There’s a reason Weird Al parodied Gangsta’s Paradise into “Amish Paradise”. They never could be offended by the jokes in it because they wouldn’t be there to see it.
@@maenad1231that wasn’t really a reason lol. He’s parodied so many people that understand all the jokes. I love Weird Al you don’t need to make thing up about him lol
my issue isn't fully cosplaying as amish, its pretending shes in danger. Its her posting that she was a victim of some truly disgusting shit in this amish community she wasn't even apart of, its her telling businesses that sponsor her how thankful she is because they are helping her save up money to escape. She made her audience think she was a victim and they came together to support her, they were offering financial support, sending things to her p.o box and offering places to stay and she allowed it. She encouraged this and that is so deceptive and malicious
It's definitely a good reason for people to call her out but I don't think the sympathy should end when a person's actions are harmful and make us angry, it's a very typical escalation of mental illness and in particular pathological lying. A pathological (as in, related to an illness) will go to great lengths to build up their lies, because they are something they wear like armor. And mentally ill people in general make terrible, selfish decisions. But it's because they need help they aren't getting. Anyway, mental illness is very difficult to understand from the outside looking in, but people really do not do things out of malice. She seems pretty naive and immature, I don't think she understood how crappy her actions were and how it would scare and concern people. If she doesn't value herself to the point where she pretends to be someone she isn't, I don't think she could ever understand that people really do care about her, but she would try to test the limits of their caring by asking for help with a non-existent situation. I hope she does get help. These situations often continue to escalate towards suicide attempts when the person gets called out. Though the attempts are only intended for attention, it can end with a terrible accident.
Cosplaying as a religion without disclosing (even w disclosing tbh) is definitely disrespectful and problematic on its own (not inherently ig, but we don’t live in a vacuum so it wouldn’t be anymore than someone playing up stereotypes without the experience/knowledge needed to actually show what it’s like)
@dami5154 why not, though? unlike aspects of us like skin color or where we're born, religion is not an intrinsic part of someone's person that cannot be changed. someone getting made fun of for their religion is fair play tbh
The saddest thing is, she didn't need to lie. She could have easily gained a platform by sharing what it's like to work in the plain store and work alongside the community without actually being a part of it. She could have also gained a platform by saying "I'm cosplaying, this is a story."
I disagree. While she did have some content on the lifestyle, most of her stuff was funny skits and sounds with the joke being she was in the community. She got popular because of her more funny tiktoks and then people looked into her and thought she was in the community. She wasn't interested in teaching people about the community. She just wanted quick popularity on tiktok and used the amish thing as an interesting hook.
Oh, that's true! Carolyn Easom does that, and she's pretty well known for it. She has a series that criticizes the faults of family vloggers, via POVs where she plays each character. She's obviously drawn inspiration from real life vloggers - For example, one of her characters has a chronic illness, which her mother exploits for attention. But of COURSE, Carolyn has made it clear from day 1 that these are characters and she is acting. She has ALWAYS called them "POVs." And like I said, her series has both drawn attention to these issues, AND gained her a lot of popularity. So you're completely right, Sarah Joy didn't need to lie at all. People love POVs and getting invested in fictional characters, it could've worked out great for her.
My first hint that she wasn't actually Amish or Mennonite was that her clothes were often wrinkled. I used to live near a Mennonite community, and their clothing was pressed and spotless.
I live in PA Dutch country and that was my first tip-off too. I was willing to believe her using a smartphone and internet because yeah, some of the folks here actually do. But not having her clothes steamed and pressed is huge. Even the teenage boys who wear Nike t-shirts under their suspenders (for playing sports) always look put together.
I used to work at a pizza ranch and since it was technically a Christian restaurant they would all come to eat there and yes, they looked proper as hell. No wrinkles no folds no stains. Although, I was shocked when they all came out of a little mini van instead of a horse carriage.
yep! while i dont live near them i do know a lot about em cuz my family kinda looked into becoming amish since we love the simple farm life. either way they work hard and they dont skip corners on things and like you said, they iron their clothing daily even if it means just to work on the damn farm. they're what i like to call "professionals"
it’s pretty common for them to use mini vans. i worked at canadian tire which carries pretty much everything. amish/mennonites would come in a van and would usually buy sporting goods, fishing lures and home supplies. some used credit cards, or would just use cash. it was pretty interesting!
