Thread by @BuzzFeedNews

For years, Trisha Paytas has been one of YouTube’s most prolific and complicated trolls. Now they say they’re done trolling — but can they really change? buzzfeednews.com/article/scaach…

Paytas’s primary YouTube account has 1.9 billion views and just over five million subscribers. They’re far from the most popular creator on YouTube, but they are the face that launched a million memes.

There are many examples of Paytas getting canceled for their own behavior — much of which Paytas attributed to “bad judgment” — but for what it’s worth, they seem reflective about the damage they’ve caused.

“I’m embarrassed all the time. I feel it all the time.”

But Paytas said they’re now done with the very thing that made them so internet famous.

“I admitted to trolling because I didn’t want to do that anymore. But I also think it was a psychological problem where I was doing it because I didn’t know who I was either.”

Paytas seems to have attained a new kind of peace. Maybe that’s because the last couple of years have seemed to bring real growth — or at least that’s what it looked like.

In the last year, viewers have started to see Paytas as a kind of underdog hero within the YouTube community. But that run ended when they got in a fight with their Frenemies cohost, Ethan Klein.

Over the last month, Paytas has post-then-deleted videos addressing their fight with Klein, thus creating yet another scandal. In one TikTok, they joke about how thrilled they are that the internet hates them again. In another, they literally run away from demands they apologize.

Now, yet again, Paytas seems to be back where they started, a semi-ironic entertainer facing an audience that doesn’t know if they’re supposed to laugh at Paytas, or with them. buzzfeednews.com/article/scaach…