling sorry or close to others in some sense, but the complete lack of self awareness is what gets me. like, are you really out here insinuating that feeling basic empathy for someone whos presenting as someone in distress/emotional turmoil is somehow parasocial now? treating any emotional reaction by others as being 'too invested' no matter the actual length it was shown is just so..... out there. by that logic, anyone who ever expresses their condolences to me abt a dead family member is somehow in a one sided parasocial relationship
"You connected to something that wasn't real."
...has she never heard of fiction???
It's so obvious her job at Rooster Teeth is gone and now she's scrambling to be relevant and make money off her fans
They bought the channel and our still doing videos on BFTV
She's working at rooster teeth??
@@chicolopes1928 well roosterteeth itself is kicking the bucket, so not for longer if she hasn't already left. But yeah i think she'll be fine, she was always very sh*tposty in her humor and content. But i get why this would look asinine to folks not familiar. Didn't even notice she's been gone for a year lol. Used to her posting a skit or art once a few months at a time to begin with
I've watched Caroline for years and she's definitely a provocateur who makes a lot of edgy jokes meant to shock people. I wasn't totally surprised when I found out her pregnancy video was a prank, but the fact that she did it all in service of promoting her Patreon just felt gross to me. I doubt I'm going to watch her again.
Yeah me same thoughts I immediately knew it was fake
same here. i wasn't hurt by it but i don't blame ppl who were. this was just lame loser shit
yeah lol I immediately assumed it was fake based on her previous comedy. i'm not offended by it, i think it's a leeeetle bit funny to mock dramatic "heartwarming" pregnancy videos put out by people who going to exploit every aspect of their child's birth. but I can see why people are upset, and it's objectively a terrible PR move
@@eipheresthe problem was she played it SO dead straight, it just didn't feel satirical in the slightest. Or maybe thats just my "media illiteracy" showing? idk man
Same here, honestly
Using the topics of miscarriage and fertility issues for grade 8 level commentary that parasocial relationships are bad is messed up. I don't care if I get called sensitive or whatever for saying that. What she did is gross.
Also, I've really come to hate this argument that if you show any ounce of kindness, empathy and share human connection with a content creator online, you must be deep in a parasocial relationship and not be able to tell reality from what's fake. F*ck me I guess for congratulating someone on having a child, reaching a milestone, showing compassion when they lose someone, being understanding when they need a break etc. Apparently it's either you don't care at all or you're too deeply invested.
Edit as I'm further in the video: Oh, it wasn't just 14 year old level deep commentary. It was greed too. A classic.
So many people think the mere act of showing empathy is enough to qualify you as parasocial. It is absurd.
This lady wants us to not feel anything for anyone online I guess because it might not be a real thing going on? Makes no sense cause even in real life situations a lot of the time you only have someones else's word to go off of. She's just an idiot really and exactly the same type of person she is trying to ridicule. Being fake and pretending it's all an act to make fun of people having emotions or, god forbid, empathy towards others just shows me she's extremely self centered. Parasocial relationships have been going on since forever and acting like you are making a statement against it using a fake pregnancy to get likes and money just goes to show me she doesn't actually care about parasocial relationships at all. She just thought it was a good way to get her name out there for the edgy people who like black and white narratives like hers.
I do think it plays differently coming from Caroline Konstnar because she went viral as a teen and has had a complicated relationship with her audience ever since. She's had serious mental health struggles and also every time she disappears people ask how she's doing, probably because they're worried for her given her mental health struggles but I imagine having so many fans asking for personal info is a disorienting experience.
Yeah it's messy, but watch her old videos and it makes sense.
@@shadow14805 I mean yeah? Empathy for someone that doesn't know you is a textbook parasocial relationship. It's just that parasocial relationships are not inherently bad, they're just complicated.
@bopete3204 Having so many people ask for personal info might be too much but, she can put her more personal content behind a paywall? Lmao. Okay. Sounds like she just doesn't like that they're asking for free.
She’s selling access to sensitive personal information about her, while criticizing parasocial relationships. Huh?
