Person #1’s Statement
This is my experience with Vinny Vinesauce. I want to preface this by saying that this statement serves to caution any other person who was or currently is involved with him sexually. In this statement the main points of discussion are emails that were exchanged, snapchat communications, the two separate occasions we had sex in person, an audio recording of our final conversation, the STD he gave me, the way he had me keep everything a secret, his long term silencing tactics, and my final thoughts and further explanations. In order to fully understand the experience I had, it’s necessary to read every part and listen to the audio or read the transcript of it.
Intro
I started out watching the uploads of Vinny’s streams on youtube in 2016. Eventually I started watching live and participated in chat. The first time I met Vinny in person was at a convention in 2017, when I was in my very early 20s and he was over a decade older than me. I first emailed him in early 2018, and I asked for advice on starting a career in the same sort of fields he has experience in. It became mutually flirtatious — initiated by him — after only a few exchanges. He then suggested we talk on snapchat. Our first time having sex in person was at a convention several months after our online exchanges in 2018. Our second time was in early 2019, at his house. He told me to keep everything a secret, things got weird, and he gave me HPV.
Emails
Our emails were strictly friendly and professional at the start. After he responded to my first email where I asked for advice about a similar career, two weeks later he asked me for a larger version of a drawing I made. When the nature of our exchanges became flirtatious, he told me in the very same message to keep it a "secret" and not to tell anyone, which I pictured below. I had recently left a long-term relationship, so the interest from him felt nice. The blacked out text hides identifying information.
For the sake of transparency, this is my reply:
At the very end of my statement, I explain the reasoning behind my behavior.
The next two emails:
The first is the reply to my reply, and the second is what he sent to me unprompted two weeks later after seeing selfies I posted on twitter. The first time he explicitly asks to keep it between us:
He asked me if I’ve ever taken more “risque” pictures, I tell him I have and then ask if he does. He said yes, but only in private like on snapchat. Again, he asks to keep this a secret. I felt encouraged by the “see more” so I sent him a censored picture of myself with my shirt rolled up. His response to it:
I reply with my snap name and our communications move there.
Snapchat
I included a picture of our saved chat messages which shows his name. The blacked out images he sent me in early 2020 are of emails from someone who was in his twitch chat.
With him using the name Deku Scrub, we snapped back and forth. He asked me if he could save my pictures. I told him yes and he did. When I asked if I could save his too, he said no. His desire for privacy seemed justifiable to me at the time because he implied the risk he was taking, but that desire now seems to run parallel with the screenshots regarding his willingness to publicly share nudes, as can be seen in Person #2’s story. If you know how snapchat works, you know that messages are deleted right after viewing, and he didn’t want me saving any messages he sent me in chat, which means no snapchat screenshots. I know he wouldn’t have felt comfortable with changing the setting to have messages expire after 24 hours, so I never asked. We got to know each other a little before the first exchange of pictures and videos. He asked me how old I was and if I was single. He asked if I had a lot of privacy and if I got along with my parents. He then said he’d like to keep things “super casual”, and I was fine with keeping emotions out of it.
Everything felt fun and exciting at first, but much later on, it felt like I had to keep the secrecy just to protect him. A day or so after I sent him that first picture through email, before we moved to snapchat, he emailed me about song lyrics I posted on twitter because he thought they were related to our emails.
From then on he would occasionally message me about things I posted on social media. I thought it was friendly at first and it made it feel like he cared, but as time went on he became more paranoid in his messages and it began to feel like he was monitoring me since he didn’t even follow me. I remember him telling me how paranoid he felt during the Projared situation while it was happening in 2019. (At the time, he told me he actually stopped doing this stuff with fans because of that.) During all of this he would mention other people he was involved with in the past through vague descriptions of their location or behavior but he never mentioned any names. He still seemed like a nice but sad person to me at the time when he said these things, so I genuinely thought that he just so happened to keep accidentally getting involved with “crazy” people.
2018, our first time having sex in person:
I stayed overnight at a hotel for a convention. Vinny and I had not talked about meeting up there at all. I posted a few pictures I took of the place on snap. I’d taken a liking to snapchat and would regularly post things for my other friends to see. Vinny looked at these, and asked if I was at the hotel. I told him yes, and he said that we should hang out after he eats. He told me the number of his hotel room and I went up there around 12am. We had a casual conversation, but slightly nervous on my end because we both knew why I was there and I wasn't sure how he was going to initiate it. Unprompted, he gave me money to cover my meal, saying he didn’t want me to have to worry about the cost of food. Vinny asked how it was getting to the hotel, and I told him how my mother was nervous because I’ve never stayed at a place completely by myself overnight before. He responded by asking if I told her I was going to have someone older looking after me. Again, we never discussed hanging out at the convention previously. He eventually invited me onto his bed and we cuddled. It started to go somewhere and we both got undressed. While he's getting undressed, he asked me something that struck me as a little weird, but I dismissed it: "I'm not going to hurt you if I do this, right? Because sometimes you just touch someone's boobs and you hurt them." This reads in text as him implying he didn’t want to hurt me physically, but based on our previous interactions and the ways he would talk about other women having their feelings hurt, I understood him to mean he didn’t want me getting upset if I interpreted it as anything more than his definition of casual sex. I assured him that I wouldn’t be hurt by just having sex. Looking back at this question, it now feels like a clear hint at his behavior patterns towards others regarding sex but I didn’t pick up on it at the time. For someone so eager to share information about his and his friends' personal lives, I didn't think that it was with malicious intent. I interpreted it as him trying to share something personal with me and confiding in me, despite it sounding like a mean-spirited joke. He had confided in me about similar things before anyway. My thoughts whenever he would bring up previous people were “sure, someone could get their feelings hurt if they want a relationship and he doesn't, but he also said from the very beginning that us doing this kind of stuff would be very casual. I'm sure he's told this to everyone else he's been with too. So, if someone is that upfront, how could people be getting hurt because of it? There has to be some context I'm missing.”
That night, he was adamant about using a condom. He said it was important to him. That made me trust him a lot. During it, he said “we’re being so bad right now”. At the time his remark felt benign but in retrospect, it stands out as another weird thing to say.
After we had sex, he said he was going to feel guilty. I tried to reassure him that he shouldn’t. Before I left, he told me to act like we didn't know each other on the con floor. I was fine with that. I saw him the next day and ignored him as requested, but he approached me and hugged me, and asked if I slept alright. That felt confusing. I didn’t hang around him during the convention much at all after that. A day after the convention, he messaged me to “remind me” that I’m a “good egg”. He liked to message me and say things like this after we did stuff.
After that convention, I got tested for STDs and I was clean. I didn’t have sex with anyone else during that time. Vinny was my second sexual partner. My first sexual partner was a long term romantic relationship that ended shortly before we started talking. He knew this about me pretty much from the start of us talking.
Early 2019, our second time having sex in person:
Shortly after we started communicating through snapchat, he expressed his interest in me coming to New York to see him. I told him I wasn’t sure how I’d get there. After our time at the convention, he asked me again. I wanted to, so I figured it out. I asked him if it was alright for me to take pictures of the city, to which he said yes, but not of the ferry because he didn’t want anyone knowing I was going to Staten Island. After picking me up, Vinny said that he would offer to let me stay the night at his house, but I couldn’t because he has trouble sleeping when people stay over. It caught me off guard because the thought of staying the night never crossed my mind. He later gave me money for the travel expenses. We ate at a restaurant near his house and despite just sitting and talking, he looked paranoid the whole time. He was looking around the room a lot and looking at the door, like he was making sure he didn’t see anyone he knew. He mentioned to me that he knows my full name because it was connected to an email I had used to fill out a google form connected to his stream. He paid for dinner. We go back to his house after. Vinny asks me if I’m safe. I tell him I’m on birth control and clean. He suggests we don’t use a condom. I think about it and decide that he’s taking a huge risk with me considering who he is, and if someone had any doubts that they were safe, or they had unprotected sex and didn’t get tested after, they wouldn’t suggest not using protection. And because he used one the first time with me and reassured me that being careful is important to him, I figured he knew what he was doing. So I trusted him and we didn’t use a condom.
