Raines created a successful YouTube channel dedicated to her advocacy efforts rescuing foxes from fur farms.
Animal rescue activist and YouTube star Mikayla Raines has died by suicide, according to her husband. She was 29.
Ethan Raines announced her death in an emotional video he posted to her YouTube channel on Monday.
He said that for years his wife suffered from various mental health issues and struggled to cope with online criticism.
“She couldn’t bear what she was feeling any longer, and she ended her life,” he said. “And it breaks my heart that someone who is selfless and devoted her life to animals could have so much negativity pointed at her.”
It was a redditor, they also posted how proud they were, I posted a screnshot but ppl tweaked at me for using reddit and I deleted it rather than argue
Lemmy people are weird. Can you link/show me this person?
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Another reason why the US healthcare system sucks shit.
No, this was the SaveAFox person… This is like hearing if The Girl With The Dogs were to suddenly die tomorrow. I’m not sure I could handle so much good leaving the world so quickly.
They had been posting fundraising updates on their YouTube for the last couple weeks. I hope they can keep it going.
I would also like to add another perspective.
I think its important to bear in mind that there are plenty of examples of animal rights and environmental organisations that have been the target of harrasment campaigns bankrolled by corporate and political interests.
I’m not suggesting this is what happened here. I think we have to scrutinize any possible conspiracy – I really want to make that clear. If you look through the other comments, there’s a lot to delve through here.
But I would suggest bearing in mind that smear campaigns aimed at cultivating a kind of political nihilism is something that does happen.
The best you can do, if you care about these causes, is to continue to support them in whatever ways you can.
In my opinion, all animals deserve a hell of a lot better than this.
If only. The fact is there are also plenty of animal rights organizations that think they could have done a better job and/or that she was doing it wrong. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were people who saw SaveAFox as another Tiger King.
Yeah there’s a big difference between rehabbing animals based on heavy human contact VS as minimal contact as possible, in this age, I can definitely see harassment from people who are very opinionated and have kind of lost the plot; who harasses people that are trying to help but have a method you disagree with versus the people who don’t care or are doing harm?
This one hits me hard. So sad. So goddamn sad. Seeing her and those foxes really cheered me up. Her death just stabs me right through the heart.
As a long time SaveAFox fan, Mikayla’s death is crushing. This is a woman that deeply deeply cared for animals selflessly her entire life.
The internet has no shame and has become a truly abhorrent place.
It was reddit. Reddit is dead center of this.
Edit: its amazing how being correctly identifying reddit as the culprit is downvoted on lemmy when its clear most of us are here because reddit sucks a skunks ass.
Proof? Not that I’m saying you’re wrong, I’m just not familiar with this lady at all so would like to know more.
There was a whole subreddit called “r/SaveAfoxSnark” that went private after the news came out. One reddit mod there got doxxed, panicked, and deleted their whole reddit history.
Edit: The mod’s reddit handle is/was KazeoLion. There are only quotes here about this, so take it all with a grain of salt until we know more. These are YouTube comments:
MappleBunny 13 hours ago One of the people responsible for the bullying is a reddit user by the name of KazeoLion, who has since been doxxed and had to delete most of his reddit posts (which are still available in the wayback machine), he even made a post where he doubled down on his actions.
We will neither forgive nor forget. Rest in peace Mikayla
bluebowser3347 21 hours ago There was a whole subreddit called r/SaveAfoxSnark that was dedicated to bullying and harassing Mikayla. The moment the news came out that she had killed herself the subreddit switched to private.
Those snark subreddits need to remember that they’re dealing with human beings.
The older I get the more I understand why the concept of demons was something people could accept.
Idk, some people are just bad. A cousin, adopted but my uncle’s adopted son nonetheless, is a good example of this. He’s no longer with us, thank fucking god, but this little devil was bad from the moment I met him to the point he died at… idk I think it was 18 or 19 years old.
