Ruby Granger #15 Dustcore

[lizzie2707]

"I am paying my mortgage completely myself"
Except you're not are you Ruby, because your tenants are paying it for you.

"I wanted to invest my money... house prices do go up"
Bingo.

"It's becoming increasingly difficult for young people to get on the property ladder"
And one of the reasons why is because people like yourself are buying properties that they don't even live in.

"I am moving into my own cottage"
You never moved in Ruby and I'm not sure you ever will.

This video has annoyed me even more than it did when it first went up! She's talking about it like it's a new toy.

It's so obvious that most of that came from her parents, especially her dad I'm guessing. It's highly unlikely an 18 year old - especially one as detached from reality as Ruby - would ever have thought to start buying property as an investment. Her dad's clearly told her do do all this and she has no comprehension of the potential implications of buying property and then not living in it, or the fact that this isn't something a normal 18 year old would do.

Also the one thing that made me die inside the most has to be her saying she's bought her "first property". I'm 22 and can't imagine being in a position where I could afford to buy a property full stop. The fact that she clearly knows she's going to buy multiple properties in her lifetime honestly chipped away a little corner of my soul.

 

[gossip_guy]

But don't you know, candles are just so aesthetic !! Can't very well live out your fantasies of being a Victorian bookworm without them. Leafing through a book isn't the same without squinting through the flickering yellow light of a candle. Normal lights are so blasé.

She's just gearing up for part 2 of the video:

"Unfortunately no matter how very most carefulest you are, sometimes your candles will set your house ablaze. Studying in the wild outdoors can be very distracting, this is why a second home is my number one academic essential for when your first house burns down."

 

[Ilaariaa]

Yet again I don't understand who this video is aimed at. Things like Notion and using your library are only really suitable for uni students (we were never allowed laptops in class at school, maybe that's normal in private schools though?). But a pencil case and folder are not gonna be used AT ALL by an English student at uni. I remember buying hundreds of folders before first year and I literally never used them because we don't get given loose paper. So is this video for a 15 year old about to do GCSEs, or a 21 year old about to start their dissertation?

She's unbelievably ignorant about her own privilege - '£120+ headphones are an absolute MUST!' So studying is only for the rich and nobody can succeed without spending a near fortune?



'Essential number 47: Air. Oxygen is so important for our brains, don't forget to breathe!'

Pro-tip for broke ass students like me who cannot afford to spend €100+ on noise-cancelling headphones: if you look up brown noise or white noise videos on Youtube you can use your regular headphones as noise-cancelling headphones. I use brown noise videos to study in the same room as my parents watching TV and you can't hear a thing.

 

[gossip_guy]

So, the first thing you see on Ruby's stationery website is "Get your Academic Essentials now".

Number of "academic essentials" from that video available for sale on her store out of 25: Two.

Honestly, keeping track of the lies, contradictions and misadvice in her videos has me like:

According to Ruby, her academic planner was designed so that it contains everything a student needs. So...why would she (or anyone else) then need separate to-do lists, notebooks, calendars and Notion subscriptions?

Ruby: "I love note flags and use them religiously."

But I thought that app she was shilling in ad posts just yesterday had changed the game because she had no way to mark and annotate texts otherwise? If that's such a revelatory, essential app, why is it not on the list, Ruby? You don't have to answer, we know you only claimed to use it because you were paid to.

Ruby: "Make sure you get a backpack that will fit everything you need, not just an aesthetic one."
Also Ruby: (Visibly struggles to fit her water bottle into her bag because the trendy, aesthetically-pleasing bag she owns several of is far too small for her purposes.)

Ruby: "It is SO important to keep hydrated. You'll definitely notice a difference in your focus if you don't."
Also Ruby: (Makes no mention of eating regular, substantial, nutritious meals. Encourages "just dry snacks". Doesn't eat anything herself. Is constantly having trouble focusing and is often confused and distracted by everything.)

Ruby: "A good, clean desk and study space is essential."
(Cut to Ruby's far-too-small desk area, covered in dirt, dead flies and disgusting globs of melted wax.)

This is a staggeringly stupid list. If you have a computer, access to the internet, a phone, a pen and a notebook, that's everything you need. Buy the reading lists when they're announced, or borrow them from the library.

Stupid apps that require you to solve Dan Brown escape room puzzles to turn off your alarm, or restrict all your apps aren't academic essentials. They're a sign that you need to exercise more willpower and self control if you keep turning off your alarm or getting distracted on the internet and missing important things. This is a Ruby problem. It is not a universal student problem.

Candles are not academic essentials.

Things like food and water are not academic essentials. They're essential to staying alive. You should be consuming them every day regardless of if you're a student or not.

