as someone who eagerly awaited her youtube videos but never indulged further than that, it really is so strange to look back now and see how much i had missed. i always was curious on why she just disappeared all of a sudden.
sometimes i used to think her downhill trajectory (i use that phrase lightly since she is actually still doing amazing now, and probably a lot better off) started once her and her boyfriend broke up because it seemed as if everything was going perfectly and then all of a sudden it was quits. i remember feeling back then that her fans then started to realise perhaps how little they knew about her (which obviously is her right) and that acted as almost her first 'betrayal' towards them. and i'm sure her being a woman contributed a lot to that perceived betrayal as well, not just her being an influencer.
yeah it also seemed tough to have mentioned/featured her bf at the time in videos and then break up and have to deal with all that! in general going through complicated feelings in any sort of public eye seems so tough because people have many unsolicited takes.
The way you framed Ashley’s decision to step away felt less like a goodbye and more like an act of quiet defiance—choosing herself in a system that so often demands everything. It’s a reminder that she doesn’t owe us her pain, her perfection, or even her presence. You captured that with such grace, peeling back the layers of what her absence really means—not just for her, but for all of us who’ve watched creators navigate this impossible world. Reading this felt like finding the words I didn’t know I needed.
i loved reading this!! i used to watch ashley's videos back when she was still posting regularly and looking back i'm so grateful that i had someone like her - funny and cool and open about her mental health and feminist - to look up to. it was genuinely so strange to see her own community begin to turn on her and call her problematic, especially because it happened so fast and seemingly out of nowhere - it really felt like she went from generally well-liked to scrutinized by the majority of her fanbase overnight. you put everything i've been thinking and much much more into words in such a well-explained manner - thank you so much for writing this!
i found this through raynefq's twitter, and im so glad i got to be introduced to your work! this was super well written and explained, and i really enjoyed reading this. i also used to look up to bestdressed- i remember watching her as a middle schooler and loving her outfit idea videos- and looking back its really upsetting how people treated her, and the same culture of over-scrutinizing women on the internet is still a prevalent issue wrt how misogyny is perpetuated online. i think u explained everything very well, and i'm excited to go through your other writing tomorrow when i have some time. thank u for writing this❣️❣️
Ahhhh thank you so much for this!! It really has been absurd to really think about how disproportionate the uproar has been compared to what she’s done!
discovered this article thru rfq’s twitter and i just want to say thank u from the bottom of my heart!!! sorry if this sounds a little dramatic but i genuinely felt emotional reading this. i’ve been a fan of bestdressed ever since she was posting thrift hauls from her dorm. for a while, everything was great. her comments were always filled with such positivity and joy! it felt like such a nice little community where people could talk about fashion, thrifting, growing up, and their love for ashley’s videos. eventually tho, she became more and more popular and with that, her comment sections became more and more toxic. i know she isn’t perfect but the way her own fans ripped her apart for any minor infraction took me by surprise. every little mistake (altho sometimes, she didn’t even do anything wrong) was twisted into a grave crime that ashley had to be publicly shamed and punished for. for a long time, i felt so frustrated and helpless because it seemed like everyone was perfectly fine with how viciously her fanbase treated her. i would sometimes comment in defense of her but it ultimately felt useless against the unforgiving wall of hate. it’s only been recently that i’ve seen people bring up the toxicity of her fanbase, and i’m so glad people are talking about it!! thank u sm for writing this article; for so eloquently putting into words these long-standing frustrations and thoughts i’ve had that i felt like i could never truly quite express. sorry if this comment is too long and i hope it didn’t come off too parasocial-y lol. it’s genuinely just been saddening how a woman i’ve looked up to for years can never quite escape the pressure cooker that her fans have built around her.
I appreciate this comment so much!! I think Ashley was a very talented and special YouTuber and the arc this has taken has been pretty surprising. Also love the phrasing of escaping “the pressure cooker than her fans have built around her” - really good description
Ughhh her videos were so good whenever she pops up on my IG feed im excited to see her and what she’s up to, i also hope she’s doing well. This was a lovely read!
I was unaware of the drama surrounding her and also was sad when she completely stopped posting on YT. I do agree that posting a video of being unmasked and partying during the height of the pandemic was a bit insensitive, but I also know so many other people in my personal life who did this - people who were literally studying in medical school. If I'm not mad at them or didn't unfollow them, there's no reason it's legitimate to be mad at Ashley. You bring up the interesting phenomenon of how becoming increasingly famous for your relatability ends up making you less relatable to others. Hence the seething criticism and Guru Gossip pages that exist online. And I agree that canceling people over small mistakes or carelessness is unproductive. It's better that she didn't apologize than fake an apology.
