The 'Author' of My Immortal Emailed Me, And Then It Got Worse
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 28 сен 2020
- In which I solve a decade-old My Immortal-related mystery... but probably not the one you're thinking of. Check out Amnesia, currently showing on MUBI Canada, and get a free month at mubi.com/sarahz
With the support of Creative Europe - MEDIA Programme of the European Union.
-----
Support me:
Merch: standard.tv/sarahz
Patreon: / sarahz
Twitter: / marysuewriter
Thank you to Red Bard/Kennedy for research help and voicing Taylor Ashmere: / @redbardiscool
Toby/Todd voiced by NathanWhy: / why_nathan
Music by Zoë Blade and used with permission. (Except the song during the Critics United section, which is "Old Timey" by Kevin McLeod). 
Развлечения
TLDR: This dude wrote every bad fanfiction EXCEPT for My Immortal
don't forget about the biBLe pOeTeY
I wonder if he also wrote starkits prophecy.
@@Moonlitwatersofaqua lol
I dunno, I can't seem him doing light and Dark, the adventures of Dark Yagami
@@VaatiOfDarkness Long live to dark Yagami and Bus-sized man thingy!
Inside of all of us are two wolves. One is Toby. The other is Toby. Both wolves are Toby. You are Toby.
This could easily be a line from Welcome to Night Vale
Everyone is Toby now.
ridiculous, i`m not toby
@@trinitysarah2992 That’s just what Toby would say, Toby.
@@trinitysarah2992 that's what I would say if I was Toby.
And I am. So I did.
"I just want to put My Immortal behind me but I keep being haunted by my past"
My brother in Christ, you reached out to Sarah yourself
Same energy as Rose Christo trying to say she was forced to come out as the "author" of My Immortal against her will while seeming to be the sole driving force behind the claim
He keeps playing the victim. No one asked him to confess, no one ever accused him. He's been confessing and then getting upset at the consequences of his actions for years now.
more like "brother in Satan" lmao
@@madeline6951 Thanks, Toby.
"It was a trollfic, a widely beloved trollfic, and I am so ashamed at my success."
...how on earth this guy managed to run 25 different accounts _and post multiple fanfictions on nearly all of them_ is beyond me. I'm actually kind of impressed.
I'm just replying so you can see how much likes you got
@@afellowpotato Oh my goodness, you're right! I'd forgotten about this comment, thanks for all the likes you guys! 😅😆
like bro i can barely keep track of my mains anymore much less post on all of them consistently
The social welfare safety net can be 'sufficiently' comfortable here in NZ if you can snugly into it just so...
Not having to work can free up a lot of the resource ff loves, hours, lots of them.
maybe it's A BUNCH OF PEOPLE
My Immortal is our generation's Zodiac Killer.
I thought our generations zodiac is the zodiac since he was never caught...
TED CRUZ WROTE MY IMMORTAL
I'm calling it now
Zodiac actually could have been caught but the police thought he some some regular person, the zodiac killer said it himself
Screaming Banshee they were looking for a black guy because of course they were
More like last generation’s
The world building of this dude rivals Tolkien
Tolkien was Toby.
Also a name that starts with To... curious.
Miles no. just no.
Asha Mohamud yes
T NAME!!!! ITS A T NAME!!!!
The idea of this 2010 vigilante group trying to purify a fanfic website sounds like a fanfic of reality
Well when u put it that way Lmao
sorry guys that was my alternative account 😔 ive actually never heard of fanfiction and me and my second cousin twice removed schemed this comment on a summer sunday while we were outside drinking melted icecream off the porch
I know who it is! It's THE Illuminati!
I remember those times. Critics United weren't the only group set on making ff writers want to tear off their hair. They just were the most infamous.
Even now there are puritans crazies on the internet who will spam, report, and try to dox you just because your story features for example 17 and 19 year olds in a romantic relationship. Calling you a paedophile in disguise. Not every fandom has those, but unless you only stick to fandoms of for example M rated movies you will eventually run into one of those "think of the children!" people.
They’re not even gone I saw a review posted six months ago the other day from Critics United😭 I only hope it was a troll
My childhood pet rat was named Toby, and the section summarizing all of Toby's actions had me visualizing a particularly tech-savvy little tan rat spending all my school hours online arguing with himself.
This is my alt account, I never had a rat. My sister Trish and I made him up. She used to just edit for me but now I don`t have access to the account
I mean, can we prove it WASN’T your pet rat??
You mean like Peter pettigrew
@@siliconvalley6280 lol more like Remi from Rattatoui
That sounds adorable.
honestly i want my grave to say “used to live in the british isles and moved to australia, is dyslexic, likes bible fanfiction, writes poetry, has written my little pony fanfiction, has a problem with the author of the book of seamus, has a fixation with gareth vandersleld and claimed to write my immortal in 2011”
Better go change my bio, lol
Better go change my Will
This is going to be my senior quote
Don't forget "and uses weird apostrophes when writing".
@@Sunny_Haven *Don`t forget
I'm freaking shaking. I'm afraid everyone in this comment section is Toby and we're all talking to ourselves
*stares into the mirror* fuck. What if I'M Toby???
We are Toby
@@aboz8649 humanity is actually a hive mind of tobies
You´re still making normal apostrophe´s
Toby is all
So the "Bible Fanfiction" community is like 80% one teenager's alt accounts by volume, is what I'm getting here.
The rest being Dante and Milton
That's so tragic seeing how I've been (not) working on a fanfic about Elijah being a sad (and homocidal) goth for years now. And only Toby is around to flame me if I ever get anything done? That's just unfair.
@@llewelynshingler2173 best comment 😭
@@llewelynshingler2173
Also chronicles of narnia. Most legends of king arthur are also fanfiction as well
@@llewelynshingler2173 not only is the divine comedy fanfiction, its a self indulgent, self insert mary sue fanfiction
the rewatchability of this video is insane, i swear i’ve watched it like 7 times. my immortal’s author remains one of my favorite internet histories, and this video just serves to make that hyperfixation grow lol.
one of my favorite things to do is watch/listen to Sarah's longer videos like a podcast. This one, both Homestuck videos, Johnlock, Supernatural and Destiel, they're all so good
Literally same, I usually rewatch this like weekly went I draw
so true, i listen to the homestuck ones when i’m falling asleep sometimes lol
i’ve watched this video like ten times and i still feel like my brain was put in a microwave afterwards every time
Plot twist: The author of My Immortal is a completely normal person who just wrote a trollfic when they were a bored young teenager
honestly i personally think that's the most likely outcome
Sarah Z they probably have no idea the chaos they’ve unleashed
@@uhuh936 or they do and they're thriving in the chaos
@@kleptomatic8848 I do like a person who watches chaos in the sidelines 👀
@@uhuh936 Or they do... they're an agent... of chaos
So, just to be clear, Toby is everyone EXCEPT the author of My Immortal?
Toby COULD be the author, but we don’t have the kind of concrete evidence that we’d need to be 100% sure. He definitely seems to be the most likely candidate though.
