Ruby Granger #12 The Continuing Adventures of Pie-rott and Muriel

[Misstike]

I wonder if the participation is based solely on quantity rather than quality.
I found, in my university seminars, that people quite often would say things just for the sake of ‘toadying’ the lecturer. However these were rarely insightful and usually just a repeat of what the lecturer had just said/verbatim of the set reading.

 

[Ilaariaa]

It feels like she’s panicking, and rather than just stopping posting photos of food altogether she’s decided that posting pictures of more food will somehow fix things. Like this is somehow evidence that she’s actually eating properly even though we know none of this is for her. Basically overcompensating. Ruby if you just stop posting pictures of food completely that will put an end to all this! You can eat what you want, but it will stop all speculation. It won’t be taken as evidence that you’re eating nothing, people will just forget about it.

You can tell her thought process is so straightforward here. Like it's little kids logic. "People don't like what I post because they think it's too little food. But if I post no more food people will think I'm not eating anything! I know what I will do. I will post random pictures of food other people are eating so people can see I'm eating something without knowing how much I'm eating!"
*cue meme of black guy tapping his forehead*

 

[pandorica_]

Any guesses which modules she's going to take in 3rd year? My bets are on "Writing for Children and Young Adults" and "Food and Literature in Early Modern England".

 

[gingerteacup]

This may sound harsh, but I hope she DOES feel somewhat ganged up on. I hope she feels bad, I hope the comments she‘s received over on Insta have caused a crisis for her. And, above all, I hope the crisis leads to her getting help, maybe taking a break (though I will miss the loltastic content) and figuring out why what she’s been doing has been damaging to everyone. I hope she’s able to overcome any self-pity and self-hatred she has and actually grow from this experience.

No, this girl does need to reflect on everything. Especially taking money from the Holocaust memorial trust and STILL not telling us how she is “reinvesting” the funds.

 

[ghostly_prince]

I really wonder what made Ruby want to lose weight initially, what triggered her potential ED? She used to be at a healthy weight and she seemed to enjoy a diversity of foods, I rewatched some of her vlogs in her first year at Uni and although she was already restricting (going vegan), she still bought a lot of food and ate decent portions. She didn't seem obsessed with tiny portions or with the same boring food like peas or yogurt bowl with a quarter of a banana...

TW: ED's

This is all speculation and I can only speak from my experience (I suffered from an ED for over 10 years) and because I see a lot of my past self in Ruby. But here are just some potential reasons why I believe it manifested the way it did for her...

1. Control: ED's aren't always about food but more so about the control it gives you. The pandemic definitely didn't help and with Ruby being away from her childhood home/comfort zone at the time she panicked and resorted to something that would give her some sense of control. I'm not sure if going back home was worse than staying in her uni house. For me being away from friends and family fueled my ed more because I didn't have to worry about other people finding out in a way but regardless she still carried on.

2. We all have speculated she might suffer from OCD or have autism which is common in people with ED's. (Also autism in girls/women is often under diagnosis compared to boys/men). This ties in with the amount of pressure she puts on herself to be perfect so maybe she thought that since she already had "perfect" grades she needed to "perfect" something else: in this case her body.

3. I think another part of it comes from her fixation on being a child and not growing up. She doesn't want to be seen as an woman, she wants to be seen as a child/young girl and in order to do that she thinks she needs to remain small and dainty, which again is common in people who suffer from eds. She doesn't want her body to grow up so she's preventing it by starving herself (when in reality it's just going make her age quicker). I think another things that ties into this is that she wants to be a fictional/historical character. And all the characters/figures she sets out to be are either skinny (think Anne from Anne with an E) or a starving Victorian. She purposely eat like these characters and figures because she wants to emulate them.

4. Lastly, maybe she did want to lose a bit of weight in general. Some ed's do start off as harmless as that but then they spiral, take over and are hard to come back from. She was never overweight. She was healthy and athletic given her gymnastics background. So maybe she did want to lose a bit of weight at the beginning but it turned into something worse.