my issue is that she made *almost ALL* of her content about the systemic/institutionalized abuse that can happen in these reclusive religious communities and allusions to how much "trouble" she'd be in if the community elders knew she posted like that, to then make that last video where she acts so nervous. She knew exactly what she was doing with that "last video as part of the community" thing and you can't convince me otherwise. I don't agree that it "wasn't hurting anyone" before, either, because the lie cheapens the REAL abuse that plenty of women face in those communities
This is how I feel too. And depending on which Anabaptist community, they’re really not all that reclusive. It seems like a mental health issue with this girl. Receiving attention for victimizing herself reinforced the positives in lying so she continued to do it. It maybe made her feel in control of her life. She seems lost. Ultimately I hope she gets help.
I think some onus is on the viewers. The way the viewers sensationalized everything and were quick to shell out money and support to an internet stranger is absolutely wild and was driven by ignorance. There are a few things that people had no clue about that had them in a tizzy 1. not every anabaptist community is amish. Many of them can have phones and things. They are all different. Mennonite is very different from amish and it should have raised red flags that she was tagging both and not specifying 2. not every anabapist community is abusive. People were right away jumping to the worst conclusions when for the most part, people of those communities grew up that way and find it normal and live normal lives. It may seem very oppressive to outsiders but I would say that about a lot of cultures and religions that we turn a blind eye to. 3. automatically assuming she is fine because she is merely in a "strict christian" household and can wear makeup is WILD. there is just as much abuse in homeschooling "strict christian" families. Again people are just so ignorant. They saw the amish law & order episode and think they know everything. lol. people need to scrutinize a lot more when it comes to strangers they don't know online. Any person could put on a costume and pretend anything and you have to not be so gullible to believe it.
@@new0news naw sorry but this reads like victim blaming honestly. If someone is telling a lie the onus is on them for being, you know, a liar. yeah obviously being skeptical can keep you safe in this fucked up world full of fucked up people but no one did anything *wrong* by extending empathy and it's a pretty jaded outlook to suggest so
Yeah it was so disrespectful. For people who are victims, it harms them, and for the people who live just fine within the community, they would be insulted too. Like, there isn't a single person she didn't step on
@@who__cares__ Pretending to be a fairy on tiktok is cosplaying. Pretending to be a trapped cult victim for internet clout and money is weird and harmful.
imho, i personally don't think shes in a community even as a convert. i think sarah joy seemed to find this a good outlet to roleplay a lifestyle, forgetting just how easily she could get caught out, especially if she has a history of going in and out of lifestyle changes like they described. it's really, really easy to lie to people on the internet. however, it's just as easy to get caught.
I think this is the opinion of 99%. She's just cosplaying. Which is fine. When you don't lie to your audience, pull on heartstrings, gain money and worry the people that put you where you are. She's a catfish, that's as simple as that. Catfishing is a staple of internet since the 90's.
As long as she didn't harm anyone, who cares! They act like all these UA-cam videos are actually real!! Sorry, but I just don't believe one youtuber's dog can talk, lol! So many people make videos that are bs. She shouldn't have made the video where she appears scared, that did worry some, imo.
@@redbeaniechild4117 oh wow! What type of donations? Like a couple bucks, like through superchats or like a gofundme? Idc about money she got through superchats, etc because people were enjoying her videos and that's what its meant for, but if she's starting a gofundme type of donations, I'd like to know what its for! But lying on a yt video is done everyday! Most people lie!
well if she fr converted and her friend told her abt her being exposed/attacked online and her family being doxxed, itd make sense that she'd get back online to clear her name and tell ppl to stop doxxing her and her family
@@kaitlynmorgan4613not really. The community says to leave tiktok if she was really “all in” she wouldn’t waste her time to come back and “clear her name” to strangers who aren’t in their community. Imagine someone telling the community elders you’re back on tiktok after they told you to pick one. That’s grounds for excommunication.
that shit pissed me off. People with no real problems and like to bait people into giving them attention is one of the few things that makes my blood BOIL
The thing that really irks me about it all is how she changed her story. Before being called out a lot of her videos where about the abuse she suffered under the community and how she wishes/wants to escape. She crafted a whole story about how she was going to be trapped to be a mother/wife when she really wanted to be a hairdresser. Now after she was called out, suddenly she switched and she was a convert and no actually she really really wanted to stay in the community and was going to take the steps to be part of the community and if we believed she was in danger then we were all just reading too much into it. It's so manipulative and horrible to pretend to suffer abuse from a community that has a a lot of real victims in it.
