- In 2020, Gabbie Hanna was criticized for showing an image of a murdered teenager in a YouTube video.
- Various drama channels, including one ran by Angelika Oles, criticized Hanna for showing the image.
- Hanna and Oles are now feuding, with Hanna demanding that Oles apologize for "exploiting" the death.
Gabbie Hanna is a prominent yet embattled YouTuber and Angelika Oles runs a channel that has sought to hold her accountable.
Gabbie Hanna is a YouTuber who has been popular since she got internet-famous on Vine. Hanna's comedic "Storytime" videos and collaborations with other LA-based YouTubers grew her online career, but a series of scandals and controversies has since set her back.
Currently, Hanna, who has over 5.5 million subscribers, is creating alternative pop music and is midway through a YouTube series called "Confessions of a Washed-Up YouTube Has-Been." In each video, Hanna has been addressing a years-old drama that impacted her reputation.
Last week, Hanna's series took aim at Angelika Oles, a YouTuber who reports and comments on drama involving celebrity YouTubers like Hanna. Oles has over 500,000 subscribers and has posted many videos about Hanna.
The two have feuded publicly over the past year regarding Oles' coverage. The drama took a new turn this month after Hanna posted her "Confessions" entry on Oles.
Hanna and Oles did not immediately respond to Insider's requests for comment for this article.
On January 23, 2020, Gabbie Hanna posted a video about the "e-girl" trend, which included a photo of a murdered teenager.
Hanna's feud with Oles began in January 2020.
Hanna, who is known for having controversies with other influencers, posted the video "Turning Myself into an E-Girl" on January 23, 2020. "E-girl" is a slang term used to describe active social media users who borrow their style from anime and subcultures such as "scene" and "emo."
In the video, she showed an article from Vox which included an image of Bianca Devins, a teenage Instagram influencer who was murdered in 2019. The video is still available on YouTube but is unlisted, meaning users can only access it if they have the link. The scene featuring Bianca Devins now appears to have been edited out.
Hanna faced intense backlash to the video for showing the image of Devins without context, and was accused of being insensitive and exploiting Devins' death for views and "clout."
In a February 14, 2020, apology video entitled "For Bianca," Hanna said that she was unaware of what happened to Devins and had "completely missed" the paragraph in the article referring to her death. She also said that she had been in contact with the Devins family and had apologized to them privately.
Various drama YouTubers, including Oles, reported on the backlash.
Various commentary and drama channels reported on the backlash and offered their perspective. One such YouTuber was Oles, who has been commentating on influencer drama and controversies since April 2017.
In the two videos addressing the situation, Oles said that Gabbie's video was "problematic." Oles' first video, which was titled "Will Gabbie Hanna Ever Stop," was uploaded on January 26, 2020. In this video, she accused Hanna of turning Bianca's death into an "aesthetic," noting how Hanna had skimmed past Devins' picture and discussed her as if she were still alive.
She later posted a second video entitled "Gabbie Hanna Finally Addresses Problematic Video" on February 14, 2020. Though Oles remained critical of Hanna for not directly taking accountability initially, she said that once Hanna addressed the controversy in her apology video, she "actually believed her this time."
"I appreciate the way she handled it," Oles said.
On April 20, 2021, Hanna clashed with Oles on Twitter, alleging she ignored calls from Devins' mother, Kim Devins.
In April of this year, Oles called out Hanna for dubbing Rachel Oates, a YouTuber and poetry critic, a "bully" for posting an unfavorable review of Hanna's poetry books. As the two engaged in a back-and-forth on Twitter, Hanna called herself a "storyteller." In response to this comment, Oles reshared a controversial 'Storytime' video Hanna made on March 8 2017 in which she talked about how a classmate from her high school overdosed and died.
—the common denominator (@GabbieHanna) April 20, 2021"Oh yes, a storyteller of other people's stories," Oles wrote. "Didn't the parents ask you to take this one down?" Calling Oles "a manipulative, narcissistic liar," Hanna tweeted that she apologized for the video "immediately" after speaking to her classmate's mother. Hanna later uploaded an apology video to the family of the girl who died, and both videos are still live on her channel.
"You, however, have ignored the calls of Bianca Devins' mother who has expressed the hurt you caused her," Hanna said. Oles later made a video entitled: "Gabbie Hanna is the REAL High School Bully," during which she discussed some of Hanna's previous controversies.
On June 25, 2021, Hanna called out Oles and other drama YouTubers, demanding that they be held accountable for how they reported on her e-girl video.
In June 2021, Hanna started a new series on her YouTube channel titled "Confessions of a Washed-Up YouTube has-been." In the second episode, during which Hanna commentates and reflects on her years as a YouTuber, Hanna defended her initial response to the backlash against the e-girl video.