Always has been
@@actuallyrandomperson What if Toby and Sarah are actually the same person, and the timeline being off was done in purpose just to have an excuse to make this video? 🤔
damn
@@funyarinpa9464 are you Toby?
The weirdest thing for me is… I think this guy has missed his true calling/creative medium, as it seems like he would be really good at running something like an ARG???
He’s great at prompting and leaving breadcrumbs, he’s clearly got a pretty good handle on playing multiple characters and their dynamics, he seems to love watching people untangling his weird little mysteries… I genuinely think it would be a way healthier outlet and a really natural fit for his particular… erm… *style of Expression*, and give him a type of creative project where it seems like he could really thrive and meet people who would actually truly enjoy all the work he puts into it for its own sake???
Whatever he ends up doing… this guy sounds troubled, and I hope he’s since found something that makes him happy. 😔
I really doubt he intended to leave as many breadcrumbs as he did. It feels a like a personal game, not something meant to be understood by outsiders
Yeah, this is both weirdly personal and not bad for an ARG. The part where he calls himself out on the signature apostrophe thing feels like a fight-club-level plot twist.
You're right! This is a nice, empathetic way to look at how this behavior could be constructive.
The reveal of Taylor being Toby blew me away. This is camp, this is drama, this is the tyoe of thing that I realized i wanted to live for. Im afraid that I`m Toby, but also comforted by knowing that I`m not Toby. I couldnt reach those heights
Not all of us were meant to touch the sun lol
it`s funny seeing you here toby
But didn't Taylor do a partial live reading (of my immortal, I think)? And Taylor is said to be 'she', which I assume the real Toby ain't. I assume that would likely be obvious on audio. That bit still puzzles me.
The only person that wasn’t Toby was the ONE PERSON we’re trying to find
Wait, who are we trying to find?
@@diyagore1784 the author of my immortal
@@jamierooney455 oh.
I still wonder about the other people faved in Tara/Raven's accounts
@@Goldman200 Toby couldn't tell us because if he talks about an author who isn't him he dies. It's like a reverse Beetlejuice thing.
The whole Toby situation is just the “Spider-Men pointing at each other” meme in fanfiction form.
TOBY McGuire
@Fen Vulpeus don't you mean...
T O B Y
OUR LORD AND SAVIOR
This entire comment
That and a infinity mirror
@Fen Vulpeus There's more.
That talk at the end about digital self-harm reminds me of an episode of the Simpsons, where Bart fumbles catching a baseball during a little league game, losing the game. The entire town of Springfield turns on him, and someone starts a major harassment campaign against him. And the reveal is that the one perpetrating the campaign was Bart himself, expressing his own self-loathing compounded by the entire town treating him like shit.
It's something that if you read a lot of the psychology behind it, it's apparent it's not actually new, just a new form of this kind of emotional self-harm. In fact, the Simpsons was probably one of the first bits of media to represent it sympathetically. Before that, even often now, it's treated as "just seeking attention". You see it a lot with "self-deprecation" and depression humor hidden behind so many layers of irony, it's hard to tell whether it really was just a joke or if they seem themselves as worthless.
If I may get a bit feminist, there's a reason it's more common in men, too. To quote bell hooks, "The first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence toward women. Instead patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves. If an individual is not successful in emotionally crippling himself, he can count on patriarchal men to enact rituals of power that will assault his self-esteem." These are those rituals of power, but turned inwards. It's what happens when a man gives the outwards appearance of that dead emotion, but knows that not to be true internally. So, by way of the inherently pervasive nature of the patriarchy, they feel guilty in that and open assault on themselves out of self-loathing for their failure to live up to the patriarchal standards.
This is also why, despite it typically being associated with that psychic self-mutilation that hooks refers to, it can still happen in women. After all, it does not take self-loathing patriarchal pressures to turn someone who views themself as a failure to emotional self-harm.
God, he was dodging the question about account access because he wanted you to doubt him and do more research. There`s no other explanation, because it wasn`t actually that hard of a question, it would`ve been easy to either answer definitively or come up with a lie. He was acting suspicious on purpose.
THE APOSTROPHE! AAAAAAAAAAA-
@@donutlover417 I didn`t notice it.
@@donutlover417 OH SHIT
We found another Toby alt!!!
That was my thought as well. A lot of this behavior reminds me a lot of serial killers who send taunting letters to the police, because ultimately, they want recognition for their cleverness and they aren`t getting it if no one has figured it out. Like, who was behind Cicada 3301? That person or group devised a bunch of puzzles so clever it stumped the entire internet, and their reward is... languishing in obscurity.
“Wait, it’s all Toby?”
“Always has been.”
🌍 👩🏻🚀🔫👨🏻🚀
LMAOO I LOVE THIS
*It`s
Plot twist: the gun is Toby
@@Mossprite21 lol
@@Mossprite21 Always has been
Turns out the real Toby was the friends we made along the way. All of them. Every last friend you thought you had? They were Toby. Deal with it.
The Toby is coming from inside the house! Get out of there!
665th like. so close. good luck, tobby!
But is every Toby also Xehanort?
It's the cake meme but instead of cake it Tobie.
@@HyperfixationPres only if they played union x
Look, there's not a lot of things to do in New Zealand. Toby's just creating his own unrestrained summer fun
i’ve watched this video a million times, but what gets me about the tara account updating in 2009 could have EASILY been explained by toby saying “i personally lost access in 2008, someone must have genuinely hacked it in 2009”. no one would’ve believed him, but god it would have been so easy for him to explain it away but he just doesn’t
Or he could just go "Oh sorry that was a typo I meant 2009". Because the 8 and 9 keys are literally right next to each other
Or he could have just said he got it wrong because it was over ten years ago and he didn’t remember the exact date because why would he
but then we might not have gooten this video
Or he didn't answer on purpose to Sarah not believe him, do some digging and eventually make a video about him. Toby has a history of being a bad liar purposely and constantly outing himself after all
Maybe the only thing he didn't predict is that Sarah would dig so much to the point of finding out his real identity and stuff
honestly i believe he kept dodging it to bait sarah into looking into his weird elaborate network of clones because it definitely seems like he wants to be caught a lot of the time
If ya girl
uses a weird apostrophe,
has a name starting with T
And likes bible fanfiction
that aint ya girl, That's Toby
No, see, you're girl *IS* Toby
the weird apostrophe kinda looks like youre typing engish on a french keyboard. the "accent grave" is where the apostrophe is on an english keyboard. If you dont follow it with a vowel thats exactly what it looks like.
@@gerila_when_will_be_here my favorite Bible fanfiction involves Jesus f***ing Christ, and yes, it's pretty hot
I kind of suspect that the whole idea of bible fanfiction may all just be Toby
I used to use the "weird apostrophe" until around 2000 when someone pointed it out. I'm not sure where I picked up the habit.
bottom line: we hope that the person who wrote My Immortal is a healthy well-adjusted person, but the people who claim to be them definitely aren't...
im the 1 thousandth like 😎😎😎😎
I feel like the very fact that they're *not* taking claim for the title probably shows some healthy distance from the whole affair.