I stumbled across this via google search (something along the lines of "wow, the way people treated bestdressed was really messed up. I hope someone has written a super well-articulated piece on this so I can point and say YES that's exactly what I was thinking but 100x better worded!). And you did not disappoint!
Really, really lovely writing -- I really appreciate how you write with kindness (not just for this piece but your other pieces as well). It's such a breath of fresh air after spending a lot of time around people on the internet just, well, being Mean. I fully agree with the stuff you've said here, and honestly I think the internet would be a better place if more people read your pieces. You present the world not as 15 second, snappy, neat little packages, but as nuanced and complex and messy. Like I felt that bit about the internet's constant surveillance in my SOUL and I'm not even remotely an influencer/anyone with a following! Can't imagine what people ~with fame~ feel.
Just like you, I followed Ashley once upon a time. I loved (and still love!) her editing style and just the ~vibes~ of her channel. Every so often, I think about her too. And I hope she's happy.
Thanks for writing this piece! I've also created a substack account specifically to follow you and comment, and I'm looking forward to binge reading all your pieces~
I think you really reflect my thoughts perfectly even though I wasn't a frequent commenter but religiously watched Bestdressed's video, I never understood the hate or the entitlement people had over her or other youtubers. I thought that the video "how 2020 has me feeling" was such a beautiful and emotional video that encompassed the depth how I was feeling during Covid... I appreciated the vulnerability. I never ventured into the comments till months later when I re-watched it, I thought why can't people just let others live.
Is it weird to say I just loved listening to her voice- it was comforting, same as Conan gray they just gave me a sense of calm throughout my chaotic upbringing as well as relating to them, but I'm truly happy for them and wish them all the happiness.
Your writing is great and I love the opening sentence of the second paragraph, I had to read it a few times to appreciate it haha
just found this article by accident through a google search -- i too was missing Ashley this morning and needing some clothing inspiration and headed to her instagram to see how she's been doing. i only started watching her videos towards the end of youtube career (or possibly right after she stopped posting) but i'm still so grateful i found her. i've learned more from her videos than i have in years of reading fashion magazines. it's wild to me how some of her fans feel she "owes" them an apology video, or a final video to announce her departure, or a video addressing why she wasn't more outspoken about her politics or a more perfect feminist. i hope she's doing well now but i can imagine there must still be a toll seeing her fans still posting comments under her recent photos demanding she come back to youtube ... i wouldn't, if i were her.
anyway, thank you so much for writing this. she holds a dear place in my heart and it makes me so happy to see other people who were influenced by her but don't feel they are owed anything.
some great points but i think the issue is not so much people - even and especially youtubers/‘influencers’ - being imperfect, so much as the whole charade of wanting to be entertained and building a persona to accommodate that, and then getting upset when the facade crumbles. i think audience expectations, and how they are shaped by consumerism and fantasy (as you mention), and the nature of celebrity/performance/spectacle, have a big role to play, beyond individual rights and wrongs.
totally agree that the whole influencer/celebrity/parasocial ecosystem is at work here! not blaming individual people's faults so much as pointing out how we can easily tend towards these impulses given the circumstances
I love this piece! Its very thought out and hits the point. Honestly, I’m just really glad she even left her youtube channel ALONE. I’d be devastated if she deleted majority of her videos (ala marziapie-esque)
The thing I remember the most was her Amazon sponsorship. It shot to pieces her credibility. She'd regularly talk about sustainability and then to do an Amazon deal when she clearly didn't need the money left a bad taste in a lot of viewers mouths.
This was a great piece, however there's a couple other reasons why the internet went after her too. She took a brand deal with Amazon, when her thing was kind of being against them. Also she was then outed by actually being from a wealthy family, which is super confusing. All this to say she is human and can't be perfect. But I think unfortunately influencers are in the firing line and they can't keep avoiding issues and keep saying I'm sorry or I didn't know because it's not good enough in some people's eyes.
i think it's interesting how the amazon deal wasn't the foremost criticism she faced! of course she did take the video down (and afaik never acknowledged again), but she seemed to face much harsher critique for other mistakes i would personally consider more ambiguous.
not really sure about what it means to be "outed" for wealth (i remember hearing rumblings of this vaguely), and that seems like a way more common obfuscation across industries that people tend to get away with
as someone who eagerly awaited her youtube videos but never indulged further than that, it really is so strange to look back now and see how much i had missed. i always was curious on why she just disappeared all of a sudden.
