Raines created a successful YouTube channel dedicated to her advocacy efforts rescuing foxes from fur farms.
Animal rescue activist and YouTube star Mikayla Raines has died by suicide, according to her husband. She was 29.
Ethan Raines announced her death in an emotional video he posted to her YouTube channel on Monday.
He said that for years his wife suffered from various mental health issues and struggled to cope with online criticism.
“She couldn’t bear what she was feeling any longer, and she ended her life,” he said. “And it breaks my heart that someone who is selfless and devoted her life to animals could have so much negativity pointed at her.”
It is a sad state of affairs when a person is doing something actually good to help animals and they get harassed. May her legacy live on forever.
My wife told me about this last night, supposedly the majority of the abuse came from OTHER FUCKONG RESCUERS!!!
From what i’ve seen of the dog rescue world, this seems right.
Also the shit the tiger king put Carol Baskin through. At least he is in jail.
That seems so crazy to me. I’m on a bunch of different guitar forums around the Internet, and I don’t recall a single time when I’ve seen anyone attack or harass a content creator or anyone else. It’s a really friendly, highly supportive, international community, and it’s HUGE. Everybody feels like a friend.
It happens in photography, I think there’s a competitive element.
The guitar world is pretty competitive, too. Perhaps the difference is the guitar is exceedingly difficult to learn, and we’ve ALL struggled with it, and have had help from others overcoming our problems. So we can all sympathize with each other, and want to share our help and knowledge.
Must have been jealous of her.
Be online and you will get harassed, it is the way.
I’ve never been harassed, probably only because of my gender identity.
Meat eaters can’t stand animal rights activists
so you think vegans were attacking her? seems like you’re an idiot
🤡🤡
I agree and I hope we all remember that mindset the next time we read about activists blocking a slaughterhouse.
These guys probably saw the Tiger King documentary and decided to armchair warrior to virtue signal how much more pro-animal rights their non-involvement and passivity was than her.
Holy fuck, I loved SaveAFox, what the hell is wrong with people 😭🤮
I don’t understand why anyone would be mad that someone was saving foxes from becoming pelts.
Unless you’re the piece of shit profiting from the suffering and death of those animals, in which case, your opinion is null and void, nobody should be against the idea IMO.
It’s incredible to me that anyone would carry such vitriol against such a noble cause.
May she rest in peace.
On any online forum, there are people who just like to stir the shit: doxxing, swatting, death threats, you name it. Most platforms have reduced their efforts to keep those slimebags at bay, and this is the result.
As a long time supporter of SaveAFox, it’s hard to really even process this. I am sure being an online personality to try and fundraise isn’t easy, but never did I dream that there was such a degree of hate lobbed at Mikayla that she’d decide to end her own life. Someone so kind and devoted to the lives of creatures who are constantly exploited and cannot save themselves. It’s just despicable, and all I can really hope for is that Mikayla’s mission continues on in spite of such significant loss.
How hollow that must feel. Not getting any justice or retribution.
And the disgusting people to blame are probably praising themselves, now.
RIP
The real hollowness is found in the people who have nothing in their lives so they embrace hate and hound those trying to make the world a better place.
From my cursory glance, yes, they are
It’s times like these that I hope there is in fact a god and they are watching folks like that.
If there’s a god, he’s a cunt. Find your own justice.
I agree, but at heart I’m a pollyanna.
“Inside every cynical person is a disappointed idealist.”
- George Carlin
I believe she had BPD as well, which in itself often gets you targeted harassment online while also making you extremely sensitive to said harassment.
I don’t know her at all - is that BPD diagnosis something confirmed, thet she shared and all?
I have terribly mixed feelings about people with BPD.
On one side, lots of empathy: they often feel miserable and (not always, but) very often their BPD is the result of trauma or abuse.
On the other, and having lived it for a decade and a half: they can make the lives of people in their surroundings an absolute abominable horror-movie type of nightmare.
It’s actually treatable but not all people with BPD seek treatment, it’s a tough one.
There just aren’t enough therapists learning how to administer dialectical behavior therapy. Very helpful for people with BPD, addiction problems, or PTSD.
I have an uncle who has been cut-off from the family because he refuses to treat his BPD and his sisters got tired of taking care of/cleaning up after him. “Doesn’t like how the medicine makes him feel”. Pretty sure he started self-medicating with other stuff and found a woman who enables him, don’t know exactly (it’s been two decades since I last heard from him)
If he was taking medicine for it, it likely wasn’t BPD; BPD doesn’t have any chemical treatments. Treatment is usually Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to try and regulate the person’s emotions and establish a more normalized baseline emotional state. But that requires a lot of personal effort, and many people with BPD refuse to follow through with it. And CBT only really helps with the emotional outbursts; It doesn’t do a lot for the abandonment issues, desires to self-harm, dissociation, etc…
Maybe he was bipolar? Bipolar is in the same category as schizophrenia, because the mania produces delusions and hallucinations. And it is treated with meds similar to schizophrenia.
