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Happy 30th Birthday Etika: Mental Illness as an Influencer

When someone exists as an influencer, with hordes of faceless people following them for "content," their humanity gets lost in the mix.

**Update: On June 25th, 2019, Etika's body was found in the East River by the NYPD. If you're experiencing suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.*

At midnight on June 20th, popular YouTuber and video game streamer, Etika, posted a video titled "I'm sorry" on his alternate channel.

The video shows the YouTuber, whose real name is Desmond Amofah, filming himself as he walks around New York, monologuing about how badly he messed up his life, doling out apologies for anything and everything. He apologizes for pushing people away, letting people down, and failing to seek help for his own mental illness. He speaks calmly and in the past tense. He mentions suicide more than once, and he laments not being able to see what happens next in Attack on Titan. Although the video was posted at midnight, it was filmed during daylight hours and likely scheduled in advance. Etika has not been seen or heard from since.

Many fans are worried that Etika is at high-risk of suicide. Others think that it might be a publicity stunt, one in a long pattern of Etika-related suicidal content. Regardless, his experiences shed light on the troubling dichotomy between Internet fame and suffering mental illness for social media influencers who experience both.

Best known for his Nintendo-related reaction videos, Etika's original YouTube channel had over 662,000 subscribers before he purposely had it banned during what seemed like a mental breakdown. In 2018, Etika uploaded a video rant against Twitter over a temporary ban for using the n-word with a soft "a." His reason for being mad makes sense, but his speech and behavior in the video seem erratic. Shortly after, Etika bombed his own channel with porn, resulting in a permanent YouTube ban. He then posted what seemed like a suicide note on his subreddit, saying, "And now, it's my turn to die. I love you all." He later apologized on Twitch livestream, chalking it up to a "meltdown."

The Know Your Meme entry on Etika documents a pattern of similarly worrying incidents that have escalated over time, suggesting possible mental health issues. These include suicidal tweets, an Instagram-streamed arrest, and his assault of a cop which led to him being briefly put in a mental health facility.

After the arrest, Etika also appeared in a very troubling interview with fellow YouTuber, Keemstar, who capitalizes on Internet-related drama on his "DramaAlert" channel.

During the interview, Etika says, "I walked into the mental place, I became God, and I walked out." The two end up arguing, resulting in Etika blocking Keemstar on Twitter afterwards. Keemstar responded by tweeting about how Etika "RAGE QUIT" the interview "cus I called him out for being WEAK!"

But mental illness doesn't make someone weak; it makes them ill. Even if all of Etika's earlier suicide-related content was some kind of "stunt," it would still point to a larger cry for help that seems all too obvious. Unfortunately, when someone exists as an influencer, with hordes of faceless people following them for "content," their humanity gets lost in the mix. The toxicity of Internet fame can be a hard pill to swallow even for perfectly mentally stable influencers. For those with mental illnesses, it can be shattering.

Many fans view their favorite social media influencers almost as friends. They may spend hours every day listening to a specific person talk and learning details about their life, so they come to feel like they really know that person. But for an influencer, the relationship with fans can never truly exist on equal footing; it is, by nature, hierarchical. The influencer creates content and the fans consume it. Even fans who genuinely want to be friends (and how does one differentiate those from the ones seeking fame, power, or influence?) don't actually want to know the real person. They want to know the influencer's persona.

The only thing lonelier than being truly alone is being surrounded by people who think they know you when they really don't. This is an experience all too common for people with mental illness, who often feel the need to hide their issues for fear of social stigmatization. For influencers, the problem is compounded. Even if they're open about their mental illness, they risk being made fun of by a large audience or, possibly worse, having their worst moments encouraged as a source of "drama." This certainly seemed to be the case for Etika.

In a moment of reflection during "I'm Sorry," Etika says: "Let my story be one that advises caution on too much of the social media s**t, man. It can f**k you up."

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The Toxic Effects of Social Media on Young Celebrities

In recent interviews, Selena Gomez and Game of Thrones' Maisie Williams have both opened up about their struggles with mental illness.

Selena Gomez

Image Press Agency/NurPhoto/Shutterstock

On Wednesday, at a press conference at the Cannes Film Festival for The Dead Don't Die, Selena Gomez got candid about the side effects of social media.

"For my generation specifically, social media has been terrible," Gomez said. "I understand that it's amazing to use as a platform, but it does scare me when you see how exposed these young girls and boys are. I think it's dangerous for sure."

