 I'm getting hate saying I used to be pretty and now I'm ugly I just want to say I like how I look so go away I get hated on for being a flirt or liking too many guys if I say hi to some guy on twitter don't call me a f*** don't say stop stop, please stop, stop, you're thirsty, you're thirsty like no, stop, I'm not thirsty he's saying that I'm not a f***ing s*** I'm a f***ing s*** I don't find it okay I'm really stupid oh my god, I'm gonna hate for that because I called you stupid I don't know the opinion I don't know maybe if people just thought positively and I'm so negative they're gonna be so upset people are in trouble okay, well I'm going to go to the party there's something beautiful about a troublesome girl the perfect mess the recklessness and destructive tendencies the endless boyfriends they've drawn up like this fictitious profile girl who's a serial date or unstable completely clingy, needy the late night parties the breakups and the broken hearted girl with mascara running down her face the kind smile with sad eyes she's running away from her broken childhood from the men who chased her down like hyenas clawing for her skin and never anything of substance she's tired of everyone wanting her to be a spectacle to be seen and never heard she's tired of people both demanding and despising her sexuality she's become so used to receiving admiration that it's all her self-esteem is based off of so she craves attention believing it to be the only thing that will prove her worth and her personhood slips away as she embraces an identity that was never hers she doesn't know where she belongs what she really wants only what she's supposed to want and what she's supposed to crave attention the only currency she knows how to attain the only form of love she was ever given and in her troublesome ways she continually searches for it I just want to throw a Keisha in a shower and wash her hair and pluck her eyebrows as she reads how to be a parent okay? let's gain pity so you guys forget about me being raised in an animal abuser she is a negligent, narcissistic mother a hypocrite an idiot and a selfish monster a Keisha Brinley washed up Tumblr girlie thief and divorced at 25 rough one the internet and social media has gone through many phases from Myspace to poking your friends on Facebook to the small sh'days of YouTube to Tumblr, Vine and most recently, TikTok throughout these many phases different internet personalities have risen and fell along with the changing tides of internet popularity one internet personality who rose to fame during the Tumblr days and has been able to stay afloat for quite some time on social media is the influencer Akeisha Curse or what most people knew her as Akeisha Brinley Akeisha originally rose to fame on Tumblr at the age of 14 but over time Akeisha became more well known for her many scandals as opposed to her many selfies and I think it's safe to say that Akeisha is one of the most hated influencers of all time so let's examine how the transition from Tumblr it girl to hated mom influencer all took place and my question for you watching is do you think Akeisha deserves the hate? is the hate that Akeisha receives on the internet internet misogyny or is it just the repercussions of the many wrongdoings that Akeisha has done throughout her time on social media hi friends and internet acquaintances welcome or welcome back to another video on my channel covering controversial internet figures if you like that sort of content don't forget to subscribe if you like this video don't forget to give it a like but before we get into this video today's video is sponsored by Senbird Senbird is a fragrance subscription service that lets you choose a new designer fragrance every month and with each fragrance you get a 30 day supply which I've found personally goes a really long way Senbird is your fragrance destination a single place to explore, discover learn about and experience sense just for you I've always wanted to be one of those people where you walk into a room and immediately people recognize you by your signature scent and I haven't quite found a scent that I feel like fully encompasses who I am and who I want to be so as always I love the idea of Senbird because I get to continue exploring scents until I find that absolutely perfect match made in heaven type of scent and you can use my code CWHM for 55% off your first month which is just a little over $7 for your first month for access to Senbird's tons and tons of fragrance options and Senbird is available in the US and Canada from Senbird this month I received Ash by Ashley Benson which has notes of delicate rose de masque intoxicating black cedar and zesty orange I also received the fragrance Dan's Le Bois from Dime which I'm hoping I said correctly which is feminine bold and intoxicating a sophisticated multi-layered scent featuring warm tones of cedar wood and subtle fresh florals I also received Violet Gem from Catherine Malandrino worldly notes of vanilla exotic sun-kissed passion fruit symphony like no other I love when packaging is like this it has a little lock so that you really just click it into place to lock it so it's extremely travel-friendly I mean this is as travel-friendly and easy to use as it gets you just lock it into place then bring it back out and spray so if you'd like to take advantage of my 55% off coupon code for just a little over $7 then definitely check out the link in my description as well as in the pinned comments of this video and thank you so much to Semperd for sponsoring this video before getting into this video on the many wrongdoings of Acacia Cursey I do want to provide a disclaimer first off, comments about Acacia's appearance or overly hateful comments are not accepted in this space and will be deleted second off, I want to cover this subject in the most respectful and balanced way which I found particularly difficult with this subject because there are so many aspects to the story of Acacia Cursey since she has had many many years on the internet I always try my best to empathize with the subjects in my video and understand their perspective just because I think that's super important to have a balanced outlook but simultaneously I will also be holding Acacia accountable for the people that she has heard and so now let's get into the story of Acacia Cursey starting with when she rose to fame on Tumblr Acacia Cursey has only ever lived her life online Acacia started a Tumblr account when she was only in 7th grade I was like, you know maybe I'm gonna turn the internet maybe I can make friends there and I heard about this thing called Tumblr and how old were you at this time? I was about 12 and a half, almost 13 and very quickly, Acacia became famous on the platform I took pictures of myself almost like every single day kind of embarrassing to talk about and then I would post them on the Tumblr and one day it just got reblogged by some of the followers and then a bunch of other people the followers started reblogging it and reblogging and then they saw Tumblr as an outlet where she could freely express herself and escape her problems the main reason it started was because at school I was bullied girls didn't like me and obviously because the girls guys, one of the girls the guys didn't like me so I didn't have any friends so I've been severely bullied so I was severely bullied in school and then when I went on Tumblr I was severely bullied there too what Acacia was most famous for were her early 2000s selfies with the swept across fringe and the selfies taken from a high angle the snapback hat worn backwards the heavy eyeliner and the iconic Tumblr pose with your tongue sticking out in a selfie also these Tumblr photos of Acacia were from when she was a minor respectful, I'm going to show her face and not blur out because her photos have been so widely shared and posted on Tumblr during this sort of Tumblr era of the internet Acacia's sort of conventional beauty and Tumblr style became something that a lot of young girls looked up to and tried to emulate my name is Acacia hey girl this is for you hey youtube it's Acacia no no I don't think you understand I'm obsessed according to various Tumblr posts Acacia's popularity came from creating relationships with famous boys on Tumblr getting involved in drama on the platform and posting more provocative photos of herself when she was still underage it's definitely true that the photos Acacia posted online were maybe a little bit inappropriate for a child to be posting but for me that's more so like interesting that those were the photos of a child that gained that much popularity on Tumblr interesting but almost as quickly as Acacia rose to fame she found her fair share of haters as well most of the criticism that Acacia received during her Tumblr era were from people believing that she was fame hungry for quickly dating and dumping other fellow famous social media stars she also got a lot of hate and a good amount of it was because these relationships whether it be due to jealousy not liking Acacia as a person or some other various reasons Acacia was often called annoying slight ugly and in one particular instance she was ashamed literally because she refused to have sex with a boyfriend that she had at the time which I mean she's in middle school and early high school age kind of a normal process for a young girl to date around and figure out what she likes in my opinion it's also important to note that much of the men that Acacia dated when she was a child and a minor were much, much older than her obviously she had a lot of pictures with random celebrities that she met just for the clout many of whom were quite a bit older than her this picture especially knowing everything with Five Sauce kills me this is the one I had forgotten about she met Shane when she was 15 and he was 25 Acacia was also seen with band members of Five Seconds of Summer and was also dating Sam Potter for a period of time a lot of fans of Five Sauce really disliked Acacia because they felt like she just wanted to be seen with the band members for fame and clout the drama with the Five Seconds of Summer fandom is basically this she showed up at a Five Seconds of Summer One Direction concert and rumors were just flying maybe she was dating Luke maybe she was dating Michael maybe she was dating Harry and basically the Five Sauce fandom just absolutely eviscerated her on Twitter so like when I'm friends with people that are popular their fans hate me cause they like stay away from my man I'm like I don't watch my grand I was terrified of Five Sauce fans literally thought they were getting me in my sleep and when she was affiliated with Five Sauce and Sam Potter they were both at kind of their height of internet fame so that only skyrocketed her even more into fame and I think it's fair to say that she was sort of an it girl from the age of like 16 to 17 Acacia Clark how do I even begin to explain her to you there's nobody like her in today's social media influencer society she was the original Tumblr girl she was the blueprint I'm sure you've seen the TikTok she posted and she had a fandom called the Kittens 2014 Tumblr that aesthetic that you guys are setting that is Acacia's aesthetic I know a lot of people think that being social media famous from the age of like 16 or 17 is a dream you become rich you have a ton of followers you're getting all these cool sponsorships and opportunities but to me it just kind of sounds like a nightmare you're so young your brain isn't even close to fully developing you're still naive in so many ways and I think what's often left out of the conversation is when you become famous people want things from you and also when you're that young you're making so many mistakes the amount of mistakes I made when I was 16 and 17 I'm so glad I wasn't on