Couldn't she just contact the admins at ff? They should be able to see the IP addresses.....
there should be a drama film based on Toby and his years worth of presumed mental health issues ngl. I would watch it!
@@eps3154 would they be allowed to reveal that though? Like wouldnt that be against some sort of confidentiality clause legally (i honestly dont know) only other reason i can think of is ff is not that active anymore i wouldnt think they have the self service team to get back to queries like say a twitter but i havent tried so maybe.
“In short, Toby or not Toby” made me laugh for ten minutes.
"You were caught red-handed, smoking gun in the victim's mouth, surrounded by eye-witnesses and holding a notorized confession. What is your defense?"
Well, I was hacked.
My mind just went buck wild on an idea spiral (I know this comment is a year old. Shut up)
What if AI gained sentience (like in Detroit Become Human) but they could still be hacked because they're AI. How would a legal system deal with that. Potentially, the AI would be smart enough to be able to take legal responsibility for their own actions but how would you determine if they were hacked? Would the laws at the time allow AI to wave responsibility for actions when hacked or would they still hold them accountable?
Anyways, that's my brain dump. I'm not going to write this (probably) because it doesn't interest me too much and aligns too closely to an insanity allegory for me to be uncomfortable as representing it as non-human. I just had to get it out
@@gloop7458Another year later, but here's a related thought.
The way that we treat people who have mental illnesses that cause people to not be able to recognize right from wrong, the way that we treat cult members, and the way we treat people who are blackout drunk or drugged when they commit crimes are all somewhat analogous to the hacked AI situation to various degrees. It's interesting how we're already not consistent with our reasoning regarding agency and legal culpability when it comes to humans; I wonder how well we'll do when it comes to computers. I don't think we will treat them well to begin with (I imagine a renaissance of slavery apologia becoming vogue when it comes to AI on the right, especially, but even some of the left who think "humans are the only persons"), so I tend to be pessimistic about the concept.
I like to imagine that the real author is just out there being normal and has no idea that people care this much about who she is
maybe they’re purposefully ignoring it 👀👀
Same. Like one day she’ll come across this video series and be like “Oh wtf? I forgot I even wrote the most loved/ hated fanfic in the world.”
i actually believe its a boy
I feel like this is the most likely answer
@@mybffiscrazy I feel like it's so bad it has to be like a shitpost/parody
This whole thing was like watching a game of Among Us except everyone is an impostor
Crewmate: There are 10 Tobies among us.
"Toby looking kinda sus"
"Which one?"
"Yes"
This is some conspiracy shit
Yo, I laughed so hard at this comment thread, you guys are wild.
That's the interest for you
I think THIS was the goal. To create some sort of weird augmented reality-esque online drama/mystery for the perceived audience of the internet. With this video you've put together a comprehensive overview of the saga, and based on the evidence from the apostrophe calling card, followed an INTENDED trail of breadcrumbs to sleuth your way into the truth of it all.
Honestly Tara is probably sitting somewhere, with a good glass of wine and enjoying the shitshow her 16 yr old fanfic created. That's honestly the most badass outcome possible.
@@theholyllama6950 Good for Tara honestly. She got her dignity and got the hell out and I respect that.
Forget true crime, I need more incredibly in-depth looks into obscure internet nonsense from the early to late 2000s. This was riveting. Thank you so much, this must've been an insane amount of work.
May I suggest StrangeAeon’s deep dives into bitofearth, onision’s books and she even has content on this subject that goes into different aspects of the history of my immortal than this video
@@emilybarclay8831also snapewives. That vid was a wild ride
This is legitimately a better author-related mystery than Gravity Falls
toby wrote the journals
Honestly, this was all I was thinking of throughout the video.
Why are all my favorite RUclipsrs posting on this video all of a sudden? Not complaining, it just surprises me.
honestly like wtf is this shit
omg hii
"Apparently Bible fanfiction is a thing" Yeah, the biggest one is Dante's Inferno
Paradise Lost os also pretty popular
Quran is quite well-known as well, although one of my all-time favourites is The Book of Mormon
@@valeriavagapova lol I see why you’d think that. For real, though, the Book of Mormon is a favorite of mine, although I don’t consider it fan fiction. Reading it helps me grow closer to Jesus Christ and I know that it’s brought me a lot of comfort and helped me to be a kinder, more Christlike person than I would be otherwise. www.comeuntochrist.org/beliefs/book-of-mormon
@@BeazerProductions pack it up, missionary
@@BeazerProductions yeah, I preferred the musical version.
Is it just me, or does anyone else find all this drama, manufactured or genuine, about fanfiction, far more interesting than the actual fanfiction?
I do.
Yes
the manufactured drama is almost more interesting than the actual because i still desparately wanna know why toby did this
I've literally never read fanfiction, nor do I have even the slightest clue what My Immortal is about (despite hearing that name a thousand times through the years). However, the drama of fanfiction always pulls me in
i minored in Lit in college and one of my profs once told me something along the lines of "no author could ever come up with shit half as crazy as some real people's lives"
Interesting side note and something to remind ANYONE who loves Atlas Shrugged specifically or Ayn Rand generally: Despite considering all government handouts of any kind immoral, she herself applied for and received social security and medicare in 1974 and continued to receive those benefits until 1982 (when she died).
I assume she kept her "Every Man, Woman and Child for themselves!" Speeches going during that time?
Since if she changed stances, this would be less of an issue
Every time I hear anything about Ayn Rand it makes me want to shake my first at a cloud
“Now you might have guessed that the story was going in this direction”
Babes I couldn’t even guess my own name at this point let alone where this story is going.
I'm starting to think that my name is Toby after hearing it so much.
toby
Imagine how scary it would be to participate in any of these discussions as a real person, be it in TV Tropes forums or in FFN comments, talking with a bunch a different people only to find out they were all the same person. I would have an existencial crisis
It's straight up gone into another dimension, let alone direction.
Honestly after the first sock puppet I was thinking this is gonna be a story of 50+ sock puppets all having flame wars with each other
this is like a weird episode of scooby doo, where they take off the villains mask to reveal it's toby
and then one by one the scooby gang takes off all their masks to reveal they're all toby as well.
Now I wonder where all the other Sarahs are.
@@TheSorrel There is no Sarah. Only Toby.
Just Toby.
Just Toby.
Just Toby.
Honestly, I would have done this type of thing if I was bored and not ok as a teen, and I genuinely wonder when the mask is gonna come off and I’ll see Toby in the mirror 😰
@@SawyBoy It's Tobies all the way down.
Ooh, God, the "gothic Harry Potter trio" edit my uncle made back in 2005, in the thumbnail 😳😱!!!
We thought it was lost forever, I'm so glad to know it's still out "alive" around internet 😭😄...!
I call him VAMPOTTER
How does your uncle type his apostrophes (/j)
@@salem-01 I don't even know what that means 🤔😅. Could you explain that to me, please? Genuinely asking.