Again this is all speculation. But I see a lot of my old ed behaviors and tendencies in Ruby. I was a similar "perfectionist" student, I'm autistic and I'm a history nerd (I studied history in undergrad and post grad) so I even somewhat get the fasciation and desire to emulated the past as Ruby has done. To me it's almost like seeing a past version of myself and noticing the warning signs as they are happening to her. I really hope she gets help soon.

 

[figgypud]

When I struggled with restrictive/disordered eating, it was all about the control and specifically a measure I took to try to avoid criticism. I was very socially anxious with low self-esteem and my thought process was literally that if I lost weight, I was eliminating one thing that people could criticise me or dislike me for - "they can't tell me I'm fat or greedy if I don't eat anything!". I was a healthy weight and still probably bigger than Ruby was originally, and nobody was saying those things about me anyway but I was terrified of any form of criticism. Given Ruby's perfectionism and her recent grades video, I wouldn't be surprised if this was a factor in her weight loss. I obviously can't know that for sure but I see a lot of similarities in the way she struggles with criticism with my younger self.

 

[Saskia69]

Love how her stories hone in on the “sugar free jam” shelf….

Also, speaking as a vegetarian, I would never post photos on social media of non-veggie food! I am NOT one of those people to critique/comment non-veggies, I must stress, but I see my own content as a reflection of me - and not eating animals is a core part of that.

It’s just really bizarre to me and is also - from past experience in the “Ed recovery” community (spoiler, 90% of this isn’t proper recovery), people would post photos of other peoples’ food - sometimes without stating whether or not they ate it.

The only trouble here is - we know Ruby hasn’t eaten it. Unless she’s suddenly not vegan, and let’s be fair to her - in her own words she has the right NOT TO DISCUSS THESE TOPICS…

 

[Lrb5]

View attachment 645578

Unless she's ditched veganism for fish and chips, her new alternative to posting triggering images of her food is apparently to just show other people's food instead? Just stop posting images of food! It's not hard!

I remember in an assumptions video a while ago she made a really smug comment about not liking 'junk food' so she's probably watching everyone eat. She then made another post about how she hateed her vegan cheese dominoes! If she doesn't like it fine, but making out she is above eating these foods really annoys me and is clearly passing this message onto her fans.

 

[myra1409]

I wonder if the participation is based solely on quantity rather than quality.

Former Exeter student here:
I know many students, on many different courses, who received participation marks - this is not exclusive to English. I knew someone studying Theatre who received participation marks based on attendance. Attendance?! I never knew participation marks weren't common practice at other universities until reading this thread! Luckily I never had them...

 

[snapesslut]

Just out of curiosity, is it normal to have the amount of meetings with tutors and seminar leaders, that she does, or well at least shows? I'm not in uni so I have no idea.

 

[influencersmakemewannadie]

Just out of curiosity, is it normal to have the amount of meetings with tutors and seminar leaders, that she does, or well at least shows? I'm not in uni so I have no idea.

I have met once with my personal tutor all year, and never with seminar leaders outside of our class hours. Most uni staff have 1 office hour per week, so it’s literally ONE hour where every single one of their students can drop in and ask questions. Each staff member will have hundreds of students across multiple courses/year groups/modules. I despair for Ruby’s peers who may have burning issues to discuss with staff, yet Ruby clearly takes up all of their time on a regular basis. (These office hours are also meant for real questions and concerns not “I want to bore you with my inaccurate views on Alice in Wonderland for 55 of your precious 60 minutes”)

 

[Auga]

Ruby always had a high risk of developing an ED in light of some of her traits, not to mention the obsession with appearing childlike. But the signs emerged really only when she started admiring and imitating Holly Gabrielle. And she will not be the only one Holly Gabrielle has "influenced" in this way.

 

[lizzie2707]

Just out of curiosity, is it normal to have the amount of meetings with tutors and seminar leaders, that she does, or well at least shows? I'm not in uni so I have no idea.

