Just want to say I love your vids! Very interesting. I like to keep them on in the background + listen to you talk while I write my own sci-fi/action novel
@@GREGGERS-REE-GREEme too! (but not writing part). I like the longer videos that I can put in the backround and clean. And I catch myself cleaning and then just nodding along when I get to some part I agree with
@@asobimo5532 Nice! I play Chinese music when cleaning / studying but hearing reviews like this are really interesting to listen to when I’m cramming for criminology 🥹
@@o0BlackSand0o actually, it’s not. It’s a whole separate thing with Xiran having a dispute with their publisher due to the publisher withholding edits. There’s a lot of misinformation out there so be careful what you believe, but Ms WOC Reader did a pretty good video on the situation, and Xiran went out of their way recently to clap back at their detractors and correct some of the misinformation on Twitter. But in short, it’s not coming out in a couple months, and very likely won’t see a 2024 release at all.
/Especially/ especially because, if I remember correctly, they started out on RUclips. Not saying it would be ok if Cait referred to them as a RUclipsr first, but calling them a tiktoker first seems very reductive.
As one of the affected authors, I can’t thank you enough, Rachel. Your insight is so deeply appreciated and accurate. You said all my thoughts much more clearly than I could. You are exceptionally brilliant at explaining the truth of what happened while being considerate and mindful of the mental illness/neurodivergent/substance abuse issues and that is greatly appreciated as well. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. ❤
i knew that you were one of the affected authors but i didn't realize it had been that bad. the empire wars looks super interesting and i'll definitely be buying it once it's released
"writing reviews against her will" like she got possessed by the ghost of an angry teenage livejournaler who just wanted to make people on goodreads mad.
She knew she was being racist because it’s too much of a coincidence. Works by POC authors aren’t THAT common that she’d hit that many in one go. Also, that “Lily” convo mentioning racism told on herself. She KNEW how it would seem because she KNEW what she intended.
The "Lily Dialogues" are the biggest giveaway since we know they are Lily. If it wasn't intentional, someone else would have had to point it out to them. Lily knew, ergo Cait knew, QED.
I am an autistic adult and an author. My disgust at this excuse is high. Addiction doesn't make you racist. Autism doesn't make you racist. ADHD doesn't make you racist. Depression doesn't make you racist. Psychosis doesn't make you racist. I was published at 17 in the fantasy genre traditionally experiencing all of that and CPTSD and I still managed to leave white supremacy at the same time. There's no excuse. She's endangering other autistic people and this is in my opinion her harming her victims again. Again.
quite franky being part of these communities gives us way less excuse to be bigotted bc we've experienced the hate that we then pushon others? that make no sense
"led to a series of uncharacteristic actions that were beyond her control" beyond her control aka Cait is taking zero responsibility for what she did. Bullshit.
I saw some commenters under one of Xiran's videos about Cait and how she would often talk bad about cosplayers who she perceived as better than her. Not sure how true this is, but I don't think Cait has changed, I really don't.
The funny Bit is.... If it was one Action, maybe two, i could believe that. I can believe that during a mental breakdown you might do SOME of that shit. Including being racist when normally you wouldnt be, because you want to Hurt someone in that Moment. However, dont we have a serious of calculated steps over a length of time? That doesnt Just Happen, Babe. Thats Not outside of your control
"Uncharacteristic actions" except for all the other times she allegedly did similar things to smaller creators... over the course of several years... in different creative spaces... while also making sure to bookend each session with tweets on her main about how she is the only one BRAVE ENOUGH to speak out about such injustices. It reminds about those posts where people talk about how their abusive partners would constantly "blackout", but somehow only their things were destroyed while the partner's things remained perfectly intact.
I was pretty pissed off she blamed her autism, I’m beyond furious she blamed ADHD medication. It’s so difficult for Americans with ADHD to get medication, they have to jump through hoop after hoop, it’s a nightmare for people with ADHD to keep up with. People are always trying to claim ADHD medication is unsafe and she’s just given them a whole load of ammunition.
idk which team you’re on, but I’ve been team Vyvanse for years and all it does is allow (some, variable) executive function. So it’s clear to us that the meds just enabled them the ability to do things they already wanted to do. Unfortunately, like you said, general public doesn’t know that and anyone hearing of this without personal experience with ADHD meds will think the “medical cocktail” really did “make” her do things “against her will”
Thanks for talking about the medication aspect of adhd. There is so much misinformation about medication and adhd. It so frustrating. Without my medication I wouldn’t be able to function day to day. I equate my meds to a seeing eye dog. A blind person doesn’t have to use one but for some they do. My throat closed up when I saw this comment. Thank you
"The authors I actually targeted" Sounds a hell of a lot like "I'm specifically angry at Xiran for calling me out" to me. But what do I know I'm only a neurodivergent adult with trauma, impulse issues and having been on a few of those meds she named specifically and think it's still all bull.
Cait feels like what I think is called a tender queer, which is queer AAVE for a white queer person who uses the fact that they're queer (or part of another marginalized group) as an counter argument when they're called out for saying/doing racist things. Which reflects a lot in their interview, because it's so clearly more concerned about their puplic image, rather then the actual, and clearly intentional, harm that they caused.
Exactly what I was thinking!! There's also an academic term for that-racing to innocence or racing to the margins. Cait is trying to center their own oppression as a queer ND person rather than accept that their white privilege has caused harm to people of color (including, you know, queer ND PoC), because they want to be the most oppressed person in the room.
White feminism to its core lmao I hate having to argue that yes, being a woman sucks, but white people's oppression has NEVER been the same as poc oppression. There is a distinction. We're fighting the same war, but we're not fighting the same battles.
It's like a Greek tragedy... The person with everything self sabotages and destroys their own future, hurting many innocent people along the way. I feel so bad for the affected authors.
Acting like poc authors can't also be autistic and have ADHD also is pretty racist. It's so othering. No one can truly understand what it's like to be an ADHD autistic white person 🥺 It's so disingenuous.
Cait Corrain is one of the reasons why mental health is still stigmatized to this day. I have ADHD, Anxiety and Depression and I had also been recently diagnosed with PTSD because of my longstanding experience of being bullied at school. I had also recently taken antidepressants and it did not make me a bigot. I hate it when there is no accountability when it comes to their mental health and I hate it even more when people (mainly older generation) blame younger generation's mental health whenever crime happens on the news.
I suffer from PTSD, anxiety, depression, and insomnia (and possibly ADHD and autism) as a result of the near-daily abuse at the hands of my mother. I was hospitalized more than a dozen times from 11 to 18 years old, and I even lost chunks of time from my early teen years because I refused to do anything but lay in bed all day and watch RUclips to numb myself from the hell I was enduring. However. Not one bit of it made me racist. In all of that struggle, I have never once felt bigoted towards any group. I _know_ racism, I grew up with constant microaggressions because of my skin tone and to this day I get ugly looks from people in public when I'm not doing a thing wrong. Corrain will never understand what this feels like. To say that mental illness was the cause of her own bigotry is only making ableists feel they're justified in seeing us as awful people.
As someone who knew Cait personally for several years before this, there's a lot about her that you completely nailed. This behavior was shocking to her former friends but not a surprise - we saw a lot of smaller poor behaviors in fandom like needing to be first, being highly competitive, and thinking she's the best while also having horrible self doubt and this is an explosion of all of those. Being in the publishing world seems like it was so toxic for her that it let all her worse habits get wildly out of control. She is obsessed with identities and absolutely views marginalization as a career boost so she had to claim as many for herself while tearing down others. I wish that was one thing people were more critical of actually - there's a lot she's claimed, exaggerated and lied about that people havent looked at more closely or called out because it's impolite to. Like the autism diagnosis that suddenly appeared in this interview is completely new and surprising to anyone who knew her in real life. On top of that, she loves talking about all her health problems on twitter and yet autism has never been mentioned until right now. I'm autistic myself and I find it so offensive and hurtful that it appears she's suddenly pulled on this new identity like it's a suit of armor. It gives her an excuse for her behavior and allows her to call anyone who criticizes her ableist. She does struggle with some very real health issues in real life, but absolutely exaggerates her physical and mental health problems online to both give herself clout and protect her from scrutiny because everyone knows how terrible it is to accuse people of faking these problems. She's abused the good will and acceptance of the disabled and nd communities. It's been really sad and frustrating to see her do all this.
So she blacked out and managed to make multiple Goodread accounts with multiple emails and passwords? So she blacked out, but managed to name one of the accounts Oh Se Young? So she blacked out, and *specifically* remembers the advance Molly got paid? So she blacked out, and despite “wanting to destroy her life” was able to concoct the whole Lily charade to avoid scrutiny? Cait is doing exactly what AJ Finn did, which is try to make THEMSELVES the victim of THEIR OWN ACTIONS!! She’s grouping herself *in* with the targeted authors. “Damn I can’t believe that happened, my mental health issues is making everyone think I’m racist…” Cait, who could very well be reading this, is a raging ableist. Using real struggles that people have (including your peers!) to justify what can only be described as a pathetic, evil scheme is a spit in the face to people who also struggle with autism, ADHD, and substance abuse.
It is possible to "black out", whether from substance abuse or extreme dissociation, but a person is ALWAYS accountable for their actions. Even if you aren't currently aware of what you did, you must to own up to it.
I COMPLETELY agree with this. The fact that she was grouping all her actions under a complete blackout felt a) dishonest and b) very deliberate. It’s like she was trying to make her review-bombing seem more spontaneous and short-lived out rather than a the decently long-term and complex scheme it was. And her self-victimization is INSANE. She keeps saying she caused harm to “herself and others” throughout the article, and it’s infuriating that the people she inflicted serious mental anguish and career setbacks on are just the suffix to her pity plea. Her review bombing ONLY caused harm to others, and if even if it didn’t, if you sprain your arm stabbing someone in the stomach, whose pain do you think matters more here?
@@celisewillis especially since, if I'm remembering correctly and i probably am because i JUST watched part 1, one batch of these fake accounts was made months before the second but was still used during an apparently separate mental break to attack and review-bomb. my question is - why didn't she delete those accounts when she came out of it, but instead kept them around and remembered the passwords/the passwords to the emails/the emails themselves to use later?
I genuinely don't understand why she keeps digging herself deeper? Was it not enough to be an insecure, petty and racist (sorry, "perceived as racist" 🙄) person (and a bad writer because that fake chat was... woof)? They had to add "autism made me do it" to the list of the accomplishments? Gross. Cait has to stop, take some time, hopefully to actually reflect on everything but I doubt it'll happen. If she can't approach it maturely she has to *let it go*, because even that is better than trying to prove how nothing is her fault.
Yup. Trying to go back into the public eye is the worst thing they could do for their mental health and substance abuse recovery, when fear of how her book would be perceived is what triggered all this to begin with. She needs time to genuinely heal and make progress on admitting to themself what they did, not more attention or last ditch attempts to just make it all go away.
What really bothers me about this interview is Cait's weaponization of their mental health. All while having taken zero accountability for the fact that they've clearly impacted others' mental health. From the in-depth explanation of a psychotic break to saying they were undergoing IV treatments. They also seem disingenuous. From lying to their doctor about how the ketamine use to the refusal acknowledge that they had the chance for MONTHS to take the goodreads reviews down. The refusal to acknowledge the base reasons why they posted the reviews is a problem. And as a result, so many people got hurt. And there's no acknowledgement of that.
yeah there was a purposeful focus on them and their mental health over their incredibly horrible and calculated actions and the impact they had. they can’t even admit that they might've had some unconscious biases that were present during this psychotic break. they don't care about being racist, they care about not being perceived as racist
yeah this is the most telling thing to me. they didnt take the reviews down. i think some explanation is warranted - if u hurt someone in a mental health crisis it makes sense to me to mention - but this is just like. i personally cant accept "im not racist i was having episodes" cos in her supposedly "not racist" lucid state she left the reviews up and was rdy to reap the benefits. hello?!?!?!?
@@Lucifersfursona no im sry its not okay to use drug addiction, arguably the most stigmatized mental illness there is, as the butt of a joke thats making light of racism. u can just say that theyre racist and shitty.
This is a circular case of privilege. The excuses she's making for doing this are exactly what she felt entitled to that led her to commit these actions. Those who aren't in her position don't have the luxury of crying mental health for hurting others. We are blackballed, imprisoned, and attacked, often doing nothing to warrant it.
According to John Wiswell, she’s also behaved like this on an author Slack they’re on, and never apologized to anyone there either. It’s a long established pattern of behavior, not some sudden substance abuse breakdown event.
Here's the problem with Cait's statement at 19:10 Their actions actually do make sense. They make perfect sense. They were jealous and insecure and lashed out at POC authors because they perceived them to be inferior. Period. Their actions were way too clean and logical andmethodical and sustained to be explained away by psychosis. The mere fact that they attempted a cover up proves that they were in a good enough frame of mind to know their actions were wrong, and *EXACTLY HOW THEY WOULD BE PERCEIVED*!! They admitted how it looks in the cover up fake conversation, which means they had the mental capacity to understand it. I don't doubt that they were in a bad mental state. Clearly, they blew up their life over it. But psychosis does not explain their actions in the slightest. Insecurity combined with racism plus alcohol is all the explanation needed here.
I was just thinking that. A Black man in my industry once commented how stuff like this "sticks" to you longer than white folks. If you're late once, you'll be thought of as "that Black guy who's always late". But the white coworkers are more often given tons of slack.
There's something about the way Cait describes the authors she targeted as just people on a list they were going off of seriously rubs me the wrong way. It just seems so dismissive of those authors. And it also just doesn't sound true at all.
