gossip_guy
VIP Member
Yupp.
An incredibly wealthy public figure accepting money from a charity is always scummy. There's a reason celebrities do this shit for free in their own time - nobody wants to see rich people profiting from needy causes and likely accepting more than their involvement might raise. The optics of it are terrible. It's not theft, it's just greedy as fuck and morally shitty from top to bottom.
But then Ruby took it a step further and lied up and down about that money from the second she experienced backlash, and kept making up stories and excuses that changed and got less believable every time.
First she claimed she only accepted the money to "reinvest" into Holocaust awareness (and anti-bullying causes, because Ruby has drawn the stupid and simplistic comparison that Nazis were just big bullies, so the two causes are naturally linked), because that's a believable alternative to just refusing money or immediately giving it back and making her own donations elsewhere. Saying you're going to be paying charities with their own money, or handing one charity's money to another is not charitable and "coming from a good place". It's stupid and highly suspect.
Then there was the hilariously dubious school memorial project excuse. Whenever asked about the progress on that memorial project, 9 times out of ten, she blocked and deleted people - always a good sign. On the rare occasion she couldn't do that, she claimed for a year that it was deep in the works and updates would be coming soon, and the schedule for an update was later and later every time with no actual information. Just days before claiming that she'd given all the money back, she posted a video including a to-do list with "Headway with memorials" on it to try to fool people into thinking it was an active project she was working hard on. She has never shown any evidence that any work was done on that dubious project after a year of claiming to be hard at work on it - who did she consult at the HMD Trust, what kind of discussions did she have with school boards, what was the approval process, how much planning had been done, how had it been budgeted, etc.?
Then, right in time for her next time to milk the Holocaust for content, she quickly claimed to have given the money back, clearly timed to pre-empt any renewed comments and backlash. Again, her story changed every time - first she'd done some thinking and after a year of criticism had finally decided on her own that she was misguided and had now returned the money. Then the story changed to "the money was returned last year".
I don't know of any reason why someone would lie so much for so long unless they just really wanted to keep the money and were hoping everyone would eventually forget about it. And there's still been no proof that the money was returned, when it was given back, or that the amount donated matched the amount originally accepted.
And that wasn't even the first or last time she's gotten wrapped up in questionable charity shit.
She accepted money from the NHS to advertise basic hygiene precautions that she herself almost never followed, at a time when the underfunding of the NHS and the paltry pay of front-line health workers was all over the news. She pledged ad revenue from several videos to multiple charities and encouraged people to sit through all the ads to drive up the amount. When asked how much was raised, people got blocked and deleted.
When people asked if the ad revenue from one of her anti-bullying would still be donated after she had to pull the video following another stupid controversy she'd caused, she blocked, deleted and avoided it. Again, zero proof that anything was passed onto the relevant charities. Considering she had a big scarlet letter on her Miss Patina blouse as far as charity money was concerned, she'd be aware that transparency was important if she was going to be in a position to handle money meant for charities.
Then there's the OTE conservation charity she got involved with, immediately after HMD 2022. Again, people had questions that it was marked as an ad - was she accepting money from another charity? Ruby shoved a very condescending disclaimer in her next video saying that people were "confused" how ad rules worked, then proceeded to lie about the ASA rules to explain why it was marked as an ad. Of COURSE she wouldn't be paid for it, who would think such a thing - aside from everyone, since she always does. And then that pesky word "reinvest" reared its head again as Ruby said that the money was "reinvested back into" the charity, before changing her tune again to say it was an unpaid ad. Again, I don't know why someone would lie unless it was to hide the fact that they accepted money and didn't want to give it back.
Tellingly, Ruby only ever does anything major for a charity when there is the opportunity for her to receive money for it, or if there's the chance for money earmarked for a charity to stop with her. The only exception was the Ukraine fundraiser. As discussed the other day, she had to be dragged kicking and screaming into participating in that by her management team to buy back some good will (just after they had to leap into her comments, pose as fans and post planted positive messages to try to drown out the critical comments from two more back-to-back charity scandals - HMD 2.0 and the OTE posts/video). She put in less than an hour's "work", looked miserable throughout and sour-faced Ruby made a weird point to mention that YouTube handled the money for it and would give it straight to the charity - she's clearly very aware when there's an opportunity for her to handle the cash and when there's not.
She might not be breaking into safes in the middle of the night to steal a charity's pot of cash, but people can draw their own conclusions about a spoiled rich influencer whose brand is built on "kindness", yet only does charity work when there's money to be made, or who constantly lies and deceives people to avoid handing over money she'd pledged to give back.