After we have sex and we’re laying down together, Vinny begins bringing up people he knows and he gossips to me about them. A lot of people are jealous of his status as the most popular streamer within the group he says. He tells me about someone he works with who supposedly was being creepy towards women, but then he immediately says he’s not sure why he told me that. He tells me about someone he used to be really close friends with until recently and the reasons why they stopped being friends. In his car on the way to the restaurant a few hours earlier, he told me intimate life and romantic relationship details about someone who we both know, and the reasons why this person was no longer in a relationship. He likes to talk about people a lot. I’ve been informed of some incredibly personal life details of countless people I’ve never talked to, thanks to Vinny. It felt especially uncomfortable when it was about people I knew and saw in a positive light because I felt like I didn’t need to know their personal business. These conversations felt very one-sided, like he was venting to me. I didn’t want to interrupt him because he was confiding in me. I couldn’t understand why he would talk that way about people he’s supposedly close with. I still don’t understand.
After we laid in bed for a while, it was getting late and he wanted to stream, so he drove me to the station to go home. He made casual conversation with me. He told me the history of the area we were in. He told me he likes the combination of dark hair and light skin, like how he has. He asked if my parents are still together. Before I left, he kissed me goodbye. After this, we went from talking several times a week to going weeks between contact.
Audio
We didn’t do anything else after that, but he continued to compliment my appearance in messages and voice calls. We did voice calls occasionally. As a way to check in and catch up. The conversations were similar, the topic of his friends and colleagues, how and what he’s doing, what I’m up to, streaming, and things happening in his chat or weird emails. In some of these calls he really leaned into complimenting my body. It was flattering until a significant amount of time passed since we last met up. During our final few calls, it felt tiring to be told that I could make so much money as a facecam streamer with my “bomb ass titties”. I played along while hinting that it’s not really something I’d want to do for a variety of reasons. He seemed so enthused at the thought of me becoming a streamer.
Our final call was intense and the only time I ever put a bit of pressure on him. I was hurting a lot and struggling with wanting to come forward with my story, so I recorded just in case I decided to go through with it. We both live in one-party consent states with regard to voice calls. I brought up difficult topics, and he talks about them in this recording. We talked about similar topics in the call before this one and several others. This conversation was in February of 2021. My voice has been scrambled, and as many parts as possible where I spoke at length were cut from the recording for the sake of brevity and privacy.
Audio transcription with additional comments and context:
Me: Speaking of vaccines, have you ever gotten the one for HPV yet since we talked about that stuff?
Vinny: No. I haven’t.
Vinny: We didn’t- we didn’t use protection- and that was, like, kind of both of our fault and I’ll even take the credit for that one. Y’know, like I’m- I will apologize again for that, um, I should’ve been more like ‘Okay listen, we should, y’know, we should do this’, and we then- It’s just um, not an easy decision to make when you’re both- like, naked.
No, it is an easy decision. People make that decision all the time. And like I said, he asked me if I was safe. I was on birth control and I also had tests for STDs after the first time when we used a condom, and I was completely clean. I had a pap smear done after the end of the long term relationship mentioned earlier, and there were no abnormalities. I didn't have sex with anyone else between these two times. So yes, I was safe. I trusted him to be too. He made it seem like he was safe. If there was any doubt in his mind that he was not also safe, or he had unprotected sex, he shouldn't have even proposed that we not use a condom.
Vinny: And I have to say it is very flattering to me that you still want to talk to me like, after all the stuff and y’know, everything that goes on and- the STD put a damper on the whole thing.
Vinny: You didn’t get, um… weird with me. You were never like, overly clingy. But my limit is so low, that I just kinda, y’know I just back away. And then y’know someone else shows me interest and then I start thinking about that.
Vinny: Y’know it does hurt to go back and think about if I- y’know, upset you or hurt you or anyone in general because that was never my intent, ever? But it just kinda happens that way, and part of it is the status thing of the, y’know, being the streamer, and the worst part is I still don’t feel that way. You know how fucking celebrity worship culture can be. You write a couple good songs and suddenly you have the answer to everything.
Vinny: It’s been a slow process but let’s just say there’s a lot of stuff that makes me not happy about myself. Where… y’know it seems perfectly fine, and it’s perfectly consensual, and then it turns into a huge source of guilt. And so I just want to get past that in my life.
Vinny: I mean the attraction like I said was definitely real. And- y’know when I saw you at that first convention, that was- y’know it was there immediately. Um, but I mean the conversation about whether or not what we did was appropriate, I don’t think it’s anybody’s business except ours. The STD thing was so fucking stupid and I-I beat myself about that because it’s like ‘well how? Y’know, how did that happen?’ I don’t- I don’t know how that happened. And I feel bad it was to a nice person? That it happened to you? It’s like, so that bothers me. But um.
“[It’s not] anybody’s business except ours.”
Vinny: Like, there are things that I have regrets about and I think about that make me upset and in some ways sex is a way to forget about it. But at the same time, it doesn’t make it feel any better if someone you like pushes you away, or like hides a bit, and that’s just who I am. Add to that, that you’re a member of like, a community or you’re watching my streams and it just becomes more complicated. So- not good. Um, I get it. I do.
Vinny: I’ll be honest, don’t take this the wrong way, I am- I feel shame- about the fact that I fucked fans. There’s a great deal of shame. That I have- sometimes it keeps me up at night and I’m not happy about myself.
Me: Mhm.
Vinny: So I want you to be aware that that is not anything to do with you on a personal level. It’s- the aspect that I could lose my career, or people view me a certain way. Ross views me a certain way. How would he view me if he knew? Even though he’s fucked fans too. [laughs]
Me: Oh, spicy.
Vinny: Everyone has. Dude, when he and Holly broke up, y’know he went through a hard time. Um, Danny. Y’know from the Game Grumps. Uh, but the point is this is something I think a lot of people do because it is, y’know such a new medium and, y’know, when a video game nerd who’s not popular gets famous on the internet, that’s not an easy thing- Like no [sighs] like there’s no rule book. Um.
These are the kind of things Vinny says about his friends as a way to seem closer to the people he gets involved with. Note the tonal whiplash from before and after he mentions Ross. He goes from seemingly expressing remorse, to almost joking about it and then rationalizing it.
Vinny: I can promise you that never in a conversation casually with any other person has it randomly popped up. Like ‘oh, that person? Yeah I fucked that person.’ Or like ‘oh yeah, no we talk.’ That’s the first way to fucking ruin your career, a., and b. I don’t like people knowing my business, and c. when people do connect dots or whenever there’s some weird accusation, I don’t sleep. I don’t eat. I get really fucked up. So, uh yeah, that wouldn’t come from me.
Me: I mean, I-I know I’m not the only person you did stuff with. I know. I’m not dumb. But…
Vinny: Yeah.
Me: I feel like it could be helpful for you to have a similar conversation just so you feel more at ease and less bad about it. Y’know?
Vinny: May I ask with whom?
Me: Um, I know [redacted].
Vinny: Well-
Me: I know she would message me sometimes like ‘hey, has Vinny talked to you? Cuz he stopped talking to me.’ And I didn’t really give her an answer. Just afraid of her messaging me again.