@@Ceruleansquid-lo3iv or a list of "people I'm jealous of because..." that she really made the effort to write down a list of debut authors to target really shows she had nothing but revenge for the authors for some imagined slight she thought they did or some self-centered need to hog the spotlight (presumably for more money). that's some kind of (bad) karma she's attracting.
if this list exists, i'd love for Cait to share it - prove that there really was some list they just blindly used to select targets. where's the list, Cait? where's this mythical hit list that you just randomly stumbled into which determined your targets independently of yourself? seems like that'd be good evidence in support of your story so it's weird you haven't produced it! of course, with their track record, they might just try to forge the list lmao. so i wouldn't even trust any list they point to.
Because it ISN'T true. Cait deliberately attacked them bc they were easy targets, seeing as poc authors struggle to be published in the first place. If they lost public interest because of bad reviews, it tell publishers that their stories aren't worth the investment.
Society (white Western society?) has created such a caricature idea of what 'a racist' is that Cait thinks that as long as they don't go around loudly claiming that POC are less-than, they shouldn't be called racist for what they did. Look, I can believe that Cait doesn't go about their everyday life consciously (!!) hating POC or believing POC are less deserving. But their actions were definitely fueled by a racist bias, making them target these authors specifically and making them act as though their other marginalizations clear them of their white privilege.
Yeah, reminds me of a tumblr post that people should stop thinking about being a racist, misogynist, homophobe etc as titles and more like constant actions that lead to patterns of behaviour. People think of nothing but a caricature of a redneck Trump loving republican when it comes to bigotry that they'd talk about how queer and progressive and neurodivergent they are bc they see it as a title
You are brilliant at these Edit: I kinda wish I covered this more in this style. It’s a great explanation of exactly how everything they are saying falls apart. I just felt… idk exhausted? at the idea of giving Cait more breath. It just sucks how much air in the room she is taking up.
Thank you, sir! Nah I think you did a great job just as you did it. It’s an exhausting topic, if I hadn’t chugged a monster before this I probably wouldn’t have done this video at all.
They wanted that article out so that when they release the book via self-pub, that they're hoping they'll be able to attract a "guilt-free" audience. Self-sabotaging their life has consequences and now that they can see how lucky they were, they're trying to catch water with a sieve.
You know what would have been believable? "I internalized a lot of racist beliefs growing up, and I've tried to unlearn them as an adult. When I felt most vulnerable and disconnected I fell back into old habits and thought patterns that are harmful and I feel horrible about it. I have tried very hard to do the work and clearly it hasn't been enough and I am so sorry to the people I hurt with my actions. I will continue to do the work and hope that I can be forgiven in time." Admit the harm, admit that you fucked up, promise that you're trying to do better and that you will do better. That's what she needed to do. Instead we get this revisionism. It isn't helping. It's making her look either so un-self-aware that she believes this, or so small and self-conscious that she wants people to believe it and give her credit for not doing a horrible thing that she did do. Alright I'm only halfway through the video time to go finish it, I had that running through my head and wanted to get it out.
as someone with some pretty socially debilitating neurodivergence, i've never become suddenly racist during a psychotic break (which i have had multiple) and CERTAINLY wouldn't have thought to try and make up a fake person as a patsy to pin any awful behaviour on after the fact
My first mental breakdown, I couldn't function at ALL. I was hyperventilating, tearing my hair out, breaking mirrors because I hated the sight of myself... ain't no way I could've made multiple accounts to make myself feel better. I couldn't even get up off the floor.
My point exactly. No one is talking about the fake psychosis, probably because it's so misunderstood. Ive had many psychotic episodes. You cannot even function while psychotic. The only way i'd maybe believe this is if all those fake accounts were commenting complete jibberish lmao. But even then, the calculated logistics of this attack completely rules out psychosis as a diagnosis. Frankly it is offensive she is claiming this since psychosis is a life threatening, dangerous state to be in. It is beyond terrifying in a way that transcends human existence.
This was bothering me too. It reeked of Cait using the extremely mischaracterization and ableistic take neurotypicals and the media have on psychosis as a smokescreen to justify their shitty behaviour. THAT FURTHERS ABLEISM. A lot of us get incarcerated and institutionalized for no good reason for behaviour that doesn't even reach this levels of heinous premeditation and moral wrongness so to use that as a smoke bomb while also crying ableism is so harrowingly disgusting. Congrants on making it worse for EVERYBODY else so they can excuse themselves out of behaviour that has nothing to do with it
As a high-functioning autistic person myself who has addiction in my family and struggles heavily with chronic mental illness, the fact that Cait is trying to hide her scheming and racism behind being autistic is gross and infuriating. Autism does not lead one to go on long, drawn out, CALCULATED behind the scenes plot to ruin almost exclusively people of colour, that is caused by racism. They don't like being perceived as racist, maybe Cait shouldn't be so openly more concerned with their own reputation, how much they DoN't LiKe HoW PeOpLe ThInK i'M rAcIsT nOw, over the actual impact they had on the people they hurt. To Cait it's literally all about Cait, and to me, the constant pushing of their mental health and substance abuse is just another manipulation to try and make themself the victim, because they can't handle the fact that they were wrong and have been subsequently punished and judged publicly in accordance with their own actions. They don't want to be thought of as a racist? Maybe don't target people of colour and then constantly self-victimize and deflect when you receive backlash (not to mention calling what they did racist in the form of their "fake friend who REALLY did all this awful stuff" like, COME ON.) Autism is not a get out of jail free card for garbage behaviour and racism, and people like Cait Corrain using it as a shield in that way hurts the rest of us, and gives more fuel to ableists who want to claim that we all just make everything up.
and!! MEDICATION!!! DOES NOT MAKE YOU??? MAKE A SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNT? ? what a crock of nonsense, they're literally just grasping at any straw they can to try and make what they did Not Their Fault, and as someone who takes an entire cocktail of pills for mental and physical conditions, it's honestly insulting.
And after watching more of the video, and what she says about her struggles with drugs and ketamine injection… I understand taking the easy route I understand just wanting to feel better for a few hours even if you know you’ll feel like shit in the long run but imagine knowing how people of color are medically mistreated, especially around mental health and around anything with medication/stereotypes of drug seeking and your just out here asking us to pity you because you were it shouldn’t be like this, but honestly privileged enough to even be able to lie to a doctor that you legit needed more meds? I was treated like a fucking anxious drug seeker for asking for asthma steroids that actually make me feel like shit because my medical presentation is a little abnormal, and I said that out front. They accused me of just being anxious and wanting drugs and when that rightfully made me anxious because I literally could not fucking breathe it just got worse. Man sorry for the language Rachel I try to be mad respectful on this channel, but genuinely fuck this person
the way corrain said "the people affected by my actions" and such had me grinding my teeth. passive language is avoiding accountability 101. like, no, those are the people YOU harmed. and there's no way it isn't deliberate.
while i sympathize with people struggling with addiction and other mental health struggles as i have them myself…none of those things make you racist. Being racist entails….acting like a racist. She’s truly trying to dodge responsibility from something SHE did. Rather than centering herself, she needs to listen to those who are hurt.
I've learned from someone in the cosplay community (in the comments of your last video, no less) that this isn't new behaviour. She used to do a bunch of cosplays of characters from Blizzard & Bioware IPs but got kicked out of the community for causing drama and then playing the victim. So her trying to get big with Crown of Starlight was essentially her trying to get a fresh start in a new community, but fucked herself due to her inability to not be the centre of attention.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Cait is trying to rehabilitate her reputation in preparation to eventually publish again, whether it be through self publishing or with a publisher. While her contract with Del Rey and her relationship with her prior agent aren’t going forward, I wouldn’t put it past an agent and/or publisher with less morals to take her on if she doesn’t just self pub, especially since comments sections for coverage of this in the past have shown that there is a vocal minority of like minded racist people have shown they feel she’s the wronged party.
Someone needs to sit them down and tell them that racism isn't a symptom of mental illness. I empathize with their mental health struggles, having them myself, but you cannot sit here and excuse the blatant racist motivations behind their actions. They should have just stayed quiet and unpacked all this with a therapist, not doubled down and made it worse.
As a former journalist, I will say that this is absolutely in part on the journalist. Yes, sometimes people will lie to you and there’s no way to verify what they said but some of this stuff is easily verifiable if you take the time. And also, part of the job is making decisions on who deserves a voice. This is just plain bad journalism. Side note: whenever you see parentheses inside a quote like that, those words were inserted by the journalist to add clarity. Love your work as always, Rachel!
Gah, exactly! The whole time Rachel was reading it, I was thinking “Why didn’t they ask anybody else for comment? The harmed authors? A psychiatrist who might counter some of her claims? Anyone?”
Honestly, reading the article I thought the journalist did a good job of giving Cait exactly enough freedom to screw herself over. Everything Cait is reported to have said is such a disaster for her. No one could have thought those quotes looked good for Cait (except Cait, I guess). It read to me like a hit piece that was somehow directed by the target.
@@annie_1718 I agree with you to some extent. However, the job of a journalist is about more than just relaying what a person says. Good journalists provide context and pushback. For instance, if you have someone who says the earth is flat and you decided to give them a voice for some reason, you wouldn’t just present what they said without saying AT LEAST “despite zero evidence, John says the earth is flat.” And I think the story would have accomplished the same thing if they had centered the victims without letting Cait be the center of attention. Even if they left the interview with Cait as is, they still should have tried to get the voice of a victim in the story as well. Even if the end result accomplished a goal of making Cait look worse, this wasn’t the best or most professional way to accomplish it.
This situation a perfect example of,”Drunk words are sober thoughts.” You can’t change what you don’t acknowledge. They will never be able to move forward without doing some very hard and uncomfortable work on themselves.
A thing that people don't seem to recognize is that even if Cait's actions weren't consciously racist, then they perpetuated Bigotry in their ignorance in that they centered themselves and their marginalizations and erased the struggles and similar marginalizations off the people that they targeted. Also, I wonder if, as people continue to say this article changes nothing they are still perceived as racist, will they bring up the new account you were talking about at the end as the "example" that it wasn't just marginalized authors?
Yep, if you were in a black out and made up a fake Asian name to review bomb a book, surprise(?)- your racist. I think people believe if they admit they're racist they think there's no coming back from it, and really that's where the work begins. If they have any interest in really doing "work." It's true some people will write them off forever, that's called consequences.
Autistic adult here. Diagnosed only four years ago, in my mid 40s. I got so angry about this I had to stop watching. It's not an excuse. It's not an excuse or a reason. Clearly her social challenges didn't keep her from understanding that she was deliberately being racist, because her alter ego Lily pointed it out in so many words. Women of my hue leaning on neurodivergence as an excuse for bad behavior against marginalized people is something I keep seeing, and it feels like the new "tears." Meanwhile she had the privilege of a diagnosis, which in my observation seems even harder for POC to get, and their neurodivergence is held against them more, and they may need to mask more to lower the chance of being a target. She needs to sit down and be quiet. Forever.
Same. I had to stop watching because I was getting upset. Autistic people already have enough to worry about, then this asshole come into our space claiming to be one of us to use it as an excuse for racism. I’m so, so tired of this behaviour.
Being a white marginilezed person means you always have a special channel of grace you are offered by white supremacy that you can tap into by harming POCs. It makes you feel special and privileged beyond what the interconected system of -isms actually makes you to live through but it is extremely conditional on how well you can be an agent of it. You have to do three times the work in harming others to make up for your "deviations" from the norm and when you are no longer useful you get trampled on. It is extremely performative and hinders on conditional acceptance. That is what I personally matured over the years of being a marginalized white person myself who refuses to harm others in consciously malicious ways. I have yet to understand what pushes some people to embrace that instead of the warmth and joy of a diverse community
Cait needs to LET IT GO. Maybe reflect on your internal biases and why you're being "perceived" as a racist instead of insisting you aren't racist. Cait never got the memo that she doesn't get to make that call. 7:13 exactly this!
the whole thing makes me think of a post i saw a while back about how white people will instantly start bringing up things like being queer or neurodivergent the Moment it looks like we're in hot water about race (which only detracts from the actual issue, despite those factors being valid outside of this context) this was such a well put video, and i appreciate you highlighting the affected authors so consistently!
She’d rather detail her medical information to the world than reach out and apologize to the people she harmed. 🤦🏾♀️ I can sympathize with her struggles but we don’t need to know all that especially since none of it makes you racist. I don’t believe the targeting of POC authors was just a coincidence and her lack of accountability is disappointing but expected at this point. Thanks, Rachel! I’ve been obsessed with your channel lately especially your ABB series. You always make me think (and laugh) and I really appreciate you! ❤
Yeah, this amount of oversharing is a red flag. Like how James Somerton started his apology video in a hospital gown 🙄 This stuff is incredibly personal information to be discussed with therapists and loved ones, not weaponized to elicit sympathy 😅
I just have to say, I don't believe that they posted those reviews while in a blackout state, given that it was maintained over time. Making multiple email accounts and keeping up with them shows forethought and intentionality. I believe her account of her substance abuse, but I don't believe that everything was done in a blackout state or that there was no underlying racism that informed her actions.
As someone who is autistic & has ADHD (diagnosed as an adult and everything!), every time I see someone use any type of npf as an excuse for this sort of thing something in me dies. This wasn't a random breakdown, this was planned out with lists & fake email accounts & fake names of specific ethnicities like. There's this thing, where people will excuse horrible racist behavior just cause the person (usually a white teenage boy) has autism. And yes, because we tend to be more isolated from our peers (and might lack social experience/warning bells) we are vulnerable to fall into extremist groups and occasionally might not completely understand a situation or similar, but that does not mean autism = racism free card. There was a video some time ago about a girl harassing a black woman with racist slurs & attacking her, and people kept going "no its fine she's autistic she doesn't understand" & similar things & and I just. I'm so tired. Racism isn't some kind of inherent thing. It's learned. You don't just start yelling racist slurs out of nowhere, you've heard those from somewhere & been told (consciously or subconsciously) by your environment to use them. The fact that shes so obviously trying to hide behind her issues (which are obviously rough to deal with) like this was just a lil oopsie & not a methodical & targeted attack is so infuriating too me.