You know, there is a japanese youtuber that I follow who regularly posted and then stopped for a while. When she came back, she announced that she was pregnant and very excited to have her baby with her partner. Two weeks later, a new video came out with her announcing that she lost the baby. There was footage of her and her partner saying goodbye to the baby in a shinto temple. There was footage of her in the hospital.
This was a youtuber I have been following for months because of her crafty/art related content.
If I ever found out that she lied about the whole thing, I would feel so betrayed. Doing this kind of stunt is not just a tone deaf joke, it's fucking cruel.
didn’t we stop doing the “i’m pregnant” as an april fools joke like 15 years ago
Ironic that she thought she wouldn't attract weirdos (derogatory) to her paid platform by... *checks notes* behaving like a weirdo (derogatory) on her free platform?! Faking a pregnancy is batshit behaviour, full stop. 😅
IT WAS A FUNNY VIDEO. IT WAS A JOKE.
@@Karan-Aujla sure... lmao
@@Karan-Aujla What was funny about it? Like explain the joke, I'm dead serious
@@Karan-Aujla"It's just a prank bro!"
I thought we had collectively decided this cop-out phrase doesn't absolve you of your actions?
@@Karan-Aujlajokes are supposed to be funny lol
As someone who tried for years to have a baby with my wife only to find out that I have fertility issues, and then a surgery removed her chances, I am beyond angry. That was a disgusting, scummy thing to do. Every part of this seems like she is actively trying to burn down whatever she has left as a content creator.
She really said: “You have empathy for ppl going through the same thing as you?? what a Ioser!”
This girl thinks she’s a LOT smarter than she actually is. This reminds me so much of Cody Sprouce acting weird on tumblr and then claiming it was a “social experiment” when people called him out on it.
His name is Cole Sprouse. Cody is the name of the character he played.
@@Trecherousbeastwho cares he’s a loser
What’s wild to me is stuff like the loss of a pregnancy tends to illicit a response from strangers even if they don’t have a parasocial relationship to you. Like, there are so many Reddit posts about traumatic pregnancies with update after update about how the baby and mom and family are doing, and they tend to get a lot of worry and sympathy from people who sometimes haven’t even seen the original post, only update number whatever. Even aside from the cruelty or taking a miscarriage If she wanted to make a point about people having emotional responses because of parasocial relationships, she failed from the get go because it’s not like you can only have sympathy for a stranger if you’re attached to their content
EXACTLY, this is such a good example, thank you
The thing is it is still somewhat of a taboo topic. So many woman experience them but because of the nature of miscarriages usually happening before you start telling people you don’t feel like you can talk about them. A sort of shared trauma that no one talks about until someone else brings up they are going through it. I’ve had 3 and they really messed me up so this sort of stuff gets under my skin.
Right, you can't honestly hope for the best for strangers because you generally believe people should be happy and prospering without being labeled parasocial.
Like come on, are we really forcing down a general empathy and optimism for others' well being? As if we needed any more examples of how we're isolated from others.
Yeppp... I really loved Caroline's artistic style and the stuff she was talking about in the pregnancy video (is this the right time? Idk what to do with my life etc) really resonated too. I'm pregnant at the moment in my 30s and left her a comment saying "the feeling is the same in your 30s with a planned pregnancy".
People on that video straight from the start said she was faking it, but I chose to give her the benefit of the doubt. Kinda mean and messed up.
Agree 100%. I've never seen this woman before, but for the very brief moment in this video that I thought she had lost an actual pregnancy, of course I felt bad for her. I feel sad for those people on Reddit. I'd feel sad if I was catching the bus and overheard a complete stranger say they had just lost their pregnancy. If you think it's funny to joke about, that's really just on you.