Vinny: I mean if she does, I guess you have the option of not responding, but uh. Or you can just say we haven’t spoke. ‘Yeah me and Vin don’t really- y’know, he’s a good dude, we don’t really- we’ve gone our separate ways.’ Um, whatever you think is best. I don’t know. But um, I plan on just kinda telling her that ‘listen, I’m in a- I’m trying to be in a different place. And I’m sorry that I wasn’t able to be more of whatever you want me to be.’ I just think she’s a very lonely weird person that is going through tough times. She got a little bit of happiness because the favorite streamer dude that’s good-looking got in touch with her. I get how that can be a psychological thing. Because this is pretty much what she told me. [laughs] I get it. But, y’know I can’t have her- like, we talk once every three months maybe, but I-I just can’t really have her digging into my life and I really do not plan on hanging out with her or anything. I would prefer if she just kind of found a boyfriend or something and moved on.
For context, this is a person in a different country that contacted me initially and told me she was involved with Vinny. Her reason for contacting me was because she thought he and I were also involved, but I never explicitly stated whether we were or not. Still, she was only ever nice to me. She accepted when I wouldn’t answer a question or I told her I didn’t want to say. Reading the way she told me how he and her used to be close and share a lot, and how he barely talks to her now made me sad. The “conversation” I mentioned was the conversation we were having: him explaining why he’s the way he is. He’d talk about how guilty and paranoid he felt all the time, so I wondered if trying to explain himself to everyone would help him and the other women feel better (I now see that these explanations are just refusal of personal responsibility and aren’t sincere). I spoke more about the other woman that messaged me to see what he would say about her. Personal information about her life that he shared with me was cut. He’s known since 2019 that she and I had contact with each other, but not because I freely told him.
Vinny: And the thing about that is, I’m a dumbass guy. And I made stupid decisions where, I was at my lowest point, many times, I would open up my email and suddenly here’s this girl who’s interested in me with similar interests, and then suddenly here’s this really nice picture. And- I have a hard time with that because I couldn’t refuse that for a while. That’s why I’m getting my emails completely vetted, because [sighs] I’ll be honest and it sounds kinda lame but I don’t trust myself.
Vinny: So, yeah I fucked around a little bit but it’s not anyone’s business. The only reason it’s people’s business is because y’know I’m more public online, and it just feels bad. Honestly, she doesn’t deserve that information, because when you have an interpersonal relationship with another human being, usually the best way to have that is to talk to them.
Knowing now of several people who he “fucked around” with that still don’t feel closure for how he behaved towards them 5+ years ago, him saying “a little bit” feels like a downplay. He also drives home the fact that he thinks this stuff isn’t anyone else’s business and that he should be the only one to talk to about it.
Vinny: So I guess your best bet maybe is just to say, y’know we kinda just don’t talk. We’re just like, y’know.
Y’know.
HPV
I talked to Vinny during the summer of 2020 about getting HPV from him, days after I found out about it. I had no visible symptoms, so I had no idea. I didn’t get tested right after our second time because I wasn’t having sex with anyone, and I trusted him. I hadn’t slept with anyone in between those two times with him. When the results for my pap smear came back with “abnormal changes likely due to human papillomavirus” I started sobbing. I had trusted him. I pushed aside how upset I was and I provided him with information on what HPV is because he said he didn’t know what it was, and I suggested what he should do about it. I said he should tell previous sexual partners, and get vaccinated for it like I did when I was a teenager, because otherwise there's nothing else that can really be done about it besides letting it run its course while monitoring it. The vaccine obviously didn't protect against this specific strain but it's the bare minimum you can do for your sexual partners if you're having unprotected sex. He said he’s only had unprotected sex with 3 people including me within the past few years. He said it’s not something he does often. (Did he have unprotected sex with anyone reading this right now? What if it adds up to more than 3?) He sounded reluctant to tell any of the previous sexual partners he mentioned. He told me that one completely disappeared from the internet and changed her number so there was no way to contact her. He said that he would try to tell the other person, but it didn’t seem convincing. I can only hope he was being true with his words when he said that he didn’t know he had it, and he wasn’t having sex with anyone at the time of me telling him. If he had sex with anyone after mid-summer 2020 when I told him, and didn’t tell the person(s) he had sex with about the STD, I hope he at least had the courtesy to use protection and take some precautions.
I got a biopsy done to test if the spot my doctor found on my uterus was a cause for concern. It was scary having to wait so long to get it too because of how booked my gynecologist was. During that time, I dealt with the stress of the situation on my own because Vinny said to me before that I can't really lean on him too much because he has his own stuff that he's dealing with. Which, with any other friend would be fine, but remember that he specifically told me not to tell anyone about us and to keep the nature of our relationship a "secret”. Without the context of who I got the STD from, how it happened, and his behavior towards me throughout all of this, there was no way I would have been able to get across to someone just how much it was affecting me. Getting an STD after being so trusting with my decision-making felt like a loss of my bodily autonomy. I felt and still feel like I’m unable to date or have sex with anyone, because the conversation of “I have an STD” would be stressful to have after spending the time to get to know someone, and it would understandably be a deal breaker for a lot of people. Seeing his face and videos everywhere online made me feel worse. All I wanted was to unburden myself by talking to another person about all of this, but I knew I wasn’t allowed. I was truly alone.
Silencing Tactics
My desire to talk to people about it was never intended as a brag, but instead I desperately wanted someone else to know so they could understand exactly how I was feeling. It was difficult to answer a “how are you doing” question when I had to hide a significant part of my life. Even with weeks of no contact with him, I felt an invisible pressure to remain silent. The times he would ask me if something I posted was about him. Nearly every time when Vinny and I did voice calls, the topic of whether or not either of us told anyone came up. How embarrassing it felt to have to dance around the facts and play dumb regarding him with people who we were mutually familiar with, because even they can’t know. A friend of Vinny’s who knew me actually reached out to me about something I posted where I said there was something bothering me that I couldn’t talk about. This friend of his told me that if anyone was treating me unfairly and making me keep silent about it, I should tell someone. They said they were seeing a lot of “disgusting” things online happening at the time. I told them that the post was because of some other thing because it technically was. But that inability to tell anyone was still a result of my situation with Vinny. I think about those messages a lot and I still wonder what would have happened if I did tell that person. Vinny told me once that in conversation with someone who we both know, the topic of me came up and he acted like he didn’t know me personally at all, as a way of demonstrating to me how well he was keeping our secret. Even before the STD, things he would say to me or things he would do made me feel weird about him. I could tell someone about it and just leave his identity as “a friend” but part of the missing context is that I would have to see things about him online constantly which would remind me of those things he’s said and done.
Recently, Vinny told me that he doesn’t like my friends and implied that I shouldn’t be friends with them, and then talked about why he disliked them. It always seemed like as soon as he knew I was talking with someone he knew of, he had to tell me all the things he saw wrong with that person. This felt very isolating to me. Knowing that he would criticize the people I associated with made me feel embarrassed and ashamed.
He talked about and made examples of other people that he was sexually involved with at various points. He warned me of a woman he followed on instagram who got harassed because he followed her, so he had to unfollow her. No one could have any idea that we talk, or else I’ll get harrassed like she did. Vinny mentioned things women said to him that he found dumb and funny. According to him, they would sometimes ask if he wrote songs about them after they were involved. I laughed with him at the time, but it feels mean-spirited now considering that they may have felt like they had a genuine friendship with him and there he was mocking them. He would mention a woman by location, like the “crazy girl from Australia”. In the audio, he wishes a woman who clearly likes him a lot would “find a boyfriend and move on” instead of giving her the respect she deserves by telling her that he doesn’t want to talk to her anymore, which would allow her to move on. There were even cases of women he was involved with finding out about other women he was involved with and them going after each other because of it. Hearing him talk about these women like this was enough for me to want to behave and be on his good side. I felt I had to say things I knew he wanted to hear, or else he’d talk about me like that to someone else. I went against or didn’t speak my own beliefs on specific topics when I would talk to him.