"actually targeted" sounds like they're still trying to claim that most of the affected authors were just caught in the crosshairs because of what lists that they were on. as if cait had a list of people she WANTED to hurt (and it was NOT a racist list, for sure!!!) and everyone else was just an oopsie.
Cait Corrain's need to continually use her mental illness as a shield against very valid criticism is beyond disgusting. It's foul. As several people have commented already; being autistic, depressed, suicidal and taking several medications DOES NOT make you racist. When I've been deep down in the darkest trenches the only thing I've ever been able to write is "I hate myself and I want to kms", not have this three-dimensional chessplaying jealous racist scheme like a bad Bond villain. God I'm so angry. And like you said, she only alienates the people who would understand her, and continues to do so by trying to use mental illness as an excuse.
This whole drama is mind boggeling but I'm glad it happened because I found Voyage of the Damned because of it, which is one of my top reads of all time now xD
What pissed me off as someone who has mental health struggles of their own is their utter lack of responsibility and blaming everything on her mental illness. She literally says that "it was out of her control" when she was review bombing others. It was just disgusting! The only and I mean only thing that she cared about was telling the world that she wasn't racist. Mental health, addiction, new medication, etc do not make someone racist, and her blaming anyone or anything other than herself and her own biases is disingenuous at best and purposefully harmful at worst!
Even if their actions weren't in their control (wich they perfectly were) they could have deleted the accounts in a brief moment of clarity (they straight admitted in this they didn't want to do) and were also given ample time to apologize in private before the issue had to be escalated. The aftermath was fully in their control
Using autism as an excuse is disgusting. I have a son who is autistic, and like yours takes things literally, he has a new pair of headphones for Xmas every year and has always needed help with school to the point that he couldn't cope with mainstream schooling, he's now nineteen and hasn't yet graduated high school(he does this year) because of those struggles, and he would never judge another person in any way, he's more likely to empathize with someone being victimized than to victimize a person himself
Congratulations to your son for finishing high school! My son is also autistic and also has so much empathy for the people around him, I could never imagine him doing anything like this. I couldn't imagine his ASD/neurodivergent friends doing this. It's so awful to stigmatize neurodivergent people, the world already places so much judgement and assumptions on anyone different than them.
As someone who is queer, ND and Jewish but also biracial, queer ND Jews are people, and like all people, a few of us are racists. I haven't come across it very often, but I have come across it. One ND Jewish person I came across actually told me that he couldn't be racist against Indigenous Australians because his half brother was "mouri". That's how he spelled it, and wrote it with a lower case letter. This is after he had said particularly racist things about Blackfellas.
anytime anyone gets caught doing something like this online they suddenly have a whole lot to say about how suicidal they were 💀 like okay and?? is racism stored in the suicidal thoughts orrrr
As an autistic author with ADD and depression, I am so sick of people using diagnoses like mine as an excuse for bad behavior. (See also: criminals on trial using "autism" as a shield for, oh, assault and murder.) Sigh. Plenty of autistic people, and people with other diagnoses, live their lives without being racist and/or criminals.
Disabilities can provide reduced capacity in the case of certain crimes(eg, FASD in the case of crimes of impulse). It’s not the same thing as blaming autism on being racist.
Only 15 minutes in but I need to vent. Open letter to Corrain: Look, as someone who is LGBTQ+, had dyslexia since I was 6, is likely neurodivergent but was never tested (even though the autism card was played repeatedly on my behalf to explain my behavior), had alcoholic grandparents (one died, the other replaced it with smoking), AND is certainly affected by trauma, depression, anxiety and dissociation.... you are not excused if you use any of your trauma and shortcomings as an excuse for racism and if you are racist that's a you problem, it is UP TO YOU to take feedback on diverse opinions about race and racism to be more conscious about race, while also putting in the work to be better despite your trauma. I am so fucking sick of people being excused (on their own accord and behalf) BECAUSE of their mental statuses and disorders. Yes, it's hard to get accommodation, people will fall and be in crisis, and people will do things that will hurt others when they don't think right or can't control themselves because they are on medication, and no body is perfect and won't learn the same way. But that doesn't excuse the fact you are or did things that are RACIST, and are using your minority and health cards to get out of it. It doesn't excuse the fact you WANTED to hurt others. Learn about it, own up to it and stop whining for pity. Pity gets you nowhere in life, no matter who you are. And stop letting others enable you to play those cards or enable others to play them on your behalf when it's not your place to do so, that can be so hurtful and perpetuate stereotypes about the communty(s) you're in.
You lost me at minority card and mental health card too, but especially the first because white people have taken that fake concept to create literal white privilege cards at our expense for their “satire”. My fuckin identity and mental illness aren’t a card that I get to present when I’m in danger or in trouble. They’re often a source of danger to my life. You may have considered that before you wrote that and put it into the world. Like I see where you thought you were going but then you went way in the other direction
Just wanted to say, that since adult diagnosis of ADHD and autism is both difficult and expensive that self diagnosis is legitimate. I live in a country with universal health care, it took my 4 years to find someone to do an adhd assessment and it cost over $700. If you feel like autism describes who you are, that's okay. Most people in the ND community recognise that not everyone can find or afford an assessment.
@@angelawossname Thank you for the assurance. I don't like to describe myself as autistic currently because my mom would weaponize traits she perceived as autistic and also refused to get me tested even though she brought me to physical therapy for it (where I ended up having a breakdown). It was a very strange environment and I'm not sure if I have autism or ADHD or both or neither, partially because of all that. I do think that self-diagnosis can be helpful for many people but I haven't found it as helpful partially because of my experience and past miseducation on neurodivergence. I do relate to a lot of ADHD content so I might reconsider that, but for now I'll just go with "maybe".
@dragoness777 it sucks you've had those experiences. My dil had similar issues, and it took her years before she was ready to seek out an assessment. She also had some internalised ablism going on, which is completely understandable but I'm glad she got therapy to work through it. But if you are ever ready to reach out and join the ND community, just know that you don't need an official diagnosis to be accepted.
Cait doesn't actually apologize in this article. They say they *want to* apologize, which isn't the same thing. Telling people that they deserve an apology is not actually apologizing to them, just like me saying that I want to go to the gym tomorrow doesn't mean I'm working out right now. Also, I'm so tired of people in a PR crisis deciding that that's the time to turn around and start "educating" people on whatever issue it is that they think will make everything okay. This whole article felt like "don't blame me! blame my mental illness and addiction!" and I just wish there had been some accountability. Any accountability. All this feels like in the end is "please stop being mean to me" Also, also - this kind of behaviour happens a lot with fanfic authors who are obsessed with reviews and comparisons, and the only thing that saves them in that community is the fact that everyone uses a pen name, so they can just delete their account and start over. This time, they have their real name attached, so escaping from their own actions is a lot harder.
I did not go after Cait directly during the first series. But then they did this... and then I simply replied what the debacle was about to someone else above me in a short factual post. Cold. And then Cait blocked me. That doesn't sound like someone who wants to have accountability at all. For reference all I posted was this: "Made goodreads accounts to downvote only PoC debut authors' books, got caught, was offered a way out, doubled down, made a really bad Photoshop post with horrible dialogue as an excuse, got caught hating on the fandom she came from. Blamed her mental illness. Blamed now autism." That's it. Wasn't at them. Not at their account, merely replying. And blocked. That's not the mental headspace to take responsibility, I think. I should note that I'm NB, generally queer, PoC, ND and have a family history of C-PTSD (4 branches of my family, tbh, since I'm also an adoptee). I take absolutely no joy in hunting down people. I'm more interested in the social justice parts such as trying to say racism is caused by mental illness, ND, etc. I have Sensory Processing Disorder and get episodes of Dissociation. And still I cannot fathom this. They had what I would have loved. BTW, another author said they told Cait that autism doesn't cause racism on Twitter. Cait then made yet another Goodreads account and then downvoted their books the next day--fresh new account. That author was autistic and PoC. I reported that account to Goodreads. Goodreads took it down within 24 hours. But yeah... contrition doesn't seem like what they are going for. Cait isn't asking, how do I then make amends?
I think what feels so disingenuous is that the comments she left are logical- driven by jealousy for specific reasons. So maybe the mental illnesses and substances lowered their inhibitions but they didn’t manufacture those feelings or how she responded when she was clear headed
In vino veritas or drunken words are sober thoughts. Their struggles might have pulled down any sort of barrier they might have had for this behaviour but the racism itself was always brewing deep in them somehow. The lid came off the pot and it stinks, doesn't mean that the lid made it reek so much
Im not racist - I'm ACTUALLY queer, and neuro-divergent, and suffer from addictions! No one understands what it's like to be me! This isn't a pattern of behaviour that i have exhibited before! What the FUCK.
Haven’t even watched this yet and I just look at the title, say “oh no!” And immediately click. Edit: oMg… they need to stop. But I sense another flare up of this on the horizon. 🙈
Same! I forgot how the last one ended and went "There's MORE? What have they done now??" edit: holy shit there actually is more. I assumed I had an error in memory but I guess not.
I really, really, REALLY wish people would freaking learn what psychosis is actually like so people will STOP using it to excuse their actions! Psychosis DOES NOT make someone some super villain who is able to carry out elaborate schemes with multiple different sockpuppet accounts AND then turn around and try to cover up their tracks when they're called out on it! That is NOT what psychosis is! Psychosis involves beliefs with are fundamentally illogical and actions which are not appropriate for the situation. If someone is in a psychotic state, they probably wouldn't be able to type in a single password to an account, let alone do it a dozen times over! Psychotic thinking is fundamentally DISORGANIZED, you can't think logically and you often can't follow through step-by-step plans or expectations simply because your brain is moving at a mile per minute and you need to do SOMETHING NOW. Like, if she actually DID do all of this in a psychotic state, then she must have ALREADY HAD the accounts made beforehand and had their passwords SAVED on her computer and ready to do whenever! Psychotic people post illogical rants on their Facebook page for hours and days at a time because Facebook often logs you in automatically and their page is right there when you go on there, but, if it doesn't immediately log them in, then 99.9% of the time they're locked out because they just can't think straight enough to put in the password and jump onto some other thing that might make it stop. Plus, NOTHING in the article addresses the accusations that came BEFORE the reviewbombing or even the accusations that Cait has ALWAYS treated other people cruelly in every single space she's been a part of.
I've seen a few people mention how this whole thing is reminiscent of fandom but I feel like the direct connections have seldom been made (the eye sphere touched upon it). And you're SPOT ON about their fanfiction days!! This is 100% drama you would see in fandom, down to the obsession with stats (hits, favorites, bookmarks in AO3). The review bombing makes me believe that in their fandom days they might have gone on anon to leave bad comments, etc. Also to point out the racism present in some of the factions of Reylo (yes, not at all reylos but enough that it has been deemed a consistent problem by journalists and academics who do fandom studies). I don't think they deserve a deep dive or a fandom exhumation but I think there is something to be said there. More and more authors will have written fic at some point--so many use it as a learning exercise over going to school for English or creative writing. Unfortunately some might keep some bad habits from their time in fandom 💀
Black person here. Not burning crosses in people’s front yards does not mean you are not racist. Having black/POC friends does not mean you are not racist. Cait definitely seems to care more about public perception than actually learning and addressing anything.
you really hit the nail on the head with "You didn't harm the people who harmed you, you harmed the people just like you." thank you for all the thoughtful, informed videos💗
The source of racist actions is racism. Unconscious or not. Addressing *that* (like, in therapy, not on a public platform) should be the priority, not the way the public perceives them. As a transgender, bisexual man with ADHD and a Jewish dad, I am not exempt from bigotry. I am still capable of being misogynistic, homophobic, racist, ableist, or just an asshole. The pain of these marginalised authors cannot be understated, and reputational damage control won't do much to make the community forget the damage. I hope not, at least.
[EDIT] Yeahno, that was a class in using therapy and social justice language to dodge responsibility and gaslight (yes) the public about your actions and current feelings. Miss me with that. Can't say the rest of what I'm thinking but I am. Not happy. 🙃 [Original Comment] Very, very not interested in hearing another piss-poor set of excuses from this person, and I am not super thrilled she was given a platform again. But I also clicked on this video as soon as I saw you had posted it, so I am trusting and counting on you to provide something of value (ideally a smackdown) here. 😮
As someone who is diagnosed & taking ADHD medications, I really can't understand how simply changing medications started her off on this plot to bring people down (primarily marginalized folk). Sometimes changing meds can be shitty - I had to swap meds for a short period bc of shortages (during a very stressful period of academic burnout) and it felt like the mental equivalent of a rubber band snapping against skin - but I never had jealous urges or desire to sabotage my peers/be racist, let alone the lack of impulse control to *act on it* for an extended period of time the way Corrain did. There's already stigma against medications for mental illness, so it's just awful of this author to push the blame for their actions onto that.