She added, "It's impossible to make [social media] safe at this point… I see these young girls, I'll meet them at meet-and-greets, and they're just devastated by bullying and not having a voice. I would be careful and allow yourself some time limits of when you should use it."

Gomez has long been open about her struggles with mental health. In October 2018, she was hospitalized and entered a treatment facility for anxiety and depression. This past April, she told Coach's Dream It Real podcast about her time in treatment and in therapy, and also mentioned social media and its detrimental consequences.

"It is not that healthy to be on [social media] all the time because I noticed with me, I got kind of depressed looking at these people who look beautiful and amazing, and it would just get me down a lot, so I just think taking breaks is really important. But just know that most of it isn't real," she said. "I don't mean to be rude, but it's very unrealistic in a lot of ways, and I think that for me, I want to protect the youngest generation because they are exposed to so much information, and I feel like that causes a lot of anxiety at the youngest age."

The day after Gomez spoke at Cannes, her thoughts were echoed by Game of Thrones star Maisie Williams, who told the podcast Happy Place that fame has been detrimental to her mental health—and the Internet's willingness to corroborate her insecurity with cruel comments only made things worse. "Honestly, I want a normal life....I don't want any of this crazy, crazy world because it's not worth it," she began, adding that used to seek out negative online criticism so she could "sit in a hole of sadness."

"I still lie in bed at, like, 11 o'clock at night telling myself all the things I hate about myself," she said. "I think there was a period of time where I was very sad, and then I came out of that, and now it's just really terrifying that you're ever going to slip back into it. That's still something that I'm really working on, because I think that's really hard. It's really hard to feel sad and not feel completely defeated by it."

However, Williams followed these admissions with some hopeful sentiments. "As soon as you start digging, you start asking yourself bigger questions than "Why do I hate myself?" It's more like, "Why do you make yourself feel this way?" The answers to all of these questions really are within you. It sounds really hippie-dippy and like 'look within you to find peace,' but it is true and at the end of the day you're making yourself feel this way for a reason."

Finally, she said that though she still struggles, the best cure has been self-acceptance. She's learned to understand that "everyone is a little bit sad," she said, adding that "at least dropping the act and just being who you truly are, I think that's definitely a first step."

It's currently Mental Health Month, so Gomez's and Williams's comments come at an appropriate time. Though their stories are different, they both contain common threads: fame is not a cure-all, and social media and the Internet can be extremely detrimental to anyone's health, no matter how successful (or kind, or talented, or loved) one actually is.

They're far from being the only stars who have been open about mental health struggles. Williams' Game of Thrones co-star Sophie Turner has also come clean about her experiences with depression and body image. "I have experienced mental illness firsthand and I've seen what it can do to the people around [the sufferers] as well," she told Marie Claire Australia.

She echoed Williams' sentiments about the struggles of growing up on the set of Game of Thrones. "Maisie and I used to do it [stay inside] together. I think being friends with each other was quite destructive because we were going through the same thing," she said on Dr. Phil's Phil in the Blanks podcast. Her comments make an important point: while honesty and openness about mental illness is important, lamenting and practicing destructive behaviors with other mentally ill people is usually unhelpful.

Instead, Williams implied, a support system should include a wide variety of people—including a therapist. "Everyone needs a therapist, especially when people are constantly telling you you're not good enough and you don't look good enough," she said. "I think it's necessary to have someone to talk to, and to help you through that."

Selena Gomez has expressed similar feelings about therapy. She's praised DBT (dialectical behavioral therapy), a practice originally created for people with bipolar disorder that has been effective in treating depression, anxiety and more. According to a Vogue profile, Gomez is a "profound" believer in DBT, and said that it "has completely changed [her] life."

It's not only the super-famous who struggle with mental illness. Many studies have shown that social media and the Internet are having widespread effects on mental health across the board, with Facebook as the worst culprit and Instagram not far behind. In general, approximately 1 in 5 adults suffer from a mental illness.

So what can we do about this? There's focusing on gratitude, accepting emotions as they are, and developing a healthy support system, to name a few. Also, limiting social media can help. "Perhaps you set a limit on your screen time each day or turn off your devices at a certain time every night. Whatever you do, carve in plenty of time for "real life," writes Dr. Saju Mathew, M.D. "You'll be happier and healthier for it." Of course, nothing can replace good old-fashioned therapy.

Eden Arielle Gordon is a writer and musician from New York. Follow her on Twitter @edenarielmusic.

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