i will open this by freely admitting I don’t know every side to every story.
i was not present from the ground floor, and i can only speak to what i know personally, from my perspective. i am not attempting to do anything more or less than that.
on that note however, i will also open with the fact that from what i have seen, the side of the story that paints my friends and colleagues as something they have never shown themselves to be seems to have been given significantly more weight by outsiders. these people have been given no chance to defend themselves by many. public statements by me and the other women involved have been constantly questioned, called lies, or even been called scripted. i have no idea what i can even say in an environment where everyone has made up their own minds that we are all doing something sinister, because i know most people won’t even believe me. but here i am anyway.
when i started here at girls play, i did meet drea first. she never did anything to wrong me personally or privately, at least to my knowledge, prior to her blocking me. i have made it a point to not seek out ways to see what she’s said about any of us, but i do occasionally get told by others (even though i don’t really want to know). she left very soon after i started, and while i still don’t feel like i have enough authority to speak on that particular split, i do know that i saw firsthand what it did to the girls who were left emotionally. i think the general reaction was somewhere between shock, sadness, and anger. for a while it seemed like once a week there was some new garbage being flung at us from the internet, but i still chose to stay. the women i worked with, even the ones that intimidated me, seemed like good people. the community was solid. i’d developed an attachment to especially sydney and maddie (the later of whom i knew somewhat beforehand as well) and later bells, and wanted to make it work with them. i wanted to help gp grow.
i was present when renee left as well, although my only interaction with her beforehand was a single stream together, in which i got the feeling that she didn’t really want me there. i have no idea if that is true at all, since i’ve never spoken to her since, and am also not the type of person to ask about that sort of thing anyway. someone hating me is 9 times out of 10 all in my head due to my anxiety. i do not feel as if i have much authority to speak on that split either, since at that time i was just beginning to ramp up my involvement in the channel, but again, i saw how it affected everyone in the company. i saw how hurt everyone was. at the time, i think we all thought the split was due to scheduling, or at least that was my impression. i don’t know. it was strange.
i had no idea either of them were upset about anything the group had done until they started insulting the other girls and alex (who never wanted the spotlight, which is why he never was a public name) publicly. i remember getting DMs (before i turned them off to non-mutuals) asking if sydney was “really my friend”. asking if she had forced me to say things. theorizing that we were all puppets. taking anything and everything we could possibly do to defend ourselves and twisting it into some warped version of what it was.
i have always been the type of person that tries to only speak with 100% honesty, or say nothing at all. i believe in being incredibly open with my feelings, my struggles, my opinions. so to have someone say my words aren’t mine, that my feelings for someone are a lie, that i’m being manipulated, hurts me deeply. i am also extremely personally familiar with emotionally abusive behavior. i grew up around it. i learned to recognize it. it simply isn’t present, at least in any of my relationships with anyone involved in gp currently. alex and sydney behaved as managers when they had to, because someone had to. and because that’s essentially what they are to us so shit can actually get done. but they also have listened to me and every concern i’ve voiced, every idea i’ve had, even when i wasn’t a full member. they’ve had my back on things outside of the channel. they’ve become my friends. hell, alex has offered multiple times to help me learn to drive. he’s offered to help me move. (addendum: he and liv DID help me fucking move. that man carried so much heavy shit up and down my goddamn stairs) he’s offered to help me upgrade my computer, or at least help me find the parts i need. i fucking game with him and the mods from home during the off chance i have time. he wrote me a proof of employment letter (which was also a glowing recommendation of my work ethic which was sweet) so me and my husband could get approved for our apartment because they didn’t want just paypal screenshots as proof of income. sydney picks me up to stream with her because i don’t have a car or a license. and not just when she’s on her way down and past my place either, she’s gone out of her way to come get me, and doesn’t make me feel like an inconvenience. i’ve spent the night at her house. i’ve texted her at buttass o’clock about dumb shit i’m worried about and she’s been there for me. we’ve had so many conversations both about work and not, about our feelings, about life, about family, about fun stuff, anything. i’ve grown to love her immensely. these people are anything but monsters. they assert control sometimes because they have to, they miss signals sometimes because they’re human, but if you tell them anything they’ve done has hurt you or that you disagree, they don’t just shut you down. they communicate.