Yeah, as a person on ADHD medicine, my side effects are like... upset stomach if I take the wrong one and not being hungry. I haven't ever decided "oh boy, I'm going to be racist because I switched!"
yep, my side effects were either "wow, I finally can do stuff" or "I feel nauseous/I need to remember to unclench my jaw/I don't feel hunger for 12h straight but I sure feel like shitting my bowels out" never racism or jealousy or anything like that
There is, unfortunately, a proportion of people who believe that ADHD medication can induce psychotic breakdowns, and that the people who take it are psychotic.
i actually do have insight on this- a family member of mine had a particularly bad meds switch that made them psychotic in the literal sense of the word. I can actually believe that anger, jealousy, outbursts, acting in ways you usually wouldn't, would be side effects of meds switches. I've seen it firsthand. but not bigotry- that was already there. nothing causes you to be racist. But in an incredibly halfhearted, lukewarm, and reluctant defense of cait, it isn't impossible for a meds switch to cause a prolonged state of being... basically an entirely different person. but again, the bigotry isn't from that, and also in cait's situation it's almost definitely an excuse either way. but some people do have really fucking bad reactions to med switches- that wasn't entirely bullshit.
My big issue with the "psychotic break" claim is that "if it doesn't make sense, it is because it doesn't make sense to anyone who isn't in it" The problem is that everything she did makes perfect sense. It is very clear WHY this was done and has a clear motive and plan, not something you generally would expect to see from someone having a break from reality. She even tried to cover and hide the actions she took. I am not saying she didn't suffer from everything she claims, I just don't think she wrote the reviews while it was happening.
26:30 -- When there are words in [square brackets] in an quote, then it absolutely is the author rewording the interviewee's quote to help make it make sense to the reader. Usually, it's because the author is pulling the quote from a larger conversation, so the interviewee used vague words or pronouns instead of the name of the subject/object their sentence. But when removed from the broader conversation as a pull quote in an article, the context is lost and the author adds the specific subject/object into the quote in [square brackets]. My assumption is the unedited quote Cait said was along the lines of "I think that they are allowed to be..." which didn't give enough context in the article, so it was changed "I think that [the authors I actually targeted] are allowed to be..." and noted with the square brackets. Now WHY the author chose "the authors I actually targeted" as the replacement? It's phrased in such a way that I doubt a journalist would write it that way themselves, so my guess is that it's another quote from Cait from another point in the conversation.
I read this article yesterday and honestly couldn't believe she had the audacity. She's just reiterating the bullshit points she made in her original 'apology'. Also the journalist who platformed her instead of the writers affected by her behaviour who deserve it more should really have known better.
This reminds me of Roseanne trying to say that ambien was the reason she made racist tweets, although much worse because it also attempts to blame mental illness for bigotry
S - State what you did A - Acknowledge the harm T - TAKE ACCOUNTABILITY N - NEVER do the specific action that you did that caused the harm to begin with again
them trying to use autism as a shield is a special kind of disgusting. They were fully aware of the harm they were causing and they told on themself. Autism doesn't make anybody malicious.
So I have a pretty unique perspective on Cate, so I can actually relate a lot to Cate’s struggles, I’m autistic, I’ve struggled with mental illness my entire life, I’ve also struggled with alcohol and addiction, been to a mental hospital, and I have also done the Spravato (ketamine) treatment for depression and have had negative responses to it as well. BUT, I am a nonbinary person of color (I’m mixed btw) so here’s where my problem is, it’s explainable but not excusable. Yes I have all these things that impact my life on the daily but it is my responsibility to not make my struggles other people’s responsibility, if I fuck up and do something foolish I need to take accountability for it point blank period no matter how bad my life is in the gutter I have to own up to my own actions and take accountability for it. To me Cate seems like someone who needs to get a lot of help and just totally be off the internet in general as it seems bad for their mental health and they really need to take time and reflect as to why specifically they felt this amount of fear and hatred towards these specific authors and then make a sincere apology because rn they are not in any position to apologize rn and fully mean that they’re sorry. I don’t believe Cate is sorry I think they’re sorry they got caught and is now having their blatant racism exposed before they could get their book money. But that’s just what I think, I could be wrong.
Yeah honestly, like it's not about listing what sort of conditions you have to force "forgiveness" out of the other person but apologising and talking about your mental health problems with Ur therapist instead. The other person shouldn't have to bear the weight of your health. But I genuinly think Cait believes the stuff she says as it paints the best picture of herself, even when a lot of the stuff might only semi-contributed to her actions. It's concerning because it reminds me of an angsty teenager - the 'I-can-do-no-wrong-unless-Im-a-victim-of-something' mentality
I'm also autistic, and my sympathy for her was low at the start (addiction doesn't make ya racist and whatnot) but hearing her mention her autism makes me roll my eyes. Like yes queen stigmatized us more as if we don't already have enough of it! and everytime I hear someone saying that they have this or that, I don't care what they have to say. ya not taking accountability for ya actions ya apology is just empty words.
"I'd rather try and make the people I hurt feel guilty for putting such an awful lable on me than admit that while my intentions may not have been racist my actions were" is such a weird fucking take I can't
I am an autistic person who has had some pretty severe meltdown on people, both strangers and those close to me. I have an incredible amount of guilt about these moments while simultaneously understanding it wasn’t my fault that I didn’t have the skills to self-regulate at the time, but even in my worst times, I didn’t say racist, ableist things. These things don’t just “come out” because you’re having an ugly moment.
As someone with both autism and schizophrenia, I just want to emphasize that my psychotic episodes have never made me racist. Its insulting that Corrain wants to use this as an excuse
If she was sorry, they’d publish the whole list of who she targeted and put as much effort into promoting those books as they once did to destroy them. Apologies aren’t about restoring your image. They’re about healing the damage you did. And she’s shown absolutely no interest in helping these authors at all.
I want to thank Rachel for acknowledging that sometimes, our actions *can* be out of our control. As someone who has experienced moments of psychosis, the amount of dismissal that conditions that take away your rational thinking are treated with can be very hurtful and scary. Sometimes we are not in control of our actions. BUT, as Rachel also said, what matters is what you do after it, and that you do your best to make up for any harm you might have caused, and that you take immediate steps to get help to avoid a repeat incident! Subconscious racism might surface when in the grips of an altered mental state. The *wrong* thing to do after is go crying "I'm not racist" without even making amends. Apologize. Make amends. Work on whatever subconscious baggage you are carying around, if possible with the help of a professional. Doing the work and showing up to become better is what matters.
That part about psychotic person's actions not making sense to anyone else is so weird because Cait's actions MADE sense, considering they are a racist, petty person who wanted to take their insecurities out on authors of colour. People start smear campaigns, badmouth and even defame others all the time! Just because it's a horrible thing to do and still some do it doesn't make it an extension of psychosis and I'm just so fucking horrified it's now on a published article for all to see! An honest, open conversation about mental illness and addiction can lead to good things but Cait is not the one who gets to lead it after doing that much damage. I feel like their obsession with being a social justice trailblazer is in play here as well, and competitiveness is not a trait we need more of in challenging stigmas related to mental illness and addiction.
Can Cait Corrain please just take some accountability and leave the rest of us out of their non-apology? They just casually dragged everyone with ADHD, autism, depression, and substance abuse into this the same way they previously tried to drag in all the Reylo fans. Cait did those things. The substances and mental health struggles did not do those things on their own. I'll spare Cait a grain of sympathy for their difficulties when they've spared some for their victims, and not a moment before.
I'm absolutely not going to diagnose Cait Corrain, I'm only a psychology student, I don't know her personally, and this is definitely not the place for it. However, regarding mental issues, as I've learned it, the basic sudden Psychotic breakdown makes people unfocused, unable to keep coherent conversations, jumping from one subject to another. It's an acute disorder that makes people very agitaded and attached to a delirious idea. The psychotic breakdown related to substance intoxication also makes people rather unable to stay on message or keep up conversations. People suffering from these episodes are not very good at planning, or able to keep up a lie for long, they are disconected on one or many basic awareness categories (space-time orientation, self-recognition, recognizing others, etc). Everything I've seen from Cait Corrain indicates a very deliberate and planned way of doing things. I'm not saying she didn't had a psychotic episode, maybe she did, but using that and her neurodivergent conditions as a cop-out it's unconsionable. I'm also neurodivergent. We shouldn't use our conditions and vulnerable moments as an excuse for bad behavior, it makes it harder for all of us.
Psychology student here too! Its really despicable. Its true that our mental illnesses and neurodivergence can influence us to act in certain ways but like… they still did the thing, you know? Neurodivergent or not, anyone who does bad things is influenced by something but no one gets a get out of jail free card. I mean i have borderline features and as a teen, i was prone to explosive angry outbursts and it affected all my personal relationships. I acted in so many ways that is not okay, and though i can see how my mental illnesses influenced my behavior, i still acted in ways that are not acceptable and treated people badly. I did those things and i had to take ownership of them. I mean really for me there is something empowering about owning up to the things you done. Nobody likes being held accountable, but i feel like it can be powerful to take ownership. Because when i didnt, i just felt like a robot with faulty programming on autopilot. Owning up might suck, but for me making excuses and denying myself agency and accountability made me feel so much worse.
Person with psychosis here: everything you said is spot on. The whole point of it is a break from reality whetever by positive symptoms (things your brain adds to reality that are not there) and negative symptoms (behavioral and cognitive abilities that get taken from you and make you non operational). How can someone who has a break in reality be functional enough in it to pull this? News is they don't, I speak from experience even though every person's psychotic break is unique to them. This to me is a major red flag that they are putting in an unrelated experience they had for brownie points because it takes two seconds to notice that their consistent pattern and actions are completly incompatible with the nature of psychosis itself
It really bothers me whenever someone blames addiction for certain actions. Drugs/alcohol just lower inhibitions, they’re not complete personality changers. They don’t suddenly turn someone racist or even violent. They do, however, take already racist thoughts/beliefs and cause them to feel easier to express.
As someone diagnosed type 1 bipolar and autistic it makes me very upset to see the word “manic/mania” thrown around to describe someone who isn’t bipolar. Bipolar people struggle enough with the stigma surrounding psychosis and mania but even in psychotic episodes, I HAVE NEVER BEEN RACIST AND CALCULATED. Psychosis is characterized by disorganized behavior. Who tf is buying this
Thank you so much for this video! I’m so angered by this as a ethnic minority who has severe clinical depression and experience of psychotic breaks. I wouldn’t dream of using it as a way to get out of hurting multiple other people with the same issues
Them stating repeatedly that their actions were not motivated by racism is an excuse that only applies if they are the main character of reality. (I wouldn't be surprised if they saw themselves that way). It doesn't matter if you personally have nothing against POC, your ACTIONS were racist. Clearly they are racist but them insisting otherwise indicates their callous disregard for the harm they did to anyone other than themselves.
I’ve always said that mental illness is not the excuse it’s the explanation. That you are still held accountable for the things you do, but when you fail people can also understand what the root cause of it is.
![ARGENTINA vs. PERÚ [1-0] | RESUMEN | ELIMINATORIAS SUDAMERICANAS | FECHA 12](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/xtI25ENDDSY/mqdefault.jpg)
Don’t be ableist in my comments. Don't diagnose her with things, and say "sounds like XYZ medical diagnosis". That's ableist.
Just want to say I love your vids! Very interesting. I like to keep them on in the background + listen to you talk while I write my own sci-fi/action novel
@@GREGGERS-REE-GREEme too! (but not writing part). I like the longer videos that I can put in the backround and clean. And I catch myself cleaning and then just nodding along when I get to some part I agree with
@@asobimo5532 Nice! I play Chinese music when cleaning / studying but hearing reviews like this are really interesting to listen to when I’m cramming for criminology 🥹
@@GREGGERS-REE-GREE how can you write while listening to someone speak? Not trying to be confrontational, just curious 😊
@@celisewillis No worried, I just can. I tune it out, but I know that someone's talking / a video's playing, so that's not total silence.
when people are more upset about being perceived racist than actual racism...😐😑
This
Oh no! 🙈
the usual
Preach.
Ah, you’ve met my mother, I see
The fact that Xiran Jay Zhao is referred to as TikToker first and author second is sooooooooooo fucked.
Yeah I am. What???
Especially since their sequal 'heavenly tyrant' is coming out in a few months
@@o0BlackSand0o actually, it’s not. It’s a whole separate thing with Xiran having a dispute with their publisher due to the publisher withholding edits. There’s a lot of misinformation out there so be careful what you believe, but Ms WOC Reader did a pretty good video on the situation, and Xiran went out of their way recently to clap back at their detractors and correct some of the misinformation on Twitter. But in short, it’s not coming out in a couple months, and very likely won’t see a 2024 release at all.
/Especially/ especially because, if I remember correctly, they started out on RUclips. Not saying it would be ok if Cait referred to them as a RUclipsr first, but calling them a tiktoker first seems very reductive.
@cakt1991 damn. I pre-ordered it a month ago! Hopefully the publisher stops messing around soon
As one of the affected authors, I can’t thank you enough, Rachel. Your insight is so deeply appreciated and accurate. You said all my thoughts much more clearly than I could. You are exceptionally brilliant at explaining the truth of what happened while being considerate and mindful of the mental illness/neurodivergent/substance abuse issues and that is greatly appreciated as well. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. ❤
I'll be buying and reading your book. I'm so sorry this happened to you
Bookish Realm did an amazing video as well. I highly recommend watching it as well
I'm excited to read your book too! :)
I pre-ordered your book immediately after hearing about all this. I am so excited to read it.
i knew that you were one of the affected authors but i didn't realize it had been that bad. the empire wars looks super interesting and i'll definitely be buying it once it's released
"writing reviews against her will" like she got possessed by the ghost of an angry teenage livejournaler who just wanted to make people on goodreads mad.
She knew she was being racist because it’s too much of a coincidence. Works by POC authors aren’t THAT common that she’d hit that many in one go. Also, that “Lily” convo mentioning racism told on herself. She KNEW how it would seem because she KNEW what she intended.
Fr like hitting that many books by poc wouldn’t happen unless she was perusing diverse fantasy lists on goodreads
AND she used fake names that were clearly coded to seem like they were reviews FROM people of color !!!!