Bipolar is indeed what I meant, I forgot that Borderline Personality Disorder took the initialism. It’s also probable that he has more than just that going on.
BPD relies on DBT and not CBT
I personally cannot confirm it, I just saw it being mentioned on one of the BPD subs on reddit.
I think it’s important to differentiate people with mental health issues and bad people with mental health issues.
I have BPD, it sucks so much and I suffer a lot of emotional pain. I have hurt some people, but the first person I really hurt, I loved like no other, and when she told me what I was doing to her when she left me, I decided not to be that person anymore.
I’ve fucked up a lot of my life during my worse episodes, but I choose not to be a horrible person to the people around me. I don’t always get it right, but I try.
A diagnosis doesn’t make you evil or bad, that’s a personal choice.
Bless you, take care of yourself and loved ones. If you do anything at all, please have safeguards against the most harrowing statistics with suicide on this diagnosis. Even worse if you are male but that’s beside the point <3
BPD is brutal on the people close to the person with the disorder. Absolutely brutal.
My sister has BPD. My parents cut her off after some particularly spectacular episodes. I stuck up for her even after she wasn’t allowed around anymore. She tried to off herself in my room when I let her hide out from her boyfriend (not the first time she did that). She ended up moving in with that scumbag who on multiple occasions beat her senseless and threw her out of a moving vehicle. I had to come over (strapped mind you) and escort her from his place to the station onto a greyhound to go live with her cousin. I have so much fuckin trauma on account of her. She’s better now, for now. If it comes to it again tho I’ll always fight tooth and nail to keep her safe, regardless of how outrageously she behaves. That’s my fuckin sister.
You’re a good sibling. I had an ex that really fucked me up. I found out later that she was diagnosed with BPD a few years after our relationship.
After reading up on it, it explained so much… Didn’t really help anything, but explained it. Made the mistake of reconnecting with her around the time of the pandemic. What a terrible idea that was lol.
Thank you, you’re an amazing sibling. Just don’t let her abuse you. I hope she is getting help, it can get better.
Wait what? People harass people online because they’ve got BPD? Like they specifically target people who are suffering from BPD? Why??
Fucking gross.
Because hurt people hurt people.
People with BPD can be very manipulative and controlling, they can leave you with your own psychological trauma if they’re not self aware enough to realise what they’re doing. And some people are just evil and don’t try be better. So there are a lot of people who have been hurt by people with BPD and they then become a target for harassment.
Sad part is that most people with BPD just want to be loved. Unfortunately they can’t trust love or anyone around them. It’s fucked and really hard to manage, but possible with a lot of hard work.
I’ve been hurt a lot by people with BPD. I have provided a lot of emotional (and financial) support only to eventually be taken for granted and/or abused. Some people with BPD can be absolute monsters.
It’s taken years of therapy and self healing to understand how they’re hurting too and seriously don’t understand how they’re hurting others sometimes.
Just wish more people could learn to not lash out when they’re hurt and seek healing. It’s hard regardless if you’ve got BPD, PTSD, or whatever, but it’s always the right way to go. Everyone deserves respect and understanding.
No, people don’t specifically look for people with BPD. I believe you misunderstood.
Then what does this mean?
I believe she had BPD as well, which in itself often gets you targeted harassment online
I believe some people react to bullying in a specific way that excites bullies. It’s not like they say “hey, who’s got BPD,” it’s just that people with BPD tend to get the reactions they seek. Don’t mistake this as saying the bullies aren’t doing wrong or ableist. It’s still awful.
I would assume that the trolls are attracted to those people because they get more of a reaction to their vitriol. It’s sad, honestly.
Yeah, I agree. If a sadistic person wants to see reactions naturally they’ll continue to harass the people that give it to them.
Is BPD bi-polar disorder? Or borderline personality disorder?
BPD is borderline personality disorder.
Latter
BPD is borderline. BD is Bipolar Disorder. But most commonly referred to as simply bipolar.