i feel like that’s what this entire issue boils down to. communication, and willingness (or lack thereof) to prioritize it. around kenzie and cori i always got the gut feeling that there was something they weren’t saying. that they weren’t being honest about their actual feelings often. again, i knew them the least out of any of the girls, but i don’t feel like that was for lack of trying. even feeling that way though, and even feeling deeply betrayed when halfway through our brief hiatus this spring they announced their intentions to quit and compete with us, i was so deeply willing to believe the best of them. i assumed they believed what we all said during the video where we explained the reason for our break, i assumed they loved this place as much as i had come to even though they were leaving, i believed their intent wasn’t malicious, i trusted when i knew in the pit of my stomach that i shouldn’t, because above all i want to believe people are good. i want to believe people can communicate, i want to believe people will be professional, i want to believe people recognize that their actions impact people other than themselves. i was one of the people that was very passionate about giving them a chance to do the split right, because i hoped they would and could. and for a little while aspects of it seemed to be going well. their announcement of departure stream was the first red flag that it wasn’t going to be smooth though. we had discussed what they needed to do, that they basically just needed to be sincere and tell people they were leaving, and the basic why, without announcing too soon that it was to create their own separate group channel so they didn’t burn our house down on the way out just because they weren’t living there anymore. once they went on however, it felt like they viewed the whole thing as a joke. they made jokes about going backpacking in europe, which some people believed to be the actual truth for a while. they laughed when people said they were upset. instead of just saying what needed to be said in a sincere and serious manner, they treated it as if it was just a casual irl stream with the occasional “see you soon though but not here!” thrown in. i had to go for a walk without my phone or anything on me because i genuinely thought i would vomit from stress if i stayed in a place where i could watch it or receive texts about it. it was very hard. but we got through it. especially since there wasn’t really anything we could do about it. that we could ultimately handle. them streaming against us when the time came we could ultimately handle. we came up with an agreement in writing, that they had an opportunity to review and adjust, and they mainly stuck to it. if everything had gone according to the plan we all agreed on we wouldn’t be here. i wouldn’t need to write this. we would have all just moved on. let each other live. grown in our own separate ways.
however, one big thing in the agreement was repayment for some things we could not use (photo shoot that was going to be for patreon), or they elected to keep (computer we had built for cori that was going to be used for helping girls play, that she was going to work with us to pay off and eventually own even before they decided to leave). we showed them the receipts. we showed them the math. we took into account things they had paid for, receipts they gave us for things for the studio and money they’d spent on the channel, etc. they saw the amount. they agreed to it. we gave them time to pay us back. we said they could do payment plans if they wanted. we could have yelled about it on social media when they didn’t even start to pay us back by the time they’d agreed to. instead we tried to be professional. private. sent texts and emails. stayed calm. and what we got back was “talk to my lawyer”.
isn’t that the shitty thing though? that everything always boils down to fucking money? i wish we were in a place where we could say fuck it and never think about them again. but absorbing that cost is making it harder and harder to pay six girls for their hard work out of the donations you all give us out of the kindness of your hearts. we have less and less at the end of the month for everyone after we pay all our bills, pay each other back for all the money we put into fun event days, restock the pantry so we can eat. sydney has taken pay cuts so the other girls can have more before even though she does more work because she edits. even though alex busts his ass constantly behind the scenes editing and making sure everything runs and the bills are in order so the lights stay on, some months he doesn’t even take a cut or pays for things out of his own pocket he shouldn’t have to. just because he’s not in front of the camera doesn’t mean he doesn’t deserve compensation for the work he does to keep girls play running. and if we did just suck it up and absorb that cost just to be done with this whole situation, what then? who’s to say it won’t happen again? who’s to say that isn’t just setting a dangerous precedent; basically telling the world we’re so kind that we’ll just be taken advantage of to avoid causing a scene and hurting feelings?
i’m not going to be the person that just hides because it’s easy and ignores problems until they go away. it’s painful to stand up for yourself and the people you love sometimes, but i can’t just let them be walked on. it would be one thing if it was just me, but it isn’t.
girls play has allowed me to expand my art practice into my career rather than something i do on the side when i have a second away from a shitty day job.
girls play is sydney’s full time job. the channel and the girls in it are her passion, her heart and soul.
maddie has a day job and extreme anxiety and has been crushed so often by these occurrences but still finds it in her heart to come in and put her whole heart into this place when she could have left multiple times and we would have understood.
liv has a family and another baby on the way and thought these women were her friends, and now they’re trying to force her to choose between them, who haven’t shown any loyalty to her at all, and us.
bells works over full time hours, is basically raising a teenager, and still puts her full heart and energy into everything she does with us because she has more passion than anyone i’ve ever known.
sky came back into this channel smack dab in the middle of the chaos and still stuck with us, and is one of the biggest things helping us grow.
our frequent guest natalie helps us so much because she wants to, because she loves this place and the community just as much as those of us that have been here for much longer. she’s quickly becoming part of our family.