Simply claiming to be a veteran is not legally stolen valor. It has to be a running fraud gaining financial benefits from those lies. I can go sit in a bar all night long until someone I'm a Navy SEAL but as long as I do not use that lie to Garner income or donations then I'm not breaking any law whatsoever
I’m ethnically mennonite. I am queer, so I and my direct family are excommunicated now. On my mom’s side, the majority of my family grew up in a strict mennonite colony. I don’t really understand WHY someone would want to convert, but if she truly wanted to convert she wouldn’t have been posting the way she was. I don’t have a problem with her converting, but I wish she wouldn’t have made it seem like she was in the situation that my family was - being completely socially and financially isolated with no way to leave. That said, I do have some sympathy for her. This seems like something I would have done when I was twelve or thirteen and struggling with mental health issues. I just wish she didn’t co-opt experiences that weren’t hers.
I’ve lived in the Lancaster PA area for almost my entire life and have known many people in the Amish and Mennonite communities personally. that’s exactly what I thought too, there’s no way her community wouldn’t have issues with what she was posting! I really appreciated your perspective as I didn’t see any other comments talking about this as someone who was in the community
Surely the main reason to convert is to marry into it, but she doesn't seem to be posting about any relationship within the community. The only other reason is having an identity crisis like a mid life crisis and comitting to it when you weren't in a healthy state of mind.
@@brookesearfossss There are people that convert to Amish or Mennonite. It's really not that hard of a concept to grasp. It's rare, but not unheard of. The culture can be very appealing to some people like myself, that if in a better situation, would certainly uproot my life to live in a community and fully learn their ways and language. I yearn for a lifestyle off the grid. Where I can be 100% self sufficient and don't have to rely on government, grocery stores, banks, jobs, and just the everyday battle to barely scrape by. I'll probably never end up Amish, but given the opportunity, I might take it. Instead for now, I'll keep my goal of building a farm/ranch on a big plot of land with all my animals and equipment. I want to build a log cabin with a wood stove and hunt and butcher my own meat and grow my own food. Everything from scratch. Find a good man to marry and have some babies...hopefully. I have some fertility issues, but if children are what God has planned for me, then I will have them.
"'You're all in, or you're all out.' And I chose the plain community... I am all in", she proudly proclaimed to the world by *USING HER CELLPHONE TO POST ABOUT IT ON TIKTOK.* _Lord, give me strength! _*_I don't want to live on this planet anymore._*
Of all the things to call her out for this seems the silliest. She closed her TikTok account when she decided to go all in on being a Mennonite, and then she reactivated it for one day so she could respond to the woman who called her out, and then immediately closed it again afterwards.
@@sfdntk yeah but most Amish and Mennonite communities wouldn't even accept her having a phone, let alone using one to make videos to post online. I don't know how well you know of those types of communities but they tend to shun technology and while some communities allow some simple technologies, most wouldn't ever allow a smart phone. Heck plenty of them don't even allow a wall phone or even plumbing and running water.
@@sfdntktechnically, she probably shouldn’t even have that cellphone. Plus, she was clearly on social media in some capacity if she was able to see that she was being called out
@@sfdntk If she was "all-in" the appropriate response would be to turn off all of her devices, deactivate her accounts, and never look at or appear on social media again - _that_ would be going "all in", and I could respect that. But clearly she was in fact _still_ online checking what everyone was saying about her, and then went out of her way to publicly post a response. That is hardly, "all in". She was LARPing for clout, and she's a clown more than she's a Mennonite. Actions speak much louder than words, and her actions make her intentions very clear. 'Back in my day', we would call someone who did this (male or female) an "attention whore".
I grew up with Anna and Sarah. I found out about all this yesterday when a friend sent a video to my sister in which both of us in a picture with the girls was featured. I haven't spoken to either of them in years but this is all very sad to see.
I like how she's blaming haters online for keeping her online to "set the record straight" and that they're at fault for her possibly being kicked out of the community. Like, no girl. If you wanted to join this religious community, maintaining your TikTok account is your fault and nobody else's. She should have deleted it the moment she "chose" the plains community, not once the bishop was already on his way and apparently already aware of her transgression. I mean, if she was actually serious about converting.
