 So, I've been getting a lot of requests to discuss this situation with Haley Morales and the fan, Lena, who unfortunately took her own life. So yeah, let's discuss this. What's up everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul, where we talk about the problem, but focus on the solution. If you're new to my channel, what I try to do is take different topics going on in the YouTube community and try to see what lessons we can learn from them. Something that I'm extremely passionate about is mental health, even more so young people mental health, like my mental health issues, my anxiety, my depression, my trauma, all of it happened as a kid. So anyways, that's what my channel is about. If you're into that, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell, all right? But yeah, let's jump into this. Let's talk about this. Like I said, I've been getting a lot of requests. I had no clue about this situation. Didn't know who Haley Morales was either until this happened. So to kind of summarize this story, Haley Morales is a 15-year-old YouTuber, all right? And she has a huge audience. I think she has over 800,000 subscribers. And a young woman, I believe she was 14, her name was Lena, she ran a fan account, which is kind of common for YouTubers to have fans who run fan accounts. A lot of people do edits and things like that. But anyways, Haley Morales said some things that got back to Lena that could be considered bullying. And unfortunately, Lena took her own life. And a lot of the internet is turning to Haley and blaming her for this. So we need to talk. So the first thing is, is let's talk about their ages, okay? You have Haley who's 15, Lena who was 14 years old. I actually learned a little bit more about this situation. Somebody recommended I watched the video from D'Angelo Wallace. D'Angelo is a super smart, funny young man. He has an art channel. He also does some commentary. But anyways, he really talks about this point about how young, both these young women are. So I'm going to link his video down in the description. It's like 25 minutes, but definitely watch it. It's worth it. He has a really good point of view on this. And I'm going to talk a little bit about that as well. And mainly it's the age of these young women. So what we know about Lena and what I've read is apparently this is not the first time that she's attempted suicide in the past. So we have a young teenage woman and man, 14 years old. It's so sad thinking about people that young just even contemplating taking their own life. And I get it. When my depression first started hitting me, when I was that age, like I get it, man. And I'm just glad that those thoughts never turned into actions. And now I'm a father of a 10-year-old son. And that's one of the reasons I'm making this video because this is an important subject to discuss. So the first thing let's talk about is people are trying to put the blame on Hailey Morales. Okay, Hailey Morales is 15 years old. And although Lena apparently she said, you know, Hailey was to blame, nobody, we can't blame people for suicide. Like, you know, like there's so many factors and everything like that. But we need to realize, like one of them is whenever a life is lost too soon or whenever any tragedy happens, we want to find somebody to blame. Like we need somebody to blame, whether it's him or her or her or him or whoever it is, right? Or maybe you blame God or whoever it is. We want to blame somebody. We want somebody to be held accountable for this tragic loss, right? But we can't do that. And this is one of the reasons why we all have to work on our mental health so much. Like something that I've had to do when working on my mental health is look at other people and be like, they've been through this. How did they get through this? Like if they can get through this, maybe I can too. You know what I mean? So it's not fair. If I have the opportunity to improve my life or my mental health, right? How is it fair that I blame somebody else for my mental health? You know what I mean? Like I look at it in the aspect of, you know, my addiction recovery. There were so many factors. One of them was I was a kid of an alcoholic mom. She didn't get sober until I was 20. I blamed her for my whole life. And then finally, you know, addiction took over my life. And when I got sober, I had to learn to forgive her. And I had to realize like, oh my God, like even though that was a factor, I had to work on my mental health. I wasn't allowed to just keep doing what I was doing. But when I look at this situation, and again, this isn't to pass blame. But when I look at a young woman like Lena who took their own life, I sit here and I ask, you know, not even not even to blame the parents at all. All right, because we don't know. But I'm sitting there. I'm like, what was going on in that household? How is there a young woman in that household who has made an attempt before and now got to this point where she took action? What were the parents doing? And again, like this is one of the reasons I have my channel. So many people just don't know the signs and the symptoms to look for. And this is how these things happen way more often than they