the internet where I would have hundreds of thousands of eyes on me seeing all of these major mistakes I was making and horrible life lessons I was learning because I could imagine it becoming a very suffocating thing like you have no ability to grow and learn without being heavily scrutinized because you're growing and learning and maturing in front of thousands if not millions of people and Acacia became so famous that she had her own urban dictionary definition and that definition reads an ex-tumbler girl infamous for getting into relationships incredibly quickly often with guys a lot older than herself faking self-harm and abusing pets and that was a big controversy at the time of the sort of Tumblr days was her being accused of sort of faking self-harm for attention on the internet and on that note I do think it's important to include some statements that Acacia recently made on her TikTok about why she was accused of that and why it was incredibly harmful to her trigger warning self-harm silly little thoughts one of the biggest controversies or like things that happened was the rumor that Sam started in one of my comment sections where I like show my arm and I'm like stay strong everyone can do it and he wrote that I don't actually self-harm which was just the worst and the reason he said that was because at that point I hadn't used any dangerous item and so in his eyes in his mind he was like she doesn't actually self-harm she just like scratches herself which as we all know now that's the same f***ing thing but feeling invalidated like that it drove me up the wall wanted to kill myself just I felt like people didn't even care when I was screaming for help and that felt like the most isolating I'm not gonna cry that felt like the most isolating thing as a child it's bizarre to me how much has changed on the internet in just a few years because I feel like nowadays it's totally unacceptable to ever question anyone's mental health or tell someone that what they feel they're struggling with they're not actually struggling with in general I don't think it's ever right to question someone's mental health and what they're telling you to be true especially if it's something as intense and serious as self-harm because none of us really know what people are struggling with and telling someone that they're lying about that when they're not can be even more detrimental to someone who's already struggling but during that time on Tumblr Acacia began getting more and more and more hate girls will go ham and they will just comment long paragraphs about why your middle name is stupid or something I have never gotten such a strong reaction it was half love, half hate and the love was insane it was like I wanna kill myself so I can resurrect and be hurt like it was like just really insane like more hardcore than I've ever gotten for myself but then the hate was just as crazy hardcore I'm not gonna repeat it and I think Acacia became sort of branded as a girl who wanted attention on the internet at all costs through either faking something or dating older famous men there was also an incident where Acacia tweeted making it seem like she was going to be cast in the movie looking for Alaska saying I just got an audition for a movie based on one of my favorite books can you guess what it is? the time when everyone knew that looking for Alaska was going to be a movie she then tags John Green and says I hope we get to be best friends soon and so many people that disliked Acacia started mass tweeting to John Green begging him to not have her in the movie to the point where he had to tweet I do not cast movie adaptations of my books I'm not a casting director please stop threatening to f*** me so already at that time even though Acacia had a lot of followers and was pretty famous on the internet Acacia was also heavily, heavily disliked one of the strangest things that Acacia received hate for which again, crazy how much has changed in sort of social media culture and what's acceptable to criticize because Acacia received a lot of hate for her being leaked Acacia's been like everyone keeps hating on her and saying her eyeballs look bad and she's a whore in a suit cause she sent nudes child-created nudes got released onto the internet without my consent and for the next three some years I denied that they even were real I shamed awesome podcasts I said nope, those are Photoshop, those aren't me I would never listen, I don't want to get into this too much because you're very young and I don't want to get arrested but I'm gonna say and you know what I'm thinking and you know what I want to say but some of the things I found on Google were a little shocking and I don't think that it was even real Photoshop some Photoshopping pictures that may or may not have included some sensor bars those are not real nope, that's a sad part I didn't hate for that one of her exes leaked her nudes apparently, allegedly, Taylor Kniff took Sam's phone without his permission I wonder what it's like to have something happen to you without your permission interesting um and he sent them the pictures of me to his own phone and then he tweeted them and she was shamed for that when A, illegal to do that to leak nudes of a minor and then the fact that she was sort of shamed for that is horrific and then the internet went getting crazy at me at me for having the pictures at me for taking the pictures I was a whore I was the most diabolical that's not the right word here disgusting, scum of the earth human for ever taking pictures like that everyone hated my guts I was just a little kid just a little kid who wanted someone to like her that's all but again it sort of added to the image that people were starting to view her as which is a sort of attention hungry girl on the internet who's trying to get attention from men who's trying to become famous at all costs you know the sort of standard trope and Akesha was pretty clear about her aspirations to become a singer and actor I can't get over you you left your mark on me her brother Peyton Clark was an actor on the Disney Channel and Akesha was in a few bands with not really a lot of success gotta tell me that we love a woman we got the chance to say gotta feel like it's a year and also had a few small acting roles over the years the most notable was her role as Taysha right, Taysha in a movie called Another Day in Paradise but in general Akesha couldn't really break out of internet stardom into sort of the show business world but eventually Akesha leveraged her tumblr fame to rise to popularity across other platforms primarily Instagram and YouTube and amassed more than 800,000 subscribers on YouTube and 2 million followers on Instagram and Akesha was a big social media influencer before that really became a thing and she started making money off of social media at a really young age so making money as a quote on quote influencer slash YouTuber I have two sources of income currently one is YouTube and one is brand sponsorships I make a majority of my money through sponsorships and brand posting because my YouTube isn't as big as my other social media according to Akesha herself in a recent TikTok she uploaded she claims she started paying bills at the age of 15 which is a lot of pressure to put on a 15 year old and sort of forces you to grow up really quickly so of course social media became a massive money maker for Akesha but at what cost? I think often times when people become famous at a young age and they have to have adult responsibilities at such a young age they sort of stop maturing the loss of a childhood can be really damaging and having all these pressures of paying bills at such a young age can also affect how you view finances as well especially if you're making a lot of money really quickly and have no appreciation or understanding of the fact that that is not the real world at all that's why I think we see so many social media stars and former child stars grow up and have money problems because they're used to a certain amount of money always being there and then when their fame sort of slows down and the money slows down they have no idea how to actually save and invest and plan out their finances so it seems like early in Akesha's tumblr days she became known as a sort of messy troublesome girl who wanted attention who wanted to date different men and I think in general at the time people saw it as not genuine but beneath the surface I think it's important to note that Akesha was just a child a child who had to grow up really quickly a child who was thrust into the spotlight and put in front of millions of people before it was even really known what the ramifications of that would mean and what the consequences of social media stardom could be children that are social media stars are contending with all of the social pressures of being children in a digital age combined with being a child star and we know that child stars are more likely to have anxiety depression, substance issues, later on in life because they're dealing with their sense of self-esteem being linked to public approval, career success and the hits and the likes and there's an intoxication there's almost like an addiction to it and they don't have the coping skills to deal with failure and disappointment but that's certainly not to say that Akesha is without her flaws because eventually even fans of Akesha started to notice things that she was doing that didn't sit right with them one of the biggest controversies throughout Akesha's social media career is when fans started to get concerned that she was opposing her animals especially after she rehomed multiple animals over the years and disclaimer, I'm about to talk about neglecting animals and animal abuse so that is really triggering and upsetting for you I recommend skipping this chapter and going into the next one a lot of fans of Akesha's started noticing that she would adopt a new animal post about that animal all over the place for a month or two and then that animal would disappear and a lot of people were really concerned with this behavior and for the animals and asked her what was going on and often when these accusations would pop up Akesha would defend herself saying that her allergies or the special needs of these pets were why she ended up giving them away but the thing is Akesha would give up an animal and then almost immediately adopt a new animal and post about that animal which is just a very weird concept to me giving up one animal and then a month or two getting a new one I mean I'm sure in some circumstances there are genuine extenuating circumstances according to Mama Bear which is a great channel here on YouTube I highly recommend checking out if you haven't but according to Mama Bear Akesha had a lot of pets growing up and as a child which may have led her to adopt a lot of pets when she was too young and inexperienced to have them thinking maybe that she could handle them since she grew up with a lot of pets I've had five cats six cats and I've had seven dogs and I've had her bit crabs three of those I remember the names my name is Dora though um me I've had claws in the floor and then I've had a lot of fishies I've had a lot of turtles One of the first pets Akesha posted was a rat named Roman and she simultaneously owned a cat named Paradise but not much is known about what happened to Roman hopefully he was kept safe from her cat Paradise in 2014 Akesha had an Australian puppy named Jabba who she posted about a lot on social media until tweeting that her mom was making her give Jabba away because she was traveling too much which would be certainly a fair reason to find a new loving home for your animal if you're traveling too much and can't have them but then it you gotta just maybe not have an animal then for a little while if you gotta give one away