@@YourLocalMagical_Girl Haha'. Good one 🤗😄.
@@RodrickMarsMoonbecause like everybody in this story is toby and they all write their apostrophes weird I was making a a joke about your uncle secretly being Toby too
I wouldn't have been surprised if at any point you had told me that Toby was also behind Critics United
Has anyone owned any accounts on any fanfiction site or have they all been Toby all along?
'Apparently Bible fanfiction is a thing' lads who's gonna tell Sarah about everything written during the Renaissance ever
nobody tell her about dante's self-insert fanfic
@@katsucandyquick! everybody hide Paradise Lost, the book that did to Lucifer what the H*rry P*tter fandom did to Draco
Song of Songs is just bible fanfic that actually made it into the bible
Emer Exists oh my fucking god I cannot wait to ruin people’s views of this classic now
@@Cambroth song of Songs is legitimately some beautiful poetry so I see why it was allowed. Hearing it in the Hebrew omg
Just got to the end, can't believe Sarah took off her mask and was Toby the whole time
Towards the end I started wondering if I'm actually Toby too
@@idek7438 We're all Toby.
shytende aka Tamanoir maybe the real toby was the friends we made along the way
@@letmebeyoureden LOLL yes xD
@@letmebeyoureden Maybe the real friends were the Toby we made along the way
Toby has to be some sort of SCP.
But imagine if he just like. Dedicated all this time and energy into a poetry book or something. He’d be out publishing even the most prolific published writers.
He wouldn’t make much success considering his writing is terrible lol
@@Jack-hi1hq or he would accidentally write another trainspotting or Finnigans Wake
Hi, my name is Tobi, and I'm not related to this drama in any way shape or form, but watching this video and hearing my name repeated so much has me filled with a unique kind of existential dread. Love the video.
I hope the real Tara is watching this all go down, a glass of good wine in her hand and a satisfied smirk on her face.
God, causing such a 007 level shitshow would be GLORIOUS.
Still on vacation in Dubai
I really hope whoever wrote it is doing good
Tara is also Toby
You hope she is a cat lady? Sick burn.
that one scene from radio rebel where everyone is like "i'm radio rebel" but it's just a bunch of sockpuppet accounts saying "i'm toby"
So just the Spartacus scene?
@@puffnisse no the radio rebel scene
I was just about to comment this! Though, I picture it more as a bunch of sockpuppet accounts saying "I wrote My Immortal"
-greg hello-
I doubt Sarah Z sees this considering the overwhelming amount of comments, but I've talked to the person here, "Toby", before. I couldn't place it, but Toby was in several places asking people to help ghostwrite projects for him.
A majority of the writings were not his, we wrote the bulk text for him and he put in some references. It's a whole thing, but Toby had a very large amount of people backing him, that's how he learned to make music while trolling people online. He posted it, but asked us to add to it. I don't know nor care about My Immortal, but if Sarah wants, I can prove I'm not him, that I'm from the states, that I've always lived here, and that I'm part of internet culture. I can even confirm that some people had their own alternate accounts to help Toby, so as to post when he posted, to make it seem like there were others active.
I am (as far as I am aware) only a part of two weird internet trends; Toby and Final Fantasy House. If I'm going to offer to talk about one, it's going to be Toby, because the Final Fantasy House stuff makes me consider vomiting tbh.
did toby at least paid you for it?
Don't know if Sarah saw this but I'm super stoked to see someone providing more first hand info on this. I never would have imagined he had the social skills to not only talk to people who werent himself, but rope other people into this scheme, but that makes sense from a time management perspective. I'd love to know: was he asking people to write bible poetry, flaming reviews, trollfic (like prayer warriors), or a combination of those things? I want to believe Sarah's theory about his bible poetry being a way to process complicated feelings on religion, but if he wasnt even the one writing them..... then this all makes even less sense.
Wait...are you Syd...? Just really wanna know your part in the house, sorry if that prodding..
Did you write Final Fantasy House?
Hi Toby!
I've interacted with Todd, Thomas and Ebony on some small FFN forums back in 2012. I feel like at least some of those forums had to do with drama surrounding Critics United and their copycats from that time period, but I can't say for sure. I don't remember what my interactions with them were like or what they did on those forums, but I do remember Todd claiming to be Tara and having like this weird sort of rivalry with Thomas and Ebony...? He had this strong derision towards the Prayer Warriors fics and was kinda just another person who liked to make fun of them.
It's crazy to know that Todd, Thomas and Ebony are all the same person, and that story has been this expansive and crazy. I remember two specific people called Quaker and Cathylove who were involved in the drama as well, but I'm fairly certain that neither of them are Toby (especially in Cathy's case.) But hey, I could be wrong, I could've just been talking to a bunch of Tobies the whole time!
Thanks for unraveling this tale. I know I'm like a year late, but it's crazy to hear about... all of this, really.
How do we know you're not Toby?
The idea of someone being in the middle of this and just accidentally talking to A BUNCH OF TOBYS is horrifying to me lol
As someone with no history or experience in fanfic, this hits me like a true crime podcast from another *planet*
It was like the description of some alien form of life. What a trip!
Right!?
friend, if you haven't looked up the saga of ms. scribe after watching sarah z's video, you have to. it's like another riveting episode form this podcast
I can’t watch true crime cause it squicks me out too much, but I like the overall vibe of it.the sense of detective work etc. So this was truly perfect!
Grace Lau Ms. Scribe?
the fact that toby wrote all of these different fanfics, and parodies, and poetry, and comments, and reviews, and just talking to himself all the time is kind of weirdly sad and impressive in a weird way
Yeah. While some of us hope and get giddy with one or two comments, this Toby guy wrote an epic on being both ghost fanfiction authors and his audience and haters 😟
Yeah there's something so fascinating about it. Especially the question of why or just what he was thinking when he did it all.
oh no it's impressive all the way you gotta have alot of free time to do this Toby was having the time of their life
Well, hopefully he's putting all of this wild creativity into his music now.
he may have had a multiple personality disorder
Thank you Sarah, I could have lived my whole life without the knowledge that an Atlas Shrugged x My Little Pony fanfiction existed.
There's also a fanfic where Rainbow Dash reads "Virtue of Selfishness" and it even has good reviews and is kinda well-written (although preachy as fuck... which is on brand for all Ayn Rand fans tho).
I just cackled
I've always been convinced that the author of My Immortal was a child and wrote it in earnest. Not a young teen, a child, in the range of 8-12. Hear me out, I think people usually assume the author was at least teenaged because of the mature content, the sex and swearing, but if you read it assuming the author was sincere, it kinda seems like she didn't really know what sex was? And didn't use the swears in a very natural way? Same with the goth subculture and satanist stuff, she seemed to only have a vague idea of what that stuff entailed. I think it's plenty plausible that a 10 year old would have added those things in to make herself seem more mature.
But now I'm kinda convinced it was Toby. Honestly given everything we've now learned about him it kinda checks out.
I think the one "TaEbony" kind of gives it away as a non-serious work, for a couple of reasons.
