“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:
“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.
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.
We had a great response to people interested in boycotting Alex Day’s London gig, but Goot is planning on playing in 14 different locations across Europe: Portsmouth, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, Bristol, London, Parist, Utrecht, Hamburg, Copenhagen, Berlin, Vienna, Frankfurt, and Cologne. Details of specific tour stops can be found on Goot’s website.
If you – or someone you know – is interested in coordinating a protest at one of these locations, please CONTACT US (tumblr / twitter) un-anonymously ASAP. The tour starts in less than two weeks!
We had a great response to people interested in boycotting Alex Day’s London gig, but Goot is planning on playing in 14 different locations across Europe: Portsmouth, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, Bristol, London, Parist, Utrecht, Hamburg, Copenhagen, Berlin, Vienna, Frankfurt, and Cologne. Details of specific tour stops can be found on Goot’s website.
If you – or someone you know – is interested in coordinating a protest at one of these locations, please CONTACT US (tumblr / twitter) un-anonymously ASAP. The tour starts in less than two weeks!