She never left TH-cam. She left her personal channel to be part of the “comedy” group Best Friends Today which was owned by Rooster Teeth which shut down recently. So yeah the stunt looks more desperate knowing that her “comedy” group failed.
yeah I think that's the most important part ppl have left out/didn't realize. I found out about her THRU BFT, I didn't even kno that she had her own channel. were her fans just not aware that she was doin stuff w them??
but yeah when u factor in rooster teeth goin under and the timing of this gross stunt, it DOES feel desperate. the other 2 guys in BFT are still able to do the podcast (they're funny so I'm glad). haven't checked em out but Caroline isn't in the thumbnails for either vid
As a lonely young mother, this stunt absolutely wrecked me. I had left a comment on the original “announcement” video about how comforting the video was for me as I had felt exceedingly alone during my pregnancy last year, so to see a creator the same age, one that I grew up watching, experience motherhood at about the same time as me gave me strength and comfort. When she made the follow up video, I felt so stupid. Even if she says this wasn’t her intention, I absolutely felt like the butt of the joke and that she was indirectly telling her audience that my kind of situation is something to laugh at. I felt worse because I was afraid it was just me that felt this way and that I was perhaps being overly sensitive, but I’m glad more people are talking about this and that I wasn’t the only one after all. I really did used to enjoy her content a lot too…
I hope that you have a good support system in place and wish you and your bebe nothing but the best in the future! You weren't stupid, she was/is. You've got this! She's got problems!
“you connected to me and my human issues because you felt emotional vulnerability? haha that’s funny” what a fucking joke.
"I created a horrible story to weed out weirdos and make all the real people want to give me money."
Newsflash the complete opposite is gonna happen
Much like how simply venting to your close friends occasionally does not mean "trauma dumping", believing a person who told you something about themselves because you had no reason to assume they were lying is not "haha you're a parasocial weirdo". I don't like to believe that every single human being I interact with is always jumping at the bit to lie to me, but maybe that's crazy of me.
She could have used a lie like an engagement or getting some mainstream job. There could have been a million different scenarios.
Pregnancy is a triggering subject and she added all these unnecessary health issues.
That is cruel knowing that people go through this.
This was a blatant manipulation and just plain mean
The whole "if you're mad you must be new here" thing from some of her fans is such a wild bad take, because these vids were intentionally the kind of thing that would trend and get outside her subscribers
If you're not her subscriber than you're not hurt tho? Like the type of people parasocial enough to be negatively effected by this wouldn't have believed her in the first place, which was the common consensus in the comments when it first came out
@@tinygreencreature5167 While I agree that what you're saying is true for the most part, there had to have been a lot of her longtime subscribers that actually did believe it.
Even if most of her followers didn't believe it (including me) plenty probably did and this entire thing is psycho. It honestly wouldn't even be that bad if it was just an announcement video but it was structured to be a deeply emotional experience on purpose.
It's incredibly manipulative and hints at some kind of fundamental disconnect from ordinary human beings. Despite being off the site for a year, this is peak content-pilled behavior.
@@tinygreencreature5167 No ? You're assuming people only empathized with her story because they were regular viewers. Plenty of people who've struggled with the issues she's pretended to have would feel connected to her, and betrayed to find out she was only cosplaying their issues.
@@tinygreencreature5167i hope you have the day you deserve.
"You believed me? You must be new to the internet" is a very dangerous thing to say. You're punishing people for having empathy, that's how the weirdos who accuse grieving parents of being "crisis actors" are born
This reminds me of a viral tik tok a few years ago where a woman was in bed and lip singing to a song about sleeping with her best friends bf or something, and she panned over to a guy, also in her bed, as the song mentioned the line. The internet exploded a bit, but then it turned out that making a video go viral was some sort of assignment or extra credit for her psych class. I feel like that’s a much better example of why you shouldn’t believe stuff you see on the internet, because it was like a 5 second clip and the only “evidence” of malfeasance was the song choice. People don’t need much convincing to jump to conclusions. The amount of effort Caroline put into trying to convince people was just unnecessarily extensive.
@UTTP-142 Gross
@@NateBeeman just report it, don't acknowledge it
Considering there is literally an fake Karen and rage bait economy, the unfortunate trend for online creation is negative. Feels like this was discovered ages ago already when og beauty youtubers found negative reviews did better engagement then positive ones.
@@NateBeeman it's a bot
@UTTP-142 wow... My comments get deleted for no reason and here your comment is up for hours.
