Yahoo Movies Tana Mongeau may finally have to face her problematic past after former friends accused her of racist microaggressions and gaslighting
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Tana Mongeau is being pressured by fellow influencers to speak up about her past behaviour.
Influencers Kahlen Barry and Nessa Briella both recently put out videos alleging Mongeau and her manager Jordan Worona were involved in racial insensitivities, microaggressions, and mistreatment towards them.
Mongeau said on social media that she would be putting out videos addressing the criticism, but this is not what the community wants, Barry said. Rather, they want her to listen and make meaningful changes.
Commentary channels and influencers have accused Mongeau of performative activism in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, and are asking her to take accountability if she really wants to be an ally.
Neither Mongeau nor Worona responded to requests for comment.
Influencer and musician Kahlen Barry, 21, posted a video on June 16 called "finally revealing the truth about Tana Mongeau" where he recounted the mistreatment he'd experienced from his former friend — one of YouTube's biggest stars — back when they had a YouTube channel together.
Mongeau hired Barry to be one of the members of her collaborative channel Trash in 2016, but what should have been his big break felt wrong, and it took him the next four years to figure out why.
About three weeks later, another influencer, Nessa Briella, also posted a video detailing how Mongeau treated her when they were in contact up until 2018. Briella also made claims about the behavior of Mongeau's manager Jordan Worona, who was also her own former manager.
Both Barry and Briella alleged that Mongeau and Worona participated in gaslighting, spreading rumors and lies, and dismissing the feelings and concerns of Black people.
Building on momentum from the larger Black Lives Matter movement, Barry and Briella's stories highlight the prevalence of racist microaggressions in the influencer industry, and beg the question of whether one of the internet's biggest personalities will take accountability for her alleged actions.
Kahlen Barry
Nessa Briella's story
Briella, 23, spoke about her time working with Mongeau in a video called "Dear Tana Mongeau," which been watched over 1.3 million times. She and Mongeau met through YouTube because they were gaining significant followings around the same time, about five years ago. They became friends and Briella introduced her to her manager, Worona, who hired Mongeau "literally on the spot." That's when the relationships started to break down, Briella said in the video.
She said that brands she had originally spoken to to started signing deals with Mongeau instead. Briella's friends at the time told her it was because Mongeau is white and thus a more "marketable" client, she said, but she didn't want to believe Worona would treat her that way at first. Briella also said Mongeau and Worona would be nice to her face-to-face and over texts, saying they loved and missed her, but then talk about her behind her back.
The story Briella told in her video suggested petty and convoluted dramas relating to comments on Instagram posts and whispers behind backs were what contributed to their fall out. Briella said in her video that Mongeau labeled her as malicious and aggressive after some of her comments were misconstrued.
For example, Briella commented on one of Mongeau's Instagram photos in 2017 of Mongeau and then girlfriend Bella Thorne saying, "I'm cringing so hard." She said in the video she meant it as a fun joke between friends, but felt Mongeau blew it out of proportion and make the argument public on Twitter.
Insider has reached out to Briella for further comment.
In a collab with Shane Dawson in 2017, Mongeau implied she and Briella had been arguing non-stop for two years. Mongeau also claimed Briella had tweeted that she "f---ing hated" her, which Briella denied in her video.
Of the Mongeau/Dawson collab, Briella said: "As soon as the video dropped, my mentions again were flooded with comments. Because now, not only do I have Tana Mongeau fans coming after me, but I have Shane Dawson fans attacking me and telling me what a piece of s--t I am, and that I should die."
Briella said all of this painted a picture of her in public as a villain that she's still trying to shake off to this day. She said she would periodically notice Mongeau's fans coming for her in waves and wonder what had happened, only to have Mongeau deny any involvement or ignore her messages.
After thinking she and Mongeau were on good terms, she'd then see tweets from Mongeau stirring up the drama yet again.
"It just got to the point where I felt like she enjoyed doing this," she said. "It just became such a pattern of things getting twisted and her going online and running with it, to ruin my name and ruin my image."
Briella felt this was Mongeau gaslighting her to wind her up, turning accusations back on her to then be able to call her "crazy" and "angry." She said Worona also started spreading rumors that she was unstable, difficult to work with, and had schizophrenia.
Briella said she was sharing her story now because she was "sick of having to defend my character on a daily basis" for what she considers to be small embarrassing dramas in her past. She said she's been "conditioned" to always think she was in the wrong after these microaggressions she said she experienced from Mongeau and Worona.
"I just 100% believe that Tana and Jordan were trying to paint me out to be this angry Black woman," she said.