"I did the right thing," she said. During the video, which is titled "Hold Tea Channels Accountable (Justice for Bianca Devins)," Hanna said that she was trying to avoid drawing any more attention to the situation by not addressing it publicly out of respect for Bianca's family. She said that by publicizing the issue and making their own videos about it, these channels were "exploiting" Devins.
—the common denominator (@GabbieHanna) June 25, 2021"This should have never been news," she said. She singled out Oles in the video and said that she "started it," and that her YouTube video about the issue ruined her birthday. Along with other drama channels, she demanded that Oles publicly apologize to the Devins family for talking about Devins in response to Hanna's e-girl video.
On Twitter, Oles defended her handling of the situation and accused Hanna of having an "agenda."
Tweeting in response to Hanna's video, Oles denied that she used Devins' name for clout — she wrote that Bianca's name was "not in the title, not in my thumbnail, not in my tags." She also denied that she was exploiting the situation saying, "I reported on a story that many people sent in."
—Angelika Oles (@angelikaoles) June 25, 2021She also said in the tweet that following the release of her video, nobody from the Devins family reached out to ask for an apology, which she said made her assume that "they didn't want to continue dragging this on."
In a further tweet, Oles accused Hanna of having an "agenda," writing, "Not sure why i'm the main topic of the video when there are drama channels that ACTUALLY put b**s face into their thumbnails."
On June 30, 2021, Oles said Hanna lied about Bianca Devins wanting drama channels to publicly apologize.
In a video titled "Gabbie Hanna LIED," Oles said Hanna had lied about Bianca's mother specifically wanting an apology from drama channels. She said that she had been in contact with Bianca's mother, Kim Devins, and paraphrased some of their direct messages in the video.
"She does not want to be involved in drama, she does not want public videos, she does not want people to 'at' her, message her or talk to her about petty drama," Oles said.
"She's got more important things to worry about like being a mother and changing laws," she added.
Kim Devins is currently campaigning for Bianca's Law, which aims to stop the spread of violent and graphic images on the internet.
Following the release of the video on June 30, Hanna faced a lot of backlash and even started trending on Twitter as a result.
Soon after, Oles shared a screenshot on Twitter of the purported conversation with Bianca's mother, which appears to show Kim telling Oles that she doesn't believe her content "harmed [her] family."
—Angelika Oles (@angelikaoles) June 30, 2021Kim Devins, Bianca's mother, had her say on Twitter.
Following the release of Oles' video on June 30, Kim posted a series of tweets about the situation. While she appeared to confirm some of Oles' points in her video — namely, that she didn't want a public apology — she reiterated Hanna's earlier claim that she believes that Hanna deserves apologies for being "attacked" after Devins made it clear that she wasn't upset by Hanna's use of Bianca's picture in her e-girl video.
"All of this should've ended when I said I wasn't bothered by Gabbie using B's picture," Kim wrote.
—Kim Devins (@devins_kim) June 30, 2021She also appeared to pre-empt backlash to Hanna's July 1 video, as she later tweeted: "Just so everyone knows, if @GabbieHanna [sic] posts something about Bianca, I have approved it."
Kim then reshared the link to a petition for Bianca's Law. "As Bianca herself would say, shut the f--- up and act like adults," she wrote. "Let's move on to more important things, like Bianca's Law."
The following day, on July 1, Kim called out Instagram and Facebook because they "allowed Bianca's death photos to be shared for a year on their platforms." She added: "Since everyone wants to bring up Bianca's name and defend her, let's talk about who really exploited Bianca for money."
—Kim Devins (@devins_kim) July 1, 2021July 1, 2021: Hanna responded with a second video calling Oles a "monster" and accusing her of manipulating Kim Devins.
Hanna responded with a video of her own titled "Angelika Oles Manipulated a Grieving Mother" on July 1. In the video, she said that Oles' response to her was "morally bankrupt" and dubbed Oles a "raging f---ing narcissist who once again made a child's death and a grieving mother about [her] and a way to exploit me."
Hanna also alleged that Oles tried to "manipulate the mother" because "what the mother of the murdered child said didn't fit your narrative."
"And then when she asked you not to and wouldn't give you the information that you wanted and asked you to stop the YouTube drama, you continued the YouTube drama in complete f---ing disregard of the family," she added.
—the common denominator (@GabbieHanna) June 30, 2021Suggesting that Oles was responsible for the ongoing feud, Hanna said: "You don't give a f--- about the family, you don't give a f--- about Bianca, you give a f--- about me."
Hanna also said in the video that when she reached out to Kim Devins, she told Hanna that she didn't do anything wrong.
"I made a video on behalf of Kim Devins, approved by Kim Devins, encouraged by Kim Devins, because when she put out a message in February, she was f--ing ignored," she added.
Hanna also shared further snippets of her conversation with Kim on Twitter, where she wrote that according to Devins, Oles should apologize to Hanna rather than her.
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