because you're traveling too much but the thing is while Akesha was traveling to Arizona she adopted a cat named Beebee who she then brought back to California but then only a week or two later she gave Beebee to a friend because according to Akesha she had a really bad allergic reaction to Beebee and couldn't keep her maybe something you check before adopting in the first place though of course to be as fair as possible Akesha was still young at this time and I feel like a lot of people make mistakes when they're young get too excited about a pet want to bring them into their house and take care of them and then realize oh crap, I can't take care of them so hopefully Beebee ended up in a loving and safe home then after rehoming Beebee Akesha ended up adopting two cats a Himalayan named Cotton and a hairless sphinx named Lil Sebastian we got the house, do you excited? excited for stairs so it's Cotton he's over there nice lot and again Akesha posted a lot with these animals particularly her sphinx Lil Sebastian and a lot of people started noticing a pattern where Akesha would get animals that sort of fit her aesthetic or looked nice and cool in photos or were very postable according to a vlog that Akesha posted on her YouTube channel her and her partner Jerus I'm so s- why can I never say that name? Jerus? Jerus I'm literally trying my best I know how to pronounce it but for some reason I can't pronounce it so forgive me on that throughout this video but anyways Akesha posted a vlog where her and her partner went on a trip for a few days and left their cats with giant bowls of food and water to have while they're gone but when they returned from the trip they found that their apartment had been infested with ants as well as their cat food that they left out so their cats were left alone with no food for the days that they were gone we came home and we see that our house has been taken over by ants this is disgusting and we feel terrible because cats are staying here we give them like two bowls of food and just like a giant thing of water so he'd be fine while we're gone for four days and we come back and we're like why didn't he cut any of his food and I keep going right on and it's just like covered with ants like in every spot so he didn't eat anything because the ants were all over it like four cotton which I don't think it's like this it goes all the way it goes all the way to the right side it's like all of his food bowls all the way all the way all the way over here here here and they're coming into that hole right there in the wall a little after this Akesha and J-Roo's moved to a larger house with a big backyard but in a vlog they said that in this big house and huge yard the only place that their cats would be able to stay in is the garage and they wouldn't be able to visit the cats often in that garage in the house they live in when we get to our new house there's really only one spot that the cats would be and I'm going to be in the garage and the garage's big it's cool we can set it up really nice but the truth of the matter is we know that we'll be going in there very often so uh bless them so they have to give away their two cats caught in in Little Sebastian and that doesn't mean that we don't love them we care about them because we love them and care about them more than what any of you think because we want them to have the best possible life that they can possibly have doesn't make much sense but okay so they relocated Little Sebastian to a friend of theirs and gave cotton to Akesha's dad thank goodness they have this many friends willing to take in their animals Akesha's friend who adopted Little Sebastian ended up tweeting that Little Sebastian was given to them in the worst condition with a lot of pre-existing health issues to the point where they had to have another person come in to help Little Sebastian because it was more than they could even take on the friend whose name is Reagan tweets animals are a job not an aesthetic and to see how someone close to Akesha viewed her treatment of animals is definitely telling according to the Lena the person who adopted Sebastian and took on his health issues he had a skin condition and also had to get all of his teeth extracted because he had really bad gingivitis and you'd think that this would be a sign to maybe stop adopting pets cool it maybe just take a break on that until you're able to do it better but unfortunately Akesha almost immediately continued adopting more pets next Akesha adopted an Australian shepherd puppy named Tibbers in 2015 when just last year just a year ago she gave away Jabba an Australian shepherd puppy because she was traveling too much and couldn't handle him but Akesha claimed that her situation was different now after that year and that she was able to be a more active dog parent so then Akesha and her partner Jerus adopted two more dogs at that time Eva and Lucy but when Tibbers was only a year old Jerus posted onto his Facebook saying that they were looking for a new home for Tibbers just why I'm just so confused why why adopt so many dogs I'm certainly not a dog expert but my husband and I adopted a pretty high energy difficult dog who had been abandoned before and has bad anxiety and I especially couldn't imagine giving away our dog and then immediately a new dog as if nothing happened he's such a part of our family and I think many other fans felt the same way so I can see why people would become really upset for these animals and angry at Akesha again I do think it's fair to note that this entire time Akesha is not yet 18 of course she's living like an adult paying bills like an adult renting houses and apartments adopting animals like an adult but she's not an adult yet which is something that I think slipped both Akesha's and the internet's mind throughout all of this so in my opinion at this time I blame more so the adults who were around Akesha who did nothing around the same time that Tibbers was given away Eva also completely disappeared Akesha also made a post about Lucy where she admits they bought her from a sketchy breeder aka a puppy mill and many people are against adopting animals from puppy mills because it encourages the dangerous practice then Akesha and Jerus also rescued another dog from a breeder and drove up to Washington to adopt the dog Poppy apparently the dog's coloring isn't natural and can come with many health issues according to Instagram comments under Akesha's post about Poppy I'm really not a dog expert so I cannot say whether or not this is true with 100% certainty but if you are an expert in dog breeding I would love to know if that's true and also what your thoughts are about adopting from puppy mills what angered people the most about all of Akesha's various pets that she adopted and gave away and then adopted and gave away was that it seemed that Akesha was most concerned about finding pets that fit her aesthetic of the moment and in some ways it's sort of fair to say that she exploited the pets that she adopted and then turned around and abandoned them Akesha used her pets in Instagram posts and advertisements and definitely benefited from them fitting her overall brand for example Akesha used Poppy to promote a sponsored post for a trolls doll Akesha ended up admitting in a post that in the past she adopted more pets than she was capable of handling because she was greedy and selfish and liked the idea of animals more than she could take care of them which is absolutely a really big thing to admit but for the people and the fans who really care about animals it was kind of too late already the damage had been done because Akesha had already put so many animals in harm's way from her past mistakes and like I've said in the past it's my opinion that how you treat animals says a lot about how you view life and living beings in general which also says a lot about your character but again though Akesha certainly has a lot of fault and blame and situation I also equally blame the adults in her life who did nothing about this constant abandonment of animals and especially her partner J-Rus who was 24 when Akesha was 17 he had zero excuse for giving up pets you know at this time Akesha was in a relationship with someone who was 24 when she was 17 she was the main bread winner and had already been the main bread winner of her family since she was 15 at least according to her she had a lot of responsibility on her and so I'm sure in some ways she felt like she was already an adult and didn't understand that she was still young, still needed to grow and didn't quite have the experience and maturity to take on the pets she took on at the time but Akesha's actions speak to a larger problem that's really rampant with influencers nowadays and that's cultivating things in their life to fit their aesthetic influencers, houses their relationships their friendships, marriages children, pets all have to fit seamlessly within their aesthetic and brand and I think it's really dangerous exploiting your life in this manner all to fit a one dimensional screen or a grid of images in general the internet and parasocial relationships has created a sort of system where social media stars exploit every avenue of their life to their audience all to be consumed as a commodity of sorts who you're married to, what your children look like, what your pets look like what your home looks like is all a commodity to be consumed your product is your social media feed and then before you know it you're sort of blending your very personal life your family, your relationships your activities and what you do with this very curated product that you're creating for an audience to consume not only does that create unrealistic expectations on the viewer but it feels like such a dangerous way of living life not only for the influencers themselves but for their family and loved ones who are being sucked into the influencers need to live such a curated life for their relationships and family around them that has to be kind of soul sucking to realize that your partner or your mother or your father or your parent is more focused on how you'll look in a photo than who you are on the inside and out and what you really care about and you can see that this pattern of really focusing on a perfectly curated image continued into her marriage and into her family life as Akesha got older her content began to change along with the trends of social media at that time as I mentioned earlier in 2015 Akesha started dating J-Rus I keep feeling like I'm saying that name wrong I don't know what's wrong with me J-Rus Cursey was a singer in the rock band Alive Like Me and in 2015 Akesha and J-Rus really started documenting their sort of love journey on a shared youtube channel they had together hi guys it's Akesha and there's J-Rus hey guys it's Akesha and J-Rus and J-Rus for some reason I was just so convinced that I was never gonna meet someone especially like soon and then two hours later I bumped into J-Rus and it's like wow the relationship moved pretty fast the couple moved in together right before Akesha turned 18 well everybody as you know we've been searching really hard for a house and as of today we have a house haha then in 2017 they had their first child together who was named after Akesha's mom's last name Brinley my entire life I wanted to become a mom and find the love of my life and I never knew that at the age of 18 that would all be good so my dreams have come true I'm pregnant I'm starting my journey and here's my story Akesha and J-Rus then had their second child just a year later in 2018 we are having a baby girl haha another girl her name is Rosemary Keegan-Kerzy I'll put it right here if you want to see how it's spelled then shortly after Akesha and J-Rus got married who are you J-Rus promise to stay rad stay weird stay beautiful