This is just sheer idiocy in video form. I'd wager because that '35 things to do before Back to School 2021' video was her most popular in a long time, she'll churn out a tonne of these numbered list videos full of terrible advice, complete incompetence, recycled B-roll and endless, repetitive padding.

They’re £6 each, like the ribbons.

Apostrophes and punctuation marks were limited edition and have now sold out

 

[lottie28]

I have another word for you Ruby. It’s Irony.

 

[lizzie2707]

aaaand she's given The Song of Achilles 5 stars on Goodreads. No written review as of yet, presumably because she has no genuine thoughts about it... But oh look, it's gotten 273 likes, her next most liked recent update had 106. Imagine lying to get good engagement on your fucking goodreads account jfc

 

[Ilaariaa]

I find it very telling that she says her favorite quote of all time/all of the books she's read is "I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers" from Anne of Green Gables.
Unless I'm missing a deeper meaning here, it's a nice-sounding but essentially empty quote about loving autumn from a children's book. Doesn't make any statements about the world that a reader might resonate with on a deeper level. It's a nice quote that you might underline just because it's a well-crafted sentence but I don't understand why someone who is apparently so well-read would choose that as their "favorite quote of all time".

 

[Scapier88]

Thank goodness Ruby reminded me that I must make a list of my favourite snacks before I go back to uni! How would I ever remember that I like monster munch if I don't have it written down?

I wrote down a list of snacks I like
Its called my shopping list

 

[lottie28]

Hi Ruby.
Why not just ask us for video ideas next time?

 

[churros]

'it doesn't feel very hard.'

famous last words Roobes

also why the fuck would you have courgette for breakfast?

I'M A VEGETARIAN AND THAT SOUNDS WEIRD.

 

[CleverLittleThoughts]

lmao over her new video. Victorian inspired school haul. Let's break it down, shall we?

1. Talks about Dickens and how he discusses using ink, paper and a blotting pad. Goes out and buys said products. Doesn't research enough to realize in his time most writing was still done with quill, not pen and ink.

2. Fake freckles in first half of video. Forgot to draw them on for the 2nd half. Oopsie! Another messy video from Ruby, who is so determined to get her videos out as fast as she can, but doesn't bother to edit correctly.

3. Wears a massive cameo brooch like a true grandma. Well, at least she got the memo that losing all that weight has aged her.

4. Bought a filthy old trunk that she "thinks" is from a boarding school. It is moldy inside. You can see the green. Nice. Let's pack our clothes in this thing and use it to go back to uni. Uni, dear. Not boarding school.

5. Suggests we all write our letters and notes with pen and ink. Why? Uni is for studying, getting a degree, getting a job for life. Is isn't about some stupid, airhead aesthetic.

6. Also buys an old fashioned typewriter. Okay, Rubes. Enjoy writing your papers on that instead of a computer. Immediate fail when she realizes how hard it is to never make an error and that you need to rewrite the entire page again. (Can we just take a moment as to how much paper she wastes with all her lists, journals, letters, etc.?) So much for being sustainable...

7. iPad. Because...wait. Wasn't this supposed to be Victorian related?

This was the most useless and ridiculous back to school themed video I have ever seen on YouTube. Her head is never going to come down out of the clouds. Needless to say, maybe she needs to get consumption for that full Victorian experience.

 

[mindlessness]

The title of Ruby's latest video made me stressed and I graduated school in 2009

It should be just three things:
- Do any pre-reading/holiday work (if required)
- make sure you've got school supplies sorted
- relax and enjoy the rest of your summer break!

 

[phantomsbaebe]

I have so many problems with this for two reasons. The first is being a bit naughty at three is normal. I have never met a three year old who doesn't at some point push their boundaries. You don't know how to NOT push boundaries until you DO. Secondly, the reaction of the teacher was (to me) perfectly normal. The sight of three three year olds about to jump out of a window would make me shout too out of fear and to regain control. Even at three, you as the adult have to assert authority. The fact of whether or not Ruby jumped out of the window is fuzzy so that probably means she didn't do it. The school would HAVE to tell her parents if she did that as a safeguarding issue and you can bet your bottom dollar, if she had jumped put of a window, her parents would remember it. The fact this teacher never came back is very odd to me. She was fired? For what, having a normal human reaction to children in danger? That's very very strange.

As I have said before, I am a pre-school teacher and this is so far off base, I'm legit amazed at this. Firstly, being in nursery at age three is quite usual as in the UK, children go to school the school year after their fourth birthday. Some unfortunate children who are born in September are only a few weeks away from five when they start so Ruby going to pre-school at three is not unusual at all.