Super important to note: Caroline Konstnar has been very open about her struggles with mental health. I used to enjoy her videos way back (like the ones she made when she was 15-16(?)), and thought she was a comedic genius. But then the videos were deleted and her channel went silent for the first time. There were rumours (announcements?) about her health and needing to get help. I don't know her mental health status now beyond what she herself says. However, I can't shake the feeling that were she better she might not be doing or saying some of the things she does. I no longer watch her videos, not even the old ones. I'm very conflicted and fear she's vulnerable.
can't BELIEVE she tried to play this off as being deep social commentary 😭😭
Some people who make content don't realize that while yes, your content is not a 100% reflection of you, the kind of content you are willing to make still does have some reflection of the kind of person you are.
Yeah her content is all her comedy. This whole thing doesn't really affect how her fans see her, because it's just another skit
@@tinygreencreature5167no it def does. plenty of us thought this was lame and tone deaf on her part, in a way that's different from the other intentionally offensive content she does. this feels like a desperate cash grab since roosterteeth went under 🤷♂️
@@tinygreencreature5167 used to be a fan of caroline and even i thought this was lame, shitty, and tacky. was i surprised this was fake? no. but i remember being pleasantly surprised and happy for caroline when she announced she was "pregnant". i was more disappointed. previously when caroline did her edgier content it was in the form of song (ie the prom song) or in some way an obvious skit. caroline did her best to make it seem earnest so even a viewer like me, who watched her often, would go "good for her!" and keep scrolling.
@@tinygreencreature5167insane how you’re all over these comments defending her in some way.. seems a little parasocial 🤭
@@michibeechi got bored lol. I watched a few of her things back in highschool and some Best Friends Today but that's mostly for Sammy. I mostly just think this outrage is silly. Like if anything you calling me parasocial would show that the people who would be considered "emotionally manipulated fans" were not emotionally manipulated or upset.
"Guys you have to understand this is a metaphor for...uhhh...how you don't really know me and ummm how I don't know you." I think I've genuinely seen alpha male podcasts come up with more insightful observations about society and that is a very low bar. Also, there is a very simple solution for not allowing weirdos to pry into your private life. Make content about anything other than your private life. She literally doesn't owe anyone a thing and could have just left it at "I was busy with life/school and now I'm back and want to focus on TH-cam." Literally anything would have been better than this...
This is so pretentious. It's reminiscent of the late 90s when comedy was just like, 'let's be mean to people, that's so funny!'
Not to mention these types like to think they invented this kind of "comedy" as if it hasn't been around forever, going in and out of style.
“The line between reality and entertainment is blurred. If I lie to you than your being lied to. It’s actually really profound if you think about it.”
Putting aside the obvious fact that what Caroline did was in extremely poor taste, it's weird how this all just resulted in an "I'm 14 and this is deep" moment.
I wonder if she realizes that the kind of "weird" audience members that she's worried about having access to her personal information are the kind of people who would most definitely pay for access to her personal information.
And the most likely to blast the private info on free open platform
My issue is that we're expected to just not trust something we were told. why would i enter every video or interaction as if i'm being lied to?
Why engage at all if your default expectation is that you're being lied to?
Ikr, it's so annoying at times
This is the kind of stunt that feels like only a 20 year old would think it was clever, but I know people of all ages have the potential to disappoint me
Its not parasocial to think that faking a pregnancy and a loss (which way too many people have ACTUALLY been through) is a horrible thing to do. At the very least, she should donate to a fertility clinic or pregnancy loss support group or something.
"you can't come at me and be like 'well i do that and i still have 200 subs' okay, are your videos good? i don't know what to tell you" is such a fucking line i'm obsessed
I scream laughed
Sameeee I was cackling lmao
Caught me off guard so heavily lmao
when my cousin miscarried she stopped eating for a month and had to be hospitalized. Not everyone has to be an influencer she should focus on finding another career.
"I made up an empathetic story and you empathized with it. Gotcha. I'm very deep for doing this."
It's very "i'm 14 and this is deep" of her to basically go, "I'm smarter than you because I don't let my emotions control me. I just use facts and logic."
"i dont want to give my sensitive information to my weirds audience" - maam the weirdos are 10x more likely to be the ones that give you money
“You can have empathy for people and not be obsessed with them”
Louder for the people in the back!