The "Lily Dialogues" are the biggest giveaway since we know they are Lily. If it wasn't intentional, someone else would have had to point it out to them. Lily knew, ergo Cait knew, QED.
110%
right, I was thinking, "statistically, that is pretty unlikely, considering the sample size."
I am an autistic adult and an author. My disgust at this excuse is high. Addiction doesn't make you racist. Autism doesn't make you racist. ADHD doesn't make you racist. Depression doesn't make you racist. Psychosis doesn't make you racist.
I was published at 17 in the fantasy genre traditionally experiencing all of that and CPTSD and I still managed to leave white supremacy at the same time.
There's no excuse. She's endangering other autistic people and this is in my opinion her harming her victims again. Again.
THAT PART!!!! You are right.
quite franky being part of these communities gives us way less excuse to be bigotted bc we've experienced the hate that we then pushon others? that make no sense
I have all that and more yet I still don’t act like a discriminatory ahole!
THIS 🙌🙌
@@AutsiticAlien007 legit i also smoke weed and drink but it doesn't make me racist likei don't know hat she thinks shes donig
This is minor, but how DARE they call NYT #1 bestseller Xiran Jay Jhao a "TikToker"
"led to a series of uncharacteristic actions that were beyond her control" beyond her control aka Cait is taking zero responsibility for what she did. Bullshit.
Also she "super duper changed" in a month. She is trying to show herself as both blameless and absolved.
I saw some commenters under one of Xiran's videos about Cait and how she would often talk bad about cosplayers who she perceived as better than her. Not sure how true this is, but I don't think Cait has changed, I really don't.
The funny Bit is.... If it was one Action, maybe two, i could believe that. I can believe that during a mental breakdown you might do SOME of that shit. Including being racist when normally you wouldnt be, because you want to Hurt someone in that Moment.
However, dont we have a serious of calculated steps over a length of time? That doesnt Just Happen, Babe. Thats Not outside of your control
"Uncharacteristic actions" except for all the other times she allegedly did similar things to smaller creators... over the course of several years... in different creative spaces... while also making sure to bookend each session with tweets on her main about how she is the only one BRAVE ENOUGH to speak out about such injustices.
It reminds about those posts where people talk about how their abusive partners would constantly "blackout", but somehow only their things were destroyed while the partner's things remained perfectly intact.
What do you mean? My mental illness regularly makes me go on a months long, carefully crafted hate campaigns designed to advance my career. /s
I was pretty pissed off she blamed her autism, I’m beyond furious she blamed ADHD medication. It’s so difficult for Americans with ADHD to get medication, they have to jump through hoop after hoop, it’s a nightmare for people with ADHD to keep up with. People are always trying to claim ADHD medication is unsafe and she’s just given them a whole load of ammunition.
I wasn't aware of that... That makes this whole disgusting thing even worse.
idk which team you’re on, but I’ve been team Vyvanse for years and all it does is allow (some, variable) executive function. So it’s clear to us that the meds just enabled them the ability to do things they already wanted to do. Unfortunately, like you said, general public doesn’t know that and anyone hearing of this without personal experience with ADHD meds will think the “medical cocktail” really did “make” her do things “against her will”
Thanks for talking about the medication aspect of adhd. There is so much misinformation about medication and adhd. It so frustrating. Without my medication I wouldn’t be able to function day to day. I equate my meds to a seeing eye dog. A blind person doesn’t have to use one but for some they do. My throat closed up when I saw this comment. Thank you
"The authors I actually targeted" Sounds a hell of a lot like "I'm specifically angry at Xiran for calling me out" to me. But what do I know I'm only a neurodivergent adult with trauma, impulse issues and having been on a few of those meds she named specifically and think it's still all bull.
That would be hilarious because she actually did review bomb my book as well lol, just that it was many 3 stars instead of 1 or 2 like the others
Cait feels like what I think is called a tender queer, which is queer AAVE for a white queer person who uses the fact that they're queer (or part of another marginalized group) as an counter argument when they're called out for saying/doing racist things.
Which reflects a lot in their interview, because it's so clearly more concerned about their puplic image, rather then the actual, and clearly intentional, harm that they caused.
Exactly what I was thinking!! There's also an academic term for that-racing to innocence or racing to the margins. Cait is trying to center their own oppression as a queer ND person rather than accept that their white privilege has caused harm to people of color (including, you know, queer ND PoC), because they want to be the most oppressed person in the room.
White feminism to its core lmao I hate having to argue that yes, being a woman sucks, but white people's oppression has NEVER been the same as poc oppression. There is a distinction. We're fighting the same war, but we're not fighting the same battles.
Exactly this
It's like a Greek tragedy... The person with everything self sabotages and destroys their own future, hurting many innocent people along the way. I feel so bad for the affected authors.
Seems like it would be a better Greek story than the book.
Part Greek tragedy, part Mr. Bean.
@@valerielevasseur8674has there ever been a Mr Bean as Greek tragedy sketch because I would watch that.
Heaven is here if you want it phenomenon
@@valerielevasseur8674this is one of the best things I’ve seen anyone say in my entire life, thank you so much /gen
The _precision._
really tired of people pretending their intentions are more important than their impact
100%. That, along with explanation vs excuse, often used when talking about mental health.
Acting like poc authors can't also be autistic and have ADHD also is pretty racist. It's so othering. No one can truly understand what it's like to be an ADHD autistic white person 🥺 It's so disingenuous.
It’s giving ‘Yes, I believe I have suffered the most because of the actions of Bojack Horseman’ -Bojack Horseman
Cait Corrain is one of the reasons why mental health is still stigmatized to this day. I have ADHD, Anxiety and Depression and I had also been recently diagnosed with PTSD because of my longstanding experience of being bullied at school. I had also recently taken antidepressants and it did not make me a bigot. I hate it when there is no accountability when it comes to their mental health and I hate it even more when people (mainly older generation) blame younger generation's mental health whenever crime happens on the news.
I suffer from PTSD, anxiety, depression, and insomnia (and possibly ADHD and autism) as a result of the near-daily abuse at the hands of my mother. I was hospitalized more than a dozen times from 11 to 18 years old, and I even lost chunks of time from my early teen years because I refused to do anything but lay in bed all day and watch RUclips to numb myself from the hell I was enduring.
However. Not one bit of it made me racist. In all of that struggle, I have never once felt bigoted towards any group. I _know_ racism, I grew up with constant microaggressions because of my skin tone and to this day I get ugly looks from people in public when I'm not doing a thing wrong. Corrain will never understand what this feels like. To say that mental illness was the cause of her own bigotry is only making ableists feel they're justified in seeing us as awful people.
100 hundred percent. Infuriating.
As someone who knew Cait personally for several years before this, there's a lot about her that you completely nailed. This behavior was shocking to her former friends but not a surprise - we saw a lot of smaller poor behaviors in fandom like needing to be first, being highly competitive, and thinking she's the best while also having horrible self doubt and this is an explosion of all of those. Being in the publishing world seems like it was so toxic for her that it let all her worse habits get wildly out of control. She is obsessed with identities and absolutely views marginalization as a career boost so she had to claim as many for herself while tearing down others. I wish that was one thing people were more critical of actually - there's a lot she's claimed, exaggerated and lied about that people havent looked at more closely or called out because it's impolite to. Like the autism diagnosis that suddenly appeared in this interview is completely new and surprising to anyone who knew her in real life. On top of that, she loves talking about all her health problems on twitter and yet autism has never been mentioned until right now. I'm autistic myself and I find it so offensive and hurtful that it appears she's suddenly pulled on this new identity like it's a suit of armor. It gives her an excuse for her behavior and allows her to call anyone who criticizes her ableist. She does struggle with some very real health issues in real life, but absolutely exaggerates her physical and mental health problems online to both give herself clout and protect her from scrutiny because everyone knows how terrible it is to accuse people of faking these problems. She's abused the good will and acceptance of the disabled and nd communities. It's been really sad and frustrating to see her do all this.
THIS!!!
(This is a silly aside but) "A Campaign of Resentment and Jealousy" sounds like a hit new edgy fantasy title.
Can confirm, I'd read that 😂
"A ___ Of ___ And ___", the same format we've been seeing for years
@@thetotaleclipse84 and I am damn sick of it
So she blacked out and managed to make multiple Goodread accounts with multiple emails and passwords? So she blacked out, but managed to name one of the accounts Oh Se Young? So she blacked out, and *specifically* remembers the advance Molly got paid? So she blacked out, and despite “wanting to destroy her life” was able to concoct the whole Lily charade to avoid scrutiny?
Cait is doing exactly what AJ Finn did, which is try to make THEMSELVES the victim of THEIR OWN ACTIONS!! She’s grouping herself *in* with the targeted authors. “Damn I can’t believe that happened, my mental health issues is making everyone think I’m racist…”
Cait, who could very well be reading this, is a raging ableist. Using real struggles that people have (including your peers!) to justify what can only be described as a pathetic, evil scheme is a spit in the face to people who also struggle with autism, ADHD, and substance abuse.
It is possible to "black out", whether from substance abuse or extreme dissociation, but a person is ALWAYS accountable for their actions. Even if you aren't currently aware of what you did, you must to own up to it.
I COMPLETELY agree with this. The fact that she was grouping all her actions under a complete blackout felt a) dishonest and b) very deliberate. It’s like she was trying to make her review-bombing seem more spontaneous and short-lived out rather than a the decently long-term and complex scheme it was. And her self-victimization is INSANE. She keeps saying she caused harm to “herself and others” throughout the article, and it’s infuriating that the people she inflicted serious mental anguish and career setbacks on are just the suffix to her pity plea. Her review bombing ONLY caused harm to others, and if even if it didn’t, if you sprain your arm stabbing someone in the stomach, whose pain do you think matters more here?
@@celisewillis especially since, if I'm remembering correctly and i probably am because i JUST watched part 1, one batch of these fake accounts was made months before the second but was still used during an apparently separate mental break to attack and review-bomb. my question is - why didn't she delete those accounts when she came out of it, but instead kept them around and remembered the passwords/the passwords to the emails/the emails themselves to use later?
I genuinely don't understand why she keeps digging herself deeper?
Was it not enough to be an insecure, petty and racist (sorry, "perceived as racist" 🙄) person (and a bad writer because that fake chat was... woof)? They had to add "autism made me do it" to the list of the accomplishments? Gross.
Cait has to stop, take some time, hopefully to actually reflect on everything but I doubt it'll happen. If she can't approach it maturely she has to *let it go*, because even that is better than trying to prove how nothing is her fault.
As just about everyone's mother has said at one point or another, if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all.
Yup. Trying to go back into the public eye is the worst thing they could do for their mental health and substance abuse recovery, when fear of how her book would be perceived is what triggered all this to begin with. She needs time to genuinely heal and make progress on admitting to themself what they did, not more attention or last ditch attempts to just make it all go away.
I think she may be hoping that she'll be able to do a redemption "apology" campaign and still have some kind of career.
Is sticking to your guns in an untenable situation a sign of narsasizm?
What really bothers me about this interview is Cait's weaponization of their mental health. All while having taken zero accountability for the fact that they've clearly impacted others' mental health. From the in-depth explanation of a psychotic break to saying they were undergoing IV treatments. They also seem disingenuous. From lying to their doctor about how the ketamine use to the refusal acknowledge that they had the chance for MONTHS to take the goodreads reviews down. The refusal to acknowledge the base reasons why they posted the reviews is a problem. And as a result, so many people got hurt. And there's no acknowledgement of that.
yeah there was a purposeful focus on them and their mental health over their incredibly horrible and calculated actions and the impact they had. they can’t even admit that they might've had some unconscious biases that were present during this psychotic break. they don't care about being racist, they care about not being perceived as racist
...
Kait “Ketamine” Korrain
Listen it’s an actual multitool of an insult let me have this-
yeah this is the most telling thing to me. they didnt take the reviews down. i think some explanation is warranted - if u hurt someone in a mental health crisis it makes sense to me to mention - but this is just like. i personally cant accept "im not racist i was having episodes" cos in her supposedly "not racist" lucid state she left the reviews up and was rdy to reap the benefits. hello?!?!?!?
@@Lucifersfursona no im sry its not okay to use drug addiction, arguably the most stigmatized mental illness there is, as the butt of a joke thats making light of racism. u can just say that theyre racist and shitty.
This is a circular case of privilege. The excuses she's making for doing this are exactly what she felt entitled to that led her to commit these actions. Those who aren't in her position don't have the luxury of crying mental health for hurting others. We are blackballed, imprisoned, and attacked, often doing nothing to warrant it.
According to John Wiswell, she’s also behaved like this on an author Slack they’re on, and never apologized to anyone there either. It’s a long established pattern of behavior, not some sudden substance abuse breakdown event.
Yikes. Hopefully this will FINALLY get it through their head that they can NOT treat people like that.
Here's the problem with Cait's statement at 19:10
Their actions actually do make sense. They make perfect sense. They were jealous and insecure and lashed out at POC authors because they perceived them to be inferior. Period.
Their actions were way too clean and logical andmethodical and sustained to be explained away by psychosis. The mere fact that they attempted a cover up proves that they were in a good enough frame of mind to know their actions were wrong, and *EXACTLY HOW THEY WOULD BE PERCEIVED*!! They admitted how it looks in the cover up fake conversation, which means they had the mental capacity to understand it.
I don't doubt that they were in a bad mental state. Clearly, they blew up their life over it. But psychosis does not explain their actions in the slightest. Insecurity combined with racism plus alcohol is all the explanation needed here.
This article is VERY generous, had an author of color done the same I don’t think they would be given the same grace.