sometimes i used to think her downhill trajectory (i use that phrase lightly since she is actually still doing amazing now, and probably a lot better off) started once her and her boyfriend broke up because it seemed as if everything was going perfectly and then all of a sudden it was quits. i remember feeling back then that her fans then started to realise perhaps how little they knew about her (which obviously is her right) and that acted as almost her first 'betrayal' towards them. and i'm sure her being a woman contributed a lot to that perceived betrayal as well, not just her being an influencer.
thank you for this post, it was a great read!!
yeah it also seemed tough to have mentioned/featured her bf at the time in videos and then break up and have to deal with all that! in general going through complicated feelings in any sort of public eye seems so tough because people have many unsolicited takes.
The way you framed Ashley’s decision to step away felt less like a goodbye and more like an act of quiet defiance—choosing herself in a system that so often demands everything. It’s a reminder that she doesn’t owe us her pain, her perfection, or even her presence. You captured that with such grace, peeling back the layers of what her absence really means—not just for her, but for all of us who’ve watched creators navigate this impossible world. Reading this felt like finding the words I didn’t know I needed.
i loved reading this!! i used to watch ashley's videos back when she was still posting regularly and looking back i'm so grateful that i had someone like her - funny and cool and open about her mental health and feminist - to look up to. it was genuinely so strange to see her own community begin to turn on her and call her problematic, especially because it happened so fast and seemingly out of nowhere - it really felt like she went from generally well-liked to scrutinized by the majority of her fanbase overnight. you put everything i've been thinking and much much more into words in such a well-explained manner - thank you so much for writing this!
thanks for reading!!
i found this through raynefq's twitter, and im so glad i got to be introduced to your work! this was super well written and explained, and i really enjoyed reading this. i also used to look up to bestdressed- i remember watching her as a middle schooler and loving her outfit idea videos- and looking back its really upsetting how people treated her, and the same culture of over-scrutinizing women on the internet is still a prevalent issue wrt how misogyny is perpetuated online. i think u explained everything very well, and i'm excited to go through your other writing tomorrow when i have some time. thank u for writing this❣️❣️
Ahhhh thank you so much for this!! It really has been absurd to really think about how disproportionate the uproar has been compared to what she’s done!
discovered this article thru rfq’s twitter and i just want to say thank u from the bottom of my heart!!! sorry if this sounds a little dramatic but i genuinely felt emotional reading this. i’ve been a fan of bestdressed ever since she was posting thrift hauls from her dorm. for a while, everything was great. her comments were always filled with such positivity and joy! it felt like such a nice little community where people could talk about fashion, thrifting, growing up, and their love for ashley’s videos. eventually tho, she became more and more popular and with that, her comment sections became more and more toxic. i know she isn’t perfect but the way her own fans ripped her apart for any minor infraction took me by surprise. every little mistake (altho sometimes, she didn’t even do anything wrong) was twisted into a grave crime that ashley had to be publicly shamed and punished for. for a long time, i felt so frustrated and helpless because it seemed like everyone was perfectly fine with how viciously her fanbase treated her. i would sometimes comment in defense of her but it ultimately felt useless against the unforgiving wall of hate. it’s only been recently that i’ve seen people bring up the toxicity of her fanbase, and i’m so glad people are talking about it!! thank u sm for writing this article; for so eloquently putting into words these long-standing frustrations and thoughts i’ve had that i felt like i could never truly quite express. sorry if this comment is too long and i hope it didn’t come off too parasocial-y lol. it’s genuinely just been saddening how a woman i’ve looked up to for years can never quite escape the pressure cooker that her fans have built around her.
I appreciate this comment so much!! I think Ashley was a very talented and special YouTuber and the arc this has taken has been pretty surprising. Also love the phrasing of escaping “the pressure cooker than her fans have built around her” - really good description
Ughhh her videos were so good whenever she pops up on my IG feed im excited to see her and what she’s up to, i also hope she’s doing well. This was a lovely read!
I was unaware of the drama surrounding her and also was sad when she completely stopped posting on YT. I do agree that posting a video of being unmasked and partying during the height of the pandemic was a bit insensitive, but I also know so many other people in my personal life who did this - people who were literally studying in medical school. If I'm not mad at them or didn't unfollow them, there's no reason it's legitimate to be mad at Ashley. You bring up the interesting phenomenon of how becoming increasingly famous for your relatability ends up making you less relatable to others. Hence the seething criticism and Guru Gossip pages that exist online. And I agree that canceling people over small mistakes or carelessness is unproductive. It's better that she didn't apologize than fake an apology.