Whenever something was happening in Vinny’s life that was a result of him being in the public eye, such as someone trying to call him out or denounce him, he was always stressed and paranoid about it. He told me about the circle of friends he has that would settle things that challenged him without Vinny himself needing to see the fine details because he didn’t want to deal with situations like that anymore. When he first told me about this circle, I was at a point where I was beginning to have weird feelings about him and our friendship, so hearing that this was happening scared me. I never wanted to cross him in any way. Coupled with the fact that he knows my full name and address, it’s intimidating. He’s talked to me before about people in his community and I was surprised to hear that he knew of them. Any sort of small thing going on eventually made its way back to him. I had no idea who I could trust because he had so many people — openly and discretely — willing to defend him and report to him about anyone. For a few years, I was a discrete ally without really understanding why I was doing it. I incidentally became a person that helped silence another woman.
Vinny emotionally harmed people and has openly acknowledged to me that he has, even joking about other people's hurt feelings a few times, or complimenting me by saying I'm "not crazy like the others" or I haven't been "weird" or “clingy” to him because of his communication habits, once again, "like the others". And from screenshots in Person #2 and #4’s stories, he’s done a lot more than that. He even admits in the audio above that he has a problem not being able to control himself when it comes to sex and women that he finds attractive. The consensus from everyone I know who was involved with him at some point (I know of 5 now) who told me about it says that he grows cold towards them after sex and/or pictures, while checking up on and monitoring them to make sure they’re still being silent about it, disguised as caring. To anyone else that has this type of experience with him: does that sound familiar? My experience is slightly different because of certain situations arising that warranted us to speak more frequently, but the general pattern is very much the same. He'll shower me with compliments and confide in me, making me second guess myself and my opinion of him, then he'll drop off just long enough as to where I'm once again thinking about how weird this situation is, and then return with reassurance. It felt so lonely because there were some things I could only talk to him about, because speaking to others about them could have potentially drawn eyes in my direction and that would have exposed the secret he asked me to keep under wraps for the safety of his career and reputation. Considering that, it's kind of funny how we ended up here I guess.
Final Thoughts
I used to think it was fine for big content creators to have sex with fans, no strings attached. I used to rationalize it as two adults making a decision. I was young, just out of my first real relationship, and this was an exciting thing that was the ultimate test of making an “adult” decision: flirting and eventual sex with a much older guy that was coming on to me. My opinion didn’t change until the mask was removed and I experienced the weirdness, silencing, and isolation of it first-hand, along with the STD that currently impacts my ability to date people. I used to be so openly against outing creators that did this, but I now realize there is nuance to these situations, and so much can go on behind the scenes. Sometimes, it’s not just cut-and-dry casual sex. Whenever someone (usually another woman) denounced Vinny, and I saw it or it was sent to me directly, I went right to him about it and tattled on them. I don’t know why I felt the responsibility to do this. It’s upsetting to see people prop Vinny up as infallible and wholesome. Vinny reveals the side he wants to reveal to people. I never stepped on his toes or challenged him in any way, so I never saw the side he showed in Person #4’s emails and Person #2’s instagram dms. It was shocking to read. I’ve only ever experienced horny Vinny, sad Vinny, and gossipy Vinny. The language vengeful Vinny uses is scary, especially when you know how to fully interpret that type of language.
Vinny blamed hook-up culture as a reason for his behavior, but keeping secrets is not casual. Insisting on staying silent about the “hook-up” to protect his career and reputation is not casual. Having venting sessions that make me feel like a therapist is not casual. Giving me money and offering to buy me things is not casual. Insinuating who I should and shouldn’t be friends with is not casual. Feeling the responsibility to protect him is not casual. Worrying about what would happen if I told anyone about who exactly gave me an STD is not casual. If my experience matches the experiences of the “crazy” and “weird” people he’s been involved with, it’s no wonder why they feel hurt. He calls them friends and tries minimally to maintain these “friendships” in hopes that no one talks about their contact together. He gives them confusing signals and becomes upset if someone misinterprets them as anything other than his narrow definition of casual, and he makes it so there’s no one to talk to about it besides him. He says if they have a problem regarding him, they can talk to him (as long as it’s not too much contact) as a way to reel them back in so they don’t talk to anyone else about it. Those other women probably felt like they had a friend in him too, until they realized they didn’t.
The problem isn’t having consensual sex with adult women. I wouldn’t be sitting here writing this if that was the case. The problems are having consensual sex with adult women who look up to him and most likely would not refuse the interest, facilitating a communication style that makes them feel close via oversharing, disguising niceties as caring so they’re more likely to defend him afterwards, making sure they keep the secret through intimidation tactics, saying things about his emotional state that would garner their sympathy to keep them from criticizing him, checking up on their known social media accounts, not bothering to consider or willfully ignoring their physical wellbeing and the consequences of suggesting unprotected sex, giving excuses and lying for years when confronted about these behaviors, negatively talking about those women while eagerly sharing sensitive information about their personal lives, and admitting that he knows what he’s doing is wrong but doing little to nothing to change his behavior, despite years of claiming the contrary. There were many things that happened that I’m not able to show for a variety of reasons. One reason for that is to protect the identities of others either involved with him like I was or associated with him. Another reason is that a lot of the things he’s said have been in person or in voice calls over several years. Yet another reason is that Vinny was extremely careful and secretive so getting together tangible evidence was difficult. Finally, I didn’t consider taking screenshots and recordings when these things were happening early on, because I was made to feel like we were friends and it was “our normal” when it was happening.
Doing this doesn’t feel good. I feel a deep sadness that I can’t describe. I really tried to push everything aside and force myself to think positively of him. I wanted him to prove that maybe he’s just bad at expressing genuine remorse. I wanted to be able to confide in him regarding the sexual health issues, but his responses always felt rehearsed and like I was a bother to him. We were never really friends like he said we were. Even though I still care about him in some way, I know that there are more people than just me who have experienced this same treatment from Vinny, including those who aren’t able to come forward right now. I need to consider those people in my decision to speak about this. I’ve tried ignoring the ways this whole thing made me feel but there are constant reminders everywhere I look. He’s very integrated into gaming spaces and it’s inescapable. There’s still so much missing from this statement of mine too. Without experiencing it first-hand, I don’t think anyone could fully understand the impact everything had on me and what it feels like to be surrounded by people, yet so emotionally isolated. I don’t expect many people on the outside to believe this statement. This primarily is for anyone else that Vinny has done this to. Included in this are details that only viewers he’s been involved with and silenced in a similar way could recognize as being undeniably true. If anyone who watched Vinny’s content is reading this, and you had sex with him — no matter how much time has passed — get tested and break any contact. It doesn’t matter how rational-minded you think you are, step back and reflect on how he behaves and if you notice things he says or does that make you second guess yourself, or make you feel intimidated, upset, or uncomfortable. Don’t allow someone to intimidate, guilt, or pressure you into silence.
Person #2’s Statement
Introduction
In 2013 I became a huge fan of vinesauce. I was an active member in the community and frequently chatted with other community members. In early 2015 I bought merch. I was so excited that I tweeted a picture of myself wearing it. Shortly after, I found Vinny on Skype and added him. I didn’t expect him to accept the request. He added me back and told me he recognized me from the picture I tweeted. He asked me how old I was, I told him I was 20 years old and very quickly the conversation became sexual. I was a huge fan of his, and I didn’t want to refuse the attention he was showing me. He suggested that I should come to New York to “show me around,” but I declined his offer so we only interacted online.
