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submitted 5 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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."

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[-] [email protected] 22 points 4 days ago

Holy fuck, I loved SaveAFox, what the hell is wrong with people 😭🤮

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[-] [email protected] 200 points 5 days ago

How hollow that must feel. Not getting any justice or retribution.

And the disgusting people to blame are probably praising themselves, now.

RIP

[-] [email protected] 82 points 5 days ago

From my cursory glance, yes, they are

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[-] [email protected] 65 points 5 days ago

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.

[-] [email protected] 38 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

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.

[-] [email protected] 26 points 5 days ago

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.

[-] [email protected] 21 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

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.

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[-] [email protected] 68 points 5 days ago

Why the fuck would you harass someone for saving foxes? Is it because she's a woman?

[-] [email protected] 28 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

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.

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[-] [email protected] 55 points 5 days ago

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.

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[-] [email protected] 100 points 5 days ago

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.

[-] [email protected] 32 points 5 days ago

My wife told me about this last night, supposedly the majority of the abuse came from OTHER FUCKONG RESCUERS!!!!

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[-] [email protected] 134 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

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

[-] [email protected] 113 points 5 days ago

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.

[-] [email protected] 64 points 5 days ago

Apparently there are 'snark' (what the hell kinda name for a genre is that?) pages on Reddit for all sorts of niche stuff

[-] [email protected] 60 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

There's snark pages on lemmy too, some of them moved here after getting kicked off Reddit.

[-] [email protected] 57 points 5 days ago

Lol at Snarky Puppy getting caught up in that search result.

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[-] [email protected] 43 points 5 days ago

Man, my life is kinda sad, but at least it's not "join a community specifically to hate on stuff" sad. What hosers.

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[-] [email protected] 38 points 4 days ago

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.

[-] [email protected] 39 points 4 days ago

I believe she had BPD as well, which in itself often gets you targeted harassment online while also making you extremely sensitive to said harassment.

[-] [email protected] 19 points 4 days ago

I don't know her at all - is that BPD diagnosis something confirmed, thet she shared and all?

I have terribly mixed feelings about people with BPD.

On one side, lots of empathy: they often feel miserable and (not always, but) very often their BPD is the result of trauma or abuse.

On the other, and having lived it for a decade and a half: they can make the lives of people in their surroundings an absolute abominable horror-movie type of nightmare.

It's actually treatable but not all people with BPD seek treatment, it's a tough one.

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[-] [email protected] 36 points 5 days ago

As a long time supporter of SaveAFox, it's hard to really even process this. I am sure being an online personality to try and fundraise isn't easy, but never did I dream that there was such a degree of hate lobbed at Mikayla that she'd decide to end her own life. Someone so kind and devoted to the lives of creatures who are constantly exploited and cannot save themselves. It's just despicable, and all I can really hope for is that Mikayla's mission continues on in spite of such significant loss.

[-] [email protected] 87 points 5 days ago

Why the hell would anyone feel any need to harass someone like this? Shit like this is never justified, but once in a while I can understand their motivations. Not this. RIP, she was pretty cool.

[-] [email protected] 58 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Because it works.

kiwifarms has been doing this en masse for over a decade and others predated that.

It is gauche to link to it considering this is the umpteenth fucking person murdered by angry and hateful bastards. But Patrick Klepek, someone who has been targeted by these orgs for over a decade, wrote about this in the context of the emulator developer Near being murdered by kiwi farms et al a few years back https://www.vice.com/en/article/what-i-learned-from-near-an-emulation-legend-and-real-person/

He talked about it more on the Waypoint (now Remap) podcast, but it is very much an open secret that these hate campaigns are ongoing with the explicit goal of murdering their target (it is not fucking suicide if you were tormented until you picked up the gun). And how even fellow victims who usually will advocate for this kind of stuff are wary of raising their voices because they or their partner are semi regularly approached, in person, by these bastards.

My hope, as always, is that this will be the last time. That this will lead to focused efforts by those with platforms to speak out. The reality is that the mid tier "creators" will probably say something and give the trite "If you or someone you know is in crisis, please call the national suicide prevention lifeline". Or, well, these days "the national slip and slide prevention lifeline" because gotta stay fucking monetized. And then they'll remain silent. All while the biggies choose to stay fucking silent out of concerns of losing people in their audience who are part of those hate campaigns.


To be clear, I do not fault the people who are under attack and wary of reminding those murderers they exist. I specifically linked to Patrick's post because he and the (now Remap) crew did an amazing job of explaining exactly what goes into this and how painful it is and why they are genuinely afraid to speak up.

I do very much fault the ludwigs and charlies of the world who will mention this for clicks and then never care again. And if the truly massive outlets were to speak out against this kind of harassment and reach out to the victims? Suddenly youtube and twitch and reddit and the like would care and start moderating this shit rather than laughing that kotaku in action and the like are so popular and only occasionally link to where the REAL hate and doxxing happens.

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[-] [email protected] 60 points 5 days ago

They are filled with hate, because they are deeply insecure, deeply afraid, and the current political and social climate tells them that this is not only an acceptable way to deal with those feelings, but encourages them to deal with those feelings in this manner.

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[-] [email protected] 67 points 5 days ago

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.

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[-] [email protected] 60 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

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.

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[-] [email protected] 53 points 5 days ago

Tragic.

But listen, no one needs YouTube that bad. If you’re having issues because of it get off of it. It’s not real anyway. (YouTube, that is. People and foxes are, of course)

[-] [email protected] 54 points 5 days ago

That advice is basically, don't work in your chosen vocation. Running animal rehabilitation is not free, you need some sort of source of funding.

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[-] [email protected] 9 points 4 days ago

I remember watching some fox channels with a lot of rescue foxes including one called Finnegan. Was that her? So sad that anyone would harass somebody like that.

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[-] [email protected] 19 points 4 days ago

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.

[-] [email protected] 13 points 4 days ago

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

[-] [email protected] 12 points 4 days ago

Lemmy people are weird. Can you link/show me this person?

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[-] [email protected] 39 points 5 days ago

The human race makes me really sick on a daily basis these days

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[-] [email protected] 44 points 5 days ago

This is a good reason to avoid getting Internet famous. The Internet is full of trolls, and you have to be prepared for it or it'll destroy you. It doesn't matter what content you're famous for, pieces of shit will try to tear you down just for the fun of it.

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this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2025
776 points (97.8% liked)

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