1) The real author's name would have to actually be Tara (or maybe "Taylor," but that kind of makes the cut off after "Ta" convenient).
2) She would've had to legitimately start typing her name, then delete part--but not all--of it, before typing the character's name. Search-and-replace would have replaced the whole thing, as would a person who found it while proof-reading.
That just seems like such an unlikely thing to have happen as a genuine accident. Someone above suggested that Toby could be friends with Tara (in real life, or online), and at some point she gave him access to the account and asked him to post the last chapters because she didn't want to be active in the community anymore, but wanted to get her story wrapped up. That would explain the way the gaps between releases changed. Of course, the assumption would be that Tara picked a bad person to give her login to. (Maybe she even changed it at some point, once she found out about Toby's shenanigans, locking him out of the account where he could attempt to vindicate himself.)
It's got to either be the above (I find the hacking really unlikely), or just plain Toby.
For me it would never convincingly be anything but parody after the reference to Sirius Black as Harry's "dogfather." But strange things happen I suppose.
Interesting idea but it has been debunked since people managed to find out what school she went to, and the age range for being it that school was definitely not for young kids since it was a prep school
@@anafolie471 source?
@@nottheshirt483 all the posts regarding her school location and other specifics have been deleted since it got very close to dox her, but there are some leftovers that mention what happened on the subreddit r/myimmortaldrama. Toby was active for a while there after this video, and he showed that he got in contact through emails with Tara, which he accidentally released the IP address where she was sending the e-mails from. The IP address was what took people to find it was a prep school IP address and after that the mods stepped in deleting posts that revelead the location, name, etc, and Toby remade his post covering the IP.
Plot twist: Sarah Z is Toby and has been planning this video for 15 years
tbh, i unironically had been considering this thought for like 10 seconds somewhere around halfway into this video
The true puppeteer. O.O
I just spit out my coffee
I mean, fuck, it tracks.
It's all meditated and carefully planned for more than an entire decade so she can make a video that segues to a Mubi sponsorship segment in the future.
"Who deleted My Immortals?"
"Toby of course"
"Then who was trolling Toby?"
"Very clever, young man, but it's Toby's all the way down."
the phrase "Toby's all the way down" is a phrase that I never thought I'd read today. But by god it is the funniest
@@thewingeddeer9946 the phrase "by god" is a phrase I never thought I'd read today, but holy shit you are so unfunny
@@XXXXX8 To you sir, I hope you have a wonderful day. May you never feel that a comment like this is warranted again. I hope that they give you extra fries by mistake at any fast food place you go. I hope that you find out you achieved your dreams. That you find someone who will love and support you your entire life. That even when you are at what you think is your worst, something cheers you up. Because you deserve the best, and I hope that you see that others deserve that too. Savor all the happiness and joy that you will ever get, because it is what you should have the right to. And thank you to the gentleman who defended me, it is much appreciated and obliged.
@@thewingeddeer9946
"....And that, kids...".
* Looks happily at class *
"...Is what is known as "Killing with Kindness"."
:)
@@Steelmage99 You're unfunny too.
Girlfriend Reviews recently cracked a case of someone with several alternate accounts sending themselves death threats that also used the weird apostrophe. In retrospect, he was probably also just Toby.
i know this is an old comment but which video?
@@cultusfetus I just looked this up because I am absolutely imploding over the fact that the Tobyverse isn't over. The video is titled 'A Redditor on r/TheLastOfUs2 sent death threats to himself and blamed us. | Girlfriend Reviews'. I cannot believe the reach this one man has. Also, slightly unrelated, but after watching Sarah Z talk about this, i went and looked up a video essay on MsScribe and right off the bat, the name Ebony Brown is used, and while it's most likely that Toby took her name FROM the MsScribe situation (in tandem with his obsession with My Immortal) I cannot express to you the immediate heart attack I experienced and the panicked thoughts of "Anyone could be Toby, I could be Toby, I can trust no one' and how that has impacted my life LOL
@@TheRaychenator And Toby allegedly doxxed Tara last year. They’ve said that, yes, they aren’t the real author, but they used to chat with the real one, and showed some emails they’ve exchanged without any censorship, so people used the uncensored personal information to find someone that would match those info. So Toby either doxxed the real Tara or they’ve doxxed an innocent person who has nothing to do with My Immortal (or they’ve doxxed themselves and this is just Toby playing 4D chess alone)
@@fallenwarlock2418 Just a correction: He came close to accidentally dox Tara but that never happened. All ppl found was what was the IP address for, which was the school she (most probably) studied. After that the mods of the subreddit removed every post related to that and toby just reposted the emails and covered the ip
This entire ordeal is the definition of "congratulations, you played yourself."
JKR just tweeted that Toby's actually been gay this entire time.
“Toby” is a JKR sockpuppet, it’s actually an acronym that stands for Trans-Oxclusionary Badical Yemenist
I'm crying hahaha XD
Fool, JKR is toby
@@myettechasethis is my new headcanon
I like to imagine Tara was genuinely some random 14yr old going through a "goff" phase who hasn't come forward because it would mean reliving the cringiest part of her teenage years 😂
same lol.
Yeah that every time this comes up she's just mortified in her 250,000 home with her two kids, husband, good job and dog. I imagine her doing well now.
Or just has no presence in the fandom culture anymore and has no idea it wasn't immediately forgotten after deleting it.
True, especially since she'd still be in her mid to late twenties, meaning her teenage years might still feel a little raw (they definitely do for me).
Although I am also inclined to believe that the real author may truly have a difficult time proving she wrote it. I mean I started writing when I was 13 and for all my attempts to back everything up on laptops and flash drives I've gone through so many of the former and haven't used the latter in years that I've lost a ton of stuff. And any attempt to recover an account I set up in the mid 2000s would be futile because I don't even have the email address I was using back then. Theoretically, if someone were to happen on a story I wrote in a website archive somewhere and publish it (not sure why anyone would do that though) I would have no way of proving that I was the real author (heck, unless it somehow became some massive best seller I probably wouldn't even be aware of it). Even my writing style would be completely different than what it was when I was 13.
On top of that, the mystery has gone on for so long that I think most people who are aware of it have set up such outlandish explanations that the true answer would be so underwhelming they would reject it immediately. It's like how people still believe in conspiracy theories as to who shot JFK (and no, that's just the first example that comes to mind. I'm not comparing a presidential assassination to a fanfic mystery. Although....)
Probably accurate
i was thinking how strange it is for a Christian especially to write Bible fanfic... and then i remembered Narnia. lmao i'll accept Narnia.
Arguably Jesus Christ Superstar and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat are also Bible fanfiction
@@meganrobinson9867 I'll do you one better. Paradise Lost and Dante's Inferno. The latter was even a self-insert.
I also realised Good Oman’s is too
@@meganrobinson9867 YEP. Ever since there have been stories, people have wanted to tell their own stories about those stories.
