Vloggers are lying to you about how happy they are

Plus, I got fired from my volunteer job

I watched two documentary mini-series this week, Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke on Apple TV and American Murder: Gabby Petito, and both make clear that the sunny smiles vloggers wear can be entirely false. As professional performers, they are editing out all their sad, angry moments, something I assumed they just weren’t filming, but which the documentaries painfully reveal are merely cut out.

Ruby Franke was a trad-mom vlogger in a Mormon community who took her family from poverty to wealth by building a huge following for her YouTube channel, 8 Passengers. She put up a post every day at 6 a.m. and had at her peak 2.5 million viewers. The children were employees, made to act for the camera, which they first enjoyed and eventually resented, but upon which their family’s income depended. Oldest son Chad, a telegenic cutie, was especially popular, so when he let slip that his mother had been making him sleep on a beanbag in the basement for the previous seven months (as his room was a privilege he needed to earn back), the vlogosphere turned on Ruby. The three-part docu-series shows unedited videos in which Ruby is filming a segment, smiling pleasantly and speaking in dulcet tones, but then interrupts herself to scream at and insult her children in a completely different voice and persona. The stark difference is shocking. In the third and final episode, things get truly bizarre when Ruby falls under the spell of another vlogger, a therapist named Jodi Hildebrandt, and sends her brainwashed husband and son away so she can have a full-time affair with Jodi, who eventually persuades her that her two youngest children are possessed by demons. I know there are several documentaries and podcasts about Franke, but I recommend this one (which you can view on Apple TV or Hulu) as it’s the only one that features the two oldest children and Franke’s ex-husband, all of whom need a lot of therapy after escaping this woman’s extreme control of her entire family. The unedited glimpses of what life was really like for this family are a wake-up call for anyone who might be comparing their own life to the lives they watch on Youtube. (I have never watched a vlog, but I can imagine their appeal, particularly if I were a young mother looking for ways to make family life easier.)

The second docu-series shows adorable, young Gabby Petito trying to launch her own vlog about van life after she and her fiance Brian convert a van and take it on the road. Her first video, “We bought a van,” was viewed 600,000 times, though I’m not clear on whether this was before or after she disappeared. However, the documentary American Murder shows Gabby struggling to stay cheerful—and to enlist Brian’s help in presenting a happy, united front—as she films their van life and tries to make it look appealing. The documentary also includes video footage of Gabby’s extreme distress after police respond to four witnesses calling in reports of a man slapping a woman repeatedly in the face. The cops, stunningly, only consider arresting Gabby, as Brian has scratch marks on his arms and face and both insist she was the aggressor, but instead they send him to a hotel for the night (!!) and leave Gabby to sleep alone in the van. No one follows up with them and they reunite in the middle of the night, which is the last time anyone sees Gabby alive. Gabby weighs about 100 lbs. soaking wet and all the calls were about male violence, so why didn’t those cops follow mandatory arrest laws (which they reference when speaking to the couple) and take Brian into custody? I ache for Gabby’s parents having to see how close to rescue their daughter was; if only police were educated about how to respond properly to witness accounts of violence.

And while I’m on the subject of false fronts, I also highly recommend a book I just read: Dear Sister: A Memoir of Secrets, Survival, and Unbreakable Bonds. The book is written by Michelle Horton, whose sister Nikki Addimando was arrested for murdering her husband after years of enduring well-documented violence and sexual torture, including the burning of her insides with a flaming hot spoon. Her husband was a popular gymnastics coach, great with kids and beloved in the community, which led the courts to reject all the evidence about Nikki’s abuse, prosecute her for murder, reject a domestic-violence-justice act that would have helped earn her a lighter sentence, and send her to prison for 20 years. One of the fascinating aspects of the story is that Nikki, embarrassed about her life with an abuser, claimed she was terminally clumsy and always covered with bruises and black and blue marks because she fell or slammed into things all the time, and her sister believed her, even though she now realizes she should have been able to see what was happening long before Nikki went to jail. Only after Nikki kills her husband does Michelle discover that her sister had actually been working with a therapist to escape, and while raising her sister’s two young children and fighting for her release, she must reckon with her own (and her mother’s) willful ignorance. The book is very well-written and held special fascination for me as it took place in the Hudson Valley, where I raised my family for 20 years before moving to Western Mass.

In more personal news, last week I posted about how much I had enjoyed my last volunteer shift at Dakin Animal Shelter, where I had worked alongside other volunteers to feed, walk, and clean the cages of the 20 dogs the shelter had on hand that day. The next day I received a truly stunning email letting me know I’d been fired as a volunteer because another volunteer complained that there was “a moment of tension” between us that included “eye rolling,” (presumably by me). I was gobsmacked. Even if I did roll my eyes, which I genuinely don’t think I did, aren’t we all adults joined together by our common purpose of helping animals in need and this great organization? Couldn’t we have talked this through after they just spent four weeks training me—rather than just dismissing me with no conversation with me? Naturally, I feel hurt and bewildered—and angry at how poorly the volunteer coordinator handled this situation. But on the other hand, I no longer have to spend my Tuesday afternoons mopping up puppy poop. (Seriously? Are there so many volunteers competing for these posts that they can afford to just toss off someone who’s willing to do the scuttiest work for free?) I am trying to handle this graciously, but I am struggling. Being let go this way brings up all my deepest fears that nobody likes me. I emailed the volunteer coordinator last night to say I was still struggling to find the life lesson in this experience, asking if he could possibly explain what happened that led him to dismiss me without even speaking to me, but so far, I haven’t heard anything from him, so I guess I need to just move on. I’m working on it, but this stings! Fortunately, I can still get lots of rescue-animal love at home.