I met with my English tutor twice this semester, once per coursework essay we had to submit, just to briefly discuss ideas - one I chose to work on a really difficult book, and the other was a slightly odd assignment of I kind I hadn’t done before. Each meeting was 10-15 minutes. I really feel for her diss supervisor, they’re going to be getting constant questions and I bet Ruby’s going to ask for wayyy more meetings than she’s allowed (at my uni we had a certain number of hours of contact time allowed with our supervisors, I assume Exeter is similar).

 

[Stormweald]

Just out of curiosity, is it normal to have the amount of meetings with tutors and seminar leaders, that she does, or well at least shows? I'm not in uni so I have no idea.

No, I only met my tutor twice this year, once for a general meeting and the other time to discuss track choice and BSA (don't know what that's called in the UK). Seminar tutors will often respond to messages sent on discussion boards and such, but it is very uncommon to schedule actual meetings. Though most tutors will have optional meetings for when you are really struggling with your essay.

 

[CatCafe234]

Ruby always had a high risk of developing an ED in light of some of her traits, not to mention the obsession with appearing childlike. But the signs emerged really only when she started admiring and imitating Holly Gabrielle. And she will not be the only one Holly Gabrielle has "influenced" in this way.

I think Ruby and Holly have been friends for quite a while - I remember a video from a few years ago when they went to London together? But I agree that it’s not a healthy relationship for someone like Ruby, who likes to take on other people’s personalities. On paper, Holly has had a lot of things that Ruby wants, like an Oxbridge degree and graduating at the top of her class and so on. It seems inevitable that she’d start copying the less healthy parts of Holly’s life to try to emulate her academic successes. This is what irritates me about this whole situation - if people like Holly and Ruby are influencing each other then they need to realise that they’re influencing their viewers too. It’s too late to publish a video a few times years down the line admitting that your previous videos weren’t exactly truthful - the damage will already have been done.

 

[tommo92]

I don’t understand how you can be this hung up on university grades (unless your making money out of it like her) - where’s having real life enjoyment, a proper uni experience. So sad for her, they are only marks so long as you pass quite well you and 200 other people doing your course come out with the same at the end

 

[kbjhguih]

To be fair … you’re paying a lot of money for University, if you want to see a professor during office hours every single week (and as long as it doesn’t take away from someone else’s opportunity to have a meeting, which it likely isn’t as office hours can be long and a lot of students don’t take advantage of them) I don’t actually see the issue…?

Our lecturers begged us to come see them in office hours to chat. My fave who become my diss supervisor had biscuits and tea and was just genuinely happy that we were engaged with the content. Though I’m guilty of never really going to office hours myself …

 

[Harpyharpyunder]

Sorry for off topic but for those of you doing your undergrad please use your lecturers time! It’s precious but it’s for you. I have done some work in a department for a university and trust me the people who got the best grades were the ones going to office hours often. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is why Ruby is getting the grades she is. If she’s sending in her essay plans etc and getting feedback then it’s pretty difficult to not do well if you’re listening to that feedback.

 

[jiggy_girl]

Sorry for off topic but for those of you doing your undergrad please use your lecturers time! It’s precious but it’s for you. I have done some work in a department for a university and trust me the people who got the best grades were the ones going to office hours often. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is why Ruby is getting the grades she is. If she’s sending in her essay plans etc and getting feedback then it’s pretty difficult to not do well if you’re listening to that feedback.

We know she doesn't listen to feedback though? she's shown time and time again that she disagrees with the feedback she's given

 

[space.cat]

I really wonder what made Ruby want to lose weight initially, what triggered her potential ED? She used to be at a healthy weight and she seemed to enjoy a diversity of foods, I rewatched some of her vlogs in her first year at Uni and although she was already restricting (going vegan), she still bought a lot of food and ate decent portions. She didn't seem obsessed with tiny portions or with the same boring food like peas or yogurt bowl with a quarter of a banana...

There were a lot of comments posted about how she looks manly because she is too large for her clothes and how her smaller sister can pull them off so much better. Specifically during the clothes swap video but on other occasions too. I can see how somebody like Ruby would be triggered by that.