I was just thinking that. A Black man in my industry once commented how stuff like this "sticks" to you longer than white folks. If you're late once, you'll be thought of as "that Black guy who's always late". But the white coworkers are more often given tons of slack.
There's something about the way Cait describes the authors she targeted as just people on a list they were going off of seriously rubs me the wrong way. It just seems so dismissive of those authors. And it also just doesn't sound true at all.
If they were all on any list without other people, it would probably be something like "debut authors of color," so...
@@Ceruleansquid-lo3iv or a list of "people I'm jealous of because..."
that she really made the effort to write down a list of debut authors to target really shows she had nothing but revenge for the authors for some imagined slight she thought they did or some self-centered need to hog the spotlight (presumably for more money). that's some kind of (bad) karma she's attracting.
if this list exists, i'd love for Cait to share it - prove that there really was some list they just blindly used to select targets. where's the list, Cait? where's this mythical hit list that you just randomly stumbled into which determined your targets independently of yourself? seems like that'd be good evidence in support of your story so it's weird you haven't produced it! of course, with their track record, they might just try to forge the list lmao. so i wouldn't even trust any list they point to.
Because it ISN'T true. Cait deliberately attacked them bc they were easy targets, seeing as poc authors struggle to be published in the first place. If they lost public interest because of bad reviews, it tell publishers that their stories aren't worth the investment.
Besides, weren’t at least some of them in a group chat with her? Wasn’t she friendly with some of them?
Society (white Western society?) has created such a caricature idea of what 'a racist' is that Cait thinks that as long as they don't go around loudly claiming that POC are less-than, they shouldn't be called racist for what they did. Look, I can believe that Cait doesn't go about their everyday life consciously (!!) hating POC or believing POC are less deserving. But their actions were definitely fueled by a racist bias, making them target these authors specifically and making them act as though their other marginalizations clear them of their white privilege.
Yeah, reminds me of a tumblr post that people should stop thinking about being a racist, misogynist, homophobe etc as titles and more like constant actions that lead to patterns of behaviour. People think of nothing but a caricature of a redneck Trump loving republican when it comes to bigotry that they'd talk about how queer and progressive and neurodivergent they are bc they see it as a title
You are brilliant at these
Edit: I kinda wish I covered this more in this style. It’s a great explanation of exactly how everything they are saying falls apart. I just felt… idk exhausted? at the idea of giving Cait more breath. It just sucks how much air in the room she is taking up.
Thank you, sir!
Nah I think you did a great job just as you did it. It’s an exhausting topic, if I hadn’t chugged a monster before this I probably wouldn’t have done this video at all.
They wanted that article out so that when they release the book via self-pub, that they're hoping they'll be able to attract a "guilt-free" audience.
Self-sabotaging their life has consequences and now that they can see how lucky they were, they're trying to catch water with a sieve.
You know what would have been believable? "I internalized a lot of racist beliefs growing up, and I've tried to unlearn them as an adult. When I felt most vulnerable and disconnected I fell back into old habits and thought patterns that are harmful and I feel horrible about it. I have tried very hard to do the work and clearly it hasn't been enough and I am so sorry to the people I hurt with my actions. I will continue to do the work and hope that I can be forgiven in time." Admit the harm, admit that you fucked up, promise that you're trying to do better and that you will do better. That's what she needed to do. Instead we get this revisionism. It isn't helping. It's making her look either so un-self-aware that she believes this, or so small and self-conscious that she wants people to believe it and give her credit for not doing a horrible thing that she did do.
Alright I'm only halfway through the video time to go finish it, I had that running through my head and wanted to get it out.
the thing is I don't think she actively tried to unlearn her racist beliefs...
saw this upload and my first reaction was to audibly whisper, "oh no, what now?" aajksd gflkjfglskj
YEP SAME HERE
Me when i aajksd gflkjfglskj
Same I was like 'how is there MORE discourse'
I saw this in my recommended and was like "oh, I GOTTA see" in that "this is a train wreck" way.
@@lizabethhampton4537 for real the way i RUSHED to hit play!!
So ready for corrain part 2: the corraining
Having watched most of it... I wasn't ready
electric boogaloo
Part 2: This time it’s…err…personal-errr!
as someone with some pretty socially debilitating neurodivergence, i've never become suddenly racist during a psychotic break (which i have had multiple) and CERTAINLY wouldn't have thought to try and make up a fake person as a patsy to pin any awful behaviour on after the fact
My first mental breakdown, I couldn't function at ALL. I was hyperventilating, tearing my hair out, breaking mirrors because I hated the sight of myself... ain't no way I could've made multiple accounts to make myself feel better. I couldn't even get up off the floor.
My point exactly. No one is talking about the fake psychosis, probably because it's so misunderstood. Ive had many psychotic episodes. You cannot even function while psychotic. The only way i'd maybe believe this is if all those fake accounts were commenting complete jibberish lmao. But even then, the calculated logistics of this attack completely rules out psychosis as a diagnosis.
Frankly it is offensive she is claiming this since psychosis is a life threatening, dangerous state to be in. It is beyond terrifying in a way that transcends human existence.
This was bothering me too. It reeked of Cait using the extremely mischaracterization and ableistic take neurotypicals and the media have on psychosis as a smokescreen to justify their shitty behaviour. THAT FURTHERS ABLEISM. A lot of us get incarcerated and institutionalized for no good reason for behaviour that doesn't even reach this levels of heinous premeditation and moral wrongness so to use that as a smoke bomb while also crying ableism is so harrowingly disgusting. Congrants on making it worse for EVERYBODY else so they can excuse themselves out of behaviour that has nothing to do with it
As a high-functioning autistic person myself who has addiction in my family and struggles heavily with chronic mental illness, the fact that Cait is trying to hide her scheming and racism behind being autistic is gross and infuriating. Autism does not lead one to go on long, drawn out, CALCULATED behind the scenes plot to ruin almost exclusively people of colour, that is caused by racism. They don't like being perceived as racist, maybe Cait shouldn't be so openly more concerned with their own reputation, how much they DoN't LiKe HoW PeOpLe ThInK i'M rAcIsT nOw, over the actual impact they had on the people they hurt. To Cait it's literally all about Cait, and to me, the constant pushing of their mental health and substance abuse is just another manipulation to try and make themself the victim, because they can't handle the fact that they were wrong and have been subsequently punished and judged publicly in accordance with their own actions. They don't want to be thought of as a racist? Maybe don't target people of colour and then constantly self-victimize and deflect when you receive backlash (not to mention calling what they did racist in the form of their "fake friend who REALLY did all this awful stuff" like, COME ON.) Autism is not a get out of jail free card for garbage behaviour and racism, and people like Cait Corrain using it as a shield in that way hurts the rest of us, and gives more fuel to ableists who want to claim that we all just make everything up.
and!! MEDICATION!!! DOES NOT MAKE YOU??? MAKE A SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNT? ? what a crock of nonsense, they're literally just grasping at any straw they can to try and make what they did Not Their Fault, and as someone who takes an entire cocktail of pills for mental and physical conditions, it's honestly insulting.
"Mental health is not an excuse for my actions" they say, continuing to use mental health as an excuse for their actions...
And after watching more of the video, and what she says about her struggles with drugs and ketamine injection… I understand taking the easy route I understand just wanting to feel better for a few hours even if you know you’ll feel like shit in the long run but imagine knowing how people of color are medically mistreated, especially around mental health and around anything with medication/stereotypes of drug seeking and your just out here asking us to pity you because you were it shouldn’t be like this, but honestly privileged enough to even be able to lie to a doctor that you legit needed more meds? I was treated like a fucking anxious drug seeker for asking for asthma steroids that actually make me feel like shit because my medical presentation is a little abnormal, and I said that out front. They accused me of just being anxious and wanting drugs and when that rightfully made me anxious because I literally could not fucking breathe it just got worse. Man sorry for the language Rachel I try to be mad respectful on this channel, but genuinely fuck this person
I don’t like using the hand clapping emoji, but this damn comment deserves a 👏 hand 👏 clapping 👏 emoji. Well said.
the way corrain said "the people affected by my actions" and such had me grinding my teeth. passive language is avoiding accountability 101. like, no, those are the people YOU harmed. and there's no way it isn't deliberate.
while i sympathize with people struggling with addiction and other mental health struggles as i have them myself…none of those things make you racist. Being racist entails….acting like a racist. She’s truly trying to dodge responsibility from something SHE did. Rather than centering herself, she needs to listen to those who are hurt.
I've learned from someone in the cosplay community (in the comments of your last video, no less) that this isn't new behaviour. She used to do a bunch of cosplays of characters from Blizzard & Bioware IPs but got kicked out of the community for causing drama and then playing the victim. So her trying to get big with Crown of Starlight was essentially her trying to get a fresh start in a new community, but fucked herself due to her inability to not be the centre of attention.
Wowwww. This comment needs more views
I heard this too on one of Xiran's videos about Cait, that she would talk shit about other cosplayers she perceived to be better than her.
@@randompromises1038jeez. The insecurity runs deep.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Cait is trying to rehabilitate her reputation in preparation to eventually publish again, whether it be through self publishing or with a publisher. While her contract with Del Rey and her relationship with her prior agent aren’t going forward, I wouldn’t put it past an agent and/or publisher with less morals to take her on if she doesn’t just self pub, especially since comments sections for coverage of this in the past have shown that there is a vocal minority of like minded racist people have shown they feel she’s the wronged party.
Someone needs to sit them down and tell them that racism isn't a symptom of mental illness. I empathize with their mental health struggles, having them myself, but you cannot sit here and excuse the blatant racist motivations behind their actions. They should have just stayed quiet and unpacked all this with a therapist, not doubled down and made it worse.
Somehow, I'm all that comes to mind is a shocked Pikachu face by the sheer audacity of still blaming everyone else and claiming the victim.
As a former journalist, I will say that this is absolutely in part on the journalist. Yes, sometimes people will lie to you and there’s no way to verify what they said but some of this stuff is easily verifiable if you take the time. And also, part of the job is making decisions on who deserves a voice. This is just plain bad journalism. Side note: whenever you see parentheses inside a quote like that, those words were inserted by the journalist to add clarity. Love your work as always, Rachel!
THANK YOU! they made the decision to platform this weirdo bc they know people are searching for it and want to pop up in the results 🫤
@@celisewillis it’s either that (which is highly likely) or they failed in their due diligence. Both are bad, baaaad journalism.
Gah, exactly! The whole time Rachel was reading it, I was thinking “Why didn’t they ask anybody else for comment? The harmed authors? A psychiatrist who might counter some of her claims? Anyone?”
Honestly, reading the article I thought the journalist did a good job of giving Cait exactly enough freedom to screw herself over. Everything Cait is reported to have said is such a disaster for her. No one could have thought those quotes looked good for Cait (except Cait, I guess). It read to me like a hit piece that was somehow directed by the target.
@@annie_1718 I agree with you to some extent. However, the job of a journalist is about more than just relaying what a person says. Good journalists provide context and pushback. For instance, if you have someone who says the earth is flat and you decided to give them a voice for some reason, you wouldn’t just present what they said without saying AT LEAST “despite zero evidence, John says the earth is flat.” And I think the story would have accomplished the same thing if they had centered the victims without letting Cait be the center of attention. Even if they left the interview with Cait as is, they still should have tried to get the voice of a victim in the story as well. Even if the end result accomplished a goal of making Cait look worse, this wasn’t the best or most professional way to accomplish it.
This situation a perfect example of,”Drunk words are sober thoughts.” You can’t change what you don’t acknowledge. They will never be able to move forward without doing some very hard and uncomfortable work on themselves.
A thing that people don't seem to recognize is that even if Cait's actions weren't consciously racist, then they perpetuated Bigotry in their ignorance in that they centered themselves and their marginalizations and erased the struggles and similar marginalizations off the people that they targeted.
Also, I wonder if, as people continue to say this article changes nothing they are still perceived as racist, will they bring up the new account you were talking about at the end as the "example" that it wasn't just marginalized authors?
Exactly. I honestly do believe that Cait may not have *consciously* been racist, but that unconscious racism is still there regardless!
Yep, if you were in a black out and made up a fake Asian name to review bomb a book, surprise(?)- your racist. I think people believe if they admit they're racist they think there's no coming back from it, and really that's where the work begins. If they have any interest in really doing "work." It's true some people will write them off forever, that's called consequences.
Autistic adult here. Diagnosed only four years ago, in my mid 40s. I got so angry about this I had to stop watching. It's not an excuse. It's not an excuse or a reason. Clearly her social challenges didn't keep her from understanding that she was deliberately being racist, because her alter ego Lily pointed it out in so many words. Women of my hue leaning on neurodivergence as an excuse for bad behavior against marginalized people is something I keep seeing, and it feels like the new "tears." Meanwhile she had the privilege of a diagnosis, which in my observation seems even harder for POC to get, and their neurodivergence is held against them more, and they may need to mask more to lower the chance of being a target. She needs to sit down and be quiet. Forever.
Same. I had to stop watching because I was getting upset. Autistic people already have enough to worry about, then this asshole come into our space claiming to be one of us to use it as an excuse for racism. I’m so, so tired of this behaviour.
Being a white marginilezed person means you always have a special channel of grace you are offered by white supremacy that you can tap into by harming POCs. It makes you feel special and privileged beyond what the interconected system of -isms actually makes you to live through but it is extremely conditional on how well you can be an agent of it. You have to do three times the work in harming others to make up for your "deviations" from the norm and when you are no longer useful you get trampled on. It is extremely performative and hinders on conditional acceptance.
That is what I personally matured over the years of being a marginalized white person myself who refuses to harm others in consciously malicious ways. I have yet to understand what pushes some people to embrace that instead of the warmth and joy of a diverse community
Cait needs to LET IT GO. Maybe reflect on your internal biases and why you're being "perceived" as a racist instead of insisting you aren't racist.