True she posted the “last video” and then immediately posted another once the scandal was outted. So clearly still wasn’t being truthful about choosing the plain life.
She _did_ delete her TikTok account the moment she "chose" the plain community, did you not watch the video? She then reactivated her account to respond to the woman who called her out, and then immediately closed her account again.
@@sfdntkyou’ve posted this comment a few times on a few different threads and I don’t see anyone responding so I will. If she legitimately took the conversion to the Amish lifestyle seriously, then she would know that continuing to post online goes against the agreement she makes with the community during conversion. This idea that she only posted that last time in retaliation doesn’t matter. Because the outside world wouldn’t matter to you once you’ve given up that lifestyle. The decision to post a second time actually shows her to be either a) lying about her conversion, b) converting but not taking it seriously, c) converting but showing that she needs more maturing before converting fully, or d) that she is so naive about the lifestyle that she is converting to that she thinks they won’t have an issue with her just doing it one more time. That’s not how the Amish feel. It’s a serious commitment that is a total shut off of your previous life. Personally, I think she’s full of it. It’s nice to see that some people want to give her the benefit of the doubt, as I think it’s good to have multiple perspectives, but the Amish are very all or nothing. There are no exceptions to the rules, like defending yourself to your audience. They’d tell you to put away your pride and focus on god and your work. I think this idea that “oh it’s just one more time to defend herself” is similar to when someone gives up something for lent, like their phones or meat. Deciding to go ahead and do it one time during lent is precisely the issue. You’re supposed to be suffering and giving up in order to refocus yourself. It’s all or nothing in lent. It’s supposed to be taken seriously. I can see how easy it would be to be flippant about this. It’s just one more post, who cares? The community she proposes she’s joining cares. And that’s who she says she cares about. So while it means nothing to us, it’s a pretty severe issue for that community and she should have taken that seriously. Sorry for the rambling response, but I grew up baptist and while I don’t consider myself baptist anymore, I’m familiar with how strict religions feel about sacrificing the influences of the outside world.
My dad grew up Amish and all my extended family on my dad’s side is Amish (some of my cousins have since left) … 1. You can join the community as an outsider but you would need to be established in a church. No you wouldn’t be able to dress English or have a cell phone after you join the church you would give all those “worldly” things up. Only the teens in their Rumspringa use cell phones and have TikTok 2. You’re either Mennonite OR Amish. You don’t bounce between the two. They’re not the same. Mennonites use cell phones so maybe she thought that would be her excuse to why she’s using a phone ? 3. Yes they live a plain lifestyle but I’ve never heard them referred to as a “plain community” or working in a “plain” store. 4. You wouldn’t see any adult Amish people on TikTok who are still joined to a church . They would either be Ex-Amish who left the church or Amish teens who have not yet joined the church. Ways to tell Mennonite and Amish a part. … Mennonite can wear prints on their dresses, ie …floral prints while Amish dresses are always plain colors. Mennonite women will wear partial coverings on their head (which is what it looked like SarahJoy was wearing) Amish woman will wear coverings hiding all their hair (except maybe a bit around their forehead) Mennonite can drive and have cell phones while Amish use horse and buggy or Bike and only community phone (think like a phone booth). Looks like SarahJoy was mixing the two .. so huge red flag 🚩
The mixing is really funny. I went to shul, did communion, and then prayed on the floor toward Mecca… what do you mean you don’t believe I’m Jewish? Worst. Cosplay. Ever. Frodo in a Hogwarts house is about as close.
My grandparents are Mennonite and it’s so obnoxious that the majority of her content was her yearning for a “regular” life. Pretending she’s in this awful community that she can’t escape
I had not heard of this young woman, and perhaps my opinion might be different from that of younger people. Pretending to be part of a religious (or disability, or ethnic, or other) community is NOT just harmless cosplay; it could potentially give serious misinformation about that community. That's not fair to the community and its real members. It's cultural appropriation writ-large. Basically this young woman was getting attention (and perhaps money?) by larping around pretending to be what she wasn't. I believe that a community deserves to have it's authentic voice presented to the world in whatever way IT chooses, not have poseurs play dress-up just to garner attention.
