Jade: "I'm going to try to find a guest that pairs with the episode before."
I think what Jade means to say is: "I'm going to feature whatever Sixteenth influencer my manager tells me to that week and make sure to plug their channel/merch without declaring my ties to them." First Ruby, next Tam Kaur - three guesses who she's managed by...
Jade does everything possible to avoid declaring those business ties. Ruby's "a dear friend" who Jade gushes that she's "so lucky to know in person". They even go through a whole "how do we know each other" in which they do an embarrassingly bad job of tip-toeing around just saying that they share the same managers and they get paired up twice a year by their managers to advertise each other's
tit undeclared. They even bring up Jack Edwards and Eve Cornwell, who are "also YouTubers who are friends of ours" - zero mention of them all sharing the same managers.
There's a hell of a lot of rewriting history going on, too. Jade introduces Ruby with some ego-stroking nonsense about Ruby going on a wild journey after starting out as a studytuber who awakened the joy of learning and helped de-stress frazzled young students - she's an "anti-bullying advocate" who "radiates kindness".
It conveniently glosses over the 7-8 years in which Ruby has used staged "OIY STODDIED 47 HOWARS IN ONE DAY!" vlogs to instil impossible study goals and toxic productivity habits in children so that they can feel inferior to her when weighed up against her fake accomplishments. Unsurprisingly, no mention of the charity scams, merch scams, that she had to scrap her annual "anti-bullying" videos because the dangerously out-of-touch "advice" courted waves of backlash and controversy. But she "radiates kindness". Sure,
Jan Jade.
I'm also not sure where this "journey" happened. Ruby started out as a studytuber making poor-quality staged videos full of lies meant to inspire envy in gullible kids and is still a studytuber making poor-quality staged videos full of lies meant to inspire envy in gullible kids. She looks substantially older and more miserable now though, so I guess that's a journey? Ruby brags that she's moved on from academic perfectionism and no longer places such weight on grades, which is a charade she goes through whenever she's not in a position to get grades. When she is, she still does all the same toxic
tit.
No surprise, focus is placed on Ruby's Oxford rejection, because this group of dimwit studytubers will never get over every one of them being rejected from their first-choice unis after making endless videos about rote memorisation being the key to study success. Together they try to continue painting Ruby's Masters at Oxford as some kind of triumph over adversity.
Jade claims it's "a testament to not letting rejection define you", yet that's
exactly what this was, for all of them. Ruby doggedly pursued Oxford just to say she went to Oxford, got in when the bar was lower and money did more talking and was absolutely miserable there. Now she's gearing up for another few years of the same. There was no "authentic joy" or passion for learning involved, no interest in studying at the place that afforded the best teaching experience for her, and no moving past rejection and making the most of life. Ruby just wanted to brute force her way into Oxford and openly admitted that she had zero interest in pursuing a Masters if it didn't get her into Oxford, thoroughly willing to waste years of her life and burn tens of thousands in cash over it.
The same happened with Jack Edwards, who kept applying to Oxford and only Oxford, got rejected every time and never showed any interest in studying at all after that. And Jade has spent the years since her Oxford rejection with a mountain-sized chip on her shoulder about it. None of these clowns really wanted or needed to go to Oxford outside of the entitled need to attend "the best school" after building themselves up as the best and brightest despite all evidence to the contrary.
Jade and Ruby take credit for pioneering the podcast industry because their managers threw them together for a similarly terrible podcast which died swiftly back in...(checks date)...2019. So, y'know, just
10-15 years after podcasts became a big thing. The podcast in question was The Wooden Spoon, but according to Ruby it was called "The Wodden Spyeen". She's heard it pronounced both ways, I'm sure.
Ruby at least seems less robotic when paired with another person, but this whole thing feels
so staged, especially when they're talking about being apprehensive of meeting each other for the first time in case their online persona was an act and they were much different in person. You can practically see the talking point notes their managers handed them. Jade is delighted to tell everyone that there's no other version of Ruby and what you see online is real. Meanwhile, Ruby is talking in a cartoonishly fake accent and wearing fake freckles while sitting through an hour-long, scripted-by-her-management ad for her channel-full of faked vlogs. There's a bottomless ocean of irony there.
I could only make it through 15 minutes of this self-indulgent crap. I expected that this was going to be a Sixteenth circle-jerk, but I didn't expect it would feel
this staged. The permanent smug smirks on both of them doesn't help sell it, either. The whole thing feels like a bad parody video.
I’m just embarrassed for her if I’m honest. Just control yourself. Yes we all enjoy a set of glorified fairy lights but surely you have something else going on for you?
