Being someone who has known Holly since her Cambridge years, it is quite a tragedy for me to see how she has changed from graduation back in 2019. If you have seen videos both in her undergraduate era and recent times, I am sure you can understand what I mean.
She was a great person, no doubt. She did exceptionally well in her GCSE and A-LEVEL, successfully survived at Cambridge, not with saying ranked 1st in her second year and third year. She is super clever and maintained many good habits there, and that's the core reason why she could enjoy a super-strong body to support her extracurricular such as dance competitions and also maintain academic performance.
In my mind, the problem first occurs when her YouTube channel grows. Initially, she only vlogs herself for solely recording her life. But the view counts, subscription number, as well as financial income could create false happiness for her brain. As a result, she spends more and more time vlog itself, and you can see she has more videos in her second year compared with first, also third compared with the second.
However, most people won't know what is happening but still come because of her Cambridge glory. She may never understand there's a whole industry behind how to develop an online presence. She may be just too naive and even spend so much time just reading comments. Since then, she has made a series of wrong decisions. Many of them are minor, such as not going on the fourth year at Cambridge.
The first big mistake that happened was she decided to leave an entire year empty, turning down the teaching job she had applied and secured, and spend over three months just traveling in Australia. You might oppose me and say long-term travel is good, but the reality is it will significantly decay a person's brainpower. Could you remember the tiredness on the first day back from the new year's vacation?
Since then, things have derailed relatively quickly. Although she could secure a master's degree at UCL, it's because of her Cambridge merit. I am pretty sure the decision dean has watched her last-minute choice in the vlogs and gave her this chance. But things have changed. In her Cambridge years, she could quickly fill many massive folders and have a box of study materials. It will not happen again.
Yes, she did not even fill half of a folder during her entire master's year at home. She began to become addicted to useless content online such as TikTok. Good habit has run away from her one by one. One of the most significant is often refusing to sleep after midnight, sometimes 2 am or so. Maybe she has forgotten that she had constantly slept at 10:00 pm and got up at 6:00 am when living at Cambridge?
I am pretty sure most of her followers have noticed these negative changes. Statistics also prove this. Her YouTube channel has barely gotten any new subscriptions in the last half-year or so. However, she still believes in her seemingly ever-lasting influence and tries to be self-employed after finishing her master's. It might work for now. But can she see herself vlogging in her 30s?
Near the middle 20s, she has two first-class degrees from two of the most prestigious universities in the UK, struggling to gain financial independence yet still believing a tiny biology channel worth more than a Ph.D. I would not be surprised if Cambridge university stopped featuring her on its official YouTube channel or the fast decrease of her future video view numbers. Nothing valuable has been left.
Many factors contributed to her decay, quite sadly. Her controversial family environment, indecisiveness, and naive thoughts about many aspects of her life have successfully derailed everything. Or maybe we are all wrong. What if these are all she wanted? If she did not work hard and find her way into Cambridge and UCL, maybe these threads would not exist at all. My real thoughts, folks.
The last bit of advice is that we should not judge a person's trajectory. Life is not linear. Some people may become better or worse at any stage of their life. But my honest thought is that Holly should never become an example to young students, especially those at Oxbridge or so. She seems to know too little in too many aspects, and mindlessly following her actions would not be good for anyone.
I really want to do something to pull her back. But in the past one month or so, I realized she has officially over. Viewing her recent birthday vlog almost gave me a heart attack. Where has that healthy, energetic, motivated, hard-working Cambridge Holly gone? I have no answer. When I saw her present situation, trying her best to hide her inside emptiness and struggling to create "positive," I just wanted to cry.
. She really has no personality outside of pretending to not have an eating disorder.