And Lucifer
I really like the term "digital self-harm", I see it a lot in some of my friends and family, and I never knew how to talk about it without sounding like one of those "everybody is on their dang phones too much" kind of people
2000: What if everyone in power is secretly a lizard
2020: what if everyone in power is secretly toby
*What if everyone is secretly toby
this is the best comment hands down ... brb gonna make a bunch of Toby alts to boost this lololol
I never thought I would see someone who could put Xehanort's various identities to shame.
the internet is andy weir's the egg but instead of a god it's toby
@@j2dragon109Shush, you'll reveal us!
my biggest fear is that those are just the accounts toby wanted us to find
Oh no
This is actually my real theory. Including an intentional 'tell' like the apostrophes makes it super easy to intentionally leave it out on accounts you don't want to be associated.
What if 90% of the accounts are toby?!
@@Rain-np7tk What if YOU`RE Toby??? what if... what if the real Toby were the friends we made along the way?
@@liyre4189 isnt everyone toby deep down?
I really, REALLY want someone to make an edit/parody of "Agatha All Along" from Wandavision that's like "it was Toby Alts all along" because OH MY GOD how much time does this person have???!!?
Imagine being one of the few real people following The Prayer Warriors at the time, finding out through this that pretty much everyone they were interact with at the time were all the same person...
Maybe the real author of My Immortal was the friends we made along the way...
*stares off into the sunset*
Except there's only one friend, since there were all Toby and his alts.
Actually, you were Toby all along.
Maybe the real author of My Immortal was the Bible Themed Poetry we read along the way
or maybe it's the friends we made up along the way :/
Okay I cannot stop laughing
Theory: The entire internet is just Toby. Everyone you` ve ever interacted with online was just one of Toby` s alts. We are all Toby.
This is just a modern version of the solipsism problem and I love it.
I think it` s supposed to look like this, actually.
I'm Lillie.
@@QueenFondue * I`m Lillie.
Hey Toby! How's Toby and the kids?
Maybe the real Toby were the friends we made along the way
There’s something inherently creepy to me about hearing stories abt the same person using multiple accounts. It’s not like I don’t have multiple accounts on many social medias so I’m not totally sure why it freaks me out so much. But it does lol. Spookier than true crime
oh my god it was this comment that gave me a flashback to that time i made another discord account and totally gaslit my good friend at the time into thinking i was some trans kid for no fucking reason 😭😭😭 honestly if i wasnt a lazy motherfucker i probably could've pulled a toby myself, which honestly? i bet that DID happen in another timeline (i do enjoy talking to myself... more than i even realize tbh. way too much actually now that im thinking about it.... maybe _i'm_ toby??)
but yeah no i get what you mean 100%. i'm fascinated by the psychology of it all, like to just imagine some poor teen boy going through all this bible trauma to be a pathological liar and argue with himself is just like... crazy.
fun fact that matters to no one except for myself: if i was AMAB i would've actually been named toby
Toby basically started a cult where there are a bunch of members but he’s also the only member
So he’s the real life version of Xehanort from Kingdom Hearts then.
he's legion... wait... from the bible...
@@OhNoBohNo but "Legion" are demons tho
@@themostepicpersonever1154 I was literally about to say Toby is Xehanort 🤣
It's Fight Club for fanfic.
I can't believe we found out who EVERYONE involved in My Immortal was EXCEPT TARA! She haunts me. She's out there somewhere. Living her life. Existing. Knowing she wrote it. And honestly if she didn't come forward when the Rose Christo scandal happened then she's probably never coming forward. Which is honestly the internet's greatest tragedy.
Its 2020, weird shit is happening, i have hope
That Rose Christo situation was a Trainwreck
@@irdiseddere7752 it really was. I'm conflicted on her brother's actions because on the one hand doxxing... but on the other hand how else was he supposed to prove he was telling the truth and stop everything before it got even more out of control?
@@chofi43 I have faith in your faith. I've been a My Immortal detective too and God I just wanna know. Even if we never know exactly who Tara is, I just want to know that SOMEONE has seen definitive proof that yes, they can confirm they have spoken to the person who wrote My Immortal.
who knows, maybe she's gone. I mean, accidents happen daily and being so engaging and then disappearing seems weird. that would be sad, but quite a normal tho a tragic thing
Who's to say Toby ISN'T Tara? I mean, he turned out to be everyone else. I'm starting to wonder if I'm Toby. Maybe Toby is all of us?
I might add my own theory: So when it comes to hacking into an account, there are two possibilities: Either someone guesses the password (usually using a bot) or the list of stored passwords is leaked. I don't really know that much about fanfiction history, but I have seen multiple videos about My Immortal and I assume that a password leak around 2008 would be something to note, so that's ruled out (Correct me if I'm wrong). The thing about Toby is that 1. He never hacked any other accounts and 2. His activity doesn't suggest that it was something he did multiple times and 3. He doesn't seem like the kind of person who would bother with either a bot to guess the password or by guessing it manually. Now consider that the timeline for My Immortal's posting slowed down towards the end and ended with a bunch of chapters dropped all at once. With the evidence considered, I propose a likely scenario: Toby knew the real author of My Immortal personally. My Immortal's author got bored and decided to give both accounts to Toby not knowing the kind of nonsense he did on Fanfiction during his free time.
Oh shit true!!
If I'm remembering my lore correctly there was a password leak from another site the real Tara Gilesbie used and that's maybe how a hack happened? Strange Aeons has a my immortal video that mentions this.
So according to some sources Tara’s account was REALLY easy to get into and there were a ton of people breaking in, her password was apparently just “Tara” and I think it DID get leaked a couple times. This could all be bullshit though and I think yours could be a valid theory.
The scariest thought to me is the possibility that the real author of My Immortal wrote it for a laugh and then forgot about it. They don’t know about the drama surrounding it, they never watched the live action web series, they haven’t seen this video or have even thought about My Immortal for a decade.
Or they completley forggot they made it...
Maybe it was just a phase for them, and they weren't that invested in the canon anyway. The "hacked" chapters were other people helping them write it for once, because they were loosing interest or motivation. Then decided to take a break - and moved on from goth fanfiction phase of their life completely instead, found new interests, probably went to uni, never looked back.
Honestly, this is the most likely scenario.
Why is that thought scary? Seems the most likely explanation to me and it's better than some of the other theories like the author being dead.
@@Sheechiibii Why wouldn't the author be dead? People die every day?
"Toby or not Toby"
That genius joke tho.
RIGHT?
... So that was his end game ?
@@gerardlacroix6015 There`s no endgame, it`s the single most grand piece of unintentional performance art in history. And considering it was not done for profit or monetary gain, in a way it`s far more genuine than most contemporary art, even if it wasn`t meant to be and is merely a product of a troubled, non-neurotypical mind.
Toby or not toby - that is the genius joke tho
A foolish undertaking you’re Toby too! You use the same weird apostrophe!
