Following her apology video, which was uploaded to YouTube on Friday, September 4, Tana Mongeau received some major backlash from fans who claimed her “long overdue apology” was not “genuine.” Others accused the entire 15-minute clip of being scripted while other social media users said she looked “emotionless.”
For these who missed it, the 22-year-old YouTuber apologized to her 5.4 million subscribers “for being such a big part of cancel culture for the entirety of my career.”
She added, “I want to express my utter disgust with every single apology video I ever made. I’m sorry for uploading them, I’m sorry for defending them, and I’m sorry for putting them out to such a huge audience. I did nothing but look at apology videos as people digging up my past again.”
As fans know, Tana’s apology came months after her former friend and collaborator Kahlen Barry publicly called her out on Twitter for using racial slurs, making him feel “invalid” and not using her platform to support the Black Lives Matter movement. Then, in a 44-minute video, uploaded on June 15, Kahlen detailed his experiences working with the YouTuber. At the time, she apologized, but he called her apology “very manipulative, very deflective, and also gaslighting and invalidating.”
In her new apology, Tana not only addressed all these prior claims, but promised to do better in the future.
“I don’t deserve a platform if I continue to act in such a gas-lighting and irresponsible manner, and I’m so sorry for how long I’ve done that,” she said. “I don’t want to come back to this platform until I am someone that can shape the youth in far better ways than the things I watched growing up shaped me. I don’t want to be the reason a young girl grows up the way I did.”
Fans were quick to slam her “fake” apology, and after seeing the backlash Tana spoke out in since-expired Instagram Stories posts.
“I just want to let you know that I am taking in everything everyone is saying, and will be making a response,” she said, before ensuring fans that her video was not scripted. “A lot of people are really coming for me for being so emotionless and just kind of talking, saying it’s a script or whatever, but I was just scared to cry. At the end of the day, if you’re crying, if you’re freaking out in an apology video, people are going to be so much more angry for that.”
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