Most ex-mennonites I've heard from say that her story is really believable. I grew up theologically/geographically close to Mennonites as an evangelical Quaker and her story largely makes a lot of sense to me. Also, Amish culture is absolutely rife with abuse. I don't think we need to be protecting it's reputation from Sarah Joy. It needs protection from itself at this point. Same with many conservative Mennonite groups, they can be incredibly awful places. It's hard watching everyone side against a woman who's story doesn't seem to have had very many holes punched in it if you ask me.
Also, to add on, looking into it. Sarah Joy and Anna's parents are extremely conservative Christians. The church Bethal Asymble is a subset of penicostal that has had issues before. Some sects of Bethel have been called out for cult behavior and abuse similar to the Mennonite and amaisj community. We don't fully know Sarah and Anna home life, but they were, in fact, home-schooled. And usually, when home school and conservative Christians are involved, there is some form of abuse going on .
@@hinatahyuuga120are you insinuating that homeschooled + Christian + conservative household = abuse? While those are the situations that make headlines, that’s not the norm or even an average experience. I was homeschooled in a conservative Christian home and was never abused. I’m late 20’s now, and while I’m aware of a few stories like this that make headlines, I don’t think it happens enough to associate the two as one leading to the other. Plenty of public school teachers have run off with their students (I have two friends from different schools who each had a situation in their school with a teacher either resigning in disgrace after getting caught with a minor or running away with a student who happened to be 18 whom they had been grooming for years before they came of age). Those are awful stories, but they make headlines or are notable enough to mention because they’re unusual. Homeschooling doesn’t equal abuse any more than public schooling does. There are certainly some sects of Christianity that have questionable ideas about child rearing, but just because someone is a homeschooled Christian doesn’t mean that’s their situation. The vast majority of homeschoolers are very normal people. My homeschool program had almost 800 kids in it from all over the world. We had prom, clubs, everything. It’s not what you think.
@juliabuonincontro8617 homeschooling + ultra consecutive right wing + extreme consecutive Christianity together that specific combinations is known to have a lot of abuse and religious trauma involved And it's not a few cases like you wanna make it out to be. Add on the type of people she would have normally been around. If she has any mental illness what so every it wpuld be swept under the rug or forced for ehr to act normal.
@@uikmnhj4meAny environment that keeps a child away from “outside adults” that could report to the authorities if abuse is going on is inherently going to have more abuse. Glad to hear nothing happened to you but that specific combo does make people wary and for good reason.
Giselle Waldner isn’t Mennonite but rather Hutterite, and her channel is a really interesting look into her closed community and how it all works. She’s based in Canada and has been posting for some time, so it gives you a sense of life throughout the year there.
To answer the question asked at the end about whether the Amish can use TikTok: it really depends. There are multiple sects (types) of Amish and they all have different rules about technology. Necessity is usually a driving factor. Refrigerators might be allowed in a community that lives further south, cars might be allowed if roads have been constructed in a way where buggies would be unsafe. Using something versus owning something is a big deal. Like you can hire someone to drive you somewhere but you can't own a car in some communities. Cell phones are more common than they used to be. But it's a whole thing. And adding in Mennonites complicates it even further as they have different rules than the Amish about tech. A social media account that is being used for non work related purposes would almost definitely be against the rules in the vast majority of communities but smart phones are small and easy to hide and young people sometimes do just that. I would be surprised to find an actual Amish TikToker but it wouldn't be completely impossible. Hope that clarifies things (even though I basically said yes and no). I'm originally from Amish country and saw their buggies all the time, we had some quilts we bought from them, and there's a bunch of Mennonites at my local farmer's market so I have a little bit of experience with them but keep in mind I'm not answering as someone actually in the community.
I live VERY close to an Amish community, and have bought many things from local Amish folks and businesses (I have some lovely Amish made cabinets. It would be EXTREMELY UNLIKELY (but not impossible!) for a tiktoker to be genuinely Amish. I've basically heard the same as you (that technology use is based on necessity) directly from local Amish folks. But still some people in the community (usually teens, but sometimes adults) will have things they aren't supposed to like phones, which they take great effort to hide so they don't get into trouble. Which, I have specifically heard from ex-Amish folks who have done those things before they left the lifestyle and religion.
I'm in PA and there is a large Amish community near me. One farm near me still uses horses to plow their fields, but they also have an electric fence, to keep in the livestock (it's hooked up to solar) Some have ID's that say "valid without photo" while others do have a photo on their ID. It depends on the order that that they're in.