The ethos of Early Years is to create an environment where learning through play is the norm. Ruby says she was only in nursery for three days before this happened so she was still settling in. Settling in is actually a vital part of the journey a child takes in pre-school. It is where a child learns the routines, what is expected of them and slowly gets to know people. If on the third day of pre-school, Ruby jumped out of a window and ran around with no thought of how an adult would react, I think that is indicative that Ruby had no boundaries as a very young child. She was centre of attention, apple of Mummy's eye, doing ballet, used to being filmed and followed around. Ruby is the star of the show. Ruby is in control. How typical.

So, then she goes on to say that this is the worst thing she's ever done and her mother told her the teacher was fired when she was seven. My question is why? Did she tell her just to tell her or was she telling her as a cautionary tale so Ruby would see how out of control she was and how she needed to stop pushing her boundaries creating guilt, a desire to please and to do her best to atone for such behaviour? That's mad!

When she talks about her "detention" (you don't give three year olds detention - it's pointless!), it's the next day which is a waste of time because it's been and gone. If they were going to give her time out, it needed to be when the incident happened. Sit her down, explain why she had to sit still and then give her no attention. To do it the next day is beyond pointless. Sitting inside drawing pictures isn't a punishment. It's a play activity. It doesn't give any indication to the child that they are being admonished for poor choices. Something about this does not add up to me at all.

It reminds me of Taylor Swift's lyrics in her song, seven -

Please picture me in the weeds
Before I learned civility
I used to scream ferociously
Any time I wanted

Three year olds are supposed to push their boundaries and adults are supposed to correct them. This video is so worrying to me because Ruby should not feel guilty for how she was as a child. We are what we are but moreover, it is bizarre and worrying that the guilt from this is still with her fifteen years later. It's just more proof that her spirit was kind of broken by the weight of expectations and demands.

 

[Irec]

I don’t think she is obsessed with filling her entire day productively, I think she’s obsessed with letting everyone believe she is busy all day - big difference.

 

[phantomsbaebe]

Can we talk about the sheer waste of time, energy and soul you lose constantly wanting to be productive? Why is it so deeply important to always be doing something? Why can't the mind and body rest and not see it as a waste of time? Why is the waste of time a problem when time itself is a construct? Why is the need for structure so strict, so absolute that not having structure creates panic so acute that something must be found to do to breach the gap?

It must be exhausting to be a person like Ruby. I just got done watching a reading vlog she did in July 2020 where she read five books in a day and she is berating herself because she slept for two hours longer than she intended to. She clearly needed the sleep and she couldn't even allow herself that necessity without it being a thing to be commented on. I can't really see how you can read and properly digest so many books in a day either but that's a discussion for another day.

One video I'd love her to make is to throw away the lists and notes and just be. Do nothing.

Force herself to relax. Get her nails done. Do a face pack. Let a deadline pass without submitting anything. Be late. Catch a train and get off at a random station and see what's there. Paint. Read a trashy romance. Try something she's never even tried before and laugh if she can't do it. Watch a movie that deals with some really grown up stuff and see it through. Go and find some clothes more suitable and fashionable and see how that feels. Start a conversation with a total stranger. Challenge herself in ways she never has before.

I'm just thinking out loud but I'd love for Ruby to throw off those shackles and dance in the rain occasionally, you know?

 

[Griftwood]

Without getting into the debate (spoiler alert: turns out I kind of do in the end) of whether or not Roobee is a perfectionist, could we just please let go of the notion that perfectionism = doing things perfectly, or even well? Perfectionism manifests in many ways. Sometimes it’s polishing things until they’re ”perfect” or appear so (I used to go over my math homework with a whiteout pen and even trace the grid back on if I’d covered it in my attempt to make every number look pretty), sometimes it’s procrastinating until the last moment and then either half-assing it or (if you’re good at thinking on your feet and tolerate pressure well) turning out something good. Sometimes perfectionism is a crippling fear of doing anything at all (I have an extreme example of this in my family, someone who is nearly incapable of making decisions and can’t take initiative at all, and it’s honestly devastating to watch) for fear of it not being perfect or good enough, or just ”wrong” somehow.

I could see Roobee half-assing things because she was told as a child that she was a perfectionist, and now she’s overcompensating by deliberately not doing her best with her videos and online presence (and it helps that no one criticizes her for this). Equally, she could just be throwing the word around because it fits with the character she wants to perform. Orrrr, maybe she’s slaving away at her content for hours on end and she just sucks at it

 

[gossip_guy]

yeah, she totally STORMED OUT...

True, in reality she sat crying in her chair while preparing a letter scribed with ink and quill to the lecturer, wherein she listed all the reasons she had fucked up her presentation that clearly weren't her fault.