should. They come seemingly out of nowhere or somebody made an attempt and we think they're fine now. You know what I mean? And one of the things, and if you, if you have been through a different experience, let me know, but when I was growing up, we didn't learn about mental health. They didn't teach it in school. I know some schools are better about it now, but like, we don't talk about mental health. So like, if we're not talking about mental health, how are young people supposed to get the help and support that they need? You know what I mean? And when I see somebody like Lena who had this, you know, fan account for Haley and everything like that, like something else that I think about, especially as a YouTuber, and that's something I talk about quite a bit, is parasocial relationships, right? And I think we all need to look at it. Like you, you see these parasocial relationships between viewer and the fan all the time. And we have to ask ourselves like, how much is healthy? How much of that relationship is healthy? And when does it become unhealthy? You know what I mean? And we have to acknowledge when our, that relationship we're forming with a person we've never met, when it's getting to that point of being unhealthy. And if we're a parent, we need to be mindful of that with our kids, right? If you're a teenager, we need to be mindful of our friends, the people in our life, like, is their relationship getting to an unhealthy place, right? And it's difficult because you see people who are like fans of like K-pop, right? And then you have like, fans of like YouTubers and everything like that. Like it's good to have something that you're a fan of. And like, when you become a fan, you become part of a community and that can actually help your mental health. Like something that helped me with my mental health growing up was being a video game player and a nerd who built computers. Like I found my people because of those things that I was into. You know what I mean? So that's just something that we really need to look at. And like so much in life is just about balance, right? Finding something that we enjoy or we're passionate about while also keeping it healthy. Like, listen, I'm a recovering drug addict. My whole life has been doing things to excess. So now today I really have to work on moderation and finding that balance, you know? And the last thing I kind of want to talk about is I don't mean to like excuse Hailey's, you know, behavior, but I don't think in any way, shape or form she was responsible for Lena's death. But you know, I see these kids who blow up on YouTube and then I have to ask like, are they ready for it? You know? Like especially, see, YouTube is a lot different than like becoming a movie star or like the Stranger Things kids. You know what I mean? Because YouTube is a social media platform. So with YouTube, you're always on Twitter. You're always on Instagram. You interact a lot and everything like that. There's so much more that goes into that relationship with the audience. And like, it makes you wonder if young people are prepared for that because anybody, anybody can just hop on YouTube, start going viral and boom, just have this massive audience. Like most of us talking like when I was 15 years old, I was worried about like, you know, 10 or 20 people at school knowing something about me, right? Now you got to worry about hundreds of thousands. And not only that, you have to worry about your relationship with these hundreds of thousands. You see what I'm saying? So it's just really tricky situation. At the end of the day, I'm of the belief that as parents, as adults, we need to be talking to our kids about this stuff, right? And as tragic and sad as this whole thing is, like it's awful, but Haley is definitely going to learn something from this situation, you know? And hopefully it makes her a little bit more kind and compassionate as she moves forward in life. But it should have never gotten to this point and it breaks my heart. You know, like I said, I have a 10 year old son so to even imagine what those parents are going through or her friends and the rest of the family and for everybody out there who's, you know, a teenager watching this stuff, like just know there's help available. And man, I wish, I always wish I can go back in time and tell my younger self that everything was going to be alright, you know? I just wish, like just hold on. If you're a teenager, hold on. I promise you once you get out of high school, things are going to get better. When you get out into college or if you decide to skip college and just go into the real world, you're going to find your people and you're going to be grateful that you just went out there into the world. So if you're struggling and need help, like check out the description down below. Aside from D'Angelo's video, I'm going to link some resources and things like that. But talk to people, talk to your parents, talk to a teacher, talk to a friend's parents, talk to, you know, your big brother or big sister. If you're struggling with your mental health, please talk to somebody. Alright, but anyways, that's all I got for this video. I'll see you guys in the next one.