4:44 I take issue with the girl insinuating that having "phases" is a mental health issue... I know she didn't outright SAY that, but pretty heavily implied.
yea, it made me laugh because she made it sound like having an emo phase equals mental illness. i'm sure that's not what she meant, but that's how it sounded.
she should’ve just said that the woman has had issues with her identity or something? i think that’s what she was getting at. like she tries to fit somewhere, anywhere
i think she was trying to refer that Sarah didn't have an identity and just liked following the latest trend or the thing that drew attention to her, she might have worded it incorrectly but I get her point
I am from South Central Pennsylvania, which if you know anything about that area it's got the highest concentration of Amish and Mennonites in the US. I could tell something was fishy when she at first wouldn't say which she was and then claimed to be Amish later meanwhile the stuff she wears would only be acceptable if she was a more conservative Mennonite (fun fact, the difference is that Amish people can't wear patterned or brightly colored clothes).
Don’t make fun of the way someone speaks.. that’s very rude. And you’ve completely lost the plot by saying a real humans voice sounds like “AI” when the purpose of AI is to copy _humans_ …
@@drpeppergurl there are some creators I cannot watch solely because of their speech patterns. They might have content that interests me but I just can’t do it
To everyone saying this isn't a big deal, it is. She lied about being a part of another person's culture for clout and money. Another person's culture is not another person's costume regardless of what race, or ethnicity they are. She shouldn't have been doxxed, but what she did was not okay. Furthermore, a lot of her videos were her posing as a victim in a culture that actually does have a major problem with systematic abuse. She didn't just pretend to be Amish. She also pretended to be an abuse victim when she wasn't.
sorry, literally no one gives sh*t about the amish. its really not worth the harassment over faking a lifestyle that is essentially can be mimicked as living "traditional"
i think using 'culture not a costume' for a white christian misogynistic and abusive cult is pretty demeaning to literally every colonized culture on the planet. obviously pretending others stories of abuse are yours is wrong but amish really fucking isnt
Right. There is no need to lie about these things happening. When you do lie, it makes things so much harder for those trying to escape and seek justice. And what is that old phrase, once bitten twice shy? Those that she fooled who were genuinely trying to help her, when they're presented with a real Amish trying to get out of that life will not be as compassionate or willing to listen to their stories.
And another matter! Because most people in these communities don't have phones or internet, she's becoming one of the world's limited representations of a community she is not even in. That's like if one guy played every Native American man on TV, but he was from Spain. Or because Muslim people do not depict Muhammed, all depictions of him are made by outsiders- often political cartoonists, who are famous for making people look unflattering.
obviously what sarah did was not cool, but the way Kenzie kept saying she has "a lot of mental health issues" and "stuff to figure out" and 'proof' of this in the past was her having an emo phase / going through different phases?? pretty gross and rubbed me the wrong way, I hate sm when ppl do shit you don't like and you bring up their mental health, like just say u hate ppl with psychotic disorders and leave
also it implies that neurotypicals can never be mean, cruel or lack empathy and etc. everytime someone does something bad, people accuse them of being mentally ill, its exhausting
okay but you yourself just diagnosed her with a psychotic disorder. how is saying she has mental health issues/stuff to figure out any different than when you call her psychotic?
What’s so weird is there are modern Amish/Mennonites who dress just like everyone else. So why she felt the need to cosplay a more conservative sect makes no sense to me.
I grew up around Amish and Mennonite people my whole life and watched them interact with eachother and the “outside” world. Technically each Amish person gets a choice to leave or stay but due to the social and familial consequences they never end up leaving. Women and girls are only educated to 6th grade I believe. I say all of this to better explain my position. Sarah joy has no idea what she was really doing but what she did was gross. There are real women who would die to live freely with choices and for her to make it a little quirky thing about her is wrong and kind of gross to me. I don’t think she had evil intentions but what she did was just wrong. She didn’t deserve being doxxed at all.
I feel like the friend wanted to get back at Sarah so she just used whatever excuse she could. There are so much more serious things to be concerned about than some woman on tiktok pretending to be amish or Mennonite
@@NicoNicoNessieSubThat's just What Aboutism. Most things you can dismiss by saying "why are we focusing on this when-" and then point to something else entirely. It's not an either/or situation. What she did apparently minimized the plight of other women for her own self-gain and popularity online. I think it's more than fair to call that out.