Initial Contact
The exchange between us continued for a few weeks. During this time, a lot had been happening in my life. I was in a vulnerable state, which he was aware of after multiple personal conversations. He added me on Snapchat and requested videos and nudes of myself, which I sent him. He would be very distant after each “session”, telling me he had attachment issues, but he enjoyed me because I was “not like the other girls he fooled around with”. He frequently bashed the other fans he was involved with. He bashed the other streamers he worked with. When another streamer from the Vinesauce community followed me and interacted with me on Twitter, Vinny told me how “creepy” this specific person was to girls and how that streamer sent unsolicited pictures to his female viewers. This other streamer that Vinny mentioned as “creepy” was never anything but respectful and kind to me. Vinny once accused me of taking pictures and videos of him while we were on cam. I told him I would never even think of doing that and he told me he was glad because this “HAD” to remain a secret. This went on until he stopped all communication. The one time I tried to reach out to him to ask if he was upset with me, I never got a reply. I didn’t understand what I did wrong. My self esteem was completely crushed, but I went on with my life and never said anything because I didn’t want to seem like “one of those crazy girls”.
Afterwards
In mid 2016, I started speaking to someone who was in the same situation as me. Not even a day later, he noticed her and I had become friends on social media and he thought it was appropriate to message me after a year without any contact, and tell me not to speak to her because she was “crazy”. He told me that he believed her and I were planning to ruin his career. I assured him this wasn’t the case and that he should just ignore her. I continued speaking to her regardless, but I felt guilty because I knew he would end up disliking me.
Continued Contact From Vinny
In late 2016, he contacted me again and told me that the same woman was using me in her plan to “cancel” him. He asked me to add his new Skype account and if it was ok for him to call me. I was convinced by him that he was telling the truth after he told me that he was depressed, his life was hard, and he didn’t want to continue pursuing fans. He told me he would start going to therapy to become a better person. I asked him what he would do if this woman came forward about him and he told me that he had nudes of her which had her face in them, claiming he has never shared nudes, but would do what he had to “if [his] life and integrity [was] on the line.” Because of this, I was afraid that if I did anything wrong, there would be a possibility of him releasing not only mine, but other personal pictures of fans he had relations with. He made it sound like his streaming career was the only thing he had in life, which made me feel worried about what he would do if anything happened to him that could jeopardize his career. He asked me to keep him updated on any tweets made about him from private accounts, and I agreed to do so out of guilt. He distanced himself from me again, assuring me he would not take advantage of fans anymore and once again blamed his depression and lack of self-control. This was the final time I ever spoke to him.
Unchanging Behavior
Not even 6 months later, I found out that he was continuing to do this. Some women that he was doing this to were 10+ years younger than him. I witnessed more and more women getting hurt for the same thing. Every story was the same. It ate at me for years. I felt like I couldn’t stand up for myself, or prevent anyone from falling for the same thing.
I see now that he had a lot of power over me. Yes, I was 20 years old and everything was consensual, but my position as his fan made me more susceptible to his advances. He made me believe we were good friends, only to cut contact with me after telling me I couldn’t tell anyone about the things we did together.
I connected with multiple women in the past couple of years who were deeply hurt by him doing the exact same thing to them, but we never really knew how we could come forward without being labeled as one of his “crazy fans”.
Screenshots
In the Instagram screenshots, read the conversation from bottom to top. I had to request logs from Instagram as I deleted them last year. Vinny deleted his @vine_sauce Instagram, which is why his name is listed as “Other User”.
Vinny asking me to add his new Skype account. Screenshots of his Skype name & profile.
Vinny hinting he would share somebody else’s nudes who has wronged him if he felt it was necessary.
Vinny confirming we had sexual encounters previously.
Vinny mentioning therapy over 4 years ago so he can stop doing “this”. States he knows he hasn’t done anything wrong, and talks briefly about how he can’t find anyone that’s attractive with similar interests in New York City.
Conclusion
It’s taken me a long time to think of how to conclude this. Vinny hurt me a lot and invaded my privacy in ways I didn’t think he was capable of. Revenge porn is illegal, and it’s very disturbing to me that it’s something he would consider as an option if he doesn’t get his way. It’s a huge betrayal of trust, and it disgusts me that someone that I once looked up to would resort to something so low. His actions made me feel used and alone. I’m shocked at just how many other people he did this same thing to. I hope my statement is able to help other people realize the kind of person he really is and keep this from happening to someone else.
Person #3’s Statement
Different Story, Same Behaviors
The first exposure I had to “VineSauce” was in 2016 when I got a notification that @vine_sauce followed me on Instagram. To be fully transparent, I knew essentially nothing about the VineSauce brand other than that I had seen variations of this logo across YouTube. I recall taking a peek at his profile when I got the notification and just figured this person followed me due to similar interests and being in the gaming scene. I did not follow back nor did I exchange messages with him at this time.
It wasn’t until 2017 that I was first introduced to Vinesauce’s content via YouTube’s auto recommend feature. I was searching for ACNL dream tours when Vinny’s video popped up next in cue. For context, I’ve never been one to watch let’s plays or gaming content online, but I was recently coming off the heels of a breakup with my long-term boyfriend of 7 years. As a result, I was either playing ACNL or watching ACNL YouTube videos as a way to distract myself and cope. As this particular video played, I was immediately impressed by the man’s dark/dry sense of humor. I recalled that Vinesauce had followed me on Instagram a while back so out of curiosity, I checked his Youtube channel.
It was at this point in time that I discovered the full extent of his following. I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel, in some respects, surprised that he would follow a nobody like me. Soon after, I checked to see if he still followed me. When I confirmed that he still did, I followed back and messaged him summarizing how I had randomly come across his ACNL video and thought it was funny. When it became clear that there was mutual attraction, the messages did not stay platonic for long.
As messages turned flirtatious in the span of an hour, I asked if he had a SnapChat. He told me he actually already followed me on SnapChat under a pseudonym and suggested we chat on Skype instead. I was flattered he wanted to voice chat as I was totally prepared to just exchange pictures and engage in some light-hearted flirtations given his location. Having only been with one man before, I was not only naive to the dating world but I was just starting to really explore my sexuality. Being in my early 20’s at the time, I also couldn't help but feel grown up and mature, engaging with an older man. Not to mention the idea of being desired by someone so successful felt exciting and reaffirming after a difficult breakup. In retrospect, I wish we would have never interacted given that I was a) an inexperienced young adult, b) entering into a situation I did not fully understand at the time, and c) was impacted by a breakup.
I included screenshots below. His username is “Instagrammer” because he deleted his Instagram but messages still remain.
Right at the start of our voice call, Vinny stated that he was emotionally unavailable. While that is all good and fine, I remember it being rather jarring. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this was the beginning of many conversations that would leave me feeling entirely confused. Despite knowing very little about each other, he shared overly personal stories about his life and why this made him “emotionally unavailable.” What also struck me was the extent to which he talked about his so-called friends. Being that I knew nothing about his team or the people he surrounded himself with, he really went to great lengths to first establish one of his best friends before proceeding to completely trash him. There is no other way I can describe this type of gossiping that he engages in other than incredibly strange, mean-spirited, and unsolicited. Why would I even be interested in this information? At the time, I chalked it up to him being nervous and trying to find a way to connect with me. He even at one point offered to fly me out to New York to see him in person. Keep in mind this was all shared within the span of one hour on our first voice call.
I was too inexperienced at the time to see what this oversharing truly was. Yeah, unfortunately, him confiding in me all these details about his life was not because I was somehow special but, likely, because he wanted to establish his baseline with me--him a misunderstood and complex artist, and me what felt like a pseudo-therapist. I also see now that his excessive oversharing of his past was an attempt to create an artificial emotional connection, to make me feel indebted to him. I’m ashamed to say it worked; at the time I so badly wanted to help him. Our interactions were labeled by him as casual but nothing about our interactions felt casual, and he didn’t seem to care. So it constantly left me feeling confused and like I did something wrong whenever he distanced himself only to resurface, vent, get off, and then comment on how I’m part of his, to quote him, “hedonistic lifestyle” he said is going to therapy for. All while making sure to state that we are still “great friends” in an attempt to keep me around. He eventually unfollowed me on instagram and twitter after I got an anonymous message from someone warning me about Vinny. I showed Vinny the messages and he told me he had a stalker and that he would have to unfollow me to protect me.