Neither Mongeau nor Worona have publicly addressed the claims in Briella's video, and they didn't respond to Insider's request for comment.
'We all thought you were this piece of s--t person'
Briella said Worona eventually dropped her as a client, but not before passing her onto a different manager, who was Black, and who Worona said would "get" her more.
Briella said people in the industry have reached out to her in the last few weeks apologizing for how they treated her based on what they'd heard from Mongeau and Worona.
"Creators have reached out in the past week and a half ... literally apologizing saying, 'Nessa I'm sorry I shut you down, I'm sorry that I didn't give you a chance because I was running with what Tana was saying,'" she said. "I was running with what I saw online. I was running with what Jordan was telling us, so we all thought you were this piece of s--t person, and I want to apologize for judging your character based off of that."
Kahlen Barry's story
Barry's story started when Mongeau set up the Trash YouTube channel in 2016 and asked aspiring creators to apply to be part of it. Barry entered the contest and Mongeau chose him as one of the six members. Barry told Insider it was a great experience for exposure and connections, but being on the channel also made him miserable.
In his video, Barry alleged that Mongeau gaslit him and provided inadequate responses when he brought up her problematic past.
Mongeau has been periodically criticized for old racist tweets and archival footage from her livestreams and Snapchats where she used racial slurs, including the N-word. In some recently resurfaced tweets, she called her friend Imari Stuart a "cotton picker" and told him to "go back to plantation." In another, she responded to a Twitter user and called them a "Cuban piece of s---."
—megan (@needysmiIe) June 22, 2020
Barry told Insider he stood by Mongeau publicly, but voiced his concerns to her in private. He said Mongeau was not receptive and dismissed him, making him feel like she was labeling him as an "angry Black person."
Mongeau did not respond to requests for comment on her history with Barry.
Barry said he'd wanted to tell his story for years, ever since he stopped being a part of Trash. But he finally felt empowered to do so after seeing high-profile celebrities speak about their own experiences in the entertainment industry, such as "Glee" actress Samantha Marie Ware calling out her former costar Lea Michele, who voiced support for Black Lives Matter on social media, but allegedly made Ware's experience on set "a living hell."
"Seeing that was like, wow, there are other people in that community sharing their experiences, so it kind of gave me the courage to share mine," Barry said. "Also I felt like it was a time, with the Black Lives Matter movement, where people are listening. They want to hear Black voices and they want to understand what is going on."
'Microaggressions are so prevalent in society'
Barry was nervous about what to expect from publishing the video. He wanted to tell his own story, but also teach others about the deeply-imprinted microaggressive ways white people behave towards people of color.
The term "microaggression" was first coined by psychiatrist Chester M. Pierce in the 1970s. According to a paper from 2014, published in the journal Race Ethnicity and Education, "racial microaggressions are a form of systemic, everyday racism used to keep those at the racial margins in their place."
"They are: (1) verbal and non-verbal assaults directed toward People of Color, often carried out in subtle, automatic or unconscious forms; (2) layered assaults, based on race and its intersections with gender, class, sexuality, language, immigration status, phenotype, accent, or surname; and (3) cumulative assaults that take a psychological, physiological, and academic toll on People of Color," the paper, written by Lindsay Pérez Hubera and Daniel G. Solorzanob, reads.
Microaggressions can be blatant or subtle. It's the way someone behaves towards someone else, most often in a marginalized group, that communicates their prejudice about their culture or race. Racism doesn't just come in the form of the N-word.
In an article for the American Psychological Association, Columbia University psychologist Derald Wing Sue said white people are often unaware of their subconscious bias that results in this behavior.
"It's a monumental task to get white people to realize that they are delivering microaggressions, because it's scary to them," he said. "It assails their self-image of being good, moral, decent human beings to realize that maybe at an unconscious level they have biased thoughts, attitudes, and feelings that harm people of color."
Barry told Insider microaggressions are "so prevalent in society" but they are just not addressed as much as they should be.
"A lot of these things are still happening because people think, 'Oh, that wasn't racist, I just was being rude,'" he said. "But it's like, no, if you treat somebody that way because of your subconscious feelings towards a person of color, that's being microaggressive, and therefore that's being racist."
Tana apologized publicly in a string of tweets
Mongeau apologized publicly to Barry in a string of tweets on June 22. She said she was sorry for the words she used in the past and "there are no excuses" for not talking about it sooner.
She said she wanted to apologize directly for "anything I ever did to make him feel that I was being microaggressive or racist," and she would "spend a lifetime" showing that wasn't who she is. It was quite short-lived, though, as Barry says Mongeau has now gone quiet and is ignoring his messages.
