Ruby Granger #21 Dirty kitchen, messy car; I wonder where the planners are?

[gossip_guy]

Even though it's still two days away from Christmas, Ruby has decided to let us have a present early, gracing us with another 15 minutes of embarrassing cringe.

She establishes her festive scene, showing that her windows are as fogged with condensation as her brain, and the gifted flowers on her windowsill wilt away just as fast as her career prospects.

"Hallo, it's Roobee, and tyooday oiy'm gyowing tyoo bee dyooing some...Victorian Christmas traditional...things," she says with an unusually glum tone, having clearly put a lot of thought and effort into this video.

This lack of effort shows no signs of stopping as Ruby proclaims that "the Victorians are credited with creating the modern Christmas" without offering any further details.

Ruby has her own traditions, though, which include:

• Sitting in filth and squalor.
• Starting fires.
• Pretending to read.

She ticks all boxes at once as she scoots around in her pyjamas on the disgusting ash-covered hearth in one of her numerous, equally squalid living rooms, starts a fire burning and flicks through a book she'll never read a chapter of, let alone finish.

Ruby starts on a manic, wide-eyed, hand-waving ramble about how the Victorian Christmas was all centred around gathering by the fireplace and reading ghost stories (or "GO-sturries!", as Ruby calls them).

The Victorian practice of reading ghost stories isn't something that has really made the transition to modern Christmas and is no longer a widespread festive tradition, so whatever establishing point she was trying to set up is already abandoned entirely with her first example.

Evidently her parents restricted her usual arson attempts to her bedroom, as she moans that the fire in this room is gas, so it's not traditional.

To get into the spooky spirit of Christmas ghost stories, Ruby is reading...a locked room mystery collection.

"These aren't GO-sturries, but it's the closest thing I had in my coll-ack-shun," Ruby says.

Reminder: Ruby owns A Christmas Carol. She claims to have read it at least three times, including in October. She was a panel guest on a live Q&A after a virtual performance of A Christmas Carol literally the day she filmed this. Another reminder: A Christmas Carol contains no less than three ghosts.

But I know what you're thinking - it's not really a scary story, is it? You're right. If only there were a way for Ruby to buy or borrow a spooky Victorian ghost book from a place that she visits often, and then she could read it for this video...

But since nobody has created such businesses yet, I guess she just had to make do with a unrelated book of murder mysteries.

Sorry, I think my internet is playing up, I don't know how those unrelated images got attached.

Ruby complains about how weird it feels to be reading scary ghosts stories at Christmas and not Halloween, even though she's not reading scary ghost stories and doesn't read them on Halloween either.

"BUT...it's good," she says unconvincingly. "And I do like this COLLACK-SHUN."

M.R. James was right there, Ruby.

Sure, a lot of his work was published in the Edwardian period, but most was written and published in the Victorian era. His stories are also a rare example of Victorian-era ghost tales which have endured as a rare Christmas ghost story tradition to this day, which would've tied into the setup you failed to pay off.

The BBC even did a series of adaptations for Christmas over the years. There's even a new adaptation of The Mezzotint due to air on Christmas Eve this year. Hell, the guy who edited the locked room mystery book in your very hand also assembled collections of James's stories. I guess that all would've required a sliver of thought, effort and preparation on your part, though, which we know is never an option.

Ruby practically hurls the book into the trash as she mentions that she's just about to tune in to the live reading of A Christmas Carol.

"This it a prime example of a GYO-sturry which was read aloud around Christmas time. Of course, in A Christmas Carol, Scrooge is visited by three GHOSTS, and so it VERY MUCH incorporates those traditional stories of Christmas, but we also seeee [scrunches fist] MODERN CHRISTMAS STORIES enveloped within this tyoo."

I listened to this several times and it never made any more sense than it did the first time. What babbling fucking nonsense. Reminder: Ruby is in her third year of an English Lit degree.

Ruby sits down to watch the performance in another living room.

She huddles for warmth under several layers with a coat draped over her, while sat next to an open window in the middle of winter.

A true genius at work.

She rambles more nonsense about Charles Dickens being a public performer, but says nothing of merit or value and never approaches a point.

She does her Q&A guest appearance (The Dickens Museum never advertised its guests by name, so some poor bastards sat through the performance and were then assaulted by "HALLO, IT'S ROOBEE!" in return for their £15 fee), but she shows no footage of any of this. If her comments in this video about the story and Dickens are anything to gauge her contribution to the panel by, it was an unmitigated disaster.

Having completely given up on that book she was pretending to read, which had nothing to do with Christmas, Ruby has moved on to writing more Christmas cards. Ruby knows less than a handful of people and has already written 7.2 billion Christmas cards this year, but what's another dead tree in a barren forest?

She says she's already written this person a card, but she's going to write another, because harassment is for life, not just for Christmas. It's her old English teacher, and suddenly all her uni lecturers who were counting down the seconds until Ruby fucks off out of their life all just had simultaneous panic attacks.

Live footage of the Exeter University teacher's lounge:

Ruby rambles about how modern Christmas cards are too related to Christmas and don't have enough weird, unrelated shit thrown in, which explains her approach to this video.

She claims that very few early Christmas cards had traditionally Christmas-themed imagery.

After showing one example, she then struggles to find any more to prove her point, and uses the first Christmas card ever sent as a chief example of this.

Floral decoration. Festive cheer. Families gathered to enjoy food and drink. Vaguely biblical imagery.

Nah, nothing like a traditional Christmas card, eh, Ruby?

Ruby moans that she couldn't find out who coloured the first Christmas card. She wasted her Dickens lecturer's time asking them, because harassing her tutors with endless emails coaxing them into offering her essay ideas wasn't enough, she has to go off-book and bother them with completely irrelevant bullshit, too.

Her lecturer posited that someone probably would've hired a woman to do the colouring, probably telling Ruby the most obvious intuited conclusion to get Ruby to leave them alone. Ruby then treats this as a confirmed fact and goes off on a tangent about how this naturally shows that it's always women doing all the work. I mean, sure - it was the Victorian era. And things haven't changed nearly as much as they should in terms of gender equality even now.

But even a cursory bit of Googling pins down the person credited with the colouring of that first Christmas card to a professional artist/colourer by the name of William Mason. He could've taken the credit for the work of someone else, that's entirely possible. But Ruby said she looked for the details of who coloured it and came up completely empty - not even a name.

She goes on about how colour printing wasn't a thing, so she says she's made a black and white Christmas card and will colour it in. She then holds up her Christmas card components - two of which are printed in full colour.

"Christmas puddings were VERY COMMON on a Christmas card," she chirps smugly, even though she was just saying that most cards featured weird images unrelated to Christmas.

As she's droning on with poorly-researched drivel, we hear pained wailing in the background. It seems the Victorian spectres that haunt her gloomy home just want Ruby to shut the fuck up with this nonsense already. Ruby does not record a second take.

Ruby posts a lip-service disclaimer to sternly remind us not to over-romanticise and simplify Victorian history in this, the latest of numerous videos in which she over-romanticises and simplifies Victorian history.

She drones on about plum puddings for what feels like most of my adult life and never once approaches any kind of a point. Is this my Scroogian Christmas torment? Am I being tortured by the ghost of YouTube present? It sure feels like it.

After rambling about Christmas puddings for hours, she says, "Question: Do you actually like Christmas pudding? Because I think it's really disgusting."

"I think it's more a tradition thing than people ACTUALLY like it," she proclaims. Because if your tastes differ from Ruby's, you're just lying to yourself.

She starts lisping heavily, and like the research for this video, she gives up colouring her card partway through and calls it a day.

She mentions that traditionally, Christmas card messages were very basic and just had a sparse, festive greeting like "Happy Christmas".

So she writes an absolute fucking essay in hers.

What was the name of this video again?

I thought so. Just checking.

"I'm actually getting my byoostuh jab in an hour," she says.

To be eligible for a vaccine booster, you have to have had the first two, Ruby.

For the next tradition, Ruby says she's going to make a handmade Frankenstein-themed bookmark for her mother, because Victorian gifts were traditionally handmade. And this isn't at all just a flimsy means of turning some bullshit she was going to do anyway into content padding for an unrelated video.

(Pictured: Ruby "I don't dyoo art" "Granger" doing art with her art supplies.)

It looks like crap, and she's chosen a picture of Frankenstein's monster that looks more like John Snow with a big forehead.

Ruby rambles more barely-researched crap, this time about Father Christmas.

She's baffled at the idea that people used to leave offerings for Father Christmas instead of just getting things for free, even though this is still a thing.

The concept of giving things away almost breaks Ruby's greed-driven brain, but she powers through and leaves her poorly-made bookmarks on the Christmas tree:

(You and me both, weird ornament.)

She says ACTUALLY, she's going to take them down off the tree until Christmas morning so she won't spoil the surprise. The best way to not spoil anything for anyone is to just throw your children's art project away and give your mum the gift of moving the fuck out.

Ruby says she's going to try out a Victorian gift-wrapping "hack" for wrapping handkerchiefs. She puts on her "Did you know...?" voice and drones some more about some poorly-researched crap, but at this point, as soon as she slips into her pompous "educational" cadence, it just became white noise to me.

"I should have ironed this, I'm sorry," she says, holding up a handkerchief. "If it were an actual gift, I would have!"

Ruby has never ironed a single thing in her life. Clothes she wears. Clothes she advertises. Clothes she shows in professional videos. Clothes she sells on Depop. All crinkled and crease as fuck.

She struggles to figure out how to wrap the handkerchief and has to Google it again. She does, only to reveal that this isn't a Victorian thing at all, but an Edwardian technique. She also discovers that she didn't pay attention to the initial instructions and used thick wrapping paper instead of tissue paper, like she was supposed to.

"pape"

She fails to find any "tissue pape" and just uses the thick wrapping paper instead.

"I'm sorry, this is such a short video," she says, even though this video is 15 painfully long minutes of pointless drivel.

As her failures in this video start to mount up, Ruby starts having a mental crisis.

"I was hoping for this video to be more...formally done like the other Victorian videos I've done*, but I left it too late and so close to Christmas and...unfortunately I don't really have the time to put together a really elaborate video. And also--I guess I COULD, if I prioritised that, but...it's Christmas, and the most important thing at Christmas is being with your family. And I don't want to...NEGLACKT THAT for...making a video..."

(*They weren't.)