alex has received death threats and hate mail to his home, his wife has been affected by the things being said about him, but he cannot defend himself because he doesn’t have a real online presence, and now he seems to almost be afraid to even try. but he still sticks it out for us. to trust those of us that are left and treat us like family even though so many people have taken advantage of him in the past year alone.
i have no idea how to close this besides saying girls play has become my second home. it’s become an amazing part of my life. the good it’s brought for me far outweighs the bad or i wouldn’t even be here. i’m just so frustrated that so many people seem to refuse to recognize that, or assume there’s some strange sinister backstory, or that we are all puppets. those of us that are still here are here because we care, because we love the nerd herd, because we love the content we create, because we love each other, because we love where the channel is going and want to make it bigger and better than where it’s been.
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here i am, just days before this is to be released to the public, revisiting this. actually, barely days. really only one full one. anyway, i digress. i wanted to add a few more feelings but didn’t really think it appropriate to alter the thoughts i had weeks (maybe even a month or so) ago. i just felt in my heart i needed to get back into this. to say more. maybe i’ll repeat myself, who knows. if i do, i’m sorry for that. i feel like this is as much for my own clarity as it is for yours. so forgive me if i talk in circles a little while getting this out of my system.
the court situation and this data dump has been making me ill with stress. even though i know what went into those contracts, how much we conceded on our points to reach a common ground, i’m still terrified there’s some way we’re wrong for standing our ground. i was terrified for court when mediation didn’t work, but i believe in this place so i was going to come. after all that inner turmoil and stress and building myself up, the date got delayed. apparently because one of the parties would be “out of town” on the other side. which i didn’t think was a reason you could get a court date delayed regardless. then that day came and went and kenz streamed for 16 hours that day. i don’t know where cori was, that very well may have been the reason, but it still felt like a slap in the face. like this thing that affects me and everyone close to me SO MUCH is nothing to them. just something to get mad about then move on. something to subtweet about & make slam videos. i don’t know.
throwing so much of my soul into redoing so much of the channel for everyone when i don’t know if we’re going to sink or swim after this has been fucking hard. i’m really proud of the work that’s been done but it also fucking terrifies me. like what if it’s all for nothing? what if i busted my ass for a month for no reason? what if i redrew all these emotes just to watch this channel burn? i’d be lying if i said everything about this data dump doesn’t scare the everloving shit out of me. even though i’ve been reassured over and over that this is the way to get out from under everything and start over i can’t help but feel afraid and dirty about it.
which makes me even angrier. why am i letting this own me so much? i spent so much of my young adult life as an activist. someone who was so proud and sure of what they believed in that i’d scream it from the rooftops & argue with anyone. where did that woman go? is she dead in a ditch somewhere? who am i, the scared little child hiding in her skin? why am i like this? why am i even writing this as an addendum?
maybe i just feel like you knowing that none of us take this lightly is important. maybe i think it’ll make someone somewhere realize just how much this affects us in our day to day. i stay up at night thinking about it. i stay up at night scared of the blowback. i lose sleep afraid that someone is going to find my personal information and hurt my family. it’s happened before. it’s happening to fans right the fuck now. people are being threatened for supporting us. but they somehow still come back. they come spend time in our stupid chat on the stupid internet. that’s fucking brave. i need to be that brave.
i’m also so frightened that even with all this proof, this timeline, these letters, that i’m standing on the wrong side of the line. so much of my being believes what we do here, believes these women, believes in what we’ve all said, but i also feel like i’m being gaslit into not believing my own truth. so many people insisting things are a way i’ve never seen has made me doubt. and it’s okay to have your viewpoint disrupted. but i feel like it’s gone past that for me, where i’m questioning every interaction i’ve ever had for no reason. it’s scary. i’m fucking scared.
but i’m trying to be stronger than how fucking scared i am.
i’ve seen the good this place does. the good these people do. these women (and the men behind the scenes too, from alex to our mods) are good. fucking. people. i believe that. with my whole heart.
am i scared this puts us down to the level of the bullies? yes.
am i scared of the repercussions? yes
am i gonna hide from social media for like 40 years? maybe.
am i ever going to let someone tell me my voice isn’t mine anymore? that my side of a story is worthless? that i’m just a stepping stone for their goals? that my passion means jack shit? that i don’t deserve success in a thing i work hard for? that i’m trying to be someone else? that what i believe in isn’t important?
fuck no.
i feel like this entire rambling thing at the end here doesn’t need to be here.
it’s okay.
i’m not perfect.
i hope this at least gave you some perspective if nothing else.
i don’t care what you do with any of this information. stay or go, that’s up to you. we just want to be heard for once.
• niki