Barry told Insider Mongeau sent him a DM on June 22 which read "hi." He said he asked her if she was willing to do a livestream and received no response.
On June 24 he said they spoke briefly again, where Mongeau requested a conversation between them so she could "grow" and they could "help others." However, when he followed up and asked for Mongeau's number and suggested they talk on a livestream, Barry said he was ghosted again.
—Kahlen Barry (@KahlenBarry) June 30, 2020
Barry told Insider he doesn't believe Mongeau's apology tweets were sincere because she never actually took accountability for how she behaved. Rather, she apologized if he felt a certain way and was just saying "whatever she could publicly basically to save face."
Rather than post loads of YouTube videos explaining her side of the situation, both Barry and Briella just want Mongeau to sit back and listen to them.
"We all said that we didn't want her to make a video," Barry said. "So she's not listening to Black voices at all."
He said behind the scenes Mongeau and Worona were also contacting other former members of the Trash channel to "silence" him.
"It felt like to me that [Worona] was trying to silence me more and [Mongeau] basically invalidated my feelings," said Barry. "Like I'm crazy, and I'm a liar, and all these things."
Worona did not respond to this claim or any request for comment.
Insider reached out to other former members of the channel Natalia Taylor, Chip Wells, Kiera Bridget, Anna Campbell, and Aaron Fuller, but did not hear back.
While calls for her to address the accusations about her behavior get louder, Mongeau has been partying in LA. She received criticism from commentators for attending Larray's birthday at the Hype House with 60-70 other influencers, none of whom were wearing a mask or socially distancing.
In one video on Mongeau's Instagram story, she and Erika Costell, another ex-girlfriend of Mongeau's former "husband" Jake Paul, brazenly told the camera they "don't care" about old tensions between them. However, many took the "don't care" comment to be a blatant disregard for following recommended guidelines during the pandemic, which has only led to more disappointment from Mongeau's fans.
"This is so f---ing irresponsible," tea channel Tea Spill wrote on Twitter. "It sucks when you've had huge events cancelled, birthdays, can't visit family in hospital, can't see your friend, and these 'influencers' are out here contributing to the spread of this virus. I can't believe some people look up to @tanamongeau."
—Def Noodles (@defnoodles) July 26, 2020
The YouTuber reckoning is seeing creators being called out for past behavior
Barry and Briella's stories come amid a YouTuber reckoning, where creators are being called out more seriously for their past behavior. Most notably, Shane Dawson, who was once the "King of YouTube," has found himself being associated with his past "edgy" jokes about the sexualization of animals and children, and repeatedly dressing up in blackface.
Mongeau's career has always thrived on drama and scandals, and when she messed up, it could be reduced to her personal brand of "just being Tana." Her past is full of instances where she has profited off of morally questionable behavior, such as selling t-shirts with her Coachella mugshot on them.
She benefited from her association with Dawson, who notably filmed a docu-series about the disastrous TanaCon event she attempted to set up as a rival to VidCon. She ended up ripping off thousands of fans and leaving them sunburned and heat-exhausted from queuing outside in the Anaheim sun.
Since Dawson's fall from grace that has had him criticized by everyone from commentary channels to Jada Pinkett Smith, creators like Mongeau are being held to higher standards. Her chaotic brand may no longer be the effective defense it used to be.
Commentators have accused Mongeau of performative activism
Several commentators who report on racial issues, including Cherita Gaskin from the YouTube channel Cherita Explains It All and YouTuber Samantha, who runs the channel kayemantra, have accused Mongeau of performative activism. They believe she should remove "Black Lives Matter" from her Twitter name because her actions don't align with actually being an ally.
"One thing about Tana that I feel a lot of people miss, especially the people that defend her, is that if someone is outright using the N-word, when they are that comfortable saying it, there has to be more going on," Samantha told Insider of Mongeau's history of using racial slurs. "There has to be more to unpack, but she has to be willing to unpack it."
She said Mongeau isn't acknowledging Barry's pain directly, because promising to post videos about everything isn't speaking to Black people, but to the white people in her audience.
People of color have to face racism every day of their lives, Samantha said, so Mongeau won't be the first or last person Barry and Briella are mistreated by. People of color in the influencer industry are still going to experience microaggressions, but maybe now they might feel more equipped to speak up about it.
"For them to call out someone, to literally tell their story, regardless of the reaction they might get, is really powerful," Samantha said. "I think it makes them true influencers."
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