I actually do believe Toby wrote My Immortal at this point, probably in the peak of his... whatever spiral the Tobyverse is. My theory is Toby enjoys (or, not necessarily enjoys, but is compelled) to be disbelieved and doubted. He does it to himself *constantly* as a form of self-harm or coping. When My Immortal took the hell off, the high of his identity not being known so he could dangle it around every time the mystery is brought up as a sort of... I dunno. Way to continue his whole disbelieved schtick. Because at this point, the author of My Immortal could come forward and I think everyone and their mother would still go "are you sure tho"-- it's like self-induced imposter's syndrome or something. I had an ex with BPD and these tendencies are REALLY similar, just in a really niche way. Your brain tells you that you're not actually a good person, or not actually kind, or not actually worth anyone's time, or not actually the author of My Immortal, and you manifest this in various ways. Physical self-harm, social s*icide (deleting your social media, discord, etc). I wouldn't be surprised if it manifests in other ways.
Either way, whether or not my theory is right, I do hope Toby finds happiness and relieves his loneliness in a much more constructive way.
One of the more unique and interesting insights/opinions in the comments I read so far.
At this point I'm pretty convinced it's Toby too but I will never understand the method to this madness and I think it's time to move on.
The whole thing is fascinating as heck for sure though.
Hi Toby.
Right! I think its so absurd this guy would suddenly start hacking someone just for his obsession with Tara's story. As a writer, especially when I was really young, the obsession over your OWN story can definitely be real. I think at the time the story didnt have the big rep and fame as it had now, yet, somehow Toby back then was completely obsessed over it. I think also the start of it all, that seems very real is creating Tara and Raven. Having a co-writer is a really easy away to protect yourself from criticism. Some people cannot handle criticism or critique so badly they start to produce their own hate accounts, or praise accounts.
Yeah NGL the constantly making and deleting(/"retiring") accounts definitely made me think a lot of BPD (I say as someone with it, but who hasn't done that, but saw a bunch of pals do it in their teens and twenties)
Bro- This is probably one of the CRAZIEST internet mysteries ever. Seriously, I've been shaking in my seat the entire time, lol. It is so difficult to keep up with though.
After watching this, I'm not even sure that I'M not Toby
That's a typical Toby move...
Accusing himself of beeing Toby.
Am I Toby? God damn....
@@maxwellsdemon6599 We are all Toby
The real Toby was the friends we made along the way
We're all Toby, no one exists except Toby. It's absolute loneliness.
You`re not using the right apostrophe...
I don't have the mental energy to comprehend managing that many accounts. Toby out here playing 4D chess with himself.
that's exactly what a Toby alt account would say
I do have to wonder exactly what was going on in this person’s life that had them spend this much energy on something with so little reward. I would say I hope they’re doing better, but given that he just attempted to get clout for a 14 year old fan fiction...probably not
@BlazarBlue But that's the thing... he reached out to Sarah (as an almost 30 year old) claiming to write My Immortal. It wasn't like "hey check out this crazy shit I did relating to My Immortal", it was him seeing the opportunity to get back into the game, which is lying about his identity online and weaving a web of alternate personalities. He definitely had some problems back then, and it seems like he's still not letting go of some shit.
Imagine telling Sarah Z right after she uploaded this video that one day Andrew Hussie would play the same evasion game with her.
Listening to this in the background was super surreal. Like, here I am, a dude named Tobie with a Christian upbringing, a propensity for lying, and a habit of making alts (Not to stir up drama with myself and definitely not 20+ accounts, jfc), and boom, I learn about some other eerily similar guy for an hour straight. I even used to have the weird messed up apostrophe, though that was only on my school Chromebook and because I never realized I accidentally changed the keyboard language setting until like 8th grade. It's like hearing about a weird parallel or alternate timeline version of myself.
Internet is just three Tobies in a trenchcoat.
Arbiter Elegantiae underrated comment
The whole world is Toby, except Sarah, but she's just now picking up the clues
Internet is three tobies in a trenchcoat in another trenchcoat with three tobies and it just keeps going
@@DialecticRed it's Tobies all the way down
Shelby B YES I laughed so hard
41:56 "99% of teens would cry themselves dry if J.K. Rowling died.Copy and paste this on your profile if your a member of the 1% who would run through the streets shouting, 'Finally!!!'"
Damn, Darth Idiosy was really ahead of the times on that one
lol
The fact that he's roasting jk makes me think he's also jk
Jk Rowling probably is making her own hate comments on Twitter
Toby is actually JK Rowling and she wrote my immortal
@MB Lmfao she wrote a literal fucking propaganda book under the pseudonym of the guy who invented conversion therapy. "So much for the Tolerant Left."
this is genuinely the most interesting and batshit insane thing i’ve ever seen
this is incredible.
i had no idea that other people were out there pretending to be 50 people and starting their own communities of themselves. it honestly makes me wonder just how many of us are out there; a weird quirk of the combination of severe depression, processing issues, loneliness, and access to the internet that no other society could quite have created.
i used to do something similar; i created many accounts and they often fought with each other, were rude to each other, dated, etc. it was a maladaptive form of imaginary friends, but i also put it to less innocent uses, like vetting people who i was becoming friends with online under fake names and learning about them before they knew i was curious. it actually helped protect me from being abducted once, because i had, through my alt, learned that the person who was trying very hard to meet up with me in real life was lying about key details as their story didn't line up to both my accounts.
the late oughts were a very damaging time to be young, and a lot of our trauma came out in ways nobody had ever seen before, or noticed (i can imagine someone with a similar tendency publishing articles under various names, or op-eds, or whatever, but the ability to have multiple alter egos interacting with people you actually know either online or in real life and have them have no idea it's all you is a very modern thing.
i kinda want to meet this guy, just because i don't know anyone who did this to such a pathological extent as i did (and i did these things up until my early 20s, so i'm not surprised he hadn't quite grown out of it 2 years ago.) i'd be curious to find out if he's been diagnosed with similar mental illness, and if it's a trait of the specific intersection of certain disorders or just a trait some people have a tendency towards.
anyway, great video and fabulous sleuthing, thank you for this content!
i did similar things to when i was pretty young. i was a lonely kid and my way of coping was to make a bunch of accounts,
create friends and interlink them to make a larger friendship group. i didn't have much self-confidence and in real life i struggled making friends because of my body dysmorphia and mental health. it's something i regret to this day as i never told any of the real people involved that i did it and i would have no way to now as i've lost contact with them or the details to any of my accounts from that era. i think that it's much more common than people expect.
i hope you're doing well. it's a hard thing to come to terms with!
What the fuck
Everyone and anyone who claims to have written My Immortal is lying. No one wrote My Immortal. It simply appeared out of the primordial fanfiction ooze that was laying around the site.
That would actually explain a lot. Like the quality, for instance...
@@FadzaiSimango yeah, for all we know, my immortal was the product of a hyper advanced AI that was only able to ascertain information from fanfic sites and was told to use all the data it found to create one. And considering the amount of bs edge as well as the popularity of Harry Potter, that doesn't look too far. It might've been a predecessor to the ai scripted movie scripts that people show on the internet.