And suddenly, like a Christmas miracle, Ruby has convinced herself that this half-assed--nay, quarter-assed video, full of ineptitude, irrelevant bullshit and terrible research, is good enough. Because spending time with family at Christmas, as opposed to every single other week, is more important than putting any kind of effort into the creative endeavour that comprises your primary source of income.

There were other options, Ruby. You could have just not bothered. Or you could have just planned ahead and been better organised. But it's not like you sell stationary to help with that kind of thing.

"You're probably thinking why did I even included this segment of the video, because that did not work AT ALL," she says, holding up her wrapping failure. Don't worry, Ruby. We're thinking that about every segment.

"But the Victorians had so many cool ways to wrap presents!" she yells excitedly. She shows none of those, though, and abruptly cuts to her outro.

After threatening us with the prospect of yet another morning routine on Christmas, Ruby finally puts an end to this, her most woefully inept video in a long time. And that's saying something.

 

[lemonbanana]

Lets see how long before comments like this one get deleted.

 

[gossip_guy]

Just in case the other...

...TWENTY-FUCKING-ONE morning routine videos weren't enough, Ruby's going back to the fucking well.

That's more entries than the Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and Jurassic Park franchises combined. But people actually worked on those, so...

Ruby has mentioned that she'd like to work in TV or film as one of her many pie-in-the-sky career dreams that'll never happen. And judging by her approach to her YouTube channel, she'd just try to make a TV show where they filmed one episode and then kept airing that same episode over and over again with a different episode title every time.

Ruby used a title with capitals in all the right places AND an emoji that's related to the video. Unfortunately, she clearly burned herself out with this rare exhibition of brainpower and then had no energy or motivation to put any kind of effort into the video itself.

Her first order of the day is to chug a glass of stagnant, dusty water because the human body is 60% water and her room is 94% dust.

Next to her bed are some creepy pictures of young fictional children. And also what looks like a Ben & Jerry's tub.

"I wake up between 6 and 7, but on this particular morning, I woke up at 4:30," she says, which is probably a lie.

She also says she washes her face with cold water to wake up and uses carrot cleanser every morning, which she will probably count as one of her meals for the day.

(Pictured: Ruby practicing to be her favourite emoji. )

She also slaps some rice toner on her face, which is another meal done. Eating disorder who? Ruby's feasting every morning!

Ruby has finally stopped her performative habit of pretending to read while brushing her teeth. Instead she's decided to just glare dead-eyed at the camera, challenging Tattlers to a staring contest for calling her out.

After losing her staring contest, she heads downstairs to cook "brackfast". She serves up the world's smallest serving of porridge while snacking on a tiny handful of pistachio nuts.

"One of the hardest decisions in the morning is cheesing the mug," she says. I assume this is some strange ritual where she lines her dirty mug with a layer of nacho cheese. The decision process boils down to a simple "Should I?/Shouldn't I?" choice.

Ruby "cheeses" an Emma Bridgewater mug, for some reason avoiding the "WHO'S YOUR DADDY?" mug next to it.

"I start every day with a mug of green tea," Ruby says. And then she pulls a giant elephant urn out of the cupboard.

After that, she assembles the world's most ridiculously tiny and disgusting-looking breakfast.

Spoiler: TW: Ruby's "Food"

There's absolutely zero chance Ruby doesn't look at this and know that it's a blatantly ridiculous thing to have as a "meal" and a dangerously stupid thing to not just offer up as something she eats routinely, but to suggest it as a normal thing for all her viewers to eat, too.

This absolute cretin has not changed. She's been called out so many times, pleads ignorance, occasionally gives a fake "I want my channel to be a safe space, what can I change?" announcement and then goes right back to doing shit like this. She does not give one single fuck about the physical or mental well-being of a single one of her viewers. She is utter scum.

Even with this tiny serving, there's still no visible evidence that she ate any of it.

As if predicting the backlash she's bound to get, she starts some kind of strange Pagan arson ritual designed to protect her against people with valid and justified criticism bullies.

She threateningly strikes a match and waves it at the camera lens and then films herself just waving the lit match around for the longest time. 1/16th of this entire video is Ruby waving fire around.

Having displayed a callous disregard for the health and wellbeing of her fans and a stunning ignorance of basic fire safety, she then decides to just go all in on showcasing her greed and stupidity.

First up, some shameless self-promotion:

(Reading between the lines: "Of course I start by planning my day in my Pumpkin Productivity planner. But the rest of you common scum won't, because we never dispatched any of your orders! Thanks for the money!")

Ruby continues plugging her planner even after the PR wildfire surrounding it that burned through all the good will of most of her customers. It's a bit like saying, "Shop at BP petrol stations! They really care!" a day after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Read the room, Ruby; nobody wants to hear about your terrible planners unless it's you announcing mass refunds.

Ruby shows off her planner for that day. It's an ode to her fundamental stupidity and incompetence in many ways.

She still has zero clue what "admin" means, and shoves a bunch of random social plans and things in the "Admin Tasks" section, including "Blakeney Photos", which likely involves a telephoto lens and a lot of stalking, and something related to Margot - her dog who passed away.

Meanwhile, 'Expenses', which sounds very much like a business task, is just shoved in the general section.

I don't know what "Margot cups" are. They could be cups that are made of or containing her dead dog. But either way, it's not an admin task, and neither are plans with/involving friends. She insisted on putting an ill-advised 'Time to spend working' field, even though she never actually uses it, and nobody else should, either.

Ruby also keeps claiming time and time again that this planner was designed from the ground up to be the ultimate planner to suit her every need, yet every time she shows it, it doesn't seem to meet her weird purposes. There's sections without tickboxes where clearly she wants them. There's sections with tickboxes that she ignores and makes her own anyway.

And there's a reminders section, a main section, an admin section and an events section, all of which serve the same purpose and she uses interchangeably. It's the most profoundly stupid bullshit. But we're not done yet; the Ruby stupidity train will be making stops at several stations before reaching the end of the line.

Ruby works on her dissertation. Note that she doesn't use a Pumpkin Productivity planner - even she's not stupid enough to use though.

She's still sticking with letter writing as a topic, even though it's barely related to literature and clearly a blatant excuse for her to ramble 10,000 words of nonsense about letter writing "etti-KAT" and "ASS-thetics" and shoehorn a bunch of poorly-researched Victorian bullshit into a degree dissertation where it doesn't belong.

She shows off the possible title: "The Sense of a Letter." It alludes to the superficial, aesthetics-first approach that Ruby is undoubtedly going to take with this.

But again, the puddle-brained lack of common sense is across the board - Ruby wastes a tonne of time handwriting a bunch of notes, even though she's only going to type this up in Notion and about 14 other places. This is the same dim-witted moron who keeps complaining that she doesn't have enough time to do important things and is always riding the edge of a deadline instead of being prepared. This kind of shit is precisely why.

And then she continues wasting time by whipping out her Pumpkin Productivity timetable pad and using a pointless product for more redundant busywork. Note the 'transfer to tablet' task, where she can reward herself with a productivity placebo for her repetitious busywork, even though she's wasted time accomplishing nothing.

Again, this is another shitty, pointless product that does not suit her pretend needs. Each entry has one tickbox. Ruby crams it with additional tasks and has to create extra tickboxes. If you know you regularly need tickboxes for multiple tasks per session to pat yourself on the back for wasting time, why not build them into the design.

There's multiple possible explanations. Ruby has no real input in the design of her stationary and the low-rent company that Ruby's management team uses to manufacture and ship her products merely offers them minimal design tweak options for a very limited selection of products. Or they could have revised the design, but that would rob Ruby of the ego-boosting fuzzy feeling she gets when her abundance of busywork "productivity" can't be contained within the boundaries of even her own planners and timetables.

Also note that this timetable does not begin at 4:30, when she claims to have woken up. And there is no slot for "BRACKFSST" or any kind of food break at any point.

(Outfit #2.)

(Moments later...Outfit #3. It's supposedly not even 8am yet...)

(Ruby's "made" bed.)

Her bedsheets have apparently had enough of these nightmarishly squalid conditions and try to escape the bed and flee the room while Ruby throws a random assortment of face products on. After plugging Glossier, because of course, she mentions that she puts on some "ASSPY-AFF" CC cream. Linguistics scholars believe that these alien words may derive from the human term "SPF", but opinions differ.

After she's gotten ready and travelled through time at least twice to change outfits, she subjects her parents to a horrifying "BRACKFSST".

Spoiler: TW: Ruby's "Food"

You'd get served better food in the fucking gulag. This doesn't even look like it's edible, let alone a meal. And I can't tell if that's a food tub or just a temporary toilet they keep in their kitchen - with the state of their home, anything's possible.

Ruby heads back upstairs and takes an awkwardly long time trying to forcefully blow out her candle, to the point where her random "Polar ACKS-PRASS" ticket almost flies away in the gust of wind. Her candle snuffer is within arm's reach.

After posing like a deranged fucking lunatic for no reason other than she is one, it's time for another outfit change:

"It's really cold at the moment," she says, as she does at all times, regardless of the weather or location, "so I layered up and put an ACKS-tra tyoo jumpers on as well as my kyoat."

Ruby paints it like she just threw a jumper and coat onto what she already had on, even though there's a black t-shirt clearly visible that she wasn't wearing before and she cuts to a completely different outfit from top to bottom:

She looks like she got dressed in the dark in a lost clothing warehouse.

Putting aside her wardrobe inconsistencies and lies, wearing a t-shirt, two jumpers, a scarf and a coat is by no means normal. It's no shock that she's always cold since she's been malnourished for a year, but also maybe try wearing the scarf under your coat and not lazily draped over it.

She dumps her camera/phone in the mud to record herself walking away for some reason.

When she's back, it's time for more tea - rhubarb and custard flavour - and Ruby grabs her favourite mouldy-looking mug and is magically back in outfit #3 again.

And then she buggers off into the sparse squatter's den of the "lounge".

She pretends to read in the rubbery-looking chair with her bulky mug balanced precariously on the armrest, ready to spill all over her at any moment.

The wonky tree looks just as likely to drop on her. And to add to the safety hazards, a lava lamp burns away unattended in this room up the farthest corner where nobody will ever see it anywhere.

One layer of obnoxious royalty-free music just isn't enough, and an especially loud, sinister and weirdly oppressive rendition of Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy starts playing over the current track.

