That Ruby and Bella TikTok is giving "my first uni group presentation" vibes. The way they're awkwardly looking at each other, waiting for their turn to say their rehearsed lines for something as simple as an outfit of the day video, it look so unnatural. I hope for their sake they loosened up around each other and had fun because that interaction looks beyond cringe.
Rather than romanticising your own life this looks more like those moments where you're in the depths of despair staring into the void and contemplating how everything is meaningless and the world is just a dark pit of ugliness and you have no future
Yes! All things aside, on a very basic level, what are Ruby's qualifications to take up the Museum's account? Did she even attend one UNDERGRAD course on Dickinson? I am not naive as to not know that EVERY volunteering, curating, internship, etc. job in the arts/culture sector ONLY goes to those who can effort to do free work because they don't need to earn a living. But even in those cases, those people who get the job at least look good on paper, having earned some sort of degree or finished related courses or sth. Ruby has nothing. I love following museums and art collectives on Instagram and I would have unfollowed Dickinson Museum so fast if I saw Ruby treating their page like a schoolgirl's diary. And what is worst is that Ruby will put down this PAID volunteering experience (even if the Museum is not paying her, she just burned at least 4000 pounds just to do that good deed, lol) in her CV and it will look so damn good on her possible applications to grad programs in the future. She will have a considerable advantage over others who cannot afford to buy their way into cool volunteering spots. Ugh, I hate this so much.
Honestly, it annoys me that NONE of this year will look bad on Ruby’s CV. She’s really regressed and on tattle we know that all her “travel” was family holiday / sponsored trips and all her collaborations with Bird and Blend / Miss Patina were vanity projects. But to an outsider, it’s really not unusual to say you took a gap year to travel to various places in Europe / the US, and her YouTube Channel and collaborations sound impressive to someone who isn’t in the detail and doesn’t follow her.
Ruby: "I'm VARRY HONGRY."
Also Ruby: (Eats nothing.)
She makes a point to say she's skipped "BRACKFUSST" and the first thing she eats is at 3pm.
She says she's going to have a "quick LONCH" despite having eaten nothing all day and apparently being really hungry.
She says it's going to be a quick, as though she's in a rush and doesn't have time for food, but then she does fuck all but sit on a bed playing make-believe for the rest of the day.
Her "lonch" consists of two tiny, thin slices of bread, a banana, a small wedge of avocado(?) and a single small, sad baby carrot.
She doesn't appear to have eaten all of this "food", as she takes her usual single, tiny bit of an already incredibly small piece of carrot (dipped in what appears to be a tub of butter?), then instantly cuts away.
But it's okay, because she's gonna follow it up by "eating apples". Plural.
She gets on the bed with a single apple on a plate, so already it's not looking good.
She starts chomping away on the lone apple with every disgustingly loud bite audible on the video for some anti-ASMR, while she butchers some of Little Women, narrating about "MAG" March and her sister Jo, who has a "HOSKY" voice and eats "RASSETTS" while a "PAT RAT" scrambles nearby.
She cuts to a closer angle of herself pretending to read (and get apple juice all over the book and bed), where the apple is half-eaten.
She cuts back to a wider angle where there's a new apple with a single bite taken out of it in her hand.
Only it's not new. Look at the earlier screenshot. It's the same apple, she's just edited this out of sequence and named the chapter "reading and eating apples" to give the impression that she ate more than she did. This is far from the first time she's tried this trick.
She's also got a tub of peanut butter - the classic ED staple - on the desk she's "working" at, along with a glass of water to chug. No other food to be seen.
"Syo, AS IT TARNED OUT, in the evening, oiy ANDED opp feeling really not varry whal. "
Gee, I wonder why, you fucking dumbass. That's generally what happens when you eat almost nothing every day and use tea and water as substitutes for meals.
Speaking of water, she's left approximately 5,793 glasses, cups, mugs and cartons strewn all over the B&B room, even though she JANUINELY KHAAN'T FYOCUS IF THAHR'S CLOTTAH ARYOUND!
A coffee cup is on the nightstand when she gets up.
It's still there at the end of the day.
In her previous videos, she showed that she'd wisely taken her water bottle with her. Only Miss Sustainability has opted not to use it and instead start buying boxed water for some reason?
The carton is shown all over the place even though she already has a glass.
So either she fills this up just to pour a glass of water from it, even though she's sat in the same room as the sink, she bought several of them despite not needing to buy any at all, or the most likely option: It's another ad. She poses the carton the same way she does all her gifted shit, with the brand name on clear display and the product snuck into every shot she can, regardless of how little sense it makes.