@@kylec8015but you have to consider intent as well, considering how horrible it must be to get doxxed and hated in masses on the internet. It's worth asking if she did all this with malicious intent or if she didn't know the harm she could be causing
@@urioriari34 It's hard to see how one could claim she didn't know the harm she was creating by directly portraying herself as a victim, coopting it for herself... Especially when she posts a final video where she alludes to harm being done to her... Something about that... seems just a tad deliberate, selfish, and intentional. I disagree with doxxing/threats, but harsh (and I mean harsh) critique is 100% fair in my book. She was more than willing to bask in the Sun of internet popularity and adulation under false pretenses, now she's being dragged publically for the truth. If she doesn't like it, maybe she should have thought twice about her actions. Regardless, the heat she's getting will eventally disappear, and people will largely forget. Hopefully she doesn't and it's a lesson learned.
They would “die” to live freely? They can just leave. This crap about being “trapped” is ridiculous garbage to pedal more hatred toward these minority religions. No sect of mennonite or amish will force anyone to stay. If you want to be in their community you follow their rules, it is VERY simple. Your comment is doing as much or more than her entire account to discriminate and breed hate towards the amish.
I think she may have been *trying* to convert. That is, the Amish notoriously don't go around trying to convert people and while it's technically possible to convert, they are very wary and cautious about it. I think she started working at the plain store, wore the dresses to fit in, liked the people and decided to attempt to be allowed to convert to Amish. Probably the Amish were getting to know her but hadn't yet accepted her as one of them. But the bishop heard about her Tiktok and was like if you're sincere you will stop that, hence her trying to quit. But then that person who vaguely knew her posted and she felt she had to respond-- and posted again. Posting again probably made the bishop think she wasn't serious about converting, so she probably was rejected from the community, and thus went back to dressing normally and going to her parents church, hence being seen in the background of her sister's socials. I think both things can be true, that she was sincerely trying to convert but also that she never was fully allowed to, so she never actually was Amish.
But she also regularly made videos complaining about stuff like systematic abuse in the Amish community. Why would she do that if she was genuinely trying to convert?
It's nice of you that you're trying to give her the benefit of the doubt but this scenario you have made up seems pretty far fetched to me. If she was serious at all joining the community, why would she be posting at all on tiktok.
Nah, she apparently had a social media history of fighting oppression and patriarchy. She saw abuse in the community while working at a plain store and instead of discussing that from an outside perspective, which wouldn't get attention, she cosplayed and then benefited from people donating money to her so she could 'escape' a life she wasn't even part of.
My ONLY thing with this is everyone who knows her from the past is showing proof or talking about when they were teens, when Sara Joy said she didn’t “convert” until like 2019 so of course she’d be like a regular American teenager when she was younger/growing up.
A problem that people have is that Sarah Joy made a lot of videos alluding to systematic abuse that she was allegedly going through, as if she did not have a choice to be in that community or not.
People found her old TikTok account from 2022 where she was pretending to be a Norwegian Immigrant, and photos of her on family's social media dressed normally in 2020 through the present time. She never converted, it's all cosplay. Which would be fine if she wasn't collecting donations for an 'escape'.
I just don't understand why this got as much attention as it did. The stakes are so low. It's not a good thing to pretend you're a part of a community you aren't, but like good lord, did it warrant an exposé, harassment, a news story? God no. And for people saying like "oh but she did all these other bad things" like yeah but you only knew that after some weirdos dug through her and her sister's whole internet footprint. Doing something bad is not grounds to find literally anything possible to additionally condemn someone. It just comes across as people wanting to be absolved of their weirdo prying behavior. It's just a really dumb battle to fight. Just ignore her and move on.
I agree. Especially when the girl who posted the first expose tiktok said she had mental health issues. So why put her on blast for the entire internet just because... she pretended she was Amish?
You guys obviously don't know that you, yourself, shouldn't be putting all of that information in the public's view anyways. If you don't want it to be seen by anyone, don't post it. Also, don't lie?? Especially when it could be traced back to you, and so publicly at that. This is why people get scammed. You guys are justifying not doing research. Whether it's on a person or not. It's called a digital footprint for a reason. Does she deserve to have her life ruined? No, but that's what you're talking about, right? (Before anyone says anything.)
Yeah, genuinely bizarre to me that rolling stone got involved. It honestly feels almost invasive. I'm unsure if an online lie like this should warrant that kind of public investigation.