And because subjecting them to her food nightmares wasn't enough, Ruby forces one of her family members to act as unpaid cameraman, film her pretending to read and no doubt shout encouraging praise when she reads an entire sentence.

And that's it!

Merry festivities and a happy Saturday, y'all!

 

[Satisfying Click]

Hallo! We've hit the bottom of the post-box!

Previous thread:

Ruby Granger #20 Waterstones won’t give her a deal, cabbage oats are a ”healthy meal”

If you could explain what does that word means, it would be really helpful for us to join the conversation The literal translation would be something like well-off neglect, or middle-class dilapidated, wealty shabbiness, something like that. I'm sure I've seen someone use a much more...

tattle.life

Congratulations to @Chickpea9 on receiving the most votes for the thread title. Your prizes include: a 2022 planner [arriving mid-March], a Bird & Blend teabag [used] some Glossier products [handed down] and a DVD of Love Actually [broken in half]

Special mention to @gossip_guy for the amusing and witty recaps. You will receive some random pens wrapped in brown paper, on advice from management as a gift.

Have a productive thread!

 

[figgypud]

These are very personal, delicate matters and if I were Ruby and my sister made a public pinterest board explicitly about my eating disorder, I'd feel very betrayed. Obviously Ruby's behaviour is harmful and she needs to stop with the borderline pro ana shit but this isn't the way to go about it.

I don't even understand how making a pinterest board is supposed to help Ruby or make her realize what she's doing. Imo Martha is just doing it for attention or maliciously.

To me it looks like it's intended to help Ruby - Martha just should have made it private, and that's more oversight than maliciousness. Ruby has talked about pumpkin being one of her favourite flavours and the rest of encouraging quotes and infographs, there's nothing triggering on there.

As a younger sister, I feel like this is Martha doing what she can to reach out to Ruby in a way she knows how without being confrontational or having difficult conversations, especially if it was made whilst Ruby was in Exeter and Martha was in Sheffield. I imagine it must be really difficult to want to help somebody from afar without constantly texting "eat, have you eaten, you should eat" when Ruby will likely have been getting that from other avenues as well.

It's not like Martha can be hands on like a professional can be or like their parents should be, she's 19 years old. So I don't think anything indicates malicious intent so we shouldn't assume that it is malicious when what we've seen of Martha towards Ruby is generally quite gentle and thoughtful (in her gifts) and in the video they did together a couple of months ago, yes there's banter but Martha came across almost like an older sister who wants to guide Ruby a bit. At worst she's just not made the board private, and Ruby hasn't even made her own recovery playlist private on Spotify so I don't think it warrants being too hard on Martha. Maybe she's a bit pretentious but I think there are a lot of assumptions made based on her appearance (dare I say aesthetic) whilst forgetting she's a 19 year old girl and lots of people are obnoxious and loud and over the top well past that age.

 

[teflonpanda]

Ngl when I read the line "I set the Roomba off downstairs" I automatically assumed she was referring to Ruby and then got very confused until I figured out she meant a type of vacuum cleaner.

Look what you people have done to me with all your nicknames for Ruby!

 

[gossip_guy]

Ruby's kicking off the New Year with her latest attempt to sweep this whole "Being a terrible businessperson and terrible person in general" thing under the rug without consequence. It's a new year! A time to forgive and forget the money she owes her customers and various charities!

As the famous song goes: "Should auld monetary pilfering be forgot and never brought to mind?" In Ruby's mind, absolutely. Ruby's a Tory, and they're not supposed to deal with annoying things like comeuppances.

Ruby starts the year as she means to go on: By clinging to the past and living in squalor.

This is a vlog covering the last few days of the year, Ruby claims. The flowers on her windowsill were delivered to her mid-December and looked near death then. Rub keeps them proudly on display still, even though they look pathetically wilted.

She starts the day by "making her bed" - i.e., pulling a throw over her bed to avoid having to change the sheets or adjust their sloppy hanging-off-the-mattress fit in any way. It's an approach she uses in every aspect of her life: Toss a metaphorical rug over anything messy or unfortunate, like criticism and requests for planner refunds, and hope it magically fixes itself.

"I always use the last few days of the year to REE-SAT and RE-FLACKT," she says, and I assume she means "Reset the Pumpkin Productivity order system to purge all refund requests and complaint emails to avoid dealing with them, and reflect on all the new money in the bank".

"I'm basically trying to do things that will set me up well for the new year," she says, then aptly cuts to a shot of her running full-sprint away from responsibility and consequences.

Ruby says her morning walk through a muddy field is the highlight of her day, which doesn't sound like a good thing, and she can't have enjoyed it too much since she spent 85% of this walk setting up her camera to film herself walking back and forth from an embarrassing amount of different angles.

Most of the later shots in the video are the same angle as earlier ones, but Ruby's walking in a different direction. Nothings says "Mindfully enjoying a carefree walk in nature" quite like setting a camera up on a fence, walking twenty feet, turning around and then walking back to collect the camera and then doing this all again multiple times throughout the walk.

She trails off on one of her now-obligatory "walking through fields" casual magic nonsensical diatribes.

"I'm SO aware right now of why I love winter so mOch? I always think it's because I love Christmas aaaand I always think, 'Oh, after Christmas I'm gyowing to bee syooo down in the dumps because Christmas will be ovah, but...gyowing on this walk now, I remember just like I love just...I love winter." (Take a break here to down your headache pills of choice because Ruby's mangling of the English language feels like a violent verbal assault on the cerebral cortex.)

She claims January and February are her new favourite months, but since she says every single month is her new favourite month when it rolls around, this means nothing - it's merely her brain telling her mouth to make sounds just to confirm she's still conscious.

Ruby twirls around in the wind and mud and rants how much the weather reminds her how much she loves Winter. Only...this isn't Winter weather. This is British weather. Wet, windy, cloudy and muddy? That's the weather you get in the UK most of the year.

"Last January when I was just going on these walks every morning, I got into the habits of going on these walks every morning."

Rubes, this is your latest reminder that the body requires nutrients for the brain to function.

When you don't eat for long periods of time, the speech centre of your starved, barely-functional brain offers up shit like, "Back when I was doing that thing I was doing, I was doing that thing I was doing!" And the now-impaired judgement centre of your brain thinks, "Sounds good to me! Lets say that out loud and share it online!" The end result is this embarrassing video.

Ruby says that taking a walk in December reminds her of all those walks she took in January. No fucking shit. You were walking in the exact same field, because you never leave home. It's a guaranteed recipe for déjà vu.

She says the walk is "really meditative" because she doesn't listen to music and lets herself think. And if this is the level of insightful thoughts she comes up with, she should really start taking headphones to drown that nonsense out.

After more footage of her walking through fields that goes on for far too long (Ruby resorts to time-lapse for half of it, and even then it drags on pointlessly), she's back home.

"LOOK how muddy my legs got." You aimed for every muddy puddle like a hyperactive 4 year old, what did you think would happen?

And those can't be jeans, right, Ruby? Because you made a preachy point in a recent video about how you don't own and never wear those, so this must be some kind of mistake, surely?

Ruby's going to get changed because her clothes are wet and "moddy", but first she points out that she's listening to The Cinematic Orchestra.

Rather than just telling people what album it is, she awkwardly just shows her screen. Strange, no? Almost as if she's conspicuously showing her screen to display the date. Y'know, the date on your phone that you can very easily change to pretend it's a different date...? That or she saw French on the album art and wisely didn't attempt to pronounce it, even though the English translation is right there.

As sloppy editing causes her sentences to overlap each other, Ruby says one of the things she does at the end of every year is to compile a memory video of the best things that happened that year.

Since Ruby never steps outside her comfort zone or try anything new whatsoever, she can (and probably will) just recycle last year's video. Contents will include:

• Spent 90% of the academic year with parents.
• Spent 98.5% of time in Exeter with Blakeney.
• Frolicked in fields behind house.
• Got lots of money through questionable means.
• Browsed Waterstones. Touched everything. Bought nothing.

And that's about it.

She makes more tea, because in Ruby's mind it's a great substitute for food.

Then Ruby tries to place her tea strainer back on its holder thing. I say "try", because somehow even placing a light tea strainer in a clearly visible holder proves taxing for her. She misses by inches, acts confused, then has to try again.

There's major "Fry misses the big red button" vibes from Ruby failing at the most simple hand-eye coordination task:



Ruby, this is your latest reminder that the body requires nutrients for the brain to function.

When you don't eat for long periods of time, the part of the brain that controls coordination of visual perception and fine motor control starts failing to work as well. This means your eyes see something, your brain tells your hands, "Sure, dude, it's right there! Go for it!", when really it's not "right there" at all. It's 6 inches west of "there".

The thing you definitely want to see a person with impaired motor functions and non-existent attention span doing is playing with fire.

Ruby has almost set herself and her desk on fire several times before, by spilling nail polish all over a desk with burning candles on it, or by waving her sweater over naked flames because she wasn't paying attention to her immediate surroundings.

Here, she lights a match and while holding it in the air, burning, she gets distracted and starts reading the matchbox.

Ruby mentally adds an achievable goal to her 2022 goals list:

Though this isn't a 'What I got for Christmas' video, Ruby randomly starts mentioning things she got for Christmas. A candle from her cousin. Gold tea cups (because Ruby loves gold, in case her willingness to do or say anything for more money didn't give that away).

Apparently her parents bought her multiple of these for when she has tea parties for her friends, which she claims happens often.

It's assumed that this is a children's tea party situation and all the guests are imaginary.

While Ruby's pulling out random gifts that she got, she posts a lengthy disclaimer on-screen.

She's not doing this to show off, but lots of people asked what she got for Christmas, apparently. So...make a video about that if it's in high demand, Ruby. That's what a content creator does: Give their audience what they ask for.

If you don't want to, or feel conflicted, don't do that. If you couldn't be bothered, make an Instagram story or post. But be consistent. This isn't a gift haul video. Interrupting an unrelated video that's supposed to be about you preparing for the New Year to show off expensive trinkets you were given is especially blatant, and the very definition of showing off.

It's like if you were talking to someone about their plans for the weekend, and then mid-conversation, apropos of nothing, they just opened their wallet and just showed you their wads of cash, mentioned that there's a lot more where that came from, then defensively said "I'm not showing off."

Christmas isn't about gifts, she stresses in her disclaimer, it's about family. But she didn't veer this video off-course to tell viewers about what she did with her family over Christmas, did she? She did it to show off her gold-covered gifts.