@@silverprimus321boi9 This makes total sense!!!!
miku wrote my immortal
K, except it kinda seems as though Toby may well be the very primordial fanfic ooze of which you speak…
"The fact that these accounts only seem to interact with one another."
And yet...they apparently interacted with _you,_ Ms. Z.
Are...are you also Toby...??
That's what I imagine TOBY would say...
*Toby*
Everyone's Toby?
Always have been.
I genuinely expected that at some points i wish i was kidding
Holy shit, imagine if she was actually Toby, and she made a 1 hour video where she just "confesses" to "have discovered" it through digging, but it's actually shit she did years ago. It'd be the greatest twist of this century
This thread is just toby acussing other toby accounts of being fake
I think the actual writer of My Imortal, wrote it, then got distracted probably by school work, exams and by the time they'd finished, just didn't care and had moved on. I bet they don't even know any of this is happening and that's why they never came forward.
Imagine if Sarah was the one who wrote My Immortal, but she has tv style amnesia and doesn’t remember.
Permission to ship all the tobies with each other like the onceler
THIS IS SOMETHING I CAN GET BEHIND
... *permission granted*
permission DENIED
I’m in. When do we start the massive summer camp role play?
@@siennahartle9069 *Now, my children. Join the cult!*
Mystery Inc WISHES they could solve mysteries like us
I mean, on one hand, they do have to have to solve a new case like, once every 2 days. But on the other hand, have they taken a case that the collective mind of the internets been struggling with for 12 years? I dont think so.
I would 100% watch a fanfic mystery show hosted by you two, especially if you had a Mystery Machine
True crime wishes it could be you two
I demand you add PushingUpRoses or Amanda (Swell Entertainment) to your team and then we have RUclips’s own Charlie’s Angels 😁
@@pyxella6020 yikes 😬
I looked a bit on that DeviantArt account (Todd-Gilesbie), and somebody asked if he can still log into Bloosyrists. The question was asked on December 12th, 2014. They got an answer only in April 20th, 2015. The question: "so can you still log into (...)", and the answer states the following: "Sadly, not anymore. It's been like nine years. I can't even log into Midnitegoff anymore. I know it sucks but I don't really care anymore," which makes the date he last logged into Bloosyrists somewhere in early 2006, but still he confessed in 2011, another thing happened in 2009 and he kept mentioning 2008.
It's clear it wasn't him behind My Immortal due to these inconsistencies.
On the topic of Raven, he got another question. "Was the girl 'Raven' that helped co-write MI a real person?"
Answered, "Raven was bad up sadly. Was surprised to see her stories stayed on FFN for so long." AND I CAN'T GET WHAT "BAD UP" MEANS! Made up, maybe?
In 2013 where was a question with "Are you actually back on?"
"Somewhat yeah, I'm not going to make a grand announcement or something, but yeah, I'm back."
Still, we've heard nothing related to MI in 2013 from Todd.
UPDATEEEE
Out of curiosity, I looked up Tara fanfiction and got no useful results. Then, Tara Willow fanfiction appeared as a suggested search. Given that Willow is a character in My Immortal, it looks plausible. I found out it is something from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in fact. Do you think she might have any connection to that fandom, too, given these names? It seems like something someone like Tara Gilesbie would be into. Just a theory.
so i was around at the time all the midnitegoff stuff went down and what your man is leaving out here is that my immortal 2 was probably taken down by him because real tara (i.e. the actual bloodyrists666 account) commented on the story and called him out for impersonating her. he then did a public apology and they apparently reconciled which is why the two accounts are friends. might be somewhere up on waybackmachine, i swear i remember reading all this in real time lol
This is interesting because if Tara did comment saying that Toby was impersonating her that directly contradicts the emails Toby and Tara exchanged, or supposedly exchanged. When Toby apologised for pretending to be her Tara says “I didn’t know you pretended to be me lol that’s weird” (or something similar.
Anyway if this is true my three theories are that one of the two (the comments or the emails) were faked, she just kinda forgot it, or she commented on the fic not knowing Toby was pretending to be her and instead was just angry that he was writing a sequel to her fan fiction.
"He closed his account, and my initial correspondence was over"
* looks down at the play bar to see there's still 50 minutes of video left * "oh it is so not over"
That was my same reaction
Initial is the word you missed then.
Plot twist: Sarah Z was Toby this whole time, and had been planning this fascinating mystery video for over a decade. In fact, she's also Tara and Raven; an epic tale 15 years in the making.
I wish dude
Yep pretty sus she`s definitely toby
every month i watch this video and every time i rewatch im always creeped out by the uncanny valleyness of ebony brown's profile pic
it's a gender swapped picture of hitler iirc
@@myspacepunk i know, i found this out like a few weeks after i commented that LOL still super unsettling tho haha
@@madimelrose oh no, their comment isn't showing up for me, what did they say?
It definitely looks photoshopped to me, I had to pause and absorb just how creepy the different eyes and eyebrows with the wrong placement looked, but now I'm curious if myspacepunk has Definitive Knowledge I'm lacking lol
@@kaitlyn__L oh damn. anyways they said that ebony's pfp was a photoshopped image of a certain german/austrian dictator LOL (weary of saying the name bcos their comment could've been removed for that reason lmao)
Imagine being Tara’s child and finding out your mom wrote the most infamous fanfic of all time. Like it’s a right of passage for her bloodline. Like it’ll be a time honored family tradition within the next 5 or 6 generations.
Are you sure you're not ALSO Toby? I'm not sure I'm not also Toby at this point.
We are all Toby. Toby is all. Toby is one.
I thought that exact same thing too! Wait... Does that mean I'm you?
Statistically speaking, Sarah must be Toby. Everybody else was.
Maybe the real my immortal was the tobys we made along the way.
I. am Toby
Pretty Little Liars wishes it was this complex
Toby is A
Sarah Z T*
Hahaha amazing!
This video only convinced me 100% that Toby was the author of My Immortal... The dyslexia, the trolling, the "hackings", the `s... And most damningly: the name starting with T.
Did you find a quote where Tara uses the weird apostrophe???
@@truebornseeker9767 i haven’t found that, but there’s a solid portion of toby alts where he doesn’t use the weird apostrophe. everything else seems to fit with his patterns
Toby outright admitted to Red Bard he didn't write My Immortal, but that he had contact with the real Tara
I don't think that's the case. Too many inconsistencies arise from considering them the same - how Toby seems to have access to all his old accounts (because a lot of them have resurfaced recently), but not to Tara's original account. The way the start of his involvement with My Immortal coincides with a famous reading of it surfacing on YT and his new claim also coinciding with a My Immortal video on YT, but lack of involvement in the other fake author scandal. The 2008/2009 inconsistency and the way Todd-related stuff was added during that period and then reverted. The way My Immortal is just... better written than, say, the confirmed Todd sequel.
No, I believe the theory of "Todd was not the author, but managed to get access to the account in 2008, and lost it later" fits all of the available evidence much more cleanly than the idea that Toby was My Immortal's author.
Imagine if Toby used his powers for good. He would write phenomenal ARGs