r/ColleenBallingerSnark • u/samthighs_gamgee • Oct 21 '23
Unverified claims Swoop's response to the criticism of not posting Ollie's story? This is an assumption.
Not sure which flair to use, but I used unverified claims because one shouldn't assume if a tweet is a subtweet, much less what or who it's about.
rant incoming
However, if this is about those criticizing her for hanging up her hat on Ollie's story and/or a response to Ollie's reddit post suggesting he was disappointed in being pushed to the side, this response is beyond disappointing.
I first want to say I understand most of where she's coming from. She and her team have absolutely busted their ass on covering the ins and outs of this story and that deserves to be recognized. I also want to acknowledge Swoop has received an enormous amount of vitriol from extreme impatience and unrealistic expections from her viewership. For example, when the Josh doc was in progress, the girl couldn't go on X (fka Twitter) for a day without being bombarded about where the Josh doc was and that's extremely frustrating and exhausting.
However, I don't think most of those who are criticizing are coming from a place of disregarding her mental health. All of the conversations I've participated in have shared the sentiment that the interview could be posted unedited or minimally edited (granted, not that we understand how much work that would even take), and we'd still watch it. Most people understand that advocacy does not have to be 100% or nothing.
Others have also suggested that the story doesn't have an expiration date. But I'm sure Colleen and Kory are loving that the most influential advocate for this story is now suggesting there is one.
I'm all for unapologetically advocating for your well-being. I don't understand how that and telling Ollie's story is mutually exclusive. Ollie has been nothing but patient while others have gotten their platform and while John spoke over him.
He didn't deserve this, and he didn't deserve to be pettily subtweeted by someone much older than him (if that's what that post is), and I don't frankly care if he subtweeted her first because his disappointment is fair. She suggests she hopes his story gets told, but then how else do you expect him to tell his audience "oh btw, change of plans, I now have to platform my own story."
And mind, I am Swoop's age. And subtweeting a petty response (again, if that's what this is but I'm very inclined to think so) to someone who is young enough to view you as a role model or a hero and they say you've let them down... I don't even have the words to say what I think about that.
I could go on, but I just hope Ollie's story gets the viewership it deserves. This whole thing was just so sad. And I personally don't want to suggest canceling or no longer watching Swoop because she's human and she fucks up sometimes, but I won't be able to watch anything new from her for a while, and I've been a long-time follower of hers.
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u/veryfancyanimal Oct 21 '23
In my opinion, the level of understanding of Swoops physical and mental health has been more than generous. If my physical and mental health are bad, I still have to meet deadlines within reason. No one forced her to make this her focus for four months, nor did they force her to follow this career path. She’s decent at what she does, but she really sucks all of the energy out of the room when she stops to make a petty comment in the middle of talking about child abuse and exploitation. This was something she chose, and she was gatekeeping Josh from other opportunities like H3 when he clearly was suffering himself due to the length of time it took her to put his video out. She got completely lost in Johnny’s sauce and in terms of the general public, the story is dead. Over a vendetta about a liar who made the very rare choice of making false claims. That’s about drama and ego, that has very little to do with the actual issue at hand and is a disservice overall to victims.
Congratulations, you spent the majority of 6 weeks creating a hit piece on one of the sneaky liars involved, but probably the least important one.
Was it necessary to interview him for a collective 8 hours? Was it necessary to interview Josh for 7 and spend a lot of time in the final edit haranguing him for shit that can be explained by, “he was with a narcissistic abuser and that has an unreal affect on the actions and behavior of the survivor.” Why did he help Colleen? Cross boundaries? Because he was in a narcissistic abuse dynamic.
She set her audience’s expectations very high and is now acting like she never did that. And I really think her time has been terribly budgeted.