I stumbled across this via google search (something along the lines of "wow, the way people treated bestdressed was really messed up. I hope someone has written a super well-articulated piece on this so I can point and say YES that's exactly what I was thinking but 100x better worded!). And you did not disappoint!
Really, really lovely writing -- I really appreciate how you write with kindness (not just for this piece but your other pieces as well). It's such a breath of fresh air after spending a lot of time around people on the internet just, well, being Mean. I fully agree with the stuff you've said here, and honestly I think the internet would be a better place if more people read your pieces. You present the world not as 15 second, snappy, neat little packages, but as nuanced and complex and messy. Like I felt that bit about the internet's constant surveillance in my SOUL and I'm not even remotely an influencer/anyone with a following! Can't imagine what people ~with fame~ feel.
Just like you, I followed Ashley once upon a time. I loved (and still love!) her editing style and just the ~vibes~ of her channel. Every so often, I think about her too. And I hope she's happy.
Thanks for writing this piece! I've also created a substack account specifically to follow you and comment, and I'm looking forward to binge reading all your pieces~
omg thank you so much!!!!
I think you really reflect my thoughts perfectly even though I wasn't a frequent commenter but religiously watched Bestdressed's video, I never understood the hate or the entitlement people had over her or other youtubers. I thought that the video "how 2020 has me feeling" was such a beautiful and emotional video that encompassed the depth how I was feeling during Covid... I appreciated the vulnerability. I never ventured into the comments till months later when I re-watched it, I thought why can't people just let others live.
Is it weird to say I just loved listening to her voice- it was comforting, same as Conan gray they just gave me a sense of calm throughout my chaotic upbringing as well as relating to them, but I'm truly happy for them and wish them all the happiness.
Your writing is great and I love the opening sentence of the second paragraph, I had to read it a few times to appreciate it haha
Thank you for this article
just found this article by accident through a google search -- i too was missing Ashley this morning and needing some clothing inspiration and headed to her instagram to see how she's been doing. i only started watching her videos towards the end of youtube career (or possibly right after she stopped posting) but i'm still so grateful i found her. i've learned more from her videos than i have in years of reading fashion magazines. it's wild to me how some of her fans feel she "owes" them an apology video, or a final video to announce her departure, or a video addressing why she wasn't more outspoken about her politics or a more perfect feminist. i hope she's doing well now but i can imagine there must still be a toll seeing her fans still posting comments under her recent photos demanding she come back to youtube ... i wouldn't, if i were her.
anyway, thank you so much for writing this. she holds a dear place in my heart and it makes me so happy to see other people who were influenced by her but don't feel they are owed anything.
I’d wondered where she went and loved reading this!! Such a fan of hers and now of yours 🩷
Thank you!!
some great points but i think the issue is not so much people - even and especially youtubers/‘influencers’ - being imperfect, so much as the whole charade of wanting to be entertained and building a persona to accommodate that, and then getting upset when the facade crumbles. i think audience expectations, and how they are shaped by consumerism and fantasy (as you mention), and the nature of celebrity/performance/spectacle, have a big role to play, beyond individual rights and wrongs.
totally agree that the whole influencer/celebrity/parasocial ecosystem is at work here! not blaming individual people's faults so much as pointing out how we can easily tend towards these impulses given the circumstances
I love this piece! Its very thought out and hits the point. Honestly, I’m just really glad she even left her youtube channel ALONE. I’d be devastated if she deleted majority of her videos (ala marziapie-esque)
Brilliant
Thank you!
The thing I remember the most was her Amazon sponsorship. It shot to pieces her credibility. She'd regularly talk about sustainability and then to do an Amazon deal when she clearly didn't need the money left a bad taste in a lot of viewers mouths.
This was a great piece, however there's a couple other reasons why the internet went after her too. She took a brand deal with Amazon, when her thing was kind of being against them. Also she was then outed by actually being from a wealthy family, which is super confusing. All this to say she is human and can't be perfect. But I think unfortunately influencers are in the firing line and they can't keep avoiding issues and keep saying I'm sorry or I didn't know because it's not good enough in some people's eyes.
i think it's interesting how the amazon deal wasn't the foremost criticism she faced! of course she did take the video down (and afaik never acknowledged again), but she seemed to face much harsher critique for other mistakes i would personally consider more ambiguous.
not really sure about what it means to be "outed" for wealth (i remember hearing rumblings of this vaguely), and that seems like a way more common obfuscation across industries that people tend to get away with