#kristina horner

^ If this doesn’t sum up the response I’m not really sure what will (image used with the kind permission of Steph http://stephmufffin.tumblr.com)

Several days after allegations against him initially surfaced YouTuber and “Wrock” musician Luke Conard has made a post on his Tumblr addressing them:

http://lukeconard.tumblr.com/post/80128644047/an-open-letter-to-my-community

“I, in no way, am looking to discredit or minimize anyone’s pain, and I’m certainly not excusing any of my wrong doing, but it does make me upset that Kristina and Whitney’s posts seemingly lump me in with other allegations I have seen on Tumblr this week. The events that they recounted in their posts happened while everyone involved was of legal age, and were 100% consensual”

“I’ve done things in the past that I wish I could undo. I feel terrible about the way things ended with Kristina and Whitney and I’m truly sorry. I’ve told both of them that, in private. If you walk away from this post remembering one thing, it’s that I am sorry about the way I acted towards them and I wish that I could take back some of the things that I did”

Whether these two paragraphs taken together constitute a contradiction is arguable, It’s noticeable that, compared to the detailed accounts of Horner and Milam, he doesn’t seem to directly mention any specific event or, well, anything in detail. Instead making vague references to “the way I acted”, “the things that I did”, “my actions”, and “traumatic events”.

Along with other issues, Conard’s seeming resistance to being drawn on the outright facts of the matter have been in an unfavourable light by many people.

Response

The response to his statement has been generally negative and at times openly hostile, perhaps even more so than the response to Alex Day’s statement on the matter, he and Conard being the only two out of the YouTubers so far accused to make them.

As well as directly reblogging his post to make their replies (in many of which the word “bullshit” is very well represented) lots of people have been using Conard’s tumblr tag as a place to vent their frustration with his alleged actions and his response

”[…]don’t victim blame your exes and try to explain your bullshit away. “I thought I was clear we weren’t together”. Yeah, I don’t think you were clear and I don’t think that YOU thought you were clear. You just wanted another girl on the hook for when you got bored.
Basically his entire post was just like his music career. Full of auto-tune.”

“How can you write an “apology” that basically says: “Yeah, I know you think I abused and manipulated you but you are wrong. Also I had a bad breakup once”

Some people have also claimed that the post exhibits a lot of the hallmarks of manipulative behaviour itself:

“He uses his mom and sister to garner sympathy, he confirms-ish the story while mentioning none of the accusations, he apologizes for there feelings and not for anything they claim (which tries to subtly shift the blame on them for not understanding or a “miscommunication”, he states that he doesn’t want to minimize their pain while addressing his own pain to the exclusion of theirs”

Including a probation officer who works with perpetrators of domestic violence:

http://isthistoosubtlefordanica.tumblr.com/post/80142032595/an-open-letter-to-the-bullshit

“if you’re wanting a choice example of what a perpetrator’s version of events typically looks like, I recommend heading over to Luke Conard’s tumblr for some insight as to what I have listen to every fucking day”

Conard has also failed to make any real statement on the accusations that he took advantage of their not being a contract for the first ALL CAPS album “Songs in the Key of Email” to siphon off all the profits for himself, saying that he wishes to deal with that “separately” in another post, which he has yet to make.

Whether he will continue to post after that is unknown, this negative response to his statement may encourage him to let his social media presence go dark, as others with allegations leveled at them have chosen to do.

Regardless of whether he does so it’s certain that these allegations are not going away and that he can no longer count on having a completely receptive audience.

The 33 year old YouTuber, former ALL CAPS member and prominent member of the “Wrock” community Luke Conard has been added to the sexual and emotional abuse allegations ongoing within the YouTube community. Both he and Alex Carpenter are scheduled to appear as guests at Playlist Live.

The allegations against him, initially raised by former bandmate, prominent YouTuber and web series actress and producer Kristina Horner have been added to by YouTuber and fellow former girlfriend Whitney Milam.

http://italktosnakes.tumblr.com/post/79898322770/the-truth-about-all-caps-yes-another-post-about-dating

http://wmilam.tumblr.com/post/79987966729/awkward-boy-stories

Both spoke about their reasons for making their statements, referencing what has been happening within the community in recent days:

“i wasn’t going to speak up about my experiences dating within the youtube community. but as more and more brave women have come forward, i’ve finally convinced myself otherwise. my silence isn’t helping anybody - not even myself. i’ve been crying and i’ve felt nauseous and i’ve felt guilt and remorse and now fuck it, i’m just going to tell my story”

“what’s been surfacing in these online communities this week is bigger than me, and I’ve felt like a coward for remaining silent while too many women I greatly respect & admire have found the courage to put themselves out there and contextualize their negative experiences in the interest of a greater positive outcome”

Abuse

At times Conard is said to have maintained relationships with several women at once, even after initially breaking up with Horner he apparently manipulated her into maintaining a public fascade while he pursued other women. A state of affairs he was apparently happy with until she went on a date with someone else.

“he told me if i didn’t sleep with him on that trip, i wasn’t serious about getting back together and it must mean that i slept with seattle guy on my date. this was absolutely ridiculous, but he forced me to have sex with him to prove i hadn’t slept with someone”

A pattern of behaviour he apparently went on to repeat with Milam after Horner finally ended it for good.

Milam states that he even used YouTube itself as a way to break down her self esteem, forcing her to appear in a video with him and then reading the most vicious comments aloud to her.