But seriously I never heard of this youtuber before and I will do everything in my power not to hear about her anymore. Great video!
“I’m ovulating and had a plug of blood come out and I’m like ‘oh my god, I’m pregnant!’.”
That’s not how that works. That’s not how any of that works.
something I really appreciate about you as a creator is how boundaried and normal you are about audience relationships
Seeing Amanda cover Caroline is wild to me
EDIT: Having watched this, I totally agree with Amanda. Stupid move on her part. Also, Caroline wasn’t truly gone for a year. Her personal TH-cam was absent, but she was working for RoosterTeeth on Best Friends Forever. She also recently had a meme template from that show featuring her go viral
EDIT 2: The show is apparently called “Best Friends Today,” not “Forever.” I never watched it
Yeah having known Caroline exclusivly from Best Friends Forever, I feel so so confused
it makes sense why she would come back to her channel rn since rooster teeth went down under
I can't be crazy right? It's pretty clear that she stopped working on her channel to work for RT, then RT shuts down, so she pretends that shes pregnant to revive her channel.
Yeah came here to say this. I used to watch her years ago and forgot about her until seeing the show on my timeline. Wasn't impressed when the jokes being told were just stupid edgy humor
Idk why people assume that everyone in a parasocial relationship is fooling themselves. Like I am fully aware my fav youtubers dont know me or care about me on that level but i can still learn things from them as a mentor or make myself feel better by their content.
Being in a parasocial relationship doesn't mean thinking your faves know you. It's you knowing things about them while they don't know you. You are in parasocial relationships. That is a value neutral statement.
@@bopete3204 most people don't understand it's a value neutral statement because so many other people use it as a synonym for 'you're crazy' lol
I agree. I find myself thinking "My friend..." about a creator or being proud for happy or sad for them just as if they were a real friend. I think it's OK. I know they don't know me and it's a one-way street. Maybe we need a new word for this kind of "friend" and also for the "love" meant when a creator says "I love you so much" to their viewers. It's a real emotion, just one with boundaries. Something a little warmer than "parasocial relationship" 😊
@@aksez2uPerfect way of describing it.
@@bopete3204 i hate when conversations about parasocial relationships go viral because it seems like nobody views parasocial relationships as a neutral, inevitable experience that everyone (especially avid social media users!) has. people immediately escalate the concept and equate parasocial relationships to harmful obessessions and are desperate to prove that they don't experience them. i'll be glad the day i see a creator talk about it and get it right!
The idea that she would get higher quality people behind a pay wall is wildd
So…she wanted to get rid of the weirdos…by making people PAY for her content? That’s ATTRACTING the weirdos
people assuming only people within their bubbles will see their content when it’s posted publicly onto a platform like youtube is just ignorance. and i don’t think she’s ignorant. she knew what she was doing and i don’t doubt she knew the hurt this could cause to people struggling with fertility/miscarriage/etc outside of her audience who wouldn’t immediately know she would be “joking” or running an experiment. saying “you should have known it was fake cus it’s caroline” doesn’t make what she did any less bad
I agree she knew what she was doing but honestly I think she fucked up intentionally. There are people I have known who burn bridges with friends because of their own immaturity and self doubt. They think they will inevitably fuck things up so they do it on their terms. If I'm a 20 something who started a TH-cam channel in high school and got millions of views and struggled with depression and other mental health issues and I didn't have a good support network I could see myself going "people will always hate me. Let me give them a reason to hate me!"
Knowing she had no problem lying about a pregnancy and miscarriage kinda makes me glad there was no baby because I know she'd use her poor newborn and show it all over the place for clout and money.
She is 100% the type to abuse her kids for social clout and defends her action on being "quirky"
this is like a much more escalated version of making a loud noise and then laughing at someone and saying "scared you!". Like... you were the one who pulled the stunt, you don't get to sit on a high horse
She manipulated her audience. They didn’t infer anything. She presented a very real situation that many mothers can relate to and turns around and said “it wasn’t real, isn’t that crazy?”. That’s why audience trust is so important for creators. We don’t really know you so when you actually lie to your audience it’s really hard to win trust back because we will never truly know you. When a manipulator says they manipulated you, you tend to leave, most don’t stick around wondering if they’ll manipulate again.