Her mother got her another beret. She mentions that she never considered herself a hat person until Blakeney pointed out that she wears a lot of hats. Note that Blakeney did not say this was a flattering habit, only that she wore them a lot.

Wearing a beret, pearl necklace and holding a gold china tea cup, she could not look more like a pampered rich girl cliché. And she keeps rattling off gifts she got. Hot water bottles, sewing machines, tea light holders.

She says her sister Martha got her the sewing machine because Ruby wants to make her own clothes. Ruby can't even iron her own clothes, there's no chance she'll bother learning make them from scratch. Ruby's mother got her an embroidery kit last year, and that still goes unused.

Ruby also mentions that Martha got her a shark adoption/tracking gift so she can GPS track a shark in the Bahamas. Because, as you know, Ruby's a STAUNCH PROPONENT of shark conservation. You can tell by the way she made one slapdash video about it a year and a half ago, never mentioned it again until she got this gift and then quickly reposted someone else's shark conservation Insta story a couple of days ago.

After briefly considering work for another Dickens essay that's due in two weeks, Ruby decides to write some meandering essays in thankyou cards instead.

Pro tip, Ruby: If you want to thank someone, don't do it by giving them even more pages of your inane drivel to wade through to start the new year. Give them the gift of leaving them the fuck alone for a while.

In her third outfit for this "day", Ruby goes for a run to the post box. Because if anything's a good idea when you're malnourished and haven't eaten all day, it's subjecting your body to strenuous exercise.

When she's back, it's time to clear old SD cards. Doesn't seem very efficient, since Ruby regularly needs access to all that old footage to recycle it in videos and try to pass it off as new, but anyway.

When she's done with that, she says she's going to help her mum tidy "the snug", which is apparently their name for one of their 473 living rooms, and then--

Umm... Hey, Rubes...? The fuck is this?

Ruby casually pans around the "snug" to reveal she owns a child's primary school desk and it's kept up the corner so she can pretend to be a nine year old in detention.

If that weren't unsettling enough, Ruby opens the fucking thing to reveal that she's adorned it with Harry Potter clippings and stocked it with childish items such as a Matilda pencil case.

Without a trace of irony, sarcasm or self-awareness, she proudly says that her new desk organisation "genuinely looks SO good".

Ruby is a twenty-one year old woman. She bought a child's bed. Dresses like a child most of the time. Reads children's books exclusively. She idolises fictional children and tapes their photos all over her walls. And now this. Adopting the lifestyle of a prepubescent child is not a fun personality quirk. It's a creepy-as-fuck sign of serious mental instability.

Ruby claims that some of the desk's contents are her mum's. Not buying it, Ruby.

It's suddenly a new day, but old habits burn bright - quite literally - as Ruby goes pyro again.

After narrowly avoiding setting something on fire again, she says she's finishing off Vee Kativhu's book 'Empowered'. It's taken her so long to (pretend to) read it because she was simply too busy with (pretending to read) Christmas literature and poetry, which can only be read in December. According to Goodreads, the only other thing Ruby read (or pretended to read) in December besides Vee's book was A Tale of Two Cities.

But let's go back to Goodreads for a second.

Firstly, this review is terrible, and if this is the level of critical skill she applies at university, it's a wonder she hasn't failed out by now.

Now, obviously, a Goodreads review doesn't need to be an in-depth critical essay, but this vague, incompetently-written "review" tells almost nothing about the book, and like all Ruby's reviews, seems written by someone who read no more than the cover blurb.

Ruby makes grand, sweeping statements about the book, but gives zero examples.

"She gives practical advice, but also (and more importantly) shares kind and encouraging words."

This sentence could apply to almost any self-help book, and no examples or further details are given, because Ruby clearly didn't read it.

"Elements are heartbreaking (especially since we know and love Vee so much)..." Do we, Ruby? Not everyone knows who Vee is. You might know her because you share the same management team, which is likely the only reason you've written this "review" (and your relationship to Vee is also something you should absolutely be declaring in a glowingly positive review, but you clearly left that part out). But you are not the focal point of the universe. Most people have no idea who Vee is, as evidenced by her book having almost no reviews.

"...and show's why..." And which year of an English lit degree are you in again, Ruby? What's that apostrophe doing there?

"...Vee shows how she turns everything into lemons and then lemonade."

Ruby, the expression "turning lemons into lemonade" is a metaphor for taking a bad situation (a bitter lemon) and turning it into something positive (sweet lemonade). If Vee "turns everything into lemons and then lemonade", you're saying she's taking a good situation, creating her own problems and then fixing them. Sounds stupid, doesn't it? Have you considered taking an indefinite vow of silence? Clearly the whole language thing is an uphill struggle for you.

"All young people should read this." That's a bold statement, Rubert. Literally every single young person should read it? Yet you only rated it 4/5? It's almost as though...you didn't read the book, had nothing to say because you didn't read the book, gave the book an overwhelmingly positive review which made no mention of the obvious bias and conflict of interest you have since you know the author, and then took a star off (without anything in the review to justify this lower rating) to pre-empt any claims of this being a shady, fake positive review.

The book could be great, I have no idea. I don't know anything about Vee other than she's an influencer repped by the same agency as Ruby, Jack Edwards (who also gave it an even-more-vague 5 star review without declaring his link to Vee), Eve Cornwell and Jade Bowler.

But I'm instantly suspicious of any book where the cover pull quotes are all from the author's friends/influencer pals. And when all talent repped by the same agency as her, who were all invited to a launch party event and gifted free books, are out there dropping positive reviews without declaring their relationship to her, this makes this whole affair and everyone involved look suspicious as fuck. Vee's book currently has only ten reviews. Two are from her agency peers. They're both glowingly positive, and neither mention their ties to Vee.

That said, this is a Ruby video recap, so let's get back to that.

Ruby marked the book as complete at 3:46am on December 29th...

Now, putting aside the fact that Ruby ain't going to be awake and reading at nearly 4am even if she did read things, here she is, still reading (or pretending to read) the book's final chapters at sunrise on December 29th:

The sun rises between 07:00 and 08:00 in the UK currently.

Make it make sense, Ruby.

Also, please note the "framed" picture to the right of her. Ruby not only seems to think pictures go on the outside of already occupied picture frames, instead of, y'know, inside them...but she's also just slapped a bit of tape in only a couple of corners, so the picture's hanging off. So aesthetic!

After another outfit change, there's footage of Ruby putting her coat and hat on that goes on forever.

And then she goes trudging around in the muddy fields again.

(Pictured: Ruby with all the Pumpkin Productivity customers who received their planners on time.)

And since she's back in the field again, of course we get an obligatory casual magic ramble.

"I LOVE mist. Mist might be my favourite weather, maybe even more than snow. Probably even more than rain, and THAT'S SAYING SOMETHING because I love rain." Why does Ruby do this? Why does every new thing she encounters have to be her FAVOURITE? Same reason she constantly claim she ALWAYS does things she never does: Narcissists and compulsive liars often exaggerate and lie about the tiniest things for attention or just for no reason at all. Everything's a competition, and Ruby always has to win, even if the only other opponent is her last remaining brain cell.

After another outfit change (her third outfit of the "day"), Ruby shows off a sad, tiny piece of toast and a small, Shrek-green smoothie.

Spoiler: TW: Ruby's "Food"

She manically points and flails her hand around like she's trying to perform a magic trick. It's partially effective: She's made her integrity disappear.

She eats her tiny, portion of toast and then reveals she's drinking three drinks at once, because that's entirely normal and not at all a bizarre substitute for actual food. In addition to her smoothie, she also has a cup of tea and a glass of water.

Then it's time for her to work on that Dickens essay she cast aside the day before.

"It's nine thirty...let's get cracking," she says, with zero enthusiasm.

She eats a tiny orange/satsuma and makes a point to shove a clock in the frame for a time-lapse.

Why would anyone do this, unless they're trying to prove something or impress someone? They wouldn't. It also means nothing, since clocks can be easily adjusted to show whatever time you want. But clearly Ruby's been reading Tattle and getting defensive.

"I've responded to some emails," she says. Only a month late with those Pumpkin Productivity emails, huh?

She's also going to subject another family member to a meandering thankyou card.

Ruby's family every time they get post:

This time she's going to pad out the card by sending her granddad a framed photo. Now, remember the part where she displayed a baffling inability to use photo frames?

Well, she hasn't exactly improved with time.

She places the frame face-down on the desk. Takes off the back of the frame. Puts the photo in. So far so good!

Now all that's left is to pop the back cover back in, and--

For some reason, instead of doing that, Ruby decides the pick the entire thing up by its unsecured glass pane. Why? I have no fucking idea. But the whole thing collapses in her hand and falls apart and then she abruptly cuts away.

Ruby, this is your latest reminder that the body requires nutrients for the brain to function.

"I wrote a card to a...com-pany THAT..."

"I wrote a card to a...com-pany THAT...parcel to my granddad."

Ohhh, "accompany"...

You really out here just using language any which wrong way you feel like, huh, Ruby?

Ruby inserts bizarre pauses and alien cadence into her sentence and still pronounces it "a-com-panny", not "a-cum-panny".

After mangling the English language some more, she moves on to just general stupidity.

So...Ruby apparently has essays to write. And she also keeps going on about how much she values time with her family. And here she is, alone in her room, writing up notes in Notion for Vee's book for herself. A book she didn't actually read.

She appears to be flicking through the pristine, unread book, grabbing random passages and transcribing random "thoughts"/quotes into Notion. Who is this for? What purpose does this serve? I mean, her Goodreads review certainly didn't benefit from any of this. Why's she treating the random book she was gifted and pretended to read like it's an essay?

She even whips out the clock to show off how much time she claims to be wasting on this performative insanity. It's staggeringly stupid.

Then she moves onto her "New Year's Resolutions", which she wrote in November.

As a tribute to Ruby, I'll recycle my comments for this page from back when she first unveiled it. Although, since I'm being honest about it, that's not very Ruby at all. Whoops.

She evidently has no clue what the word "yearly" means, since two thirds of this "yearly planner" section is taken up with space to detail your wish list for life in five years or just the distant future.

Ruby has filled hers with goals that are either laughably unattainable (for her, at least) or where the bar is so low that it'll be hard not to accomplish ("Publish an article "somewhere"" - y'know, like a blog. Done! "Read Emma by Jane Austen" - Ruby will read the Sparknotes summary and mark this done.)