Then, months after breaking up with her for the first time:

“I attended a party at his house with friends, drank a lot, blacked out for the first time in my life - I do not remember anything about this party - and woke up the next morning in Luke’s bed. You can imagine my shock. When I asked him to explain, saying I couldn’t remember anything, he swore NOTHING had happened - according to him I was just drunk and fell asleep in his bed […] a girl I didn’t remember approached me to say she had been at that party and tried to get me out of the room after hearing indicative noises inside only to find he’d locked the door”

However, Conard managed to convince her that he had changed, and they began to date again, he sent long romantic emails and discussed the future with her, apparently all the while repeating the same patterns of behaviour apparent in his previous relationships, until she caught him red handed:

“We planned and threw a Halloween party together, and during our party I went up to use my things in his bathroom only to walk in on him in bed with a topless 19-year-old girl he had met on a video shoot a few days ago and previously informed me was a lesbian. He insisted she had cornered him in his room, shut the door, literally thrown him on the bed, and started kissing him entirely against his will. He was sorry he hadn’t ‘resisted’ as much as he should have”

ALL CAPS

ALL CAPS, an Electro-Pop band consisting of Horner and Conard, was formed in late 2009, released three albums “Songs in the Key of Email”, “Lowercase” and “Bmin/E” and toured twice. The band broke up in late 2011, at that time ostensibly because of Horner’s vocal nodes, a painful condition most common among female and child singers:

“people think i quit all caps because of my vocal nodes - and that’s partially true. luke got off easy in that sense. in fact, luke’s part of the reason my nodes got as bad as they did, because he was pretty sure it was something i was making up and encouraged me to sing through it all the time. but the real reason i quit all caps is because the time i spent with luke held some of the lowest moments in my entire life”

Not only that, but apparently Conard used the fact that they never drew up an official contract for the sale of their first album to ensure that he gained all the profits from sales of the first album, which was released independently, subsequent work being released through DFTBA records.

Conard has tweeted about the allegations, promising to make a statement, saying that:

“I’ve had a lot to process the past few days, I’m gonna get some sleep and address it all tomorrow”

The tweet is time stamped at 10 hours ago as of posting this article.

^The gold plated play button, reports of it going *ting* when looked upon are as of yet unconfirmed.

The new rewards system -which attendees of this years VidCon got a sneak peek at- was officially unveiled just over a week ago.

It consists of a gold plated play button for those who have reached at or above a total of 1,000,000 subscribers and the thing is framed in a way reminiscent of gold or platinum records.

There’s good stuff in here for the slightly less mammoth creators too. Those who have reached 100,000 subs get a 500 dollar gift card and a custom DSLR bag.

Awards

It’s actually not unusual for social media personalities and organizations to receive awards based within an online genre or even a single website. 

The Webby Awards are old as balls, rewarding internet peeps and businesses since 1995 and The Streamy Awards go one further.

They focus exclusively on web series; still a pretty small industry despite the large audience growth and acceptance into mainstream culture that it’s made in recent years.

What’s different about these rewards is that they’re given exclusively on the basis of numbers.

^ Look familiar?

Mixed Reception

The reception among big YouTubers has been largely positive and tends to break up into those who are still a bit too small to qualify for the gold and have a hungry look in their eyes.

“I want one, my house mate Charlie. He’s got a million subscribers. He just sits at his desk just across the room from me with his gold…plate….thing. I do just want to put more effort into my videos and make them more worthwhile” - Alex Day

and those who are grateful for the recognition but have some concerns

“I love it because it feels like a thank you…a thank you to the people who have invariably worked extremely hard to achieve that level of success. And it’s important for YouTube to recognize that those people play a large part in the success of YouTube" 

"The fact is that most of the people doing really interesting things, who have the most potential to grow, to change things, to continue altering the landscape of media, and who I am fascinated by do not have 1,000,000 subscribers” - Hank Green

“I'm flattered, since i am in the 100,000 category - but saddened by all the incredibly talented and hardworking people going un-thanked, the ones who don’t quite have that many subscribers but still make huge contributions to this community daily” - Kristina Horner

They aren’t the only ones to focus on the smaller channels.

Smaller Channels

One thing brought up repeatedly in the comments on the official announcement, on twitter and other sites where the discussion has taken place is that the awards do nothing for smaller partners and creators.

The awards themselves arent the main issue here however. It’s a sense of continued and growing frustration with YouTube -spawning movements like the #SaveYouTube campaign- its policies and the general attitude of the site as a whole.

A lot of the ways in which bigger creators got a leg up in the past simply don’t exist any more or have been redirected towards already popular channels.

Stuff like getting featured on the main page or appearing in the recommended videos section and although the community has gone a long way in picking up the slack there’s always going to be people who slip through the sizeable cracks.

Stabilisation

When taken together with things like the new London Creator Space and programs like YouTube Next VloggerandNextUp a picture forms of a business trying to consolidate its gains and standardise skills and pathways to success in an industry where technical proficiency can vary from the profound to the mediocre.

It could well be a risky move, there’s a good chance it may simply limit creativity, create a stiff model for how creators should work and interact with their audience that could stunt them in the long term and make the industry even harder to break into.

Then again it might usher in a new generation of ultra-proficient creators while improving the already substantial profiles of the people who did it the old fashioned way.

Damned if I know, feel free to have your say though.