This "social experiment" has the same depth as my parents telling me not to give money to beggars because they could be lying about using the money to buying food. Yes, I know it could be a lie, but why would I stop give something that I won't miss because of a possibility in my head.
Is empathy a parasocial trap? So bizarre...
It’s crazy how drama surrounding a creator with 1.1 million subscribers is now considered “niche youtube drama.” It definitely is now, but back in the day this would’ve had everyone on the internet and their mom talking about it.
People online seem to forget how big numbers are. 500-10,000 subs is an insane number of people, yet it's still considered small. I think people need to look up how big crowds of people are to properly grasp how crazy that actually is.
I also think saying "1m subs" instead of "1,000,000 subs" really tricks people into seeing that number as small lmfao
@@iblame_nargles 10k subs sounds like a lot when you picture them all in the same place. But in reality, how likely is it that you'll ever come across a single one of those 10k subs in real life? Probably a one in a million chance, if that. When you look at it that way, that number becomes much smaller.
This really smacks of someone who spent ages struggling with creative burnout while seething with jealousy at people getting views on their "dumb" pregnancy vlogs, because her content was so much better and more worthy. I really think there needs to be a term for this. We have parasocial relationships - an audience's sense that this artist/creator should be fulfilling their emotional needs as though this is a friendship. But this I feel is what happens when a creator actually feels contempt for their audience for not giving them the level of praise, attention, and wealth they feel they deserve.
feeling a “I’m 20 and this is deep” here
"the joke is that you connected to something that isnt real" how can that be a 'joke' if thats something people do all the time? We connect to fictional characters in movies, tv shows, books, video games, etc. How is that a joke/funny when its already a big part of our lives and has been for centuries? She didnt think this one through.
She plays with her audience's emotions and has the gual to lecture her audience about why they would care, parasocial relationships and doing crazy things to direct attention to PATREON? That makes me wanna donate a certain amount of money to you per month FOR SURE... I'd rather use that money as toilet paper.
gall
There’s things you never “joke” about, and pregnancy loss is one of them. I’ve been through it, I lost my daughter at 18 weeks gestation, so that meant going to the maternity ward, being induced, getting an epidural, and delivering my child that I’d never get to bring home.
I’ve dealt with some pretty awful things in my life, and losing her was the hardest thing I’ve ever been through. I hope this person never has to feel what I felt when the ultrasound technician told me my baby no longer had a heartbeat, because I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. This stunt was just so heartless and immature.
❤❤❤
She gives me major “rAwR xDDD … I’m not like other girls 🤟🤪” vibes.
I skimmed through comments and saw a lot of people trying to connect with her about their own fertility issues, being pregnant as a young adult at 20, their own fear in life wondering where they’ll go and what they plan to do with their future, etc. … and yet somehow those are the “weirdos” that are in the wrong for trying to just let others know they’re not alone?
Oooookay.
I've lost two pregnancies over the course of less than a year and am currently on my third and nervous as all hell.
When I saw this going around I legit couldn't believe it. Then the fact that she gives us a pseudo-intellectual speech about parasocial relationships afterwards just really feels like a slap in the face. My heart goes out to all the mothers with angel babies, truly.
Just a note of encouragement, I hope - I had a miscarriage before each of my healthy pregnancies. Wishing you the best! ❤💙
@@aksez2u thank you so much for the kind words. It really helped 🙏🏾
As someone else who had a long journey to a healthy birth, I’m sending you all the good energy with your rainbow baby 🌈
It’s so hard to enjoy your pregnancy because you’re waiting for something to go wrong the whole time. It’s an exhausting experience, I hope you are able to have as much peace as possible ❤
I wish you all the best with your rainbow baby 🌈 pregnancy after loss is really hard. I found it emotionally exhausting.
I'm a rainbow baby myself 💜 My mom had two miscarriages before she had me, and I'm sending you well wishes for a healthy pregnancy🫂
So, her way to fight against parasocial relationships is to lean into them and make money?
“More sensitive information behind a paywall”….do you not realize how stalkerish and insane people will stop at nothing to get close to their fixation?