She's also set herself up for disappointment by expecting a first for her degree, even though she's struggling to meet deadlines or come up with even a basic foundation for her dissertation. Good luck with the Masters thing, Ruby!

Ruby thinks she can get a book deal, even though her dwindling popularity and vanishing relevance takes her out of the running for a vanity book deal, and no way can she get one on her own merits. Considering her lack of talent, her inability to use language coherently and the book she self-published being a major red flag to publishers, I wouldn't count on this happening, if I were her.

"Work with an anti-bullying charity."

Why this is still on her list after the anti-bullying week disaster (any proof that any of the ad revenue for those videos went to charity yet, Ruby?) and her own fabricated history of bullying is a mystery, but she should probably avoid walking through that PR minefield again.

"Tangibly promote letter-writing"? What nonsense is this?

After the old resolutions, she adds some more.

• "Read more selectively." Ruby doesn't read anything as it is, aside from children's books. That's about as selective as it gets already.
• "Try and declutter significantly." This is on her list every year. Her home is always a shithole and nothing changes.
• "Develop a better night routine." What is her obsession with night routines?
• "Donate 10% of everything I earn." This has been suggested to her countless times on here whenever she gets all preachy about charity while doing nothing charitable. She won't even give charities back the money she took from them. She ain't going to give them her own money, too. The fact that she's put this as a future goal instead of just doing it right away with nothing stopping her is as big a sign as any.
• "Do more charity work/volunteering." Another suggestion that's been thrown at her on Tattle. She won't actually do this. She will move the goalposts, consider a reposted Insta story to be "charity work" and consider this done.

"Fully enjoy my last term." This year, Ruby has avoided campus as much as possible, complained about how much she hates studying on campus, is constantly falling behind with uni work and has generally appeared miserable at uni. Off to a great start, Ruby! Remember the "academic resolutions" she set (go home less, embrace uni culture, etc.) and gave up on in a day? This is that again.

"Send articles to magazines and competitions." Ruby employing the "If I send my drivel literally everywhere, someone will eventually read and publish it!" desperation approach.

"Work with Royal Mail." This doesn't mean Ruby will actually do any work or attempt to get a job at Royal Mail (or anywhere). She will just try to court a partnership deal for them to pay her to made shit-quality paid ads where she offers "Did you know?" historically inaccurate facts about the postal service and letter writing.

"Get a first for my degree." Why? This is out of your control, Ruby. Just put "Work to the best of my ability" and be happy with what you get instead of peddling this nonsense to people. And since you regularly cut every corner you can to avoid doing the work, a first isn't something you're entitled to or deserve.

Her 'Things to Do in 2022' list is a similar mix of 'can't fail' tasks, obvious shit that she needs to do anyway ("Complete my dissertation"? You need to do that anyway to graduate, Ruby) and pie-in-the-sky bullshit that will never happen.

"Publish a book"/"Release an audiobook". Never going to happen unless she self-publishes again.

"Solo travel to Rome". This will be like that "solo trip" to Devon, where she'll go with her family and do everything she can to hide their presence on social media to make herself seem more independent.

"Sort out library in full"/"declutter the loft" these are both rooms in her parents' home. Not only will she not bother doing these, but it's a sign that she has zero intention of even considering moving out after graduation if she's planning on claiming two more rooms as her own.

And then another walk in a field, this time with her cousins, mother and aunt.

Ruby shouts to get their attention. "Wooooo! Smile everyo--"

As everyone but her mother glares at her with confusion, she abruptly and awkwardly cuts away.

The video's almost over but the stupidity's not finished yet!

After yet another outfit change, Ruby mentions that she takes lots of screenshots to remind herself of things on her phone. I'm not sure how this is supposed to work as a reminder system, and evidently neither is Ruby, as she forgets about all the screenshots she's taken. So now she's going through over a month's stockpile of forgotten screenshots and transcribing what she thinks they might've been for into Notion.

So alongside her complex, pointless busywork system of using dozens of concurrent paper and digital planners and so on alongside Notion, Ruby also uses this screenshot system that clearly doesn't work. Isn't there reminder sections in your planner for this, Ruby?

Note that Ruby is always obsessed with finding a new morning and night routine (even though they always stay the same) yet never once considers streamlining her bullshit system of numerous redundant planners that wastes most of her day with busywork. And then she wonders why she's always late for things, always falling behind on work and never has time for anything.

What a fucking dipshit.

Happy New Year, everyone!

 

[linnea]

I cannot deal with all the outfit changes How can her fans actually believe her when she says she changes clothes 5 times a day?!

I'm starting to believe that she has a massive collection of folders on her computer with footage from different days, titled "drinking tea", "twirling in the garden", "cooking porridge", "reading in bed" etc, and when it's time for a new vlog (sorry, routine) she just puts random clips together to create an illusion of her perfect day that has fuck all to do with reality.

 

[Scapier88]

Ngl when I read the line "I set the Roomba off downstairs" I automatically assumed she was referring to Ruby and then got very confused until I figured out she meant a type of vacuum cleaner.

Look what you people have done to me with all your nicknames for Ruby!

I mean Ruby and a roomba both do twirl around in circles doing a half hearted job

 

[gossip_guy]

What do you think's behind her mental health decline? Is it ED-related? I wondered if she's struggling to get the grades she wants at uni this year because that would definitely explain stress & unhappiness...but Ruby got firsts for her other stuff, so that's just speculation.

Probably a combination of things.

1. Graduation is creeping up and Ruby is woefully unprepared for adulthood. She's defined her entire life by school work (in her case, high school) and her last excuse for devoting all her time to that is about to disappear (unless she does a masters). She's not grown at all as a person since high school or really branched outside her comfort zone in any way since she started uni. Her best/only friend will also vanish from her life after uni, because she has an adult life to live.

2. She used the start of the pandemic as a convenient excuse to run home from uni and retreat into childhood. This was likely spurred on by 1. She bought a child's bed, wore child's clothes, read exclusively children's clothes and continued to idolise fictional children. This also likely fed into her eating disorder, which really kicked into high gear around this time and would figure into her trying to look more childlike by any means necessary, however misguided and dangerous.

3. After spending a year at home, her compulsive dependence on her parents is worse than ever. Her insistence on running home every weekend has only deprived her of time she could've spend on essays, and she's constantly complaining about being behind. When she does stay at uni, she just transplants all her compulsive dependencies onto Blakeney, which won't end well when she graduates and moves on to life her own life far away from Ruby.

4. Final year of uni places more emphasis on independent thought or original critical analysis, with a lot of weight dependent on her dissertation, and if she's doing one, her final creative writing project. Ruby's system of getting high grades with little effort by relying on the notes, ideas and critical thoughts of tutors, fellow students and essays will not work for these projects the way it does with standard tutor-set essay questions, so she's floundering.

5. She's less equipped mentally to deal with studying or anything else particularly taxing because her eating disorder has clearly ravaged her ability to do anything especially physically demanding, or think or verbalise coherent thoughts most of the time. So she's likely struggling to stay on top of things the way she used to.

6. Her YouTube channel is stagnating. Her content has never been good, and it's not changed in any way in years, she's just recycling the same ideas. But her core fanbase it outgrowing her while she's incapable of growing up. Meanwhile all her StudyTuber peers consistently pull in substantially more viewers because they've grown and changed their content as they've moved further into adulthood.

7. Her business is experiencing massive diminishing returns. The planners that sold out in a day last year now have tonnes of stock left after weeks. This latest debaucle combined with the last of her remaining fans outgrowing her will ensure that next year her store sells next to nothing. Meanwhile, the management company she shares with Jack Edwards helped get him a Waterstones partnership for his planners (which were made by the exact same company) because his sell better and his brand is more popular and relevant. You know that one must've hurt Ruby after all the embarassing sponsor-chasing she's been doing with Waterstones.

8. She's been the cause of more controversies and been the recipient of more criticism in the past year than every other year she's been doing this combined. Taking money from charities on multiple occasions, posting endless triggering food-related content, the planner fiasco, the bullying video mess, the LG Gram situation, the PETA predicament, the giveaway scams, the book club disaster, people getting wise to her fabricated video timelines, her getting caught in lie after lie after lie. In a year when she's likely to be getting less praise from her tutors, the criticism (or bullying, as she sees it) is probably hitting even harder. It's likely another reason she goes home so much, so mummy and daddy can tell her how special and perfect she is.

In conclusion: Ruby's her own worst enemy. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Tattle Armchair Psychology Hour.

 

[gossip_guy]

I just wanted to thank you so much for this. As someone who

Spoiler: TW

almost unalived myself during the holidays

I wan't in too great a mood to watch endless video footage of her frolicking, opening tea and prAsents in that childish, callous way of hers. But this thing you wrote...it made me laugh for the first time in days, and I just wanted to tell you that this is just a gossip forum, but for someone who reads here it might mean a tiny bit more than that. Sorry for taking up space and time.

Spoiler

I can't even pretend to imagine what you've been going through to reach that point, but I'm so sorry you've had to deal with it.

I'm so glad you're still here.

Don't forget that you're never alone, even if it might feel like it sometimes. There's always people around to talk to if you need to reach out, and that's something you never have to apologise for.

And for whatever small measure of comfort, entertainment and distraction it brings, as long as Ruby's posting stupid shit online (which, let's face it, will be forever), I for one will always be here to make fun of it and watch Ruby's godawful content so you don't have to.

 

[Stormweald]

Lol, is her sister dropping hints?

This is pinned in there:

Sorry if this has been shared already I can't keep up sometimes.

 

[gossip_guy]

After another week of laying low and avoiding comeuppance and criticism for the planner debacle, Ruby's back!

Has she learned the error of her ways? Is this a long-overdue apology video? Will she finally be paying back the money she owes to various charities and organisations that she deprived of money or claimed to be donating ad revenue to and never did? (Holocaust Memorial Trust, NHS, Unicef, Ditch the Label, etc., etc.)

Nope, just "another vlog". The intonation comes off as "Yes, another one..." as if she's finally aware that all her content is just an endless series of unrelated footage from random days cobbled together into a vlog.

The enthusiasm drips off the screen, much like the condensation on her mouldy windows.

