Occasionally, in my harrowing travels through the endless and labyrinthine interpersonal vendettas within the vegan YouTube community, I’ll discover drama that I’ve overlooked. Perhaps there was a feud between two lesser YouTubers whose channels I have not yet subscribed to, or maybe something went down in the comments section of a Blogilates Instagram post that I missed because for mental health reasons I had to stop following Blogilates on Instagram. Or perhaps, as in this case, I just wasn’t paying attention. What a mistake that was.
Thus far, we have focused on drama within the inter-vegan community, with very little attention paid to the true mortal enemy of vegan YouTubers: non-vegan YouTubers. Two weeks ago, ardently non-vegan YouTube personality Nicole Arbour—notorious for a 2015 video titled “Dear Fat People,” in which she claimed that fat shaming does not exist and that overweight people are sweaty and smell bad—published a video called “Dear Vegans” that acquired nearly 340,000 views. Across the internet, one thousand vegan mouths opened, then closed, then smiled.
“Dear vegans: shut up!” Arbour begins, after oinking like a pig. “Completely separate from your beliefs, you people are the most annoying group of humans known to mankind...more annoying than Jehovah’s Witnesses.”
Arbour talks about how much she enjoys eating meat, and how being a vegan is “not a skill” to be proud of. Arbour also alleges that vegans “smell like bean farts.”
This video, in keeping with Arbour’s general strategy of offending people for clicks, did not sit well with the vegans in question, who responded with a virtual avalanche of critiques, eye rolls, and casual death threats.
Freelee the Banana Girl, in her video “Dear Nicole ‘pea-brain’ Arbour” (479,000 views), claims that Arbour is “not all there upstairs,” while adding, naturally, that “She did make some good points in the ‘Dear Fat People’ video that she originally did.” (Freelee promotes a “Raw Till 4” diet that includes 30-plus bananas per day. Freelee also once claimed that obese people caused 9/11 deaths by blocking the stairs.)
“Miss ‘Dear Fat People’ is starting to expand, and I wonder if it’s all the bacon you’re eating!” she said gleefully. “People like Nicole just want to keep stuffing their face with death.”
Vegan Gains, who has previously been involved in drama with Tana Mongeau, Blogilates, and feminism, also had strong words for Nicole Arbour.
“I’m really curious to see what a selfish, apathetic bitch who says things merely for shock value has to say now,” he begins, before angrily listing her logical inconsistencies. “It’s clear that you’re just jealous that vegans are all-around better people than you.”
Sorsha, another vegan YouTuber whose videos remind me of a girl who was very mean to me at camp in 6th grade, informs Arbour with a smile, “If you’re going to call yourself a comedian, at least be funny sometimes.”
“Remember that girl that made that video titled ‘Dear Fat People’ who tries to deliver her jokes just like Jenna Marbles?” Sorsha asks. “Well, you probably don’t remember her, ‘cause she’s pretty easy to forget.”
“Given the chance, a lot of animals would eat the fuck out of us,” Arbour says in her video, which Sorsha watches in her video.
“Given the chance, a lot of people would kill the fuck out of you, Nicole,” Sorsha replies.
Will Sorsha make good on this subtle threat? Would murdering Nicole Arbour be considered vegan? Will the videos featured in next week’s blog involve fewer references to death, and “chicken periods”? Will I eventually be bullied into veganism after watching all of these videos of cows getting impregnated? We’ll just have to wait and see!
This has been a Vegan YouTube Drama Update.
Image via screenshot, gif by Bobby Finger.