and take Akesha as your wife they also had their third child together Kali in 2020 Kali has been really hard it's been really hard to deal with I'm really tired I'm up all night and most of their journey having children getting married Akesha's pregnancy journeys their move from California to Oregon all of these things were documented in their shared YouTube channel and this was right when family vlogging was really taking off so Akesha's YouTube channel also had a lot of success as well people getting really invested into Akesha's family her transformation from sort of the tumblr reckless it girl to the granola mommy vlogger at first many people thought this was a sort of positive change but Akesha was young and Akesha and J-Rus got married very quickly and had children very quickly most people still felt that Akesha had settled, matured and grown and were excited to see where her journey would go oh I feel super mega, supertastic amazing, big pumped okay everybody needs a bath everybody needs a bath are you putting soup in your hair Akesha pat Akesha bake your man bake me a cake guys baths is in cave Akesha and J-Rus also had their own singing duo called A and J and they released a song together called times like these which they used as a soundtrack for their pregnancy announcement in the early days of Akesha and J-Rus's marriage there wasn't too much controversy Akesha had gained a lot of new followers from her family style content and sort of rebranded herself away from the problematic tumblr girl she was seen as the only controversy at this time was the coat controversy I'd say which happened right after Akesha's wedding yes that's right a coat controversy where a coat company sent Akesha seven coats for her wedding in exchange for an instagram promotion but the coats didn't arrive on time and Akesha never posted them but also never sent the coats back so the company built her $3,700 and then filed a lawsuit when she continued to not respond or send the coats back that is until people called her out for it but overall apart from the coat controversy Akesha and J-Rus seemed content and seemed to be living a fairly normal life and vlogging about their journey in parenthood and marriage and her turn towards veganism at this time as well I want to push more towards being a vegan for most of their marriage Akesha and J-Rus lived in a mobile home unit in J-Rus' parents backyard but they eventually moved around seemingly bought or rented a few different homes had a few family vacations we're at Disney World Animal Kingdom with a little posse we're all wearing the same shirt and in just a few years Akesha and J-Rus did quite a lot and they vlogged most of these family adventures on their youtube channel stay round, stay weird, stay beautiful sometimes whoa okay stay round, stay weird, stay beautiful bye but soon fans who tuned into their vlogs started to become concerned about how Akesha and J-Rus were treating their children soon the hate that Akesha was receiving changed from her being fame hungry to her being a bad mom it's distressing to watch this on youtube because you are actively watching a child being traumatized a lot of people think that Rosie has been like most and especially compared to Brynley's treatment you can see that Rosie definitely has the lower end of the stick twitter accounts started exposing and criticizing the toys that Akesha would give her daughter Brynley what she fed her, how she dressed her and brushed her hair and more and after Akesha gave birth to her daughter Rosie more intense we are so anxious to meet Rosemary Rosemary she has a heart condition I have to be hooked up to monitors I think twice a week now her back two ventricles of her brain were enlarged she has something called ACC which is a genesis of the corpus of the most Rosie has a disability which was undiagnosed for the first year of her life and led to wild speculation online people became really concerned for Rosie thinking that Akesha hated Rosie was neglecting her and failing to acknowledge or treat her condition there were many times where Akesha would post about Brynley but Rosie wouldn't be in any photos so we call this baby the forgotten baby the forgotten baby can you imagine like growing up and knowing that your mom called you the forgotten baby so Rosie didn't have a new born photo shoot like Brynley which is her older sister and before seeing her waiting for her to get more chunky before they do the photo shoot well you'll see later on that they actually did have the photo shoot she just never posted the pictures or it looks like she never hung them up like they did to Brynley's so this girl's gonna grow up and like always compare herself to our sister when Rosie was in photos she looked underweight and a lot of people became concerned that she wasn't getting enough nutrition or being fed enough people also thought that Akesha wasn't trying hard enough to get a diagnosis for Rosie but people were still worried for Rosie and thought that Akesha and Jerus just weren't doing enough and of course you could say in this situation well people pry too much people pry way too much this is not their business and 99% of the time I would say that is 100% true people need to butt out they have no business and knowing this family's business but for this situation I don't know if it's that cut and dry because Akesha and Jerus shared all the ins and outs of their life on their vlog they shared all of their business with their family what was going on their pregnancies, their birthlog with hundreds of thousands of people who became invested in their family became invested in their children because they were posting about their children so when you record your family and your life and you gain a following off of exploiting all the ins and outs of your family and your life and your children of course people are going to become invested in your family and yes maybe even judge your family you are putting it all out there you know I think all mothers watching all parents watching this video know that there is definitely no such thing as a perfect parent and we all make a lot of mistakes but when you're filming yourself making parenting mistakes and posting that online this might sound harsh but people have a right to call head out and say hey that's a mistake because what else do you expect when you're posting and profiting off of your family on top of that when Akasha was pregnant Akasha posted a really emotional concerning video about how there might be something wrong with Rosie's heart during her pregnancy which is just really emotional Rosemary she has a heart commission that we found out about yesterday it's called Tetology of Fallow I think talk for short to be the people that get to care for her and get to love her we're lucky really it's uh we're talking with my parents and it was your first thought is why me or why us and then you uh you start to realize why not people became really concerned for Rosie and Akasha during her pregnancy and then she gives birth to Rosemary and gives no information on what's going on with Rosemary how she's doing what her condition is is her heart doing okay of course people are going to be concerned about that and want to know what's going on and what the update on Rosie is besides that Rosie didn't have the original heart condition that the doctors thought she had her daughter was diagnosed with Tetology of Fallow um and recently we went up to Portland to find out more of like the plan for what was happening and it turns out that Rosemary does not have Tetology of Fallow either she was misdiagnosed um she developed later on um that part of the heart that separates the chambers eventually Akasha revealed that Rosie was diagnosed with Algeal's syndrome which is a rare genetic condition three days ago our daughter got diagnosed with Algeal's syndrome we had our genetics appointment which was three days ago in Portland um the genetics counselor came in and started talking as if we knew that she had Algeal and we were like we were like wait wait where's the heart and she was like oh my gosh I'm like so sorry like I thought that someone else had told you um and we were like nobody's told us we've kind of just like been in the dark fans became increasingly worried about the health and safety of Rosemary many fans thought in general Akasha was downplaying her daughter's condition Algeal's syndrome is known to cause issues with the heart, kidney and liver and can vary intensity but certainly can cause a lot of complications and need a lot of medical treatment and when Akasha was posting about going out and about during the pandemic with her immunocompromised daughter a lot of people became concerned. Fans also called out Akasha for finding in various different videos that Rosie was repeatedly left lying on the ground seemingly in the background of videos. For example there was one time that Akasha vlogged Rosie lying on the ground eating an apple and another time when Akasha was twitch streaming where Rosie was lying on the ground when their dog backed into her and she became upset and crying I hear Rosie crying I was going to see her back help, it'll be bad oh I have to go home Rosie I hear her crying um very big eyes hi guys I'm back everything good? yeah Rosie stepped on her Akasha defended the allegations of her neglecting her daughter and leaving her on the ground with the story time posted to tiktok. According to Akasha she was working and streaming on twitch and her husband was supposed to be watching the kids okay so I was working my job I did every Thursday night for 2-4 hours um and during that time my daughter was with my very capable ex husband and he was watching her he was spending the evening with her like he did every Thursday night when I worked and during that time during my stream I hear her crying so I go and check even though I don't have to because like I said she's in the capable hands of her loving father so I was taking care of it and I'm not in any rush because I know she's in capable hands so once I get out there because I'm curious about what happened I need to check on her he says don't worry I've got it all handled you're good just go back just go back because he knows I'm live during this time and there's nothing I can do I can't console her because he's consoling her I can't hold her he's holding her there's nothing to put a bandaid on there's no ice pack that I can get there's nothing that I could do in this scenario because it was just an accident of my partner at the time playing with our dog and our dog accidentally backing up into our daughter unfortunate situation no parent wants that to happen nobody wishes that to happen but it did happen like accidents do and we handled the situation so the reason why acacia returned to streaming was because her husband handled the situation both acacia and j-ruse claimed that at this time acacia was the sort of bread winner working on her social media career and j-ruse was the primary caregiver of course I don't think social media is a particularly hard job to do especially if you're staying home you still have the ability to be an active parent to a certain extent but if that was the sort of setup that they had as a family then I would think more of the blame and focus on the parenting should be put on j-ruse since he was the primary caregiver there's also been some concerning reports of acacia's children being found on cp sites and vlogs and photos of her kids were posted everywhere on both youtube and instagram from both acacia and other people reposting her content and even a lot of the bad moments like rosie being hospitalized where photos were taken of and posted and shared everywhere a redditor on rslash acacia snark explains how much of acacia's audience felt about her treatment of rosie during this period of her