Well, it is unfortunately symptomatic. Lived with one for 10 years. Gave everything. It is not easy to admit that most of the even self aware sufferers will automatically manipulate and stir up drama due to the impossible weight of their own guilt and anger which if you want to help you have to realise is never going away and more often than not continually hurt anyone around them. It’s sad that giving energy and help to sufferers is so draining and destructive and if you want support many people react like you. Except in support groups. So if anyone is reading : take care of yourself first, giving more than you have is bad for everyone and it will be hard not to. Support groups are your friend as many that are in the same situation sharing and understanding is deeply important to survive
Why the hell would anyone feel any need to harass someone like this? Shit like this is never justified, but once in a while I can understand their motivations. Not this. RIP, she was pretty cool.
Because it works.
kiwifarms has been doing this en masse for over a decade and others predated that.
It is gauche to link to it considering this is the umpteenth fucking person murdered by angry and hateful bastards. But Patrick Klepek, someone who has been targeted by these orgs for over a decade, wrote about this in the context of the emulator developer Near being murdered by kiwi farms et al a few years back https://www.vice.com/en/article/what-i-learned-from-near-an-emulation-legend-and-real-person/
He talked about it more on the Waypoint (now Remap) podcast, but it is very much an open secret that these hate campaigns are ongoing with the explicit goal of murdering their target (it is not fucking suicide if you were tormented until you picked up the gun). And how even fellow victims who usually will advocate for this kind of stuff are wary of raising their voices because they or their partner are semi regularly approached, in person, by these bastards.
My hope, as always, is that this will be the last time. That this will lead to focused efforts by those with platforms to speak out. The reality is that the mid tier “creators” will probably say something and give the trite “If you or someone you know is in crisis, please call the national suicide prevention lifeline”. Or, well, these days “the national slip and slide prevention lifeline” because gotta stay fucking monetized. And then they’ll remain silent. All while the biggies choose to stay fucking silent out of concerns of losing people in their audience who are part of those hate campaigns.
So the motivations are… just to kill an innocent person without having to take responsibility for it? You’re right, more needs to be done about this. Look what happened to Chrischan. Probably wasn’t always willing to commit incest.
See, I have no idea what to do with this idea that fits within the bounds of good ethics but I’m certain that there’s something deeply wrong with our species that gets worse the more isolated we can be without dying off. The further back you go the more likely being shunned for being an absolute piece of trash would lead to your death but now the most broken people can still proliferate and cause problems for everyone else without even really needing to leave their homes. I can think of a million better things to do than obssess over and relentlessly bully someone.
I’m glad that we’ve hit a certain point where more and more people are choosing to have higher standards, and maybe that will help, but holy fuck this is gunna take a while to sort out.
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“Body shaming is good when its men.”
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Accusing anyone that acts a way you don’t like as having a micro penis seems like body shaming to me. I can’t imagine that someone who has one and isn’t a shitty human appreciates being associated with them.
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Damn, you’re dumb as hell. Cryptoableist, lmao.
They are filled with hate, because they are deeply insecure, deeply afraid, and the current political and social climate tells them that this is not only an acceptable way to deal with those feelings, but encourages them to deal with those feelings in this manner.
Why the hell would anyone feel any need to harass someone like this?
For one, there’s good money in it.
Black Cube’s tactics have resulted in a number of international controversies. In Canada, the firm was criticized by an Ontario Court for an attempt that aimed to discredit a judge by trying to get him to make antisemitic comments in secretly recorded meetings. In Romania, two of its employees were convicted of criminal charges involving harassment and hacking. The firm also drew condemnation for covertly surveilling and assisting efforts to discredit women accusing Harvey Weinstein of sexual violence and the investigative journalists researching whether those accusations were credible. Their tactics also involve attempts to goad individuals into making anti-semitic or otherwise damaging remarks.
Some nasty people just see someone who appears vulnerable/has mental health issues and use that as an excuse to attack someone. there’s this really fucked up site called Kiwifarms that’s been around for over a decade that was specifically made for trying to harass and bully people to death for being “weird”, trans, or neurodivergent. it could also be they were jealous of her popularity
I really feel quite torn up over this news. I’d seen the channel and her videos sporadically, she seemed like a kind soul who really loved & cared for the foxes.
RIP Mikayla
If you’re going to put yourself out in the swamp of social media to rally attention for something, you better have the requisite thickness of hide. As sad as the situation is, she made the choice and probably should have backed out before she reached her breaking point. This story has hemophiliac choosing to work at a razor blade factory vibes :o
Literally no different than telling women they deserved to be raped cause of what they were wearing. People need to grow the fuck up and stop bullying people, that’s literally the only thing that needs to change here. There’s no reason to bully a person who’s simply working to rescue animals from abusive situations, them being on social media isn’t an excuse to be a garbage person and harass people, to death no less
“People should just not bully.” Good luck with that. In the mean time, do what you have to in order to safeguard your mental heath.