1. She was distracted by the bullying students on the Zoom call who were sat quietly with looks of bewilderment on her face as she talked about a variety of things unrelated to the topic at hand.
2. Her house was too cold to concentrate.
3. She didn't receive the presentation topic at least 6-12 months in advance to allow her to prepare properly.
4. She was anxious about the 'rona again. (At which point she scrunched up her face and awkwardly rubbed at her eyes to show how superduper honestly really very mostest anxious she truly was.)
5. Her dad received word that one of his tax loopholes might get closed, which caused a lot of stress for the family.
6. She had a nightmare the night before where she had to get a real job, and this left her too scared to focus on the presentation.
7. She couldn't find a relevant Sparknotes entry to steal material from.
8. A bullying commenter online had the audacity to correct her spelling, and this left her in such a state of psychological trauma that it would be impossible to focus on a presentation.

So, naturally, none of it was Ruby's fault.

 

[pwned]

The cult of productivity is linked to capitalist exploitation of human beings as good only for work. It's part of why being a workaholic is praised, especially in the US. People born after 1980 or so were pressured into unpaid internships as "job experience" - more and more requirements for being "worthy" of a paycheck were piled on. The problem is that these notions, the fetish of always being occupied with tasks, are entirely postmodern. The ancients had the idea of a required "rest" or "peace" for mental health and philosophical reflection (in Greek, this was called σχολή, and in Latin, otium; the Latin term is still used in certain contexts). I highly recommend looking at the wikipedia article if you are interested in the concept; it's much better than I expected! There is probably some work to be done in terms of connecting this intellectual, elite* notion of "fruitful rest" to other cultural or religious forms of retreat from daily life, meditation, and introspection.

Intellectual work requires time and rest and reflection. But moreover, I now know what burnout is. I admittedly never used to believe in it for myself - for others, sure. But I lost a parent and close family member within a couple months; then other traumatic things happened with a person I trusted as a mentor and with another person in my private life. Everything kept piling on top of me until I broke, and I stopped caring about anything at all. I used to always say yes, always take on new projects, but I found myself unable to perform. It was and still is an absolute nightmare, a horror beyond belief; I am still making my way out of this dark place. I never thought that could happen to me. But when you push yourself to the limit constantly, there is no room or leeway if something goes wrong. If something unexpected happens. Or maybe you can handle one bad surprise, but how about 5? How about a pandemic? A sick family member, a house fire, a demanding boss, insomnia, anxiety...? Eventually a person shuts down. Trust me, it is better to prevent this than to occupy your mind every second of every day. Furthermore, some of the best ideas are generated in those quiet times, or while doing repetitive, mindless daily tasks (shower thoughts). If you don't let your mind wander, you'll never discover hidden jewels in your own consciousness!

*freedom from work (paid or unpaid) is always connected with a kind of privilege, but that doesn't mean we as human beings need to explain or justify our own rest, our own otium. If we fall into the workaholic trap - even for the sake of argument, for the illusion of escaping our privilege ("I worked 3 jobs simultaneously and went to school and raised my siblings and volunteered with orphans...") - we strengthen the idea that a human being who works more is worth more. This is not true, but it is easy to slip into this line of argument even unconsciously.

 

[lizzie2707]

I wish I never found out about Ruby threads. I thought that Ruby lives the way she shows us. But she is more like an imaginary character. She was my motivation and even motivated me to go to one of the best Universities in my country (for free). Because of her I started waking up at 6-7 am, enjoying mornings and nature, planning my day, reading books. I though she is real. And now I’m just disappointed and have realised that she has mental and self-esteem issues. And that’s all mostly a lie. She’s not clever or kind at all and doesn’t even a true bookworm. I’m so upset... Sometimes it would be better without knowing truth. Now can’t watch her videos, it seems too unrealistic... what have you done guyssssss (sorry for my English)

I know what you mean. I'm sure lots of people on this thread started watching Ruby with faith in her, and only started to realise the truth after a while. I second everything @Griftwood has said though, and also want to remind you that all your new good habits, all your achievements, they're down to you, not Ruby! You're the one getting up early, enjoying nature, working hard, and that's something to be hugely proud of! It's not Ruby's influence alone which has made those changes, you couldn't have done it if you didn't really want to and weren't able to in the first place. Especially going to a top university for free, don't put that down to Ruby's influence, put that down to how amazing you are for working hard and being smart + talented enough to get onto the course you're taking! It's definitely tough when you lose a source of motivation or inspiration (I'm sure many of us found that with Ruby), but you will find new ways of motivating yourself, and those good habits you've picked up from watching Ruby aren't going to go anywhere.

 

[Deeznutslol]

Is this page a legit fan page or is it very subtle trolling?