Speaking of condensation, she's tried to hide the 'AD' text in amongst the fog on her window. I mean, Ruby wouldn't be crawling out of her Victorian steamer trunk to show her face and risk dealing with more backlash if she weren't getting paid for it now, would she?

This one's sponsored by 'Karma', which is ironic, since Ruby's had to deal with karma over the Christmas period when dealing with widespread criticism for her terrible business strategy of not sending products to people who paid for them, lying about it and then ignoring everyone. Did I say "criticism"? I meant "bullying", of course - sorry Rubes!

Ruby starts by "making her bed" - as usual, this does not involve changing the bedding or sheets that have been on there for a month now, or even adjusting the ill-fitting sheet hanging off her mattress. Just toss the duvet over it and tick it off the to-do list.

An outfit change later, she's apparently preparing for a meeting she has at 10. After suspiciously fiddling with the clock and checking that there are batteries in it for some reason, she places it facing the camera. Why? Because she has to prove to her audience that she spent a whopping ten minutes scribbling on her gifted UnreMarkable tablet. Such a majestic feat of productivity.

Digital and analogue clocks are laughably easy to change. This footage could've been recorded at 2:38pm on a Wednesday afternoon. Having a clock pointed at the camera proves nothing but how defensive Ruby is that she's been caught lying about the timescales of her videos on numerous occasions.

After her gruelling 600 seconds of toiling away with mindless scribbles, she's earned a break apparently.

"eeYoo knyow the drill..." Ruby says, "I like to go on a morning walk."

This is definitely the face of someone who's enjoying her morning walk. I've seen happier faces at funerals. Hell, I've seen livelier corpses at funerals, and they were better fed, too.

Is she miserable because she was forced to take the dog with her this time? Having to hold the dog's lead impacts her ability to run around frolicking and twirling, caressing the bramble bushes and staring with wonder directly at the sun, like all well-adjusted, mentally competent adults do, so it's entirely possible.

Is she miserable because taking something you enjoy and forcing it to be an habitual routine thing that you do without fail at a certain time every day whether you want to or not is a sure-fire way to wring the enjoyment out of it? Probably. But Ruby will never learn the lesson that rigid routines for every single thing is not beneficial.

Is she miserable because she's still recovering from a month of deserved criticism for her stupidity and misdeeds bullying? Maybe!

Ruby aimlessly wanders the woods with a gloomy look on her face again like she's in the first act of The Blair Witch Project.

(Same energy.)

Her dog is smart enough to avoid muddy puddles, but Ruby isn't. Instead of following the dog's lead and walking around it, Ruby does her usual childish, mindless thing of aiming for the puddles. Not only that, but she appears to kneel and/or lie down in it - the camera drops to floor level and there's an audible splashing sound. Either Ruby just had to get a close-up of some mud, or she just gave up and faceplanted.

After "about twenteee minutes?", Ruby's back and so is the clock. Also making a glaring appearance is her PETA-brand phone case, because while she's keen to try to disprove all those people who caught her lying in the vast majority of her videos, she has learned absolutely nothing.

"This call was with a...VIEWER acksually...we were working together on a PROJ-ACKT." By which she presumably means she's found someone to write her dissertation for her, in exchange for the planner they paid for.

Reminder: @Griftwood noted that Ruby was recently chumming the Instagram waters to find followers who've taken her upcoming 'Writing for Children and Young Adults' module so she could quiz them:

Ruby Granger #20 Waterstones won’t give her a deal, cabbage oats are a ”healthy meal”

"ALL INFLUENCERS DO IT! SO RUBY HAS NO CHOICE BUT TO LIE! OTHERWISE SHE'D HAVE NO MONEY! THIS IS BULLYING!" Ruby setting the tone and equating genuine criticism with bullying had the desired effect with her brainwashed fans. "IT'S A NEW PRODUCT! SHE HAS ONLY JUST HAD THE CHANCE TO TRY IT OUT!"...

tattle.life

Related? Possibly. But Ruby has never treated her viewers like peers. They're the common scum she's here to "educate". They're a source of money and other valuable assets. They're not her equals as far as she's concerned. So if one of them's working on a "proj-ackt" with her, they're doing all the work and she'll take the credit.

After she's done milking some poor chump for essay ideas, she's off to put those ideas onto paper (and magically change outfits)!

"This was the farst toime I've evah written paht of an ass-ay downstairs in an armchaah," she lies. We've seen her doing uni work in that chair many times before, so this is a bizarre and dubious flex.

She leaves her giant Fortnum and Mason mug full of Fortnum and Mason tea perched precariously on the edge of the chair's armrest, which is always a wise plan for someone with a proven history of terrible hand-eye coordination.

After plugging F&M so that she can pay tribute to her Tory brethren, she proudly proclaims, "I worked on this ass-ay for tyooo hours? and acksually managed to write a thahrd of the essay."

Now...this sounds like unbelievable bullshit. I'm not saying that's impossible, because it's absolutely possible to write an essay in six hours. It's not likely to be great, but it's doable. Ruby, however? She doesn't work that fast or that efficiently.

It's tough to make out clearly, because as well as the content of her videos never improving and becoming more lazily and incompetently made over time, they're also of visually worse quality, and Ruby has started uploading at a maximum resolution of 720p. What is this, 2008?

But when she celebrates being 33% finished with the essay, she shows that she's actually just thrown together an outline in Notion (of course).

The sections that can be made out all employ weird use of caps for some reason:

"CONTEXTS of the argument"
"BOTH BOOKS END WITH RESURRECTION"
"CRUCIFIXION IMAGERY IN TTC"
"CRUCIFIXION IMAGERY IN OLIVER TWIST"
"CONCLUSION"

It's another essay for her seemingly never-ending Dickens module, which it feels like she's been doing for the past three years, in which she compares Christian imagery in A Tale of Two Cities and Oliver Twist.

So she spent two hours cribbing from Sparknotes and threw together part of a rough outline.

To celebrate pretending to accomplish something, her narration awkwardly fades out before the sentence is over and she pretends to drink from an empty mug.



Then her nail polish spontaneously changes from this freshly-applied baby blue:

...to this fresh coat of off-white colour polish that's several shades whiter:

We know Ruby rides every coat of nail polish into the dust, so there's zero chance she took off a fresh coat and reapplied it.

"Syo today whoiylst oiym in Oxford OIYM gyowing to gyow and boiy presents for people," she says. Note that she hasn't mentioned Oxford at any point before this, so this is just bad storytelling. "YASS, Christmas is ovah, butifeelloike people need pick-me-ups in January."

Translation: Ruby wants more things, so she will give additional crappy gifts in January so that people will feel obligated to respond in kind and get her things. She also needs a flimsy excuse to post about the sponsored service she's advertising, so she's really just getting paid to buy things.

In her last video, she posted a massive disclaimer about how Christmas isn't about presents, and it's about treasuring your family, even as she avoided her family to brag about her presents on the internet. This only reinforces that Ruby's all about material shit. And if buying thoughtless gifts for people buys her some cheap goodwill at a time when her name is mud, then that's a bonus.

Ruby's relatives all getting late Christmas presents of regifted crap:

Here's a thought, Rubes: Why not give back all the charity money you took, and then make an equal donation on top of it for their troubles? What happened to donating 10% of your earnings? Why is that being postponed, but you're rushing to buy more presents as an excuse to buy stuff and inevitably get stuff in return?

Anyway, right on cue, Ruby segue-ways from her supposedly "spontaneous" gift-buying to advertising Hive again. If you've forgotten what Hive is, it's an online storefront that offers a small percentage of their sales to independent bookshops in their "network" - a maximum of 10% on online delivery orders and 25% if store collection from a given bookshop is selected. It's better than nothing. But you know what's better than buying at a place that gives a paltry slice of the proverbial pie to an independent bookshop? Buying directly from an independent bookshop.

Why does Ruby use Hive? Because she's an idiot, mostly. But also because this video is sponsored by the browser plugin Karma, and since Karma is an American app, there's very few options for UK-based sites for her to use when advertising it, so she always uses Hive. It goes without saying that she never uses Karma or Hive unless she's being paid to.

Ruby cranks the speed of her footage up far too much, to the point where all her words collide in one high-speed crash of barely-comprehensible word vomit.

Her unnaturally high-speed rambling makes it unclear if the person she's shopping for told Ruby she liked three books and so Ruby has bought them the exact same three books that the person presumably already owns, or Ruby has chosen three different books based on their similarity to the other three books this person likes. I honestly have no idea, since Ruby's talking like this:

Ruby claims to have read 'We Were Liars', 'The House Without Windows' and 'To Kill a Mockingbird'.

There's almost no chance she's read 'To Kill a Mockingbird'.

She likely skimmed through 'We Were Liars' after accidentally buying it thinking it was an instructional manual.

'The House Without Windows' she actually read, only because it was barely over 100 pages and was written by her hero: A random twelve-year-old girl.

Please take a moment to enjoy Ruby's hilarious, rambling, error-filled review of the book:

Reading about how a young girl was happy even owning so little and didn't need worldly possessions to be fulfilled caused Ruby to completely re-evaluate her life. She did this by committing to spending every single day doing whatever she can to get all the money she can and accumulate as many worldly possessions as she can fit into the hundreds of spare rooms in her parents' house, no matter how much lying and swindling she has to do to accomplish this goal. A truly uplifting, feel-good story.

Ruby after reading this book:

Ruby gushes how she's "genuinely so happy" to be working with Karma. Y'know, because they're paying her for it.

She claims to have been using Karma for years, yet has never been seen using it outside paid videos.

I've said it before, Ruby, I'll say it again: YOU DO NOT NEED TO LIE IN SPONSORED VIDEOS. THEY WILL PAY YOU THE SAME MONEY EITHER WAY. Just say "This video is sponsored by [insert sponsor here]. Here's what it is and how it works. Here's an offer code (if applicable)." Boom. Done.

Much like your teachers and lecturers, sponsors will not reward you for sucking up to them. The only thing this affects is your integrity, which is now non-existent.

Ruby continues lying when advertising Karma. She claims Karma "ensures that you always get the best price when shopping online". This just isn't remotely true.

I shot holes in this claim in her last Karma-sponsored video here:

Ruby Granger #16 Rooberoy Lockhart, author of ”Erimenthal Me”

She did make it quite clear that she only went home for the wedding (the one of the Thatcher cosplay), and that she was heading back afterwards, so I don't think that would be the reason for removing it. I can't think of anything especially bad or stupid she said in it that would make her want...

tattle.life

(All prices were correct at the time of posting that.)