doing family vlogs rosie I still can't believe that rosie is nearly three and a has not advocated for her at all nothing about how hard it is for her everyday life how the doctors literally saved her daughter's life and all she cared about was gallivanting around seattle how she got pregnant as soon as they found out they weren't carriers of any of rosie's illnesses I don't know if that's even the right word it feels like she doesn't even know what's wrong with her daughter she doesn't care and she wants to just forget about having a disabled child acacia did respond to some of the controversy over her parenting decisions with rosie and a tiktok response to a commenter asking why she took rosie camping after rosie had open heart surgery acacia responded saying rosie wasn't released from the hospital until she was safe to go out and about and do things which was weeks after her surgery alright we're touching on this guy right here this comment why did you take your daughter camping to mount ring the day after she had open heart surgery I love this one I love this one because of how wrong it is you know, hilarious to me um because she wasn't even released from the hospital until she was safe to go out and about and doing things which was like weeks weeks and weeks after she even had open heart surgery she wasn't sent home on machines or anything like that capable of being out in the world again that's why she was sent home we thought we would hit a national park to cross it off our bucket list and because we've been cooped up and she has been cooped up in a medical facility for three months now we thought it would be a good idea to get her out in some nature because that's the kind of people that we are we think that nature is healing which it is it was approved by the literal person who performed open heart surgery on her and gave the okay to us to go so I mean I guess you guys could be mad that I took her but I'm not I'd do it again there are certainly a lot of situations where children with disabilities are treated differently by their parents and it's completely unacceptable and not okay but at the same time it's also completely acceptable and okay that Rosie might not be developing like other children then she might look different from other children and there's nothing wrong with that either and it is important to note that at the end of the day only Rosie's family can truly know the ins and outs of her condition I also wonder as Rosie grows up how she will feel about people looking so much into her condition and speculating on her health safety, happiness and the fitness of her parents I don't know I think personally I would be angry to find out people judged my childhood with such scrutiny as I said earlier that is the consequence that happens when parents post their family so publicly online but I also think it's important to be cognizant of the fact that Rosie did not ask for any of this but I am curious what you guys think of the situation as well especially since I am not well versed on the ins and outs of Algeal's syndrome around the time that people started to become wary of Akesha's treatment towards her children 2020 hit and in 2020 tweets that Akesha had once tweeted resurfaced in these tweets Akesha said the n-word and spoke down to people of color and once people really did a deep dive into Akesha's old twitter posts many started to see her as a bigot did you know that big time tumblr girl Akesha brindley is racist? I'm gonna be sharing some of Akesha's recent past posts so viewer discretion is advised there are some tweets here from 2014 she's around 17 when she posts this using the n-word there's also this post where I'm trying to censor out the second half of this but again it's a use of the n-word Akesha has old instagram pictures like this one and she's been called out before for this in the past people being like that's racist you shouldn't be saying that word because it's racist and her excuse is it was just a joke after several people found old videos from tumblr and tweets using racial slurs including the n-word Akesha responded by tweeting a simple I'm sorry the following day on March 3rd Akesha finally addressed her past posts many years ago I said a racial slur more than once I'm sorry that I did and I'm sorry I cannot change that trust me I wish I could I'm sorry I'm beyond remorseful I will continue to do all I can to show my true beliefs and that I support the black community Hi guys it's Akesha I want to make this video because one I owe it to the people in the black community that I have hurt and I owe it to all of my viewers who deserve a lot better from me when I was a teenager I said and used the n-word what I can say is that when I was ignorant I was not aware of the generational damage that it causes like I'm aware now and all I can do is apologize for ever being that sort of ignorant In another tweet she apologized to her black viewers I'm moving forward and I hope that you can forgive me and move forward too I'll take my time and you deserve yours I love you all so much I really do hate that I hurt my black viewers because you really do mean so much to me I'll see you soon have a good night Many of Akesha's followers at the time were quick to accept Akesha's apology believing that she's changed from the Tumblr persona that she was in the past but there were a lot of people that didn't buy that apology We're still waiting on the apologies from the other things too girl One user tweeted and Akesha responded the list of things I've done wrong is very long and will continue to be added to because I'm a human The only way I can apologize is through my actions and my present and my future which I will do I'm sorry I can't give you everything you need Another person wondered how Akesha could use this language when her own sister is black My sister, she's the youngest she's the baby, she was adopted When asked about this, Akesha also responded I'm doing better for her she said I'm being ally for my little sister and do everything I can so that the world is a better place So, I hope that I'm getting my point across here because with my ADHD my brain is working really fast The fact that Akesha's own sister is black certainly adds a whole other layer to this and the betrayal that Akesha's sister must have felt about all of this is heartbreaking racism really shows the true interior of a person but I also think even more so if you've said statements when you're underage a minor, a child that shows more so the environment you were raised in and the people you grew up around whether friends or family members because Akesha was younger when she posted a lot of these statements is that a valid excuse I know that there are many children who grew up in a raised household who were able to grow, learn and educate themselves and realize how long the world view that they were raised in was but the thing is I'm certainly not the person to say whether or not Akesha has done enough to educate herself prove that she's grown from her past and that she can sort of be redeemed on this topic so instead on this matter I would love to have a more open dialogue and how does one redeem themselves from their this past especially when they have black family members of course Akesha has reposted quotes from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to become an ally for those who need my privilege being an ally for all communities and being an ally for my little sister that is my makeup tutorial ah pizza but are those things really enough to excuse your own racist actions and is even the act of trying to prove that you're no longer racist performative in itself I definitely think regardless it's clear that at least one of Akesha's parents is not the greatest person as Akesha's father Rich Clark has been exposed for some pretty disgusting things my dad's a photographer this is my daddy hi I'm dad recently Rich Clark who's the father of Akesha Cursey and Peyton Clark Disney Channel actor has been exposed for grooming teenagers Rich Clark has been accused of using his child photography business to get alone time with young girls in order to pressure them into taking risk a and explicit photos several sources told the daily beast seven women who previously modeled for Rich Clark detailed the 52 year olds allegedly predatory behavior including how he would encourage young girls to pose provocatively for him telling them that excels and justifying his love for 14 year olds declaring that while he's not supposed to act on it he could think it and want it all I want and Rich Clark runs a children's photography business in Los Angeles and his online portfolio is almost exclusively filled with photos of young girls Clark's website also features some headshots of his son Peyton who starred on Disney's short-lived series I Didn't Do It in 2014 the former models told the daily beast that Clark often used Peyton and Acacia's success to market himself to potential clients both parents and teenagers propping himself up as a knowledgeable insider to the hard to crack world of show business and social media influencing but after their experiences with Acacia's father many of the young women believe he should not be around young girls Brittany Christine was the first to come forward about Clark with the 26 year old sharing a brief version of her story on tiktok explaining how when she was around 18 years old she began dating Clark's then teenage son Peyton in the spring of 2013 but things moved fast and soon after her first date she says she essentially began living with the Clark family and Rich Clark was constantly pursuing her I want to commend all of the young girls and women who came forward and shared their story with Rich Clark to go into detail about all of the encounters these young girls had with Rich Clark would be too upsetting for me personally but I will link the article why but I will link the article written by the daily beast in my resources so you can check it out and read more of these young women's stories if you would like to and can stomach it and knowing that this was Acacia's father who was accused of all of this and whose text messages were exposed has me feeling really concerned and honestly wondering if Acacia endured the same treatment I don't think it's appropriate to assume anything about Acacia's childhood but I will say struggling with self and over actualizing yourself at a young age are signs of trauma and it makes me wonder in fact in going through Acacia's tiktoks I saw a video of her looking sad with the caption watching videos of me as a little girl and seeing the special fade each time I hate that you made me it really made me worry about what that could possibly mean given the context of her father's dark truth coming to light I know this chapter is a little off topic on the general story of Acacia but I think in some ways it does fit into who Acacia is and who she became because who your parents are and how they raised you has a lot to do with who you become and well the trauma you might experience I know for me personally I've spent a lot of years running from my own childhood and it can affect you in a lot of negative ways it seems that at first social media was an escape for Acacia but maybe she had to become an adult too quickly to sort of outrun her childhood with so much adult responsibility being put on to her at such a young age and well that's just an environment ripe for making a lot of mistakes and the next mistake that Acacia made was her worst one yet and caused her to leave social media in October of 2021 all of Acacia's controversies throughout her time on the internet came to a head when Acacia was called out for stealing photo editing presets made by another creator a creator named Ashley known as Ashley Vai on social media has her own brand revolving around photo