She posted the above story during her trip, too. This shit's blatant.
And she's lying about the timescale of her videos again, too.
When trying to explain what happened the next day and claiming she sat in a meadow for hours reading, she has one of her patented poker tell squinting seizures. She's lying.
She looks terrified when she sits down to pretend to read under a tree (she claims she's been reading this book for endless hours across the trip, yet is somehow still only 3/4th of the way through) and she's constantly looking around all skittish in case someone might be nearby.
No fucking way did she sit there reading for hours. She filmed two minutes of footage and then ran back to her room as fast as she could.
After doing a godawful job of showing what Concord has to offer outside her B&B room, with 80% of the footage of Louisa May Alcott's house being close-ups of cracked and peeling paint of old windows, she concludes her trip there by urging everyone to visit. But she does it in her usual stilted, faux-poetic "just list several nouns with awkward adjectives" purple prose, which sounds anything but sincere.
"Oiy johst want tyo nyote that Con-chord is one of the myost BEEYOOOTIFOL PLYACES oiy've AVVAR visited. WHOITE STEEPLED TOPS. FLAILING LEAVES, SQUIRRELLING SPARRYOWS HOPPING YOVAH EXPYOSED TREE RYOOTS. TOINY COFFEE SHOPS AND POIYLES OF VOIBRANT LEAVES-DUVETS OF ORANGE AND BROWN--PATCHWOCK QUILTS OF ANOTTHA YEAHHR PAAHHST. OIY WUD RACKOMAND CONKUDD TO AVVERYONE."
There were leaves and trees and sparrows and coffee shops. All of the things she chose to highlight are things you'd find in almost any town in the western world. At no point does she mention anything that makes the town unique.
Reminder: "Oiy would rackommand this to AVVERYONE" is her go-to line when talking about a book she claims she's finished but very clearly never read, which sums up her approach to Concord; she lazily glanced at this town's cover blurb and then just pretended she'd experienced everything it had to offer.
She butts back in from the present to ramble about her "wroyting jacket" and the "CRONCH of an appol" while her dog barks loudly in the background. As always, she does not bother recording a second take, because she's indescribably fucking lazy.
She fills this section with humble-bragging lies about how she got up in Concord and went walking BEFWORD SHE'D EVEN MYADE HARR BAD! BOHT USUALLY SHE AWHLWLHEYS MYAKES HAHR BAD AS SYOON AS SHE WYAKES OPP! HAHR RYOOM JOHST HAS TYOO BEE VARRY TOIDEE OR SHE CAN'T FYOCUS!
As she's coming out with these blatant lies, there's mess all over her room, her bed is clearly visible in the background with the duvet that's been on it for months now, and the same sheets that have been on it for about a year. She's quite happy to live in filth and squalor and that's always been the case.
She showcases her usual lazy clichés, too. She tacks a load of unrelated footage onto the end of a vlog for padding. She plays Danse Macabre for the 9,492,507th time. The audio levels and quality are terrible; the second Bella shows up on-screen, their conversation is absolutely deafening, with the added bonus of being accompanied by wind blasting against the camera mic.
Ruby says she doesn't want to make a separate video all about her Salem trip, so surely she's wisely chosen to cherry-pick the best of what the place has to offer. There's...umm...main roads? And a tree? Grey skies. Hedges... How is this different from her being at home again?
Bella instantly (and inadvertantly) proves why she and Ruby make such fitting friends.
She points to a random shop. "This store looks just like...DOO-SEE'S MARKET from Gilmore Girls!"
Spoilers: It's pronounced "Dough-See".
Ruby then says that the coffee shop they're in had a real "Gilmwoar Gharls feel tyo it", despite it looking like every modern coffee shop/restaurant nowadays.
Neither of them has actually watched the show, have they?
Then they go to a bookshop and do nothing but talk about how "beautiful" the covers are.
The video abruptly ends with more dog barking and a snippy "HAVE A PRODOCKTIVE WEEK" after Ruby announces that her second meal in Salem will just be more sugary desserts.
What a miserable and pointless trip this was for her.
The deeper into this gap yah we go the more shame I feel keeping tabs on these updates. On the one hand, it's not like most people can have a big YT channel and following, and I appreciate that a lot of my disdain comes from class envy, but it just feels like her brand is beyond necrotic. In what world is it efficient to badger a small museum into letting you manage their instagram without fanfare for a few days? Dressing up on Ha-llo'we'iene' just to stay in your room? All the things she's done with Patina or Bard or whatever just feels like the same thing that any half-savvy teenage girl with social media could do with much less second-hand embarrassment involved.