Yeah I agree it’s a shitty situation, and people should be better. But the thing is a shockingly large portion of those online just aren’t and are not looking to be. At least not right now and probably not for the foreseeable future especially with Orange Julius promoting the sanctity of “free speech”
If you have a fragile psyche and put yourself out there to garner attention on social media in this environment and do not expect some serious trolling to happen, that’s just being naive.
So a good cause is the same as working in a factory?
Your analogy would have been better to someone providing humanitarian aid in a warzone whilst suffering from a not-immune-to-bombs condition.
(And even in that analogy someone would have to deliberately target her specifically for the work she did, not just a random bombing.)
wth no!
The human race makes me really sick on a daily basis these days
It really feels like the human race is determined to destroy itself.
It really does.
Jesus, it really goes to show how shitty humanity really is.
I actually really liked watching those foxes laughing, it was a nice little bright spot in a world fully of cynicism and bullshit and if course shitty humans had to be shitty humans harassing her for being a decent human being.
Humans not humanity.
Why the fuck would you harass someone for saving foxes? Is it because she’s a woman?
God gave us dominion over all creatures read the Bible!
There are children dying in the streets here, why don’t you do anything about them?
The foxes bread for fur here are not capable of living in the wild, “rescuing” and releasing them is the real animal abuse.
I think fox fur is fancy, fuck you lady!
Just some examples I can think of off the top of my head. People can get pretty polarized when it comes to killing, or not killing animals.
isn’t it stupid?
If you kill cats and dogs, you’re a sociopath. But when you kill foxes, that’s fine.
In this case I’d say it’s a difference between animals raised as a product vs animals as pets. Personally, I don’t take issue with animal products as long as the animal is treated with care during life and dignity during death, but I definitely understand why some people are against animal products. Harassing them to the point of suicide is not an acceptable reaction. I’d also put some money down that the industries she targeted had at least some involvement in harassing her.
What difference does it make what they were “raised for”? Black people were raised for slavery, doesn’t make it right. All food animals have the exact same capability to suffer in the same way that dogs and cats can. So what they were raised for is irrelevant.
h care during life and dignity during death,
they aren’t. Cows have their children taken from them in the dairy industry. male chicks are murdered at 1 DAY OLD in the egg industry. Cows, pigs, chickens etc live in their own festering faeces in the meat indsutries.
A perfect demonstration of my point. Thank you.
On the internet, it’s almost always because she’s a woman.
I would also like to know what the criticism was, but at the same time, I also feel like the internet can be shit sometimes whether there was reason to criticise or not.
Pretty sad story.
They claimed she was not taking proper care of the foxes. I haven’t read one thing that was in any way proven. It was just trash talking trolls doing what they do best, telling lies. They had story after story about the conditions. The woman was trying to do good, something none of those trolls harassing her have ever did. The trash reddit sub went private because now they fear consequences.
I did the research in the muck mines of the internet for y’all, and it is more complicated than it looks on the surface.
Several animals died in her care due to neglect, including leaving foxes on leashes and letting them get tangled up and baked alive in the sun. There are text messages that leaked of her having paperwork forged to make some animals look like they were bred in captivity. Her organization was registered as a fur farm to avoid some taxes and regulations. Lastly, she had an OnlyFans page where the regularly posed with dogs and foxes in ways that suggested she was trying to appeal to zoofiles, including text descriptions that are very questionable.
A subreddit was created called Save A Fox Snark that was tracking her questionable methods, and one user in particular, seemingly a furry, was very active in screenshotting all of her questionable content in hope that she would get shut down for animal cruelty. That furry is now also being targeted for harassment.
I went straight into the swamp for this info—you can read it all on KiwiFarms, Soyjak, OnlyFans, and the internet archive pages of the Save A Fox Snark subreddit.
So basically, you consider going to the people who drove her to commit suicide “doing the research”.
Doing the research to see what they were saying about her that might lead her to commit suicide, yes. If you want to know what the cyber bullying was that caused someone to commit suicide, it makes sense to look at the posts themselves, which is what I did.
I too look at ISIS propaganda when I want to see why they did what they did 🙄
There’s a huge difference between reading Mein Kampf and praising it for its good points.
Where did I praise my sources, exactly?
I did the research in the muck mines of Mein Kampf for y’all, and it is more complicated than it looks on the surface.