His parents got him a pet weasel. It ‘disappeared’. I don’t remember the specifics but it was pretty clear it didn’t just run away. His brother would show up at the dining table with bruises around his neck. Just fucking evil shit like that. Ended up running away at 17 years old, died in an attempted robbery sometime after that (his memory is not something I try to keep alive).
Point is: there is such a thing as irredeemable. At least, in my eyes.
I read a long write up about the trolls behavior and accusations but the machine I used for isn’t accessible this morning. A little searching and you will find a better write up on it.
Tumblr users were also heavily involved
I forget tumblr still exists.
Wow, I’m shocked…
The internet mirrors humanity.
It mirrors humanity when we’re anonymous, which is why it’s so awful. There are people who are publicly shitheads without being anonymous, sure, but they’re far fewer in number.
Not really. Nowadays, it’s a funhouse mirror that is distorted in ways that rich sociopaths think are better.
Why the fuck would you harass someone for saving foxes? Is it because she’s a woman?
God gave us dominion over all creatures read the Bible!
There are children dying in the streets here, why don’t you do anything about them?
The foxes bread for fur here are not capable of living in the wild, “rescuing” and releasing them is the real animal abuse.
I think fox fur is fancy, fuck you lady!
Just some examples I can think of off the top of my head. People can get pretty polarized when it comes to killing, or not killing animals.
I would also like to know what the criticism was, but at the same time, I also feel like the internet can be shit sometimes whether there was reason to criticise or not.
Pretty sad story.
I did the research in the muck mines of the internet for y’all, and it is more complicated than it looks on the surface.
Several animals died in her care due to neglect, including leaving foxes on leashes and letting them get tangled up and baked alive in the sun. There are text messages that leaked of her having paperwork forged to make some animals look like they were bred in captivity. Her organization was registered as a fur farm to avoid some taxes and regulations. Lastly, she had an OnlyFans page where the regularly posed with dogs and foxes in ways that suggested she was trying to appeal to zoofiles, including text descriptions that are very questionable.
A subreddit was created called Save A Fox Snark that was tracking her questionable methods, and one user in particular, seemingly a furry, was very active in screenshotting all of her questionable content in hope that she would get shut down for animal cruelty. That furry is now also being targeted for harassment.
I went straight into the swamp for this info—you can read it all on KiwiFarms, Soyjak, OnlyFans, and the internet archive pages of the Save A Fox Snark subreddit.
Never, ever source Kiwifarms. That org is fucking disturbing
They were the ones organizing some of the bullying—I wanted to see the posts she was seeing to better understand the nature of the harassment.
Thanks for the context. Very helpful.
So basically, you consider going to the people who drove her to commit suicide “doing the research”.
Doing the research to see what they were saying about her that might lead her to commit suicide, yes. If you want to know what the cyber bullying was that caused someone to commit suicide, it makes sense to look at the posts themselves, which is what I did.
I too look at ISIS propaganda when I want to see why they did what they did 🙄
There’s a huge difference between reading Mein Kampf and praising it for its good points.
Where did I praise my sources, exactly?
They claimed she was not taking proper care of the foxes. I haven’t read one thing that was in any way proven. It was just trash talking trolls doing what they do best, telling lies. They had story after story about the conditions. The woman was trying to do good, something none of those trolls harassing her have ever did. The trash reddit sub went private because now they fear consequences.
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yeah I don’t think the human brain was meant to cater to a million fans
It is a sad state of affairs when a person is doing something actually good to help animals and they get harassed. May her legacy live on forever.
My wife told me about this last night, supposedly the majority of the abuse came from OTHER FUCKONG RESCUERS!!!
Must have been jealous of her.
That seems so crazy to me. I’m on a bunch of different guitar forums around the Internet, and I don’t recall a single time when I’ve seen anyone attack or harass a content creator or anyone else. It’s a really friendly, highly supportive, international community, and it’s HUGE. Everybody feels like a friend.
It happens in photography, I think there’s a competitive element.