Cait never got the memo that she doesn't get to make that call.
7:13 exactly this!
Exactly this. Her writing career is done. She needs to shut up, move back into her parents house and do some serious growing up.
the whole thing makes me think of a post i saw a while back about how white people will instantly start bringing up things like being queer or neurodivergent the Moment it looks like we're in hot water about race (which only detracts from the actual issue, despite those factors being valid outside of this context)
this was such a well put video, and i appreciate you highlighting the affected authors so consistently!
She’d rather detail her medical information to the world than reach out and apologize to the people she harmed. 🤦🏾♀️ I can sympathize with her struggles but we don’t need to know all that especially since none of it makes you racist. I don’t believe the targeting of POC authors was just a coincidence and her lack of accountability is disappointing but expected at this point.
Thanks, Rachel! I’ve been obsessed with your channel lately especially your ABB series. You always make me think (and laugh) and I really appreciate you! ❤
Yeah, this amount of oversharing is a red flag. Like how James Somerton started his apology video in a hospital gown 🙄 This stuff is incredibly personal information to be discussed with therapists and loved ones, not weaponized to elicit sympathy 😅
I just have to say, I don't believe that they posted those reviews while in a blackout state, given that it was maintained over time. Making multiple email accounts and keeping up with them shows forethought and intentionality. I believe her account of her substance abuse, but I don't believe that everything was done in a blackout state or that there was no underlying racism that informed her actions.
As someone who is autistic & has ADHD (diagnosed as an adult and everything!), every time I see someone use any type of npf as an excuse for this sort of thing something in me dies. This wasn't a random breakdown, this was planned out with lists & fake email accounts & fake names of specific ethnicities like. There's this thing, where people will excuse horrible racist behavior just cause the person (usually a white teenage boy) has autism. And yes, because we tend to be more isolated from our peers (and might lack social experience/warning bells) we are vulnerable to fall into extremist groups and occasionally might not completely understand a situation or similar, but that does not mean autism = racism free card. There was a video some time ago about a girl harassing a black woman with racist slurs & attacking her, and people kept going "no its fine she's autistic she doesn't understand" & similar things & and I just. I'm so tired. Racism isn't some kind of inherent thing. It's learned. You don't just start yelling racist slurs out of nowhere, you've heard those from somewhere & been told (consciously or subconsciously) by your environment to use them.
The fact that shes so obviously trying to hide behind her issues (which are obviously rough to deal with) like this was just a lil oopsie & not a methodical & targeted attack is so infuriating too me.
"actually targeted" sounds like they're still trying to claim that most of the affected authors were just caught in the crosshairs because of what lists that they were on. as if cait had a list of people she WANTED to hurt (and it was NOT a racist list, for sure!!!) and everyone else was just an oopsie.
Cait Corrain's need to continually use her mental illness as a shield against very valid criticism is beyond disgusting. It's foul. As several people have commented already; being autistic, depressed, suicidal and taking several medications DOES NOT make you racist. When I've been deep down in the darkest trenches the only thing I've ever been able to write is "I hate myself and I want to kms", not have this three-dimensional chessplaying jealous racist scheme like a bad Bond villain.
God I'm so angry. And like you said, she only alienates the people who would understand her, and continues to do so by trying to use mental illness as an excuse.
This whole drama is mind boggeling but I'm glad it happened because I found Voyage of the Damned because of it, which is one of my top reads of all time now xD
helllll yeah
What pissed me off as someone who has mental health struggles of their own is their utter lack of responsibility and blaming everything on her mental illness. She literally says that "it was out of her control" when she was review bombing others. It was just disgusting! The only and I mean only thing that she cared about was telling the world that she wasn't racist. Mental health, addiction, new medication, etc do not make someone racist, and her blaming anyone or anything other than herself and her own biases is disingenuous at best and purposefully harmful at worst!
Even if their actions weren't in their control (wich they perfectly were) they could have deleted the accounts in a brief moment of clarity (they straight admitted in this they didn't want to do) and were also given ample time to apologize in private before the issue had to be escalated. The aftermath was fully in their control
Using autism as an excuse is disgusting.
I have a son who is autistic, and like yours takes things literally, he has a new pair of headphones for Xmas every year and has always needed help with school to the point that he couldn't cope with mainstream schooling, he's now nineteen and hasn't yet graduated high school(he does this year) because of those struggles, and he would never judge another person in any way, he's more likely to empathize with someone being victimized than to victimize a person himself
Congratulations to your son for finishing high school! My son is also autistic and also has so much empathy for the people around him, I could never imagine him doing anything like this. I couldn't imagine his ASD/neurodivergent friends doing this. It's so awful to stigmatize neurodivergent people, the world already places so much judgement and assumptions on anyone different than them.
As someone who is queer, ND and Jewish but also biracial, queer ND Jews are people, and like all people, a few of us are racists. I haven't come across it very often, but I have come across it. One ND Jewish person I came across actually told me that he couldn't be racist against Indigenous Australians because his half brother was "mouri". That's how he spelled it, and wrote it with a lower case letter. This is after he had said particularly racist things about Blackfellas.
anytime anyone gets caught doing something like this online they suddenly have a whole lot to say about how suicidal they were 💀 like okay and?? is racism stored in the suicidal thoughts orrrr
As an autistic author with ADD and depression, I am so sick of people using diagnoses like mine as an excuse for bad behavior. (See also: criminals on trial using "autism" as a shield for, oh, assault and murder.) Sigh. Plenty of autistic people, and people with other diagnoses, live their lives without being racist and/or criminals.
Disabilities can provide reduced capacity in the case of certain crimes(eg, FASD in the case of crimes of impulse). It’s not the same thing as blaming autism on being racist.
Only 15 minutes in but I need to vent. Open letter to Corrain:
Look, as someone who is LGBTQ+, had dyslexia since I was 6, is likely neurodivergent but was never tested (even though the autism card was played repeatedly on my behalf to explain my behavior), had alcoholic grandparents (one died, the other replaced it with smoking), AND is certainly affected by trauma, depression, anxiety and dissociation.... you are not excused if you use any of your trauma and shortcomings as an excuse for racism and if you are racist that's a you problem, it is UP TO YOU to take feedback on diverse opinions about race and racism to be more conscious about race, while also putting in the work to be better despite your trauma. I am so fucking sick of people being excused (on their own accord and behalf) BECAUSE of their mental statuses and disorders. Yes, it's hard to get accommodation, people will fall and be in crisis, and people will do things that will hurt others when they don't think right or can't control themselves because they are on medication, and no body is perfect and won't learn the same way. But that doesn't excuse the fact you are or did things that are RACIST, and are using your minority and health cards to get out of it. It doesn't excuse the fact you WANTED to hurt others. Learn about it, own up to it and stop whining for pity. Pity gets you nowhere in life, no matter who you are. And stop letting others enable you to play those cards or enable others to play them on your behalf when it's not your place to do so, that can be so hurtful and perpetuate stereotypes about the communty(s) you're in.
You lost me at minority card and mental health card too, but especially the first because white people have taken that fake concept to create literal white privilege cards at our expense for their “satire”. My fuckin identity and mental illness aren’t a card that I get to present when I’m in danger or in trouble. They’re often a source of danger to my life. You may have considered that before you wrote that and put it into the world. Like I see where you thought you were going but then you went way in the other direction
Just wanted to say, that since adult diagnosis of ADHD and autism is both difficult and expensive that self diagnosis is legitimate. I live in a country with universal health care, it took my 4 years to find someone to do an adhd assessment and it cost over $700. If you feel like autism describes who you are, that's okay. Most people in the ND community recognise that not everyone can find or afford an assessment.
@@angelawossname Thank you for the assurance. I don't like to describe myself as autistic currently because my mom would weaponize traits she perceived as autistic and also refused to get me tested even though she brought me to physical therapy for it (where I ended up having a breakdown). It was a very strange environment and I'm not sure if I have autism or ADHD or both or neither, partially because of all that. I do think that self-diagnosis can be helpful for many people but I haven't found it as helpful partially because of my experience and past miseducation on neurodivergence. I do relate to a lot of ADHD content so I might reconsider that, but for now I'll just go with "maybe".
@dragoness777 it sucks you've had those experiences. My dil had similar issues, and it took her years before she was ready to seek out an assessment. She also had some internalised ablism going on, which is completely understandable but I'm glad she got therapy to work through it. But if you are ever ready to reach out and join the ND community, just know that you don't need an official diagnosis to be accepted.
Cait doesn't actually apologize in this article. They say they *want to* apologize, which isn't the same thing. Telling people that they deserve an apology is not actually apologizing to them, just like me saying that I want to go to the gym tomorrow doesn't mean I'm working out right now.
Also, I'm so tired of people in a PR crisis deciding that that's the time to turn around and start "educating" people on whatever issue it is that they think will make everything okay. This whole article felt like "don't blame me! blame my mental illness and addiction!" and I just wish there had been some accountability. Any accountability. All this feels like in the end is "please stop being mean to me"
Also, also - this kind of behaviour happens a lot with fanfic authors who are obsessed with reviews and comparisons, and the only thing that saves them in that community is the fact that everyone uses a pen name, so they can just delete their account and start over. This time, they have their real name attached, so escaping from their own actions is a lot harder.
I did not go after Cait directly during the first series. But then they did this... and then I simply replied what the debacle was about to someone else above me in a short factual post. Cold. And then Cait blocked me. That doesn't sound like someone who wants to have accountability at all.
For reference all I posted was this: "Made goodreads accounts to downvote only PoC debut authors' books, got caught, was offered a way out, doubled down, made a really bad Photoshop post with horrible dialogue as an excuse, got caught hating on the fandom she came from. Blamed her mental illness. Blamed now autism."
That's it. Wasn't at them. Not at their account, merely replying. And blocked. That's not the mental headspace to take responsibility, I think.
I should note that I'm NB, generally queer, PoC, ND and have a family history of C-PTSD (4 branches of my family, tbh, since I'm also an adoptee). I take absolutely no joy in hunting down people. I'm more interested in the social justice parts such as trying to say racism is caused by mental illness, ND, etc. I have Sensory Processing Disorder and get episodes of Dissociation. And still I cannot fathom this. They had what I would have loved.
BTW, another author said they told Cait that autism doesn't cause racism on Twitter. Cait then made yet another Goodreads account and then downvoted their books the next day--fresh new account. That author was autistic and PoC. I reported that account to Goodreads. Goodreads took it down within 24 hours. But yeah... contrition doesn't seem like what they are going for. Cait isn't asking, how do I then make amends?
I think what feels so disingenuous is that the comments she left are logical- driven by jealousy for specific reasons. So maybe the mental illnesses and substances lowered their inhibitions but they didn’t manufacture those feelings or how she responded when she was clear headed
In vino veritas or drunken words are sober thoughts. Their struggles might have pulled down any sort of barrier they might have had for this behaviour but the racism itself was always brewing deep in them somehow. The lid came off the pot and it stinks, doesn't mean that the lid made it reek so much
Im not racist - I'm ACTUALLY queer, and neuro-divergent, and suffer from addictions! No one understands what it's like to be me!
This isn't a pattern of behaviour that i have exhibited before!
What the FUCK.
Haven’t even watched this yet and I just look at the title, say “oh no!” And immediately click.
Edit: oMg… they need to stop. But I sense another flare up of this on the horizon. 🙈
SAME i'm so BEWILDERED
"Now What?!" Gang Gang 😎
Same! I forgot how the last one ended and went "There's MORE? What have they done now??"
edit: holy shit there actually is more. I assumed I had an error in memory but I guess not.
I saw it was 40 minutes and I was like “oh no 😬”
Cait thinks she's the only person in the world going through it
I really, really, REALLY wish people would freaking learn what psychosis is actually like so people will STOP using it to excuse their actions! Psychosis DOES NOT make someone some super villain who is able to carry out elaborate schemes with multiple different sockpuppet accounts AND then turn around and try to cover up their tracks when they're called out on it! That is NOT what psychosis is! Psychosis involves beliefs with are fundamentally illogical and actions which are not appropriate for the situation. If someone is in a psychotic state, they probably wouldn't be able to type in a single password to an account, let alone do it a dozen times over! Psychotic thinking is fundamentally DISORGANIZED, you can't think logically and you often can't follow through step-by-step plans or expectations simply because your brain is moving at a mile per minute and you need to do SOMETHING NOW. Like, if she actually DID do all of this in a psychotic state, then she must have ALREADY HAD the accounts made beforehand and had their passwords SAVED on her computer and ready to do whenever!
Psychotic people post illogical rants on their Facebook page for hours and days at a time because Facebook often logs you in automatically and their page is right there when you go on there, but, if it doesn't immediately log them in, then 99.9% of the time they're locked out because they just can't think straight enough to put in the password and jump onto some other thing that might make it stop. Plus, NOTHING in the article addresses the accusations that came BEFORE the reviewbombing or even the accusations that Cait has ALWAYS treated other people cruelly in every single space she's been a part of.
I've seen a few people mention how this whole thing is reminiscent of fandom but I feel like the direct connections have seldom been made (the eye sphere touched upon it). And you're SPOT ON about their fanfiction days!!
This is 100% drama you would see in fandom, down to the obsession with stats (hits, favorites, bookmarks in AO3). The review bombing makes me believe that in their fandom days they might have gone on anon to leave bad comments, etc.
Also to point out the racism present in some of the factions of Reylo (yes, not at all reylos but enough that it has been deemed a consistent problem by journalists and academics who do fandom studies).
I don't think they deserve a deep dive or a fandom exhumation but I think there is something to be said there.