<insert Nazi apologism>
I went straight into the swamp for this info—and here’s where you can look it up <insert link to Neonazi sites>
Yeah sorry if I don’t believe this when the source is fucking kiwifarms
The source isn’t just kiwifarms—the internet archive pages of the subreddit are still up to see exactly what they were posting. The OnlyFans photos have been archived and there are many of them.
Believe whatever you want, but there was a whole mountain of information out there.
There’s a whole mountain of misinformation as well, and you decided that looking into the loaded conclusions and supposed “leaks” that had no other facts to back them up than what they were telling you.
And you need to keep in mind that targeted harassment campaigns are perfectly content twisting and manipulating the truth. I have plenty of experience with shit like that from my personal life. So I do not put a lot of stock in info sourced from places like those
In addition, I highly doubt the founder would have been this deeply affected by the harassment if she actually was a person that didn’t care much for the animals or others and their opinions
I do keep that in mind, that’s why I just report what I saw and where I saw it. The OnlyFans posts were created by her directly, I don’t think there is any dispute that the account was hers.
People can believe what they want, I just did some digging to see what the accusations were that made her feel like suicide was her only option.
She was the subject of harassment for reasons, and here were some of them. Whether the allegations were true or not isn’t the point, she still felt harassed enough to do something terrible.
Kiwifarms isn’t always wrong, but they like to fuck up things major ways, usually by focusing too much on someone being a leftist and/or trans, and sometimes even covering up abusers. They managed to cover up a rapist by not only focusing on her being trans, but also harassed multiple of her victims as it usually were “drunken sex”, which wasn’t considered as rape by many. Also Kiwifarms has an obsession with the “let’s paint our targets as irredeemable assholes, so driving them into suicide will be heroic, and also can be weaponized against the same group later on”. (BPD, while often seem like a misdiagnosis of badly mishandled CPTSD, is pretty much “asshole disorder” in many people’s minds.)
Never, ever source Kiwifarms. That org is fucking disturbing
They were the ones organizing some of the bullying—I wanted to see the posts she was seeing to better understand the nature of the harassment.
Thanks for the context. Very helpful.
Could have just stopped the YouTube channel and done something else. I know this is a stupid comment but it makes you wonder whether a bit of therapy or support in that direction would have been a bit more accessible her life could have been saved.
You’re blaming the victim.
Piss off you victim blaming ass
Work on your reading comprehension my dude
Work on not being a shitty person
Maybe if you could read you wouldn’t need to call other people shitty but have a day I guess bye
Maybe if you wouldnt be a vile pile of pure garbage people would not call you shitty.
Maybe you wouldn’t be a bad poo poo brain your dad wouldn’t have left for cigarettes
See? You keep confirming what a shitty human being you are. Complete waste of cell. Blaming the victim for being bullied to death.
hey uhh this isn’t exactly a happy conversation, but, uh happy cake day 😅
If you know it’s a stupid comment, maybe don’t make it
I get what you’re trying to say, but by saying it, you’ve demonstrated a significant misunderstanding of what it’s like to live with depression and suicidal ideation.
As simply as I can: I wouldn’t assume that she wasn’t seeking mental health help when she ended her own life. Just because she was successful in removing her own life, does not mean she wasn’t trying to save herself from that outcome.
Intellectually, the above statement is contradictory, if she didn’t want to die, then why did she end her own life? That, is the very nature of suicidal ideation and depression. You can’t intellectually ponder it out of existence, and you can want to live while still having suicidal urges that are hard to control.
This isn’t a logic problem. Intellectual reasoning doesn’t have a place in the discussion. The cognitive therapy you get from a mental health professional often needs to be paired with anti-depressants to mitigate the negative thoughts while you sort of work on rewiring how you think about the things that are causing you to feel depressed. Whether those things are internal thoughts, or comments from external sources…
Depression is a demon that isn’t easy to overcome.
By saying she should have just gotten therapy trivializes the struggle that some people go through every day, so I would expect some down votes for your comment. I understand that your comment is meant to be helpful and coming from a place of caring, but it does not come across that way.
I’ll add a disclaimer: all of the thoughts and ideas expressed here have no scientific, nor medical basis, I am not a doctor. These are from my own personal experiences and research, and have no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I may be wrong and if I am, I hope any readers will comment to let me know that I have erred.
A final note: to anyone struggling with mental health: I hope you get the help and support you need to overcome any struggles you may be experiencing. I sincerely hope you can find a path towards mental health that works for you.
Thanks for coming to my Ted talk.
Another reason why the US healthcare system sucks shit.
It was a redditor, they also posted how proud they were, I posted a screnshot but ppl tweaked at me for using reddit and I deleted it rather than argue
Lemmy people are weird. Can you link/show me this person?