presets called Cherry Photo Club Ashley has a passion for photography and created this brand for easy but stunning presets and I've seen a lot of people who purchased Ashley's presets comment saying that they love her presets and found them super easy to use and one of the people who purchased them from Ashley was Acacia Cursey and then after buying Ashley's presets Acacia rebranded them and sold them as her own in a video Ashley Vai showed the messages between her and Acacia only after she felt like nothing was being done on Acacia's side after she came to Acacia saying this looks a little weird here what's going on Hi my name is Ashley I make presets under my brand Cherry Photo Club I have for a couple of years and I'm very passionate about it recently I had another large creator Acacia Cursey, some of you may know her as Acacia Brinley steal my presets she didn't steal them, she purchased them herself under her name and she put them up as her own and acted like she had worked really hard on them pretty much and the whole situation has been weird energy from the beginning and I'm just not happy with how things are going and how she's handled this so how did this whole entire situation start Ashley was scrolling on social media one day and saw that Acacia had posted photos on her instagram that looked a lot like Ashley's presets I noticed that Acacia had posted a photo on her instagram it's the one where she has the green eye shadow I immediately noticed that it looked like one of my presets so I thought she either tried to edit her photos like mine or she purchased my presets and was using them which I was excited about at first she thought maybe Acacia was going to shout out her presets and she got really excited especially when she noticed that Acacia had recently purchased from her store the night that she posted the green eye I went and checked because you can type in like in my website thing I can type in anyone's name and see who purchased the presets and she did purchase them I'll put the screenshot here so I knew that she had them but then when Acacia announced that she was going to be releasing a new presets pack soon and posted before and afters that looked really similar to Ashley's presets that Acacia had just purchased from her store Ashley knew something was up so she posted this thing on Instagram saying that she had 12 presets coming out at this point she posted a couple before and afters and I knew something was going on I didn't know what yet I wanted to give for the benefit of the doubt she hadn't put anything out I had no proof I just had the feeling which selling lightroom presets seems like a really stressful business to get into because there's really no way to copyright safeguard your presets and prevent other people from copying them and then even when someone copies they can turn around and say no I didn't I made my own this is just a coincidence or I changed it enough that it's unique enough that it's now my own preset another instance that really threw me off was this picture where she was talking about how it doesn't work for every photo in lighting scenario and everything and I knew because she used the photo with the sunset in it and I could tell by the colors in the sky that this was my preset orange soda and this is the post that I made about my preset orange soda so I'm sure you're wondering how did Ashley know for certain that Akesha copied her presets what if Akesha just bought Ashley's presets but made entirely new presets that were just heavily inspired well Ashley found out that the presets Akesha was selling her new preset pack were identical to her presets due to the curves in the photo I'm going through and finding that there are near identical if not 100% identical presets in her pack to mine and the reason I know this is because I do something that's a little bit of chaotic energy on my end but I mess with the curves of the photo I basically add a ton of dots along the curve line one of them is going to mess up the photo pretty bad so Akesha clearly didn't know this and she didn't bother to change much of anything which for those who don't know about photography or photo editing curves is basically adjusting the levels of white in RBG in a photo and how and where they appear in the photo and when she took Akesha's presets and the curves in those and lined them up with the curves in her presets she saw that they were absolutely identical and there was zero doubt in her mind that Akesha just ripped off her presets so going through it I first found that it was at least six presets of mine that were taken so Ashley ended up directly messaging Akesha being like hey what's going on here these look kind of similar I wanted to reach out to her and you know see what her explanation was going to be hey I just wanted to reach out and discuss something that's been a little awkward to bring up I noticed this past week about my preset pack and have been utilizing it I was excited about the support but not even a week later you've released one of your own and it looks really familiar with maybe a few tweaks honestly feels like a repackaging of my product that I spent months curating and I understand maybe you used it as a base or were inspired by it but being a small woman owned business is hard and I wanted to reach out to you directly to see if we can find a solution between us at first Akesha just tried to make it seem like she was just really inspired by Ashley's presets she came back to me and she said oh my goodness first of all I'm so sorry I understand how frustrating that can feel and it's truly not fun and I know this wasn't easy messaging me about it I did buy your pack I buy packs often from friends and people I follow because I do genuinely want to support especially because that's also what I do and how I make money I was inspired by one of your presets while making my own pack in fact I'm inspired by everything you create presets and content I would absolutely never ever steal your work and market it as my own but when Ashley pressed her a little bit harder saying so far I found six presets that are identical to mine with identical curves Akesha couldn't really find an excuse for that so she kept firing off some messages to me about how she's been working on it since April and so I came back and I said if I'm being transparent I make extremely specific curve adjustments to combat the replication of my presets which I explained earlier to you guys and it feels like more than just a subtle inspiration of color she asked if I wanted her to remove the one preset at the time and I came back and said basically no like there are at least six that are identical acting like you only took inspiration from one is just lying at this point if you reached out I would have been happy to collaborate on something or even create presets for you ripping off mine is not okay on a multitude of levels and the messages that she wrote back I found extremely strange she just said I totally understand could you let me know the six you're referring to and it's sad because Ashley said that if Akesha wanted to collaborate on a preset or work directly with her and creating presets she would have been completely open to it but now that Akesha just stole her work and tried to repackage and resell it Ashley wanted her to take accountability and own up to her mistake she came back and said she removed all the presets in question but for my understanding she was replacing them with different presets but they'll keep the same name I've already given that I said I feel like it needs to be explained publicly by you things like this happen so often to smaller brands and it's not cool so Ashley asked Akesha to make a public statement and a public apology but Akesha begged Ashley not to saying that the haters who had followed her around for years would never let this situation go she comes back and says I don't know how much you follow along with me but I have a group of people that hate me so much that every day I've had recently has been spanned by them to the point where I don't work anymore I worked on a fun summer colorful pack for months and months but I had troubles finishing it on top of that in the messages Akesha starts speaking to Ashley about her family's financial situation and how the influencer with millions of followers and her family were now struggling because people were messaging brands and asking them not to partner with her obviously you probably want to hear a sob story but if I were to publicly inform people the group would really tear me apart like really really bad I came back and I said you but you didn't just use the base like they're identical I told her I was sorry to hear about work and that people were mean to her and that I definitely don't tolerate any kind of bullying online and I don't wish that on her she starts telling me about her financial situation which I'm gonna block out part of it because she tells me how much money she has in the bank account and I don't feel like that's my business to share and out of respect and being a nice person I'm going to block that out so she says money is a very big deal to her and her current job situation is not something that she takes lightly so according to Akesha she lost most of her income and only had a small amount in the bank and was relying on the photo presets to stabilize her family's financial situation which I mean there's many things to say about that first off boundaries don't share with strangers on the internet especially strangers on the internet that you stole from do I think Ashley should have explicitly shared all of those messages publicly maybe not but most people felt like these messages were just Akesha trying to manipulate Ashley and get her to drop the whole situation out of pity for Akesha which is really not fair so Ashley continued to stand up for herself and her business saying I'm really sorry for your situation but you stole from me own up to it I'm feeling bad for her at this point in time but at the same time I'm also trying to stand up for myself and not be like a doormat be walked all over and taken advantage of I said I hear you but even with all that said you still repackaged my presets you keep mentioning that you lose jobs in your financial situation so I don't understand why you'd risk being called out for this I hear you and understand your financial struggles I support a lot of my family with my income and as much as I love to bring my feelings into this it's just about business and mine who's stolen from I don't know how to fix this without you publicly acknowledging it so that your followers know that you didn't create them the ones you posted were all my presets you even shared one and said it was your favorite but it was mine I was really trying hard to continue to establish that boundary of let's keep things professional here I know personally I would really struggle in that moment and I know a lot of you guys probably relate to that where I would be like oh my gosh I hope your family's okay no no no it's fine I'll just drop it leave it alone I hope you and your family are doing great but that's not the right thing to do either if someone steals copies lies, cheats not the person they stole from responsibility to protect them it's their responsibility to own up to the mistake and help the victim of the situation which in this scenario is Ashley Ashley's the victim and Akesha is the one who stole on top of that a lot of people thought in general Akesha was completely lying about her financial situation to Ashley I mean it's really hard to say I will say from what I know about AdSense and how much AdSense family vloggers get because they're in like a higher echelon of family friendly ad content and I've heard in the past that Instagram influencers that have over a million followers get