I wasn’t the first, I wasn’t the last
While I can recall the details of my story clearly, what is harder to put into words is the hold Vinny can establish. While his patterns of behavior are highlighted within this document, he is a master at keeping lines blurry with charisma and a gentle and melancholic persona. He wants you to feel sorry for him and he wants you to feel you are the “special one” that he can confide in.
I’d like to end by saying it isn’t lost on me that I engaged in a consenting sexual relationship with a man. This is true. I enjoyed engaging in that part of the relationship. I also fully realize I am not a “fan” of vinesauce. However, I hope what I wrote at the very least highlights his pattern of behavior and provides more support to the other women’s stories in this document who were actual young fans of his. Once Vinny engaged in sexual activities with his fans, a line was crossed that he couldn't ever come back from. At that point, he wasn't someone seeking a relationship, connection, or hookup. He was only seeking power. He sought out young women of various ages who wanted to be with who they thought Vinny was. But they didn't get the "Vinesauce" persona because that person doesn't exist. Vinesauce is a character. They got the real Vinny, a famous YouTuber on a powertrip with ulterior motives who blatantly disrespected his fans by taking advantage of them.
Person #4’s Statement
Intro
Everything started early 2016 when I was assigned to prepare a social media strategy for the company I was working for. They offered me the possibility to send care packages to a few content creators on youtube and twitch in hopes to promote their products and eventually workout a sponsorship. Naturally, I gravitated towards the creators I loved as I figured this would be a great opportunity to support communities I cherished and was a part of. As much as I was a fan of these people, my approaches were all professional and not inciting any sort of friendship or relation beyond business.
This was when I first spoke to Vinny from Vinesauce. I DM’d him on Twitter to confirm what would be the best way to communicate with him for professional inquiries as I was reaching out on behalf of my employers. We continued talking on Twitter while figuring out the logistics of this project for a few days before he eventually messaged me to sympathize with me since I had shared publicly that I had recently been cheated on. I was incredibly surprised that a creator I admired and respected was taking enough interest in me to look at my tweets to get to know me. At first, I only assumed this was a coincidence and Vinny was simply being an empathetic person. It was flattering but I didn’t expect any attention beyond that.
Things Become Intimate
At that time, Tobuscus’s allegations of sexual-assault were released which had shocked me as I was a fan in my teenage years. So in response to the news, I chose to tweet my feelings about this situation. Something along the lines of: “With the recent news, it’s terrifying to think that I might not really know some of my youtuber friends.”
Soon after, Vinny messaged me inquiring about who I was referring to in my last tweet which made me very confused because he and I were only communicating on professional terms and in no way was I suspecting he’d ever be looking at my tweets let alone care about what I said on there. I assured Vinny this wasn’t about him and that he didn’t have to worry. He proceeded to question me on my opinion of creators who sleep with their fans. My opinion has since changed, but I responded that if everything was consensual and done between adults who respect each other, I didn’t have a problem with it but that having sex with fans is very risky for many reasons. This is when he confessed to me that he had a few experiences with sleeping with fans and expressed that he wasn’t too proud of it.
This was major information to share with someone whom he had just recently gotten in contact with but it made me feel like he was trusting me for some unknown reason which was flattering from the perspective of a fan. We continued talking for a bit and sharing our life experiences back and forth for a good hour. The conversation then took a turn when he revealed that he was reassured I didn’t judge him so harshly for having had sex with fans before because I was his type. I was baffled to be complimented on my physical appearance, especially coming from a creator I enjoyed and found attractive. I admitted to him that the attraction was mutual so he offered to add me on Skype and to hop on a call for the evening to which I agreed. He went by the username VineScrub (DekuScrub).
Skype Calls
We started a call and once the initial awkwardness faded, we began addressing the mutual attraction we just admitted to earlier. I confirmed with him my age at the time (22) and his age (31). Vinny immediately stated that he wasn’t looking for a romantic relationship but more of a friend with benefits. I wasn’t opposed to it as I had just left a long term relationship and wanted to feel free to explore my sexuality as a single woman. So I agreed to his terms but I confessed that I was a bit nervous as this was my first time doing any of this with a man. It was evident he liked the idea that he’d be my first. Vinny had been very clear that if we were to meet, we wouldn’t have any penetrative sex because he believed, based on his experience with past women, that penetrative sex would lead to me potentially “catching feelings for him”. This was a particularly odd thing to hear as I didn’t agree with that logic so I inquired about the woman he experienced this with to better understand where he was coming from.
Without a beat, Vinny began to speak ill about this “crazy girl” and in no time, he was sharing with me all these stories about various fans he had slept with. He didn’t hesitate to paint them as attention seeking, desperate, unreasonable women who supposedly changed the moment they had sex in person. Vinny assured me that I was nothing like them. He had a way to make me feel special by continuously putting down these women then complimenting me. Genuinely wanting to believe that Vinny was an honest and good man, I brushed it off as a couple of extreme fans who didn’t understand what they were getting into and that Vinny was simply a complex guy who just wasn’t ready for a relationship at the moment.
Eventually, we moved on from speaking about these women and began sharing flirty messages and pictures. Very quickly these images became nudes and a few days later, I was doing webcam sessions where I masturbated for him and fulfilled his various requests.
(See screenshot below. This is a retrieved Skype log which they offered in html format.)
Soon enough, every single conversation we had was sexual in nature and held very little space for friendship. We rarely held casual conversations that didn’t lead to a sexual favor at his request. Then when I would approach him with interest to engage sexually, I was met with complete radio silence. This was a bit puzzling. Wasn’t a friends with benefits relationship meant to be mutual? Why was this only happening on his own terms? When I brought it up, he apologized and explained that he wasn’t very good with communicating regularly and he even did this with his closest friends and fellow streamers. Not wanting to be unreasonable and knowing he was a busy guy, I accepted his answer.
Vinesauce
Through this time, I was relatively active in the Vinesauce community. I regularly drew fan art, watched livestreams and had made friendships with other Vinesauce streamers and fans. Vinny had made it very clear that our relationship was to remain a secret and that he was risking his whole career. So I kept quiet, did artwork and tried to keep up the appearances of a regular fan artist. But when a male member of the Vinesauce team would follow me on Twitter, Vinny would immediately contact me to ask me if I was speaking to that member. When I asked him why he was so concerned about me making friends with his fellow streamers, he’d respond that they were creeps and that I shouldn’t be talking to them. This has happened with at least two members.
Before I knew it, Vinny began regularly bad mouthing his colleagues and people from his past despite me never instigating it. Every time, painting them as pathetic and critiquing their life choices and their relationships. It was incredibly disheartening to hear him speak of his colleagues like that. This made me very uncomfortable as I hadn’t imagined this was how the leader of Vinesauce would speak of his own team. I wasn’t entirely convinced that what he was saying was true or perhaps exaggerated so I chose to make those opinions for myself. By continuing to speak to the members he was so eager to “protect” me from, I concluded they were no danger to me and in fact the opposite of what Vinny wanted me to believe. I assumed Vinny was being jealous and moved on.
My Trip to NYC
The summer of 2016, my best friend and I had planned a trip to New York City for a weekend vacation. Excited for this time off, I tweeted about my upcoming trip. One of Vinny’s friends that had been in contact with me before, invited me to get pizza one evening while I was in NYC. He even kindly offered to invite Vinny if I wanted, which made me feel awful because I had to pretend Vinny and I never made contact beyond the occasional fan art. I was genuinely excited to meet this friend in person so I played the part and told them they could invite him but it wasn't necessary.