But suffice it to say, Karma does not ensure that you always get the best price when shopping online. Karma just ensures that you might get a publicly-available discount code for one of the select few stores that it supports, and even then, the discounted price will undoubtedly still be far more expensive than if you just shopped around a little online.

Ruby cuts in with some short footage of herself using Karma on her filthy laptop screen, and she sounds like she's dying. Her voice is so hoarse and she's clearly ill. But given how much Ruby uses footage from weeks, months and years ago, who knows when that was actually recorded. Does she have the 'rona as we speak? Was this recorded last time she had Covid symptoms and still going out in public and not taking tests? It's anyone's guess.

Back to present, or possibly the past, and Ruby raves about how Karma will alert you if there's a sale offering "fifty PRUH-cent off or twenteee-five PRUH-cent off". And oh, the "KEEYOO-PON" feature is her absolute favourite.

Okay, shall we do this again? Maybe last time I got lucky and Karma usually does give the best deals ever.

So her order with Hive, with whopping £1.06 discount voucher applied, comes to a total of £20.13.
(No postage is listed, but we'll assume Ruby picked the free postage option.)



Same order delivered at Amazon? £18.66.

But maybe you don't want to support Jeff Bezos, and who can blame you?

Same order at eBay (books in 'Brand New' quality): £19.13.

Let's say you're happy buying used books as a gift. I know I'd be happy and grateful to get a second-hand book as a gift. Ruby herself seems to advocate for it when recommending charity shops as a source of books for gifts in her previous videos, and that definitely wasn't just a bit of performative virtue signalling now, was it?

That same order, with We Were Liars and To Kill a Mockingbird in "Very Good" condition and The House Without Windows in "New" condition from Abebooks (a storefront that's comprised of mostly - shock! - independent book sellers): £15.26.

If you're a stickler for buying new things when you're buying gifts, the cheapest combination of 'New' items above (We Were Liars and To Kill a Mockingbird new at Amazon and The House Without Windows new from Abebooks) comes to (including delivery): £17.63.

And that was a quick search of a few places I usually shop from. There's undoubtedly far more, potentially cheaper options around.

"This has save me SYO mOch money online, and I'm gyowing tyoo use it RIGHT NOW for PAR-chuh-sing these BOOKS." And then never use it again until the next paid video.

And there you have it - her entire reason for this "spontaneous", "selfless" gift-buying session: To advertise Karma.

Karma is dogshit. Don't clutter your browser with potential spyware crap when a few minutes of shopping around online will save you far more money.

Spoiler: TW: Ruby eating "food"

She has a wheatgrass shot instead of breakfast, because that'll help the brain situation.

And after this latest outfit change - her fifth overall outfit of this "day" - it's time to jump in the back seat and go to Oxford with mummy and daddy.

Oxford is a city of culture and history, full of great independent and used book shops. So, naturally, Ruby's first stop is Waterstones:

Her sponsor-chasing obsession with Waterstones would be completely hilarious if it wasn't so embarrassing at this point. That's not to say it's not still pretty hilarious.

Ruby, even if Waterstones were going to sponsor you, which they never, ever will...if you keep advertising them for free, why would they ever want or need to pay you for it?

To add to the hilarity, Ruby starts raving about how Oxford is one of her favourite cities and how much she loves the "unrivalled" architecture...while filming inside a fucking Waterstones, whose layout and decor is practically identical from city to city.

"This Waterstones is my FAVOURITE Waterstones," she says as she picks up an Oxford University keychain.

Ruby, the Oxford University is for Oxford University students. Are you an Oxford University student? No, you are not.

Also, note that her nail polished has magically changed once again. From bright baby blue, to off-white, to bright blue again...

After a trip to Blackwells, which is better than Waterstones, but still not exactly a sampling of the unique variety of bookshops that the city has to offer, Ruby goes to Anthropologie as it gets dark, because why not just hit up every bland mass-market chain you can in a new city?

Ruby probably just shops there because they're very sustainable and eco-frie--

How Ethical Is Anthropologie? - Good On You

In its search for adventure, has Anthropologie forgotten about its impact on people, the planet, and animals? Let’s find out how ethical Anthropologie really is.

goodonyou.eco

Oh.

Well, anyway...

After a trip to a shopping mall Krispy Kreme for possibly-vegan-but-knowing-Ruby-probably-not donuts, she's outside and it's suddenly daylight again:

She's clearly put on a mask just to take it off on-screen - we know Ruby avoids wearing them wherever possible. Let's not forget the uni cafe fiasco.

"I always forget how much I hate flogging in pubic," she says, and I'm honestly not sure if she mispronounced "vlogging" or if she's gone too deep down the Victorian rabbit hole, but she 100% says it with an 'F'.

She does some sightseeing around local landmarks like the Bodleian Library and Radcliffe Camera, but it's pitch black by the time she's done fucking around with mass-market retail, so it's all a little pointless as everywhere's shut. Ruby notes that she only had two hours in Oxford, and half of that was spent shopping.

What was the point in this trip? Why didn't they go in the morning to have the full day there? Why waste half of a two hour trip in shops you can see anywhere?

Ruby hides her parents off-screen to fake this being a solo trip as much as she can, so I would assume - at best - her parents were going for a meal with friends (hence the two hour timeframe) and Ruby tagged along to walk around alone in close proximity to the restaurant. So outgoing! Such independence!

As she rambles factoids about random buildings, she films herself skulking around a carpark and walking along a 6 foot section of street as passers-by eye here like she's a lunatic. They're not wrong.

We're then treated to more shots of her walking, but they're completely out of focus. She included them anyway.

At this point, the restaurant staff probably had to ask Ruby's parents to leave because the mentally challenged child they left roaming and frolicking in the car park was scaring the customers, because it's home time!

Ruby shows her haul to her mum, even though she was there, shared a car ride back and will probably get six letters in the post from Ruby about this trip in the next week and a half.

"I had lots of fun cheesing out little gifts for people." Ruby is still incapable of saying the word "choosing" properly, in addition to 74% of the rest of the English language.

Spoiler: TW: Ruby "eating"

After taking the world's smallest bite of a "vegan" donut, Ruby proclaims that we all need to try this, if we're vegan or not. I mean, we know Ruby isn't.

Ruby decides that the first week of January (or so she claims) is a great time to start adding Christmas ornaments to the tree, as Daddy Bones creeps about in the hallway.

And then after yet another outfit change - her sixth outfit! - she writes three letters. Presumably all to her mummy.

A new day dawns!

Spoiler: TW: Ruby eating "food"

As her hairline recedes before our very eyes due to prolonged malnutrition, Ruby helps it along by eating porridge that barely fills the bottom 1/5th of the bowl and a stupidly small fruit cup with four frozen blueberries and a small smear of yoghurt.

This is not food. This is food's newborn baby brother. When it grows to be three times bigger, it may qualify as a snack.

The fact that Ruby is still showing this shit and by extension encouraging it as a healthy meal is dangerously stupid.

Ruby reads The Art of War, and her thoughts in the video are almost word-for-word her flimsy, dismissive review on Goodreads verbatim:

"I thought this would contain more wisdom than it did. I’ve heard so many people rave about it that I expected it to be more readily applicable to modern-day conflict. It’s interesting because of its age, but not for much else."

Her complete inability to apply critical thinking to a relatively simple text is astounding.

Sun Tzu's collected advise is timeless. There's a reason it's been used for centuries in countless different fields.

It's not beyond criticism, sure - you can argue that some ideas contradict others, or that the messages put forth in them have been so often parroted over the ages that they've become almost trite platitudes.

But to say that the book is completely worthless and cannot be applied to modern-day conflict just shows how feeble Ruby's brain and it's ability to interpret and apply and recontextualize information truly is.

I mean: "Anger may in time change to gladness. But a kingdom that has once been destroyed can never come again into being." That's as true as it ever was, and applies to all sorts of modern-day conflicts, big and small. Don't act while you're pissed off. You might feel better in the morning, but the damage you did while your thoughts were clouded by anger can't be undone, as much as you regret them. The Art of War is full of such timeless idioms.

She's clearly gone into this book, taking what little she read with a very literal interpretation and then got bored and bailed.

It's not hard to see why Oxford Uni rejected her as fast as they could.

An outfit change later, Ruby's wasting her time planning.

"I just used my master to-do list and then transferred that onto a timetable because I had quite a lot of things I wanted to do today..."

I know when I have a lot to do and a finite amount of time to do it all, the first thing I like to do is waste a significant portion of that time on repetitive, redundant tasks that serve no meaningful purpose.

I thought this was what your planner was for, Ruby? So that you could remind yourself ahead of time what you needed to do? Why are you always doing this shit the morning of?

She decides she hasn't started any fires in a while and uses it as an excuse to show off another Christmas gift.

With no further explanation, she holds a candle at the camera. It's too blurry to see. Does Ruby record a second take? Fuck no - has she ever?

"I am one with the fire, the fire is with me," she probably mutters subconsciously.

"My bullies will burn in the fires of Hades," she thinks to herself, mindlessly burning more things.

Failing to like the second candle on her first try, she tries again.

Only her hand-eye coordination is completely shot, and she holds the rapidly blazing candle like half an inch away from the wick, as if she somehow thinks lighting fires from a distance will work. She gets confused why this insane display of stupidity isn't working, and then awkwardly cuts away. When she cuts back, the candle is lit. Apparently lighting a candle required both hands and all her concentration.

Ruby, this is your latest reminder that the body requires nutrients for the brain to function.

Ruby is back on that Dickens essays again, and whips the clock out to prove...something? Without seeing your screen, all this proves it that you spent a chunk of time at your laptop. Anyone can do that, Ruby.

But apparently her Dickens essay is complete! So it's time for an outfit change/some footage from a random new day!

"I literally change outfits twice in the space of an hour this day haha!"

Quick to try to distract us from her blatant lies and the three different outfits in less than a minute, Ruby shrieks that it's snowing.

Only there doesn't appear to be any snow. Not that we can see through the foggy windows of Ruby's swampy sweat-trap of a room:

Ruby shows all the condensation, and for some reason she's written "Look at you, playing with your cards. Pathetic! - Hermione" on one of the panes. Such an inspirational message of...judgemental, dismissive bullying?

Hmm.