upwards of 10,000 per sponsored post so if you think of the many years that Akesha has been online getting that sort of income it's extremely hard to fathom how someone in that sort of position could be struggling financially after just a few months of no sponsors of course I'm sure Rosie's medical needs could be expensive and Akesha probably never learned how to be financially savvy and save and plan out her finances in a strategic way in case emergencies like this happen but it is certainly really difficult to fathom that Akesha could be in as poor of a situation as she described to Ashley but since Ashley held firm in wanting Akesha to own up to the mistake Akesha finally agreed Akesha and Ashley spoke through messaging about a statement that Akesha should make which she ended up posting to her story like the message that she wrote was kind of manipulative because of that reason alone calling me her friend and acting like this was just a little bump in the road or something was the vibe I got and so this didn't sit right with me but I did give her the okay to post it she asked if I was comfortable with her posting it I said yes because at least she was taking accountability and doing the bare minimum from Ashley she says, guys I have to open up about something nor normally I would just blow past this that kind of makes me wonder how many things you've blown past and pretended like it didn't happen but I'm trying my best to be honest with myself and everyone earlier this week I was having a difficult time creating the last few presets in my pack and I went out looking for inspiration I needed the last few missing color palettes I just couldn't quite create I'm sure you could have come up with something the fact that you just couldn't figure out how to create a color palette you had in mind maybe means you shouldn't professionally be selling photo filters anyways she continues I had purchased at Cherry Photo Club summer pack and fell in love I was immediately obsessed with them they had the exact same tones I was missing but failed to make on my own then why are you even selling presets if you can't make presets I wanted to recreate similar vibes with some of my presets but by doing so I took away business from my friend at Ash Levi and for that I'm so apologetic doing this also ruined any artist integrity I've removed and or replaced a few that were practically identical earlier today and any post where I'm using them especially in the cases where they were used to promote sales of my pack extremely ashamed and embarrassed that I cut a corner like that just to get what I was looking for I had been chatting with her on ways to give back and want to make clear that this will absolutely never happen again so much love to you at Ash Levi for being so kind and understanding I just feel like when people do scams like this lie cheat manipulate steal I just always think there's so many other ways you could have gone about this that would have been completely fine reaching out to Ash Levi asking for a collaboration taking an online class or tutorial on how to make lightroom presets spending just a few hours messing with the lightroom app to come up with the color combination you're looking for there really are so many other ways of not getting yourself into this kind of predicament but then when Ashley continued to look back through the presets she found that a lot more were stolen from her than she initially realized there were 13 presets in total that were stolen from her I went through all of her presets was like a fine tooth comb and found out that it was actually 13 presets and not only was it 13 presets but some of the names like one of my presets is called cool boy right she took that and named it playboy like did you even try how do you think this wasn't gonna come up so Ashley sent a message to acacia saying she thought acacia should refund everyone not just apologize which acacia eventually did but it took her a long time to get there there's been speculation that acacia made over $15,000 selling that preset pack and a lot of people felt like your only job that you had to do is create filters photo filters where you just adjust the exposure adjust the brightness the contrast the grain the coloring and sell those to people and you couldn't even do that without stealing so many so many people would kill for the opportunity to be able to sell photo filters and make $15,000 off of it so it made a lot of people also feel like acacia is just kind of lazy because there were just so many better ways of going about this that would just require like a little bit more work so here's a full breakdown of the timeline of the preset debacle posted by at gerry jones on twitter first acacia claimed to be working on presets for months but still couldn't finish in time for her own release date but it seems like she wanted to copy a style she saw was popular not her own style so she bought ash's presets not because she wanted to use them but because she wanted to see how ash made hers but then she wanted more presets in her pack rather than less so she cut corners and stole ash's exact presets and then sold ash's designs for her own profits when confronted by ash she lied instead it wasn't true then she told ash it was an accident she made to identify to her which presets were stolen as if acacia wasn't the one who chose which to steal then she finally admitted to stealing and she offered to give ash a portion of the profits but not without mentioning that she is anxiety over her presets because she relies on those profits a lot she disclosed some financial issues to ash which seems like manipulation because of that ash felt uncomfortable taking money from acacia not to mention that her saying she has financial trouble contradicted what she was previously saying that she isn't having financial issues she then offered to promote ash's brand as if that would fix anything acacia finally posted publicly admitting that normally she would just ignore things like this and it seems like she only posted her apology because the creator herself was the one that caught her the post was only on her story and it only lasted 24 hours in the story post she uses a photo which still has her preset on it in other words she's still promoting her own presets she downplays the situation by calling ash her friend which they're not and acting like she decided to admit it on her own she blocked anyone who comments or likes comments about the stolen presets she removes the stolen presets replacing others with some actually made by replacing them with her own acacia proves that she is perfectly capable of making her own presets when she finally feels pressured enough to make an actual post on her feed it's still a photo of one of her presets comments are disabled later they're enabled acacia says she's in a bad place so she doesn't have to read comments she offers to work something out with those who want to be refunded if they'll just message her as if it's not her job to reach out to the customers acacia continues to act as if this is all a learning experience while still not showing what she really learned she already knew stealing was wrong on November 13th of 2021 acacia posted an instagram photo saying you've paid $6,360 to gumroad eek for refunds with the caption where she said the final round of refunds were sent out this week if you were still waiting a refund you should have gotten an email on monday the refund takes three to seven business days to show up in your account if you do not see either of those search preset refund in the email you used to purchase the presets with as you might have received it last year or the beginning of this year when I personally reached out before moving forward I did not steal from anyone and I did not just add my name or sell someone else's filter pack I used Ashley's presets as a base for half of the presets in my pack with one unintentional duplicate what I've been focusing on the most is how I handled everything leading up to the release and everything post release I wasn't transparent afterwards I got swept up in fear and anxiety I didn't want to face it head on so I tried to handle everything privately instead of owning my I should have taken accountability day one taking them all down and refunded there's lots of different things I should have done above all what matters now is taking action and I've done that every day this past year I have not stopped thinking about it in trying to do right by you guys myself and my babies wishing you all well and hoping to see you again I personally appreciate and acknowledge how acacia has acknowledged all of the ways in which she handled the situation wrong and wish she did it differently though I'm not the one who acacia stole from so how does Ashley by feel about the refund and acknowledgement Ashley by said about that statement glad everyone has been refunded but saying you didn't steal is weird considering our last messages where I pointed out which 13 presets were mine saying you used mine as a base isn't true taking all of my presets and changing a few numbers to make them a little more warm is still stealing and posting side by sides here of the presets that don't even go with each other girl please admit what you did and leave it at that the excuses are wild and Ashley does have a valid point that even in that whole post acacia was still making excuses for herself she had fear and anxiety she just used Ashley's as a base she didn't steal and I still wonder if acacia would have ever done anything if Ashley didn't figure this out and contact her asking for some acknowledgement in an apology I don't really think acacia would have ever owned up to it and this isn't the only time a kind of similar situation has happened a few years ago acacia was selling used clothes of hers on depop and then the customer started noticing that they would buy orders from her and never receive the clothes and acacia only acknowledged it when she was called out repeatedly for it which is again a pattern I notice a lot with influencers who scam through all of this the thing that makes no sense to me is how acacia could be in such a financially desperate situation that she needs to steal and repackage photo presets to sell to her audience according to biography daily acacia curses net worth is estimated to be between 700,000 to 1 million so there's definitely a lot of red flags going on and a huge question of where did the money go but acacia being called out for stealing these presets ended up being the final straw that led to her leaving social media in October of 2021 acacia announced in an instagram post that she's quitting influencing and stepping away from social media indefinitely she's done monetizing her life she said and after months of debate decided it was time to move on the negatives being an influencer finally outweighing the positives this role has done an immense amount of damage to me, my relationships my financial stability and my view of the world this decision was one of the hardest I've ever had to make while simultaneously being the easiest and most freeing things I've ever done since it meant a better life for myself and my family acacia also explained in her goodbye message that while she may one day be acacia, she was no longer going to rely on it for her family's survival, something that I'm only guessing the preset situation finally solidified was not a good idea. I was exhausted on all fronts, living an autopilot online, I was living with an empty cup while still doing my best to fill the cups of those around me and I could not operate like that for long, I lived a majority of my life in a place I didn't want to be in and made a lot of decisions that I probably wouldn't make again. Acacia has been able to make a solid income and support her family off of her