On my second day in NYC, I met up with Vinny and our mutual friend. We explored the city, had an overall fun day and eventually parted ways. Because I knew I wouldn’t be allowed to take pictures of the three of us together, I simply snapped a few shots of interesting views and items. We visited a weird store with odd sculptures that day and Vinny chose to snap a picture with an alien I pointed out which he posted to his socials. However, when he later noticed I had shared a picture of a skull that was on a nearby shelf, he told me to take the post down out of fear that fans would figure out we had hung out that day. This sounded very far fetched to me but I could tell he was getting paranoid so I deleted it to ease his mind.
As I return to my hotel room that day, I get a message from Vinny. We start talking about our day and eventually, we’re planning on meeting up the next day to have some alone time. He firstly suggests that he could pick me up, drive us somewhere and we could fool around in his car. I admitted to him that I was quite nervous as it was my first time with a man and would be much more comfortable with this affair if we had a bed so he offered that I sleep over and leave early to catch my bus home.
So I made my way to Staten Island, met him at the train station and got to his place. We sneaked through the backyard and through a small discrete door that led to his room. After spending a few minutes talking, we move on to his couch where we begin to make out and eventually I perform oral sex on him and engage in non penetrative sexual acts that we agreed to. We then went out to eat around his place and returned home and promptly had oral sex once more.
Once we had finished, Vinny and I spent some time chatting in his living room. Somehow, our regular conversation turned into him shit talking about his colleagues and friends once more. The ease with which he bad mouthed one friend after the other was unsettling. All I could do was sit there, stunned by how disrespectful he was towards the people who worked with him. At a loss, I sat there uncomfortable and attempted to comprehend why I was being told all this.
Vinny began pointing out that our mutual friend seemed to be really fond of me, maybe even developing feelings for me. He insisted that if I wanted to start a relationship with this friend, he’d be okay with it but then warned me that this friend has some alcohol related issues, that I should be careful around him if I decide to engage with him because he pushed himself onto women sometimes. I was shocked by this information and although a part of me doubted the information he was giving me, I felt it was safer to keep it in mind. I tell him that I had no interest in getting romantically involved with anyone in his circle because of our current “friends with benefits” situation which gets him to stop speaking about our friend.
We continued our night by watching some TV. Aware that the situation I was in was a little odd, I sat relatively far from him to avoid making him think I was trying to incite romance by cuddling. I could recall how he described the “crazy ones” as clingy and needy so I felt this was the smartest way to not inspire emotional attachment. That way, everything was very casual until he moved in and began to hold hands with me. I was well aware that cuddling and caresses didn’t equate to romantic interest but the gesture was definitely pushing the boundaries of what I considered to be a non romantic situation. I felt this was unfairly blurring the lines that we had set in the sand. Especially since this line had been decided because he claimed the past women fell in love with him and ruined everything. Nonetheless, fueled by a need to please and a mutual need for momentary affection, I went with it despite knowing this wasn’t the smartest thing to do in our situation.
As we began getting ready to sleep, I mentioned having to take my anti-contraceptive pill in the morning. Vinny immediately responded with excitement. “You’re on the pill? God, this means we could do it raw?” In an instant, he was crossing his own limits only to expose himself and invite me to engage in full-on unprotected sex. At the time, I believed he and I were friends so I turned down his offer as this was his initial wish and I was truly not prepared to have unprotected sex with him. He finally settled for oral sex and we went to bed. The next morning, I performed oral once more and he drove me back to my hotel room so I could rejoin my friend. We then parted ways with a hug and this was the end of my trip to New York City.
The Friendship Goes Silent
A few days after my return home, Vinny progressively began speaking to me less and less. He stated that he wasn’t horny these days and that we could just stay friends, yet refused to show any sign of the friendship he had given me the impression we shared. Eventually, Vinny came around and answered me. I took that time to let him know that when he’d be with someone else, he probably shouldn’t be giving fans a doubt that you might like them romantically or not as this was definitely a great way to get into a messy situation. I tried to explain how that can hurt people’s feelings and he should probably confirm with them that it’s okay. Vinny agreed and proceeded to go in lengths about how much he knew his actions were wrong. He began to claim he intended to not do this with fans anymore as he didn’t want to hurt people anymore and that he was looking to get therapy which I encouraged.
From everything he had told me in that conversation, I was beginning to believe that I was the last woman he would be involved with in this way and that no one else would be tied into such a messy situation. As hurt as I was that my supposed friend completely stopped talking to me, I settled with the thought that this was the end of a terrible habit and the beginning of a healing period for all of us.
Meeting Others
A few days later, I had come into contact with another woman from the community that I had begun to be friends with. We watched a few streams together and enjoyed each other’s tweets. As we began speaking of our involvement within the community, we realized we had both been in close contact with one of Vinny’s friends and began jokingly speculating if he had interest in the both of us because he liked all of our pictures. This eventually led us to make a few connections and after much hesitation, I asked her if she had perhaps any experiences with Vinny to which she admitted she did a few years ago. I chose to reveal that I had recently been involved with him as well. Out of curiosity, we began sharing some memories and compared experiences. We were shocked to realize our stories were so similar aside from a few details. At that moment, it became clear that every woman was told the same things and that this was a recurring thing for Vinny. A striking moment in the conversation came when the woman told me Vinny had promised her this was something he’d never do again. This was when I realized how much pain truly resulted from his actions and that he was likely to do this to someone else after me. I was relieved to have found someone else who knew the kind of emotions I was going through. We remained in contact and developed a friendship over our mutual experiences.
Then I received a DM from a woman in the Vinesauce community. I had never spoken to her before but I had seen her around online. She asked me for advice on how to find cheap bus tickets to go to New York City as Vinny’s friend had invited her over. He had recommended contacting me because I took a bus to come to NYC as well. This was my first red flag. I then recalled the night in Vinny’s basement where he told me our friend had an alcohol problem and a tendency to force himself onto women. I couldn’t guarantee this information was true but I felt I couldn’t risk this woman meeting our friend and getting hurt. After all, this woman had just recently turned 20 and told me she planned to go there on her own which sounded extra sketchy. Faced with this information, I chose to break my silence and admitted to her that I had a no-strings-attached relationship with Vinny. I explained that he had warned me about our mutual friend and I felt she should know this before meeting him alone. I was aware that I was meant to keep everything a secret but I felt my friendship with Vinny wasn’t worth potentially getting a woman hurt. I needed her to know what she was getting into.
She responded to my warning with very little concern and a lot of doubt but she told me she would keep it in mind. Then, she went quiet and blocked me.
Vinny Finds Out
That’s when Vinny returned to my DMs. He informed me the woman had told him everything which made him very upset with me. I told him I understood his concerns but that I couldn’t let this woman leave for New York and meet up with a man alone like that. Especially not if Vinny himself had warned me that this guy had bad tendencies. Still very angry, he agreed that the situation had some red flags but that I shouldn’t have come forward because this put him in a very stressful situation. I was furious. At this point there was no doubt in my mind, Vinny was trying to shame me for trying to protect a woman in a situation he agreed to be sketchy. I felt he shouldn’t have been telling me all these things about our friend if he didn’t want me to take them seriously and that it was incredibly tone deaf to paint me as unreasonable for being upset. Eventually, I caved in and agreed to settle down so he could make sure everyone is safe and handle the situation he claimed I had created for him. Vinny stated that the things we did made him feel “shameful” and that he would make an active attempt to stop his sexual habits with fans as it hurt people too much. I desperately wanted to believe him. I wanted to believe he really wanted to change because this clearly hurt everyone involved every time. I was still deeply hurt by his actions and couldn’t truly forgive him just yet. Nonetheless, I believed people could change and let him know that I supported him in his journey to end these bad habits. He thanked me and we agreed to move our separate ways.
