Hi.

In early March, a former friend, Klaus, who worked with me on videos for my channel, put a ‘callout post’ on Tumblr about me. The post contains logs of a conversation we had after he came out to me that another friend had made him feel unsafe in skype chats in late 2011.

I handled this very poorly. I encourage you to read the logs Klaus has posted. [EDIT: I originally didn’t provide a link to the logs here because I was worried fans of mine would ‘go after’ Klaus, then later at a reader’s request I added the link in because people couldn’t find it otherwise.

After this response was first posted, Klaus only got angrier, threatened to dox me and my girlfriend, attacked people who said positive things about me, and then suddenly deleted his tumblr account. Whoever opened a new account with the same name set it to redirect to a malware/phishing site, so I’m removing the link again. Sorry.]

I believe that there is a proper way to react when a person approaches you with a story like the one he came to me with. It is always important to be kind to people who trust you when they tell you they feel hurt. When this happened, I failed to do this. Because I knew the person he was talking about, and I had been there at the time for many of the conversations Klaus had been referring to, I immediately went about investigating whether or not the claim was true. My first real response to Klaus opening up to me about his fears was to tell him that I doubted him, and to question if he was sure he was remembering things properly.



This behaviour was wrong. I had the opportunity to respond with care and understanding and instead my first instinct was to try to ‘check the facts’. This is not a kind instinct, and it is not a good way of treating anyone, especially a friend.

I write from a position of privilege. I try my best to be a good person and see things from a worthwhile perspective, but when it comes down to it I am a straight white man living in a very secluded part of the UK where most people aren’t affected by the worst of the problems I often talk about. I try to criticise the exact perspective this can engender, but when this happened I didn’t even notice I was acting it out myself. I failed to be compassionate to a friend who was confiding in me. Even if everything Klaus had said had been untrue, it was still nothing short of cruel to respond the way I did.

I want to be a good ally and stand up for people who have been hurt, and I very clearly still have a lot to learn from others. I wish I hadn’t needed to learn this lesson at all in the first place. I know I have disappointed some people. I recently reached out to my audience, asking people who have problems with aspects of my work to get in touch and tell me what they feel I should do differently, and I want to reaffirm that I read all of the messages that are sent to me, and take them seriously. I lost a very good friend, someone who was and still is important to me, because I failed to live up to the principles I believe in, and I do not want that to hurt anyone like that again.

A couple of other members of the community have shared the callout post and their disappointment with what I wrote. I am heartened by this behaviour –it’s good that people in our little corner of the internet are willing to criticise people’s actions, especially when they otherwise agree with them or like their work or share their goals, and especially when that person is me. This is exactly the sort of community I want to be a part of, and I hope I can do right by it in my work.

I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, and how I dealt with Klaus’ feelings is a big one. I was a bad friend to someone who deserved to be treated better, and can never undo that – but I can, and will, do better in the future.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. I can never apologise enough to Klaus. I don’t expect him to forgive me. His post relates that he shared this story because he wants me to do better in the future, and to grow as a person, and at the very least I hope it’s clear that I want to live up to his, and your, expectations for me.