It's really not my business to criticise someone for getting an income off having land, or having a media following, or being a model - God knows a lot more scummy people do that with greater success and less scrutiny, but I really hope Rubes just puts down the camera, reads for its own sake - if she wants to - instead of as a performance, and follows a goal that she can put her head down to achieving that has a well-trodden path. It just seems like everyone wants to be an celebrity as if it's not a completely nebulous, fleeting, non-salaried position, when there's so much pride and satisfaction, and self-respect, involved in getting an actual profession. To that end I hope she really does well as a teacher, trains/goes to school for it, and it doesn't end up just being some code-name for a half-assed influencer role she's got cooked up.
Why would the BBC choose to sponsor Ruby? I thought there were strict rules on their advertising. The idea that they are doling out licence fee money to lazy YouTubers - especially for such a lame ass video - is rather annoying to me. There must be many genuine young creatives who need money to develop their talent or who would benefit from an organisation like the BBC sponsoring coaching or development opportunities as a better use of taxpayer money. I wouldn't even mind if they offered her some training in how to edit or develop content rather than just pay her to put out this kind of cr*p.
I'm dying at the image of some poor American grocery store clerk trying to decypher what the fuck Ruby is talking about when she's asking for "ROSSEH TAPPLES".
She had to settle for either a "MACKINTOH SHAPPLE" or an "AVVERCRISS PAPPLE".
Another classic Rubyism: She pronounces "ennui"..."eNNyouEYE".
The way she keeps digging herself into a hole every single time she's corrected... I often find myself wishing if only she actually were accepted to Oxford. It would have been good fun to see her to try and cope with real criticism and actual work load that she can't bullshit her way out of.
This is what happens when you never leave your nursery. Suddenly you realize that there are things outside which are breathing and living. Glad that she knew that it was at least a bird.
I understand what you're saying, but I'm just not super inclined to cut her a whole lot of slack because she's literally making money out of all of this. It's in her interest to downplay the money aspect and project an image of someone who is motivated by non-material things, "learning for the sake of learning", etc. She tells a whole lot of lies about who she is, and makes money off of it. She's admitted her mental health is shaky, but apparently not shaky enough to forgo being on social media and losing out of the income in order to take some time off to get better. A lot of people are or were introverts, a lot of us have struggled with MH issues, but she is not like most of us - she comes from massive financial privilege, which has also enabled her to pursue a social media career at a young age.
Also, it’s so unhealthy that whatever Ruby does, people always defend her. She never seems to learn because she never really has to acknowledge that she makes mistakes. And yes, she’s young but she isn’t that young anymore - she’s closer to her mid-20s than her teens and again, it’s not healthy to allow her that excuse forever. Consciously or not, Ruby creates this child-like image because it allows her to get away with a hell of a lot, but the reality is it’s just getting odder and odder as she gets older.
Her whole identity is fake. I don't think that she ever struggeld with bullying. Or that she was ever interested in tea, poetry, academic or whatsover.
Ruby Granger is a ficitional character. An identity on Insta where the real Ruby makes money with.
Its like a theatre play where Ruby Granger is the main role and Ruby Bones is the director.
"I don't want this to turn into a negative space" = I don't want people to keep questioning me bc this is actually an AD but the museum and I did something shady to not have to report it as an AD and I didn't think that people would question me or find it suspicious. This whole thing is so sus.
One of you mentioned earlier that she did all this to add to her resume as an unpaid internship and make it look impressive and I'm believing it now. It looks better if this falls outside of her influencer life and aligns more with her "academic" side. If she ever wants to apply to graduate school, this will look really good and not just as another "sponsorship." So she came up with a way that this wouldn't have to qualify as an AD.
"I was not paid for the work I did with them & it was fully voluntary."
And yet even an initial disclaimer and two "clarifications", she still hasn't said "I paid for all tours and events involved and was not gifted anything of value during my time at the museum". It's an ad, Ruby.
I still think the main problem is that she has lost her school day identity of being “gifted” (I still struggle to comprehend this), and pretended to be so many different things that she now has absolutely no idea who she is, what she believes in or how to “do” life.
I actually think that Ruby has only been a gifted child in her own imagination and in the eyes of her biased family. Some teachers may be easy to impress, but most will notice when a student's comments just don't make any sense. And the other kids will notice too.
When I went to school, there was this girl who always had to raise her hand and say something which she understood only to an extremely superficial extent, it was really embarrassing. Everyone disliked her. Even to the students who struggled most at school it was crystal clear that she was just trying to seem smart, but there was no actual understanding going on.
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