In no time, several Vinesauce members unfollowed me one after the other. I had expected to lose them as followers because they worked for him. However, I began noticing more and more of the friends I had made within the community were no longer responding to me as quickly as they used to. Even my new friend who had confessed to having an affair with Vinny in the past had stopped being as responsive. My heart was broken and I had no one to really turn to. My family was very little support as they didn’t understand the gravity of the situation I was in. The few friends I had left were empathetic but didn’t really know how to help me. I desperately tried to apologize to everyone involved but no one bothered to respond. As weeks passed, my isolation kept growing as I kept this secret experience to myself out of fear that Vinny would come around again to scold me. Seeing his face and name everywhere on my social media gave me deep anxiety and so I made the decision to leave the little part I had left in the community. It was the only way I could attempt to heal.
Despite being afraid of him, I was still an activist against sexual abuse and misconduct, as I was well before Vinny had come into my life. Perhaps I wasn’t allowed to speak about my experiences and his actions but this didn’t mean I couldn’t support a cause that meant a lot to me. Whenever sexual allegations came up about various content creators, I would take to twitter and express my great disappointment and my wish for the victims of these people to be able to tell their stories in time. I never named or referenced Vinny directly as I was still afraid to speak openly about him but I still chose to publicly disapprove of abusers. I judged this was of no harm to Vinny since I was no longer part of the community and had very little online presence. These passive aggressive rants were essentially my final outlet to speak on a subject I personally related to despite no one really caring for my opinionated tweets. Vinny wasn’t my friend anymore and I had blocked him so what could go wrong?
The Final Emails
A month later, I received a long email from Vinny. He said he had seen my tweets and claimed a few people had contacted him about them as well. He’s been told by someone that I’m attempting to “expose” him, that I had been attempting to contact others whom he might have had relations with. Immediately, he mentioned that the holidays are a difficult time for him and that I’ve made him feel worse. Throughout the email, Vinny claimed I portrayed him unjustly as a monster and that my recollection of the events weren’t correct. He outright insisted we never had sex in the first place despite me having performed oral sex on him at least four times in an evening. A striking point for me was when he began quoting things my past self had told him in DMs. As if I was bound by the things my past self had said to him before I knew the gravity of his actions. As if I wasn’t supposed to change my mind. He even attempted to justify that I was alright with everything because I confided in him that I had once exchanged flirtatious messages with a married man. Because I had consented to Vinny’s conditions previously, he thought I was unreasonable for having a new perspective after hearing other stories from other women. Vinny didn’t understand why I was upset as he felt our last conversation meant everything was water under the bridge. He pointed out that my worries about our mutual friend and the girl he was meeting were pointless since they had become platonic friends and she wasn’t interested in men, and that our friend was hurt by me and that he felt I used him to get to Vinny, which was absolutely not the case. He even went as far as quoting the DM I had sent our mutual friend. It was apparent that he thought I was trying to rally people against him and that his paranoia was growing. Vinny was making it clear that he was ready to defend himself and that he wanted to keep these things between us. He ended his email with, once again, mentioning how this was difficult for him.
(For the entire email please refer to the screenshot down below. I have combined them to make one screenshot due to their length.)
I responded that I had never sought out other women who had experiences with him but that all of them naturally came to me because they appreciated the things I was saying on the subject of abuse and para-social relationships. Afterall, at the time, this was a recurring topic of conversation on Twitter as more content creators faced allegations. It just so happened these women all had experiences with Vinny. I continued to justify my anger and actions but admittedly felt enormous anxiety at the thought he was angry with me again. What would he do now?
(See screenshot below. Same as the other ones.)
Vinny responded by insisting that, because he had told me about some of his past relations with fans, I should not have been as shocked as I was. What he specifically omitted was that the experiences these women had shared with me were very different from what Vinny had described. He portrayed them as crazy women while in the end, they were all normal women who had been deeply hurt by his actions and silenced. Just like I was.
He then proceeds to describe his family life and uses it as a justification for his lack of emotional availability and to bring home how hard things are for him, adding that sexual urges lead to some bad decisions.
Vinny took this time to let me know he was seeking therapy. That he was working hard to better himself and that he was hoping this was the end of his sexual habits with fans. Only to mention that he has remained friends with some women he had sexual encounters with and that our friendship could have been real if I hadn’t done what I did.
Vinny continued that he doesn’t feel like it is fair of me to suggest he should stop doing these things with fans because of the possibility he could meet a girl he is compatible with and knows him. He then blames the fact it is difficult for him to find local people who have similar interests.
Finally, he apologized for contacting me and goes on to describe his efforts to be better, that people have made advances towards him and he’s refused them. He evidently wanted me to know that this wasn’t something he wished to experience with anyone else and that he wanted to only meet local people.
Overwhelmed, I didn’t bother responding. I believed this would be the last time he’d speak to me and I no longer wanted to deal with him anymore. These events were traumatic enough and I needed to get away for my own well being. I would quickly learn that this wouldn’t be the end for me. I noticed all sorts of accounts following my Twitter suddenly, even attempting to follow my private account. It became apparent that some of them were only following me to report back to Vinny whenever they saw a “suspicious” tweet from me. No longer feeling safe on my own social media accounts, I chose to deactivate my Twitter account and lose all the work I had done. It was an enormous loss for me but a necessary one. I couldn’t trust anyone who was following me from the community anymore. Starting over would allow me to clearly see who was following my new accounts.
A year later, I was still consumed by guilt for having gotten myself in such a situation and sadness of having lost all my friends. It had been impossible to avoid him entirely and moving on had been extremely difficult. His face appeared on my timelines despite how many people I muted and blocked. Clips of his streams would be used in Youtube videos totally unrelated to him. No matter how hard I tried to detach myself from this awful experience, it felt like I was trapped. Not only trapped but silenced. My friends who had common experiences with him were very quiet with me and I had no one to turn to whenever the memories were too much for me. Out of pure shame, I began believing his version of what happened. I began believing this was my fault, that I should’ve never spoken out, that I was the one to blame for everything. I desperately wanted to return to a time that was long gone. So I sent him the apology letter in June 2017, not really expecting to be forgiven but perhaps erasing the bad blood. I hoped that I could have a chance to explain myself to our mutual friends, that perhaps I could rejoin the community I had loved for years one way or another. I needed to find a way to move on and felt this was my only ticket there. He never answered this email and this was the last time I tried to contact him.
As the years went by, I kept my silence and prayed that our shared experience somehow scared him out of doing this any longer. That perhaps this had been an awakening moment for him, that his therapy would have helped. A past member of Vinesauce had told me a few years later that he had indeed gone to therapy and that he was making progress. He was aware that Vinny had “womanizing issues” but had faith in him so I chose to believe it. But despite my attempts to avoid the community all together, it was impossible to stay away and properly heal. I was often contacted by unknown people about my experiences with Vinny and had to deal with strangers speculating on who I was, calling me and other women “sluts” and “clout chasers” when all we ever wanted was to move on with our lives and forget. And yet all this time, he continued to gain popularity and influence while he kept us silent for the sake of his career and fear of what he could do to us in return.
In Conclusion
I testify to you today knowing this might be misconstrued as a simple case of “ghosting after sex” or an attempt to obtain “clout”. Friends with benefits and one night stands exist and can be done right without hurting anyone. I’m also aware that it isn’t a crime to have sexual desires and to not be looking for something serious. I had consented to a relationship where we both could thrive and enjoy ourselves and at the end of the day, I was tossed the moment he was bored of our affair, fed lies to pit me against the other women he had done this to and ultimately all I got from this was years of self-hatred and emotional distress. The relationships Vinny creates with his fans are nothing short of self-serving and isolating, which he is very aware of.
He claims he doesn’t want to hurt anyone anymore and yet we haven’t seen any indication he plans to stop. How many women need to suffer for him to see the impact of his actions? Why has nothing ever changed in his methods? All I want is for him to cease targeting his fans for his personal desires. I want people who further engage with him in the future to know what they are getting into. I never want to find out there are more women like us out there suffering alone.
If you have gone through this with Vinny or any other person, please know you are not alone. You do not have to be silent anymore and neither do we.