Hello there Mumsnet. We hope to find you all well!
We are writing this post today to raise awareness of an issue that has popped up. We feel it is incredibly important to spread the word. I'll give you a run down.
A famous YouTube personality (male) is currently in a relationship with a Canadian teenage pop singer (female). This teenage girl, the pop singer, recently posted a photo of a premature child, insinuating it was her male child, and that he had tragically died as a result of premature birth. Hundreds (maybe hundreds of thousands considering the size of their combined fanbases) of people saw this. However, it was soon found out that this child was not hers - and (thankfully) not deceased. The photo had infact been taken (WITHOUT PERMISSION OR KNOWLEDGE) from another mother on the internet, of her little baby girl, for the purpose of lying and garnering attention/sympathy towards the pop singer/the couple.
Now, of course, famous people pull silly stunts all the time. However, the fact that this picture was taken without permission and extremely unrespectfully declared the innocent baby dead caused many, many people to try and get an apology for the act, specifically for the mother of the child and the child herself (who is alive and well at four years old).
Shockingly, while the pop singer has kept quiet apart from very cruel posts about this situation (including calling anyone who questions her about this 'cs and b**s') and is being protected by her partner, her parter has posted videos on his YouTube channel denying it ever happened, while at the same time forcefully insulting mothers of premature children and being extremely abusive. I short, they are trying to avoid responsibility, giving an apology and bullying mothers all over the world into submission and to 'keep quiet'.
We, as a large group of people who want to speak up about this, feel that this is entirely unreasonable - especially considering their fanbases are made up of very impressionable young teenagers. We want to spread the word to see if people agree with us that this is awful behaviour, the cover up is disgusting, and we will NOT be abused into submission just because they are 'famous', 'protected' and we mothers are not.
Here is his video on the subject after he recieved emails from angry mothers (Please keep in mind both these videos have STRONG abusive language aimed towards mothers, and offensive body language).
Just to clarify, he is lying. The photo was up for about a month before it was found out to be a lie. He is in full knowledge of this stunt. This has all been proven with the help of people who are 'tech savvy'. He is trying to cover his tracks. He knows everyone knows, this video is solely made for the purpose of using bullying tactics to keep people quiet.
This is his half-assed apology for how abusive he was to mothers of premature children in that previous video:
As you can see, not an apology at all.
This is a very brave mother of a premature child who is speaking out publicly, acting out as spokes person for the rest of us. She is not famous. She is not a YouTube star. She is "just" a mother.
If any of you feel strongly about this, we would very much appreciate it if those of you with Youtube accounts can give this mother support as our spokesperson. We understand some of you may not feel so strongly. What are your thoughts on this?
The many, many of us offended by this do not feel we are being unreasable asking for an apology, standing up for ourselves, and trying to get rid of the cover up. We feel we are being entirely reasonable, but as mothers (and many, many other individuals) we are being bullied.