The guitar world is pretty competitive, too. Perhaps the difference is the guitar is exceedingly difficult to learn, and we’ve ALL struggled with it, and have had help from others overcoming our problems. So we can all sympathize with each other, and want to share our help and knowledge.
These guys probably saw the Tiger King documentary and decided to armchair warrior to virtue signal how much more pro-animal rights their non-involvement and passivity was than her.
I agree and I hope we all remember that mindset the next time we read about activists blocking a slaughterhouse.
Meat eaters can’t stand animal rights activists
🤡🤡
This is crushing. Loved what she was doing. Loved her channel.
Jesus, it really goes to show how shitty humanity really is.
I actually really liked watching those foxes laughing, it was a nice little bright spot in a world fully of cynicism and bullshit and if course shitty humans had to be shitty humans harassing her for being a decent human being.
Humans not humanity.
How hollow that must feel. Not getting any justice or retribution.
And the disgusting people to blame are probably praising themselves, now.
RIP
The real hollowness is found in the people who have nothing in their lives so they embrace hate and hound those trying to make the world a better place.
From my cursory glance, yes, they are
On 4chan?
It’s times like these that I hope there is in fact a god and they are watching folks like that.
If there’s a god, he’s a cunt. Find your own justice.
I agree, but at heart I’m a pollyanna.
“Inside every cynical person is a disappointed idealist.”
- George Carlin
Doing some sleuthing, it appears a former follower was mad about some incidents at the shelter, and started a subreddit against it:
SFW, but click at your own risk.
https://web.archive.org/web/20250307232100/https://www.reddit.com/r/saveafoxsnark/
The last web archive backup is old, but my guess is the subreddit snowballed (due to the Reddit engagement algo loving hatesubs, of course) and got us here.
So… yeah.
Rest in peace.
Jesus, every single post is made by the same person.
What a fucking nutjob
Reddit needs to be held accountable for the snark subs
I’m pretty okay with Duggar snark and Sister Wives snark. My girl follows all of it. Anything that spotlights the abuse inherent in fundamentalist Mormonism/Evangelicalism is mostly a good thing, in my book.
No clue about the particulars on this. Never heard of her before.
The human race makes me really sick on a daily basis these days
It really feels like the human race is determined to destroy itself.
It really does.
Sad, I watched her shorts sometimes. Apparently there was a hate ‘snark’ subreddit that just made up shit about her all day, with some members connected to the factory farming fur industry, and pedophilic artist KazeoLion, leading the harassment
So…wait. I’ve never heard of her, but you’re saying there was an entire subreddit deddicated to making up lies about her, saying she did horrible shit, KNOWING what they said was a lie? Because if I’m reading this right, that’s pretty fucked up.
I think most people know about her through her fox, Finnegan the Fox
Apparently there are ‘snark’ (what the hell kinda name for a genre is that?) pages on Reddit for all sorts of niche stuff
So telling lies about people is a ok, but mentioning a green plumber is not. I’m fucking grateful that I’m banned from that cesshole of a website now.
There’s snark pages on lemmy too, some of them moved here after getting kicked off Reddit.
Fundiesnark is often for people who leave insane religious institutions or crazy churches to talk about that and make fun of the people still trying to push their hateful religious agenda online, there’s a lot of survivors of some bad shit there, I support it frankly but like, foxes? Not like any of these people are coming from fur farms where they were personally abused and need a space to talk about its ridiculousness
Also snarky puppy is just a musical group it’s not a snark group
Not like any of these people are coming from fur farms where they were personally abused and need a space to talk about its ridiculousness
I suppose they are incredibly small, disturbed people
Snarky puppy is amazing!
Man, my life is kinda sad, but at least it’s not “join a community specifically to hate on stuff” sad. What hosers.
Lol at Snarky Puppy getting caught up in that search result.
TIL there’s a snarky puppy community here
It’s a pretty fucked up name if you ask me, specifically.
I follow her and she was a beautiful human. This news is so painful for me.
If there was an organized harassment campaign against her I wonder if there is any legal culpability for those involved.