I remember when 4chan managed to geolocate Shia Labeouf based on the position of a flag
Even if she was bs ing on Patreon, some dedicated stalker is going to fish out her actual private info
She really said "Haha, I manipulated you, that's the joke, tee-hee, I'm so quirky"
I can't imagine how people who went through the same trauma and pain of losing a baby most felt when they realized that it was a bit to lunch her patron wtf is wrong with her 😒
The level of seriousness in the original is just messed up in retrospect.
It’s pseudo-intellectualism.
I just don’t understand. Generally, there are 2 forms of patreon: artists, writers, educators, and people who have no value, if they were to disappear, and persist purely from parasocial relationships.
Caroline doesn’t seem to realise she is the latter. I mean, i used to be a MASSIVE fan of her, but I just forgot she existed when she stopped posting. If she never did post again, no one would worry about the impact on the youtube space that say, Hank Green would have. To mock people for having a parasocial relationship with her (in reality, caring about a baby and/or miscarriage is not parasocial at all, we do it for people we don’t know all the time), and then begging for money from people who are most likely going to be parasocial in nature is a bit… confusing of a position.
It's an unprincipled position
"None of this is real". What a weird thing to say to some people who are real and fighting real medical battles
My wife and I had a miscarriage in December, and it is truly more devastating than anyone will ever think it is unless they've been through it. My wife is a warrior for going through it.
I don't like people even joking about pregnancy (April fools I'm pregnant stuff)
But to make a video about "losing the baby" Is truly disgusting!
I am so glad my wife doesn't watch this reviling woman
Sending love as someone who has had a few, ifs so ridiculously painful. Her making this a joke is sickening
Ur wife has the miscarriage not u stop having a Parasocial relationship with ur wife
Im sorry you both had to go through that 😔
Maybe creators like What’s Her Face would declare that me reaching out to you at all so is just me gullibly forming a parasocial relationship with you, but hey, we can’t all be so cool and quirky lol.
@@MK-wc7sy Did they not teach you grammar in elementary school?
@@crumblingphilosophy9323 امحق
also, her bullshit "ppl said horrible shit to me at 15" to try and pre-deflect from criticism. Ma'am, this is nawt gonna make that change.
People said horrible things to me at fifteen, too. I'm not making those jokes, either. I didn't make them at twenty. I don't make them now. GOSH. Wonder why!
Would not be surprised if later she "revealed" that the "i lost the baby" video turned out to be a "satire" on people doing "social experiments" and we're all supposed to get it i guess.
I think this was an interesting experiment for sociology, art, and media consumption. Not because of what she attempted, but because of how spectacularly she failed.
You guys offended about my fake pregnancy are being parasocial. And if you didn't get it was a joke, you're not part of the group that developed a parasocial connection to me in the past.
"I WAS JOKING 😃". What is the fucking joke
Exactly!
I mean yeah? I watched her videos before and thought it made sense for the pregnancy to either be real or fake. She's always had a somewhat oppositional relationship with her audience and is quite cynical about TH-cam after getting really big as a teen. It's reckless but it's on brand.
I imagine it'd be a betrayal for the fake pregnancy to be one's first exposure to Caroline.
She is certainly going to filter her audience with this stunt. I don't think the people who do stick with her now are going to be the ones she expects or hopes for tho.
Unless she was extremely calculated and wanted to specifically cultivate a creepy, obsessed, and toxicly parasocial audience through this stunt.
My thing is....she literally did not need to do this. And of all the things she could've done, that fact that she thought to do THIS says a lot about her as a person. Yikes.
Everything about that channel and patreon seems plagued with immaturity and I'm literally her age. Just fundamental misunderstandings of social connections, marketing, irony, and how to carefully critique something. Big yikes
It’s ironic that her older content holds up better because it was absurdity for the sake of absurdity. I think she mistook that as people seeing her as a deeper satirist.
Does anyone smell onions?
I like Caroline's old content and first heard about this unhinged stunt in passing. Realizing that this BS was her is shorting out my synpases this Tuesday afternoon.
she probably thought this was such a power move too, I'm getting second hand embarrassment