social media career for years and I'm sure it's really hard to give up income in an area that you're comfortable with as opposed to the great wide unknown. The most poignant part of acacia's announcement is her revelation that she knows her career is harming her but she has no idea how to live acacia's life is undoubtedly very similar to that of a child star whose time in the spotlight is all they've ever known and the fear of what's on the other side of that fear has been keeping me here for longer than I can even admit, fear of what would happen if I stopped bringing in money, fear of what I could even offer the world, fear of who I am because this is all I've ever known the story of acacia and how her life online turned into her living nightmare is now more than ever a really important story because many younger people see pursuing social media as their dream job of sorts but for many reasons social media is not a good fit for everyone I know personally I get a lot of anxiety and feel really overwhelmed when I have a lot of notifications or emails to look at. For people pleasers it can be a really harsh and brutal reality into the real world where you truly cannot please everyone and some people will find the most ridiculous reasons to have an issue with you if you're extremely successful in social media it's also not always the best thing because it can give you a ton of unrealistic expectations of life and money with your social media career being fairly fleeting in the first place after acacia left instagram and youtube and social media for good she ended up posting that she started a patreon so that people who really wanted to could still have access to her life and her family which is a weird concept because it's kind of like pay money to see my children that's like a weird thing to wrap my head around after acacia left social media there were also tons of reports about where acacia was working if someone saw her out walking about reports about her husband j-roose in his own personal struggles what he was trying to do to make money but i don't want to get too much into those because that feels particularly invasive to me if someone has spent the majority of their life on social media and then chooses to leave it and to live a private life i do think that should be respected even if that person isn't a perfect person i don't think it justifies following everything they do in their life after they've asked for privacy it just feels a little bit toxic and parasocially invasive did i say toxic it feels a little bit toxic and parasocially invasive almost like people are disappointed that they no longer have acacia as their lol cow which that was the first time i have ever used lol cow as a word in a sentence but yeah it's like they want to keep acacia as their lol cow where they can continue to make kind of jabs and jokes about her life and downfall and struggles to find a career after leaving social media and that's something personally i just can't agree with as wrong as i think acacia has been at times i don't think people should have pride into her life when she asked for privacy acacia kept her promise and left the internet but in late 2022 she started popping up on social media again and since acacia's returned to social media fans have noticed that in typical acacia fashion much has changed in her life in a short period of time the biggest change being that acacia and her husband jerus jerus why the biggest change being acacia and her husband jerus got divorced most fans realize this when acacia left comment on one of her tiktoks hello mrs wrote one fan on her video acacia responded with more like ms which was the first public announcement of the divorce after 4 years of marriage it seemed like acacia and jerus were officially done on december 28 she shared on instagram yes i'm single i've been single for a bit yes i have all my kiddos no i do not have a story time i don't know what else to say acacia also posted text screenshots of herself talking to a friend on how to share the news including one exchange referencing young gravy two days later she shared she's been trying to find ways to appropriately talk about what's going on in her life but stayed reserved on details until she's ready to address the situation and to also respect someone who's a big part of her life i wanted to talk about a lot of people are curious which is completely understandable it's a part of the human condition we're all curious to some extent i would be curious too if i was a viewer i am curious about other people's breakups and divorces breakups are hard, divorces especially are hard especially in this specific situation that we're in and acacia is back on instagram posting fairly regularly and posting a lot onto tiktok though it seems that her recent social media posts are more reminiscent of the acacia of the tumblr era as opposed to the acacia of the family vlogging era because not only is her ex jeruse no longer in her content but her children are gone from her posts as well in fact acacia no longer shares any of her children online though she assures that her children are still with her and she has custody of them and that the reason she doesn't post them is because she wants to respect their privacy in acacia's recent posts she's also been more open about addressing her past controversies everyone i ever knew loved to keep my name in their mouth it was everyone's favorite thing to do they loved it because hating me is cool hating me was cool and i was just a little kid just a little kid who wanted someone to like her that's all i went through i went through way too much because of it i like loved to do this thing where i protected men that gave zero shit about me don't know why but i loved it it was my go to and it does seem that she's done some healing where at least she's opening up and talking about these things more and addressing them head on at first it seemed that acacia's ex j-ruse was completely gone from the internet with no social media profiles but recently j-ruse started a tiktok page to post about his music projects where he addressed that he had gone to rehab recently and is seemingly in a recovery situation though i do think it is really important to note that i don't think it's anyone's business what happened to j-ruse and what he might be struggling with unless someone shares that publicly i don't think it's anyone's business to pry into it from j-ruse's captions on his tiktoks it seems that a lot of the hate and negativity that was sent their way online about their family really got to j-ruse mentally as well which i'm sure that's gotta be such a weird situation getting into a relationship with an influencer where that's not necessarily the life you've chosen but all of a sudden your life is public people know about your life and they're judging your life and sending hate your way it's gotta be really overwhelming especially for someone who maybe never asked for that when akasha was asked why she came back to social media she commented that she has to be a caregiver to her children but still needs to work and i'm sure social media to akasha is a pretty easy way of being able to stay at home but still make an income and i'm sure that's a pretty hard sort of trap to escape akasha's business email is in the bio of her instagram so it seems that she is definitely primarily motivated to bring in income which is understandable to a certain extent when you have a family that you need to provide for and give a safe home especially when you have three children that you need to clothe, feed take care of and make sure they have a stable home and environment some people also saw it as a sort of disingenuous sign that akasha hasn't learned anything one twitter user wrote reviving this account solely because she has a business mail on her bio so she clearly still wants to profit off her platform a platform she clearly demonstrated over and over again she doesn't deserve i definitely think having a platform is a privilege and you have to at least to a certain extent respect your following and do right by them and if you scan, live, cheat, manipulate, say the things that alienate a part of your audience, treat animals poorly, people have a right to walk away from your platform but it seems that when akasha was offline in the year 2022 that she was forced to grow and learn a lot she seems to be back at the mobile home in jeruse's family's yard and from the posts that jeruse has posted himself about his experiences this past year it seems like their family has been put through a lot and to give akasha credit at least one thing she's learned moving forward is the importance of protecting her children's privacy since she's largely kept her children offline and i think only time will tell whether or not akasha has truly learned from all her mistakes akasha is definitely not the only influencer who's had a huge following of people who despise them, in fact it seems there's some influencers who have actually gained more fame out of the hate they receive as opposed to their fans and i think the dark truth of the story of akasha is no matter how you feel about her how mad you are of her past actions, how much you assume about her life and family how sorry you might feel for her all of it is really just a reflection of yourself maybe you had a neglectful parent so you fear that reality and are worried of other parents potential neglect on their children maybe you care for animals you cannot forgive them regardless you come from a broken family or selfish parents a lot of those i can relate to personally the online life of akasha hits home for you because it deals with issues you've dealt with personally or issues that are a soft spot on your heart the credit i'll give akasha at the end of this video which honestly should be a standard but you'd be surprised how many social media influencers don't do this so the credit i'll give akasha at the end of this video is that all the things she's been called out for she's acknowledged and addressed so akasha did what most people ask of influencers who make mistakes to the best of her ability she tried to take accountability now it's up to the general public to decide if accountability is what we wanted all along or if we can't forgive people who bring up past traumas for us but personally i see akasha as someone who's gone through a lot of trauma as well a questionable childhood where she had to grow up really quickly and do it all online with millions of people watching for every move and mistake now she has three children is a single mom in trying to rebuild her life and redefine herself online as a fellow mother and someone who had to grow up really fast really quickly i can't help but deeply empathize with that side of akasha there are of course a lot of questionable things regarding akasha but my heart doesn't want to believe that she's a bad person and i think after people ask for accountability there needs to be a sort of waiting period where we allow that influencer to actually show improvement and growth after taking that accountability on so i guess i'll end this video on a more definitive and maybe positive stance than i have in past videos and say that if we don't give akasha at least a chance to show growth to show that she's learned her lesson to show change and improvement if we don't give her that chance to show that she's held herself accountable well i think that says more about us than it does about her but what do you think and that's all for today's video thank you so much for watching if you made it to the end i really appreciate all the love and support lately again thanks so much to semperd for sponsoring the video don't forget to check out the link in the description for 55% off your first month and i'll see you in the next video have a good one until then bye