Anyway. Ruby claims the snow "Must've just stopped." But there was no snow. It was merely Ruby's brain malfunctioning.

Ruby, this is your latest reminder that the body requires nutrients for the brain to function.

Those gifted flowers are still on her windowsill and crumbling to dust faster than Ruby's future prospects.

Ruby claims she's going to clear under her bed, but it's just a flimsy excuse to show more books she hasn't read.

"I ALWAYS just seem to end up with a MASSIVE pile of books BY. MY. BED." She points at a very small stack of around five or six books, two of which are pocket-sized. "WHO ELSE?"

Who else?

She doesn't clean under the bed. Instead she fucks around putting away Christmas decorations.

She heads towards the dead flowers on the windowsill...

"The one thing I really don't want to take down is..."

She reaches for the dead flowers on the windowsill...

Is she finally gonna toss them?!

She veers hard right: "...My nutcracker!"

Those flowers are going to be there as long as the house is.

Ruby is amazed that pine needles have fallen off a dead pine tree.

"THAT'S CRAYYYZEEEEE," she drones, running her hands through the mess.

She pulls more off the branches, as if we won't believe that pine needles have fallen off a dead pine tree unless we see it with our own eyes.

Ruby, this is what happens when you leave a dead pine tree in your room for far too long. The pine needles fall off. It ain't the aurora borealis.

After making a massive fucking mess in this area of the room, she then decides it's time to divert her attention under the bed.

She doesn't hoover or dust under there, or pull her bed out to clean behind it. She just pulls the easy-to-reach stuff out and transfers some of it from the dusty under-bed area to her mouldy trunk, which is like going from the frying pan to a dumpster fire.

After the dust is all stirred up from under the bed, there's black mould particles swirling through the air and pine needles occupying every crevice of the floorboards, Ruby decides it's a good time for putting wax seals on letters instead of cleaning anything.

Her wax stamp technique hasn't improved one bit. It's misshapen, the stamp design is off-centre and the seal itself is barely touching the envelope seal line. It's purely decorative, since the envelope is a self-sealing one, but that's all the more reason for this to not look like shit. I'm no wax seal expert, but this looks like melted ass.

And speaking of melted ass...

Ruby decided the pièce de résistance for this whole shitty affair would be to smear the front of the envelope with a strange brown trail of something distinctly...fecal.

Poor Emily.

Ruby adds a stamp of her favourite fictional child, with a note for...the postman, I guess?

She claims some "frAnds" are coming over, which sounds distinctly like bullshit. But it's a convenient excuse to show off the things Ruby bought for herself her "frAnds".

There's a teacup. Which, of course, isn't just a self-gift for Ruby.

And then a tea selection tin. Which, of course, isn't just a self-gift for Ruby.

Ruby sees, in distinct, white letters, "T2" and her brain just turns to gloop and struggles to parse the very clear letters.

"Twah--uhh--twotee--teetoo..."

Ruby, this is your latest reminder that the body requires nutrients for the brain to function.

Also on the gift list: A dragonfly pouch from Accessorise which Ruby says will be part of a Secret Garden themed literary box for "this person". Which, of course, isn't just a self-gift for Ruby.

Ruby claims this next gift - a notepad with a cover made from an upcycled vintage book cover that Blackwell's sell - was just too extravagant and expensive to justify buying for herself, so she only got it as a gift for someone else.

These notebooks sell for £17.

Now, let's break this down.

Ruby spends more than that in a couple of days on tea.

Ruby's planner that she sells is £16. It is also of terrible quality, may arrive defective or may not arrive at all. But that, she claims, is "essential". So what's the difference between a prohibitively expensive £17 and a "you have to fucking buy this or your academic life will crumble before your eyes!" £16? Well, the obvious answer is that Ruby wants money.

But that's not a fair comparison, right? A planner serves a different function to a blank notebook.

You're right. But Ruby sells notebooks, too. They cost £9 for 80 pages and look like this:

That is to say, they look like shit. Flimsy, cheap quality and massively overpriced.

The About Blanks notebook is infinitely higher quality, is studier, is much more visually appealing and has much more personality. The page count for the About Blanks notebook isn't listed, but it appears to be 200-400 pages at a glance.

So, you'd need to buy 3-5 of Ruby's notebook for a cost of £27-45 (before shipping) to get the same amount of pages and hers would still be flimsy shit. But Ruby doesn't claim that's too expensive or extravagant.

This performative poverty act fools nobody, Ruby. It's insulting, and nobody buys it.

Ruby did this for two equally transparent, stupid reasons.

1. She thinks it makes her look especially generous if the gift she makes a big deal about how the gift she's buying is prohibitively expensive and "extravagant".
2. She think it makes her seem relatable to pretend to be poor.

Meanwhile she owns her own home while living with her parents and paying no rent, is the paid face of a business swindling it's customers for tens of thousands, gets lucrative paid deals to endorse and advertise products she never uses.

Ruby implies this is a gift for a viewer, and this is really shitty behaviour when buying someone who watches her content a gift. Would you hand someone a gift and say "This is SO extravagant and expensive! Like, I couldn't even justify buying this for myself." If the person didn't immediately see through Ruby's bullshit - and it's likely that Ruby's hardcore fans won't - that'd make them feel immediately guilty, like they couldn't accept it. And that's what Ruby just did.

"I have been speaking with this lovely person, and...speaking with her, I just feel like this is the kind of thing that she'd really like, BECAUSE SHE SOUNDS A LOT LIKE ME!" Oh. Never mind - Ruby just bought this for herself.

Ruby never shows the friends she was meeting, but says it was Felicity and Verity, the twins who're children of her parents' friends, because Ruby is incapable of making any social connections outside her parents.

Back home, Ruby starts scribbling inside a book which is apparently for a friend, defacing a page several pages in. Unless you wrote this book, Ruby, don't ruin this gift with your bullshit drivel. Just write a card to go with it.

Ruby writes an essay of a card in addition to defacing the gifted book. So not only does the poor recipient get a ruined book, they get to wade through Ruby's indecipherable scrawl without a dictionary that'll translate whatever nonsense language she's writing in.

And finally, the nightmare is over.

 

[sitkx]

we are all jealous bullies

 

[Princess Peach]

I have tried to think of a caption, but nothing is more hilarious than the post itself.

 

[Mr.Mistoffelees]

"I remember just like I love just I love winter. Last January when I was just going on these walks every morning I got into the habit of going on these walks every morning, I'm just reminded of like all of those walks in January which I love. Winter is wonderful."

Is she okay?

 

[gossip_guy]

I remember there used to be an Exeter confessions page where you could do anon submissions and someone wrote this, so I think tbh she’s always been seen as a bit of a joke there. I think this post was too far though.
View attachment 952335

Seems more than fair to me.

Aside from her fans, who would be more likely to sign up to her uni already without the paid ads, the average student isn't going to be swayed into signing up by a privileged YouTuber peddling toxic productivity habits in videos full of lies and fabricated schedules. The uni is tarring their reputation by associating with someone like that, and that was before she'd added another dozen shady controversies to her belt.

But more importantly, how many students who don't already have the wealth and social media following that Ruby has got the opportunity to be a paid spokesperson for the university?

It's yet another instance where Ruby didn't need the money, but that opportunity could've made a real difference to someone else. It's another instance where Ruby should've stopped, thought if it was right ("Could someone else use this money more?", "Do I spend enough time here and enjoy it enough to endorse it?", "Is this a conflict of interest? I shouldn't take the money if it'll raise questions of favouritism in my viewers, or affect my ability to be honest about the uni in my content...") and declined.

If I was a parent and my kid was having to work a job alongside uni to pay to stay at their first choice uni, meanwhile the university threw tuition fee money at a rich, spoiled influencer who was vocal about it not being the uni they wanted to go to, who actively spends as little time as they can on campus and actively encourages toxic productivity in students, I'd be fucking livid about the university's choices.

The university was stupid and senseless to do it. Ruby's fans would've already got all the Exeter University advertising in the world for free through her study vlog content. And the average student isn't going to leap to sign up just because a spoilt, judgemental Hermione impersonator tells them to in ads she got paid to read. That money could've gone towards scholarship programmes, or books and facilities that would benefit everyone. Instead it was more money in Ruby’s Scrooge McDuck hoarded pool of cash.

If anything, it's a massive conflict of interest to pay an influencer enrolled at the university where their grades are assigned to speak favourably about said uni. Warranted or not, it's going to raise lots of questions when the dumb-as-rocks influencer student who gets improbable firsts across the board is a paid employee of the university who never says a bad word about said university in her content.

 

[Griftwood]

Presented without comment:

 

[buflesse]

Ruby's having a full on meltdown

 

[gossip_guy]

Martha filling the content void left by Ruby and releasing her own daily routine video.

I generally find Martha infinitely more tolerable and likeable than Ruby (not that that's a high bar to step over), but good lord, she's reached peak levels of goth teen cliché by reading alone in the rain in a graveyard.

Other than that, it's a video that feels full of (completely unintentional) Ruby shade as she accidentally dunks on her sister for 7 whole minutes.

• Martha points out that she has no embroidery skills whatsoever, but she can at least use an iron. Ruby felt that.
• She does laundry like a self-sufficient adult human. Ruby could never.
• She casually shows that she can play the saxophone, which is more talent than Ruby has ever had at anything aside from lying and stealing.
• She makes a point to show that she uses a random playing card she had lying around as a bookmark, where Ruby makes a big superficial production out of hand-making shitty bookmarks or charging money for cheap, tatty ribbon bookmarks.
• She also made the smart choice by dropping out of uni when she realised she'd given it a fair shot, hated it and would never use the degree anyway. Meanwhile Ruby's rapidly deteriorating forcing herself to finish uni despite having no interest in any of it and constantly complaining about every aspect of uni culture apart from the part where she gets praise for things.

I'm sure Ruby (hopefully) said it a lot more supportively in real life, but it's hilarious how passive-aggressive and condescending Ruby's comment sounds here.

"Marsha, I don't think uni is the right path for you. Some lesser people just aren't built for the macademia struggle."
"My name's Martha."
"Yes, that's what I said - Morla."
"MARTHA."
"Mohmoh?"
"MARTHA."
"Murrmurr?"
"MAR-THA!!"
"Yes, of course, Marvin. Now if you'll excuse me, I have 36 unsolicited letters to write to the same lecturer."