More and more authors will have written fic at some point--so many use it as a learning exercise over going to school for English or creative writing. Unfortunately some might keep some bad habits from their time in fandom 💀
Black person here. Not burning crosses in people’s front yards does not mean you are not racist. Having black/POC friends does not mean you are not racist. Cait definitely seems to care more about public perception than actually learning and addressing anything.
you really hit the nail on the head with "You didn't harm the people who harmed you, you harmed the people just like you." thank you for all the thoughtful, informed videos💗
The source of racist actions is racism. Unconscious or not. Addressing *that* (like, in therapy, not on a public platform) should be the priority, not the way the public perceives them.
As a transgender, bisexual man with ADHD and a Jewish dad, I am not exempt from bigotry. I am still capable of being misogynistic, homophobic, racist, ableist, or just an asshole. The pain of these marginalised authors cannot be understated, and reputational damage control won't do much to make the community forget the damage. I hope not, at least.
[EDIT] Yeahno, that was a class in using therapy and social justice language to dodge responsibility and gaslight (yes) the public about your actions and current feelings. Miss me with that. Can't say the rest of what I'm thinking but I am. Not happy. 🙃
[Original Comment] Very, very not interested in hearing another piss-poor set of excuses from this person, and I am not super thrilled she was given a platform again. But I also clicked on this video as soon as I saw you had posted it, so I am trusting and counting on you to provide something of value (ideally a smackdown) here. 😮
Agreed
As someone who is diagnosed & taking ADHD medications, I really can't understand how simply changing medications started her off on this plot to bring people down (primarily marginalized folk). Sometimes changing meds can be shitty - I had to swap meds for a short period bc of shortages (during a very stressful period of academic burnout) and it felt like the mental equivalent of a rubber band snapping against skin - but I never had jealous urges or desire to sabotage my peers/be racist, let alone the lack of impulse control to *act on it* for an extended period of time the way Corrain did.
There's already stigma against medications for mental illness, so it's just awful of this author to push the blame for their actions onto that.
Yeah, as a person on ADHD medicine, my side effects are like... upset stomach if I take the wrong one and not being hungry. I haven't ever decided "oh boy, I'm going to be racist because I switched!"
yep, my side effects were either "wow, I finally can do stuff" or "I feel nauseous/I need to remember to unclench my jaw/I don't feel hunger for 12h straight but I sure feel like shitting my bowels out" never racism or jealousy or anything like that
There is, unfortunately, a proportion of people who believe that ADHD medication can induce psychotic breakdowns, and that the people who take it are psychotic.
i actually do have insight on this- a family member of mine had a particularly bad meds switch that made them psychotic in the literal sense of the word. I can actually believe that anger, jealousy, outbursts, acting in ways you usually wouldn't, would be side effects of meds switches. I've seen it firsthand. but not bigotry- that was already there. nothing causes you to be racist. But in an incredibly halfhearted, lukewarm, and reluctant defense of cait, it isn't impossible for a meds switch to cause a prolonged state of being... basically an entirely different person. but again, the bigotry isn't from that, and also in cait's situation it's almost definitely an excuse either way. but some people do have really fucking bad reactions to med switches- that wasn't entirely bullshit.
My big issue with the "psychotic break" claim is that "if it doesn't make sense, it is because it doesn't make sense to anyone who isn't in it"
The problem is that everything she did makes perfect sense. It is very clear WHY this was done and has a clear motive and plan, not something you generally would expect to see from someone having a break from reality. She even tried to cover and hide the actions she took.
I am not saying she didn't suffer from everything she claims, I just don't think she wrote the reviews while it was happening.
I'm sick of malicious people blaming their unacceptable behavior and intentional destruction on a medical condition.
26:30 -- When there are words in [square brackets] in an quote, then it absolutely is the author rewording the interviewee's quote to help make it make sense to the reader.
Usually, it's because the author is pulling the quote from a larger conversation, so the interviewee used vague words or pronouns instead of the name of the subject/object their sentence. But when removed from the broader conversation as a pull quote in an article, the context is lost and the author adds the specific subject/object into the quote in [square brackets].
My assumption is the unedited quote Cait said was along the lines of "I think that they are allowed to be..." which didn't give enough context in the article, so it was changed "I think that [the authors I actually targeted] are allowed to be..." and noted with the square brackets.
Now WHY the author chose "the authors I actually targeted" as the replacement? It's phrased in such a way that I doubt a journalist would write it that way themselves, so my guess is that it's another quote from Cait from another point in the conversation.
I read this article yesterday and honestly couldn't believe she had the audacity. She's just reiterating the bullshit points she made in her original 'apology'. Also the journalist who platformed her instead of the writers affected by her behaviour who deserve it more should really have known better.
This reminds me of Roseanne trying to say that ambien was the reason she made racist tweets, although much worse because it also attempts to blame mental illness for bigotry
S - State what you did
A - Acknowledge the harm
T - TAKE ACCOUNTABILITY
N - NEVER do the specific action that you did that caused the harm to begin with again
them trying to use autism as a shield is a special kind of disgusting. They were fully aware of the harm they were causing and they told on themself. Autism doesn't make anybody malicious.
So I have a pretty unique perspective on Cate, so I can actually relate a lot to Cate’s struggles, I’m autistic, I’ve struggled with mental illness my entire life, I’ve also struggled with alcohol and addiction, been to a mental hospital, and I have also done the Spravato (ketamine) treatment for depression and have had negative responses to it as well. BUT, I am a nonbinary person of color (I’m mixed btw) so here’s where my problem is, it’s explainable but not excusable. Yes I have all these things that impact my life on the daily but it is my responsibility to not make my struggles other people’s responsibility, if I fuck up and do something foolish I need to take accountability for it point blank period no matter how bad my life is in the gutter I have to own up to my own actions and take accountability for it. To me Cate seems like someone who needs to get a lot of help and just totally be off the internet in general as it seems bad for their mental health and they really need to take time and reflect as to why specifically they felt this amount of fear and hatred towards these specific authors and then make a sincere apology because rn they are not in any position to apologize rn and fully mean that they’re sorry. I don’t believe Cate is sorry I think they’re sorry they got caught and is now having their blatant racism exposed before they could get their book money. But that’s just what I think, I could be wrong.
Yeah honestly, like it's not about listing what sort of conditions you have to force "forgiveness" out of the other person but apologising and talking about your mental health problems with Ur therapist instead. The other person shouldn't have to bear the weight of your health. But I genuinly think Cait believes the stuff she says as it paints the best picture of herself, even when a lot of the stuff might only semi-contributed to her actions. It's concerning because it reminds me of an angsty teenager - the 'I-can-do-no-wrong-unless-Im-a-victim-of-something' mentality
I'm also autistic, and my sympathy for her was low at the start (addiction doesn't make ya racist and whatnot) but hearing her mention her autism makes me roll my eyes. Like yes queen stigmatized us more as if we don't already have enough of it!
and everytime I hear someone saying that they have this or that, I don't care what they have to say. ya not taking accountability for ya actions ya apology is just empty words.
S.A.T.A.N -screams in the distance-! I really need to update that video lol! Brilliant as always, Rachel!
Cait has created my fall tbr at this point with all those cool sounding books that were targeted
"I'd rather try and make the people I hurt feel guilty for putting such an awful lable on me than admit that while my intentions may not have been racist my actions were" is such a weird fucking take I can't
I am an autistic person who has had some pretty severe meltdown on people, both strangers and those close to me. I have an incredible amount of guilt about these moments while simultaneously understanding it wasn’t my fault that I didn’t have the skills to self-regulate at the time, but even in my worst times, I didn’t say racist, ableist things. These things don’t just “come out” because you’re having an ugly moment.
As someone with both autism and schizophrenia, I just want to emphasize that my psychotic episodes have never made me racist. Its insulting that Corrain wants to use this as an excuse
If she was sorry, they’d publish the whole list of who she targeted and put as much effort into promoting those books as they once did to destroy them. Apologies aren’t about restoring your image. They’re about healing the damage you did. And she’s shown absolutely no interest in helping these authors at all.
I want to thank Rachel for acknowledging that sometimes, our actions *can* be out of our control. As someone who has experienced moments of psychosis, the amount of dismissal that conditions that take away your rational thinking are treated with can be very hurtful and scary. Sometimes we are not in control of our actions. BUT, as Rachel also said, what matters is what you do after it, and that you do your best to make up for any harm you might have caused, and that you take immediate steps to get help to avoid a repeat incident! Subconscious racism might surface when in the grips of an altered mental state. The *wrong* thing to do after is go crying "I'm not racist" without even making amends. Apologize. Make amends. Work on whatever subconscious baggage you are carying around, if possible with the help of a professional. Doing the work and showing up to become better is what matters.
Putting a comment here to feed the algorithm in case I get so infuriated by the shenanigans I can’t stay until the end
That part about psychotic person's actions not making sense to anyone else is so weird because Cait's actions MADE sense, considering they are a racist, petty person who wanted to take their insecurities out on authors of colour. People start smear campaigns, badmouth and even defame others all the time! Just because it's a horrible thing to do and still some do it doesn't make it an extension of psychosis and I'm just so fucking horrified it's now on a published article for all to see! An honest, open conversation about mental illness and addiction can lead to good things but Cait is not the one who gets to lead it after doing that much damage. I feel like their obsession with being a social justice trailblazer is in play here as well, and competitiveness is not a trait we need more of in challenging stigmas related to mental illness and addiction.
Can Cait Corrain please just take some accountability and leave the rest of us out of their non-apology? They just casually dragged everyone with ADHD, autism, depression, and substance abuse into this the same way they previously tried to drag in all the Reylo fans. Cait did those things. The substances and mental health struggles did not do those things on their own.
I'll spare Cait a grain of sympathy for their difficulties when they've spared some for their victims, and not a moment before.
This is going to turn into a Netflix documentary at this point
We can only hope
Hopefully not. Considering their harmful attention-seeking behaviour, Cait would just *love* that
I think that's what she wants because then she can be famous at least.
I'm absolutely not going to diagnose Cait Corrain, I'm only a psychology student, I don't know her personally, and this is definitely not the place for it.
However, regarding mental issues, as I've learned it, the basic sudden Psychotic breakdown makes people unfocused, unable to keep coherent conversations, jumping from one subject to another. It's an acute disorder that makes people very agitaded and attached to a delirious idea. The psychotic breakdown related to substance intoxication also makes people rather unable to stay on message or keep up conversations. People suffering from these episodes are not very good at planning, or able to keep up a lie for long, they are disconected on one or many basic awareness categories (space-time orientation, self-recognition, recognizing others, etc).
Everything I've seen from Cait Corrain indicates a very deliberate and planned way of doing things. I'm not saying she didn't had a psychotic episode, maybe she did, but using that and her neurodivergent conditions as a cop-out it's unconsionable. I'm also neurodivergent. We shouldn't use our conditions and vulnerable moments as an excuse for bad behavior, it makes it harder for all of us.
Psychology student here too! Its really despicable. Its true that our mental illnesses and neurodivergence can influence us to act in certain ways but like… they still did the thing, you know? Neurodivergent or not, anyone who does bad things is influenced by something but no one gets a get out of jail free card. I mean i have borderline features and as a teen, i was prone to explosive angry outbursts and it affected all my personal relationships. I acted in so many ways that is not okay, and though i can see how my mental illnesses influenced my behavior, i still acted in ways that are not acceptable and treated people badly. I did those things and i had to take ownership of them. I mean really for me there is something empowering about owning up to the things you done. Nobody likes being held accountable, but i feel like it can be powerful to take ownership. Because when i didnt, i just felt like a robot with faulty programming on autopilot. Owning up might suck, but for me making excuses and denying myself agency and accountability made me feel so much worse.
Person with psychosis here: everything you said is spot on. The whole point of it is a break from reality whetever by positive symptoms (things your brain adds to reality that are not there) and negative symptoms (behavioral and cognitive abilities that get taken from you and make you non operational). How can someone who has a break in reality be functional enough in it to pull this? News is they don't, I speak from experience even though every person's psychotic break is unique to them. This to me is a major red flag that they are putting in an unrelated experience they had for brownie points because it takes two seconds to notice that their consistent pattern and actions are completly incompatible with the nature of psychosis itself
It really bothers me whenever someone blames addiction for certain actions. Drugs/alcohol just lower inhibitions, they’re not complete personality changers. They don’t suddenly turn someone racist or even violent. They do, however, take already racist thoughts/beliefs and cause them to feel easier to express.
She REALLY tried to summon the ghost of Matthew Perry to score pity, I am blown away
As someone diagnosed type 1 bipolar and autistic it makes me very upset to see the word “manic/mania” thrown around to describe someone who isn’t bipolar. Bipolar people struggle enough with the stigma surrounding psychosis and mania but even in psychotic episodes, I HAVE NEVER BEEN RACIST AND CALCULATED. Psychosis is characterized by disorganized behavior. Who tf is buying this
Thank you so much for this video! I’m so angered by this as a ethnic minority who has severe clinical depression and experience of psychotic breaks. I wouldn’t dream of using it as a way to get out of hurting multiple other people with the same issues
Them stating repeatedly that their actions were not motivated by racism is an excuse that only applies if they are the main character of reality. (I wouldn't be surprised if they saw themselves that way). It doesn't matter if you personally have nothing against POC, your ACTIONS were racist. Clearly they are racist but them insisting otherwise indicates their callous disregard for the harm they did to anyone other than themselves.
*sigh* you don’t get to call your actions racist when an imaginary person did it and then change your mind when you did it.
I’ve always said that mental illness is not the excuse it’s the explanation. That you are still held accountable for the things you do, but when you fail people can also understand what the root cause of it is.