Sniffing Coke, In Bed With Blokes
Bullying or holding accountable? The struggles of being an influencer growing up in the media: Olivia Neill
Does cancel culture have an age limit?
You know when you spend too much time with someone, and you start picking up their mannerisms? You don’t mean to. You’re not trying to copy them or steal their personality. You just admire them and enjoy being around them, and so they rub off on you and vice versa. Well if any of you have watched Olivia Neill’s videos then you’ll know what I’m talking about.
To the revolution!
I’m shy *cue annoying hand to face movement*
Skinny legend
are just a few of the catchphrases that I and many others find myself annoyingly repeating.
It’s quite an ingenious idea to turn this artform into a career.
After moving from Ireland to London in 2020, her subscriber count skyrocketed, with 657k YouTube subscribers, 579k Instagram followers and just hitting 1m on Tik Tok, it comes as no surprise that her name is now very familiar to those in my age group.
You complement someone on their brown North face puffer coat: Olivia Neill made me.
Perhaps they are wearing an unusually large hair clip or have done their hair in a certain way: Olivia Neill inspired me.
Wearing glasses in the winter? Yep you guessed it, all down to Olivia Neill.
She is so influential, even to the point where she has bought into fashion formula 1 racing jackets. Something you never thought could be deemed stylish or cool has now become something that is highly sought after.
After moving to London with best friends Flossie Clegg and LookingforLewys she has been living the high life, partying with the likes of Wes Nelson, which no doubt only grew her fame.
However, as with any celeb, it seems that as soon as that person acquires a certain amount of fame or following, a small percentage of the public seem to want to search for something to criticise and ‘drag’ them for and before long Olivia Neill was subsequently CANCELLED.
For those of you who don’t know, cancelling is when you reject an individual or idea in order to remove them from a business or social setting.
So why was she cancelled?
Around the middle on January the drama began. Tik Tok worked its algorithm magic and on many Olivia Neill supporters for you pages ‘tea spilling’ videos started to surface. With that the ball started rolling and more and more dirt was collected.
Videos surfaced of Olivia Neill sat round a table with alcohol and playing cards and in the corner were two little bags of white powder. Despite no evidence of these bags belonging to the YouTuber, the flame was ignited.
Subscribers then called out the fact that Olivia Neill was partying in a pandemic and this led to videos of her being shared hugging subscribers in the streets on London around the time she was rumoured to be positive for Coronavirus. Perhaps this would have been somewhat swept under the rug if she hadn’t posted a video a couple of months prior on her YouTube slamming those who were meeting up during the pandemic.
And lastly, remember this video? Supposedly staying alone in a fancy hotel in London. After the drama unfolded on Tik Tok, the final piece of dirt surfaced. A video of her making a Tik Tok in the same bed and in the same robe, kissing fellow youtuber Elmo films.
And it is no secret that Olivia finds Spencer (Elmo films) attractive as she would often refer to his good looks in his videos.
What was the fans reaction?
With Olivia Neill previously uploading a video commenting on how her favourite YouTuber Emma Chamberlain never gives the viewers an insight into the boys she is seeing, it is not unsurprising that fans were upset that she contradicted herself by keeping this juicy bit of gossip to herself.
Having broken up with boyfriend John Fletcher in Ireland before moving to London, Olivia was keen to show off new love interest singer and strictly contest HRVY although the status of their relationship was never confirmed and soon ended. Swiftly followed by Tik Toks made with fellow instagrammer Fin Mathews hinting at a blossoming relationship and now the hotel fiasco with Elmo. This girl is living her best single life and her fans are here for it! (But not when she hides it).
Whilst some fans gave Olivia and instant green card with tweets such as:
“we all do it” and “come back girly pops we miss you” — ‘Girly pops’ being another annoying catchphrase —
Other fans were not so forgiving…
A plethora of Tik Tok parodies were made mocking the 19-year-old, impersonating her being on drugs or drawing little bags of drugs in the corners of their videos.
The bullying doesn’t stop there, with a large amount of hate comments being left on Olivia’s Tik Toks branding her a hypocrite; however these are mixed with nicer comments such as “come back, we’ll pretend it didn’t happen”.
What’s happened since?Despite the drama beginning with Olivia Neill, both her best friend Flossie Clegg and LookingforLewys have not posted since it all unfolded as they too are being held accountable for breaking lockdown rules. Although, Flossie is in her own hot water as she was seen to be laughing at a boy who joined her live stream on Instagram to sing a song raising awareness for mental health.
But these YouTubers are not the only ones being cancelled. Remember James Charles? He has been in so many BIG scandals from saying the N word to sexually manipulating boys. British YouTuber Molly Mae is constantly being cancelled, even for saying she doesn’t like the food in Italy, pathetic right?
Here’s my issue:
We cannot go around cancelling people for the smallest of issues. There is a strong difference between holding someone accountable for their actions and bullying them. Yes, perhaps Olivia Neill should be held accountable for breaking lockdown rules and being a hypocrite.
But we must not be so hasty to forget that she is nineteen. A large proportion of this age group have dabbled in drugs and why should she receive this amount of hate just for being in the public eye. What if the shoe was on the other foot? What if your private life got exposed? Would you want to receive hate after hate every day for something you can’t change?
Of course, I understand the role model aspect of things but it’s not as if Olivia Neill is using her platform to promote drugs, she has simply been ‘exposed’ against her will.
This leads me to question whether there should be an age limit on cancel culture. When growing up we all make mistakes. In my opinion, James Charles sexually manipulating young boys is inexcusable.
But Olivia Neill seeing boys and doing drugs? It may not be to everyone’s taste, but to me it sounds like an average day in the life of a normal teenager. Not very ground-breaking at all!
Breaking lockdown rules? For sure hold her accountable, don’t bully or blame, just a conversation would clear things up. But then a time comes where we should move on and forgive.
On that note, I’ll leave you with this:
Be kind: https://www.bekindmovement.co.uk