This. The ex friend is so weird for doing this over something so harmless. I could understand if Sarah was scamming people but just pretending to be Amish for social media is not really that bad. Because it's not like pretending to have a disability or lgbtq because those aren't a Choice. Being Amish at her age is a choice.
Whenever people get caught doing something they shouldn't be doing on the internet and then come back crying in a video about "People are actually digging and finding out stuff about me and sharing it all over the internet" I go through this weird back and forth of, yeah that sucks and people shouldn't be doing that, but also WELCOME TO THE INTERNET. That's what the internet does when they sniff out someone's lying or making a fool of themselves. We all know this. Don't act brand new. Maybe don't lie to everyone's faces and people won't come forward with proof that you're lying.
Assuming this is as fake as it appears to be, I vehemently disagree that it's as harmless as many seemed to believe. There are still horrific things happening within Amish communities to both humans and animals, and anything that calls really victims stories into question in any scenario is unacceptable. Eli Yoder is a content creator from an old order Amish community who is definitely worth a watch. His story highlights how deeply engrained beliefs can be and makes it clear how difficult it must be for some to escape. His father was shunned and pushed to suicide and his own mother will barely tolerate his existence since he left.
Oh thank you for covering this- I wanted to observe from the sidelines but not be involved- I did think the video where she said it was her last video in the community was odd bc it sounded like a lot of cars were going by in the background- not that they *cant* be in areas where there are cars but it was interesting Thank you for covering this!
To be clear, Amish folks drive their horses and buggies alongside cars. They use the bike lane. Some communities may be more isolated but where I’m at they’re very integrated with the rest of us and I do pass them frequently on my own drive to work.
So I live in PA Dutch country (I’m not Amish myself). I was willing to extend to grace and belief to this girl because practices can differ between households; ex. some Amish families do in fact have smartphones and social media, some don’t. (Amish Facebook is wild if you’re interested in a deep dive.) But at this point with her accusing the Amish community, my neighbors, of some horrible things that did not happen, she is putting them in danger. Nope. Glad she’s deleted her accounts. Honestly this seems like a mental health and identity issue that I hope she’ll get professional help for. Maybe she really did like religious modesty and wanted to participate. But she could have actually converted to an Anabaptist fellowship or even just covered her hair/crown without labeling herself as anything. That’s okay too. I’m agnostic but have covered my own hair/shoulders/knees/etc. before in certain situations to be respectful, like when entering a mosque or cathedral or synagogue. There are many ways to practice modesty and many reasons to do so.
I really like your style of covering a story. You have a calming, clear voice and didn't sensationalize things. I've subscribed and I look forward to watching more of your videos.
I find it strange that she says she wanted to be a part of the lifestyle yet in her videos she complains about the specific problems within the community that have pushed women to leave. Soooo, do you want to be down or not? It wasn't like she was born into it, she could freely leave and have a safe home. So, it was just all weird from the beginnning.
In fairness, you can criticise something and still believe in it. Someone can believe the Amish way is the Godly way but also recognise that some parts of their doctrine is down to human intervention, and not their Bible
I've heard bits and pieces of this spectacle but not the full story. Grateful for the recap. I genuinely think this kind of lying on social media is so strange. We live in a day and age where you and your whereabouts can be identified by the wallpaper in your house so to play with people's emotions like this to the point where they get really concerned for your safety is WILD.
i feel to a certain degree the community that followed her also holds some responsibility to look at themselves after all of this. she was able to get away with the lie because people really *really* liked the story she was selling. i saw that tiktok about being jealous of girls going to university prior to all the drama, and i thought it was kinda weird - like, what amish girl that's so trapped in the life she can't go to school is posting that on tiktok? she's talking about how she might face consequences, yet she's filming in her place of employment all the time? like, half of the proof in this video was public the entire time she was going viral on tiktok 💀 but that's was the story everyone wanted. she was the perfect cult victim you can feel good about helping (or feel better about your own life and worldview by watching) because she wasn't actually a victim. you don't have to deal with the consequences of undereducation and a lifetime of brainwashing, because there weren't any. no one is responsible for her actions and the harm they caused but sarah joy. but this story was extremely sketchy and contrived from the start - why were you so invested it, and so uncritical?
i dont fully understand tho. she said she was CONVERTING, meaning she previously wasnt, to amish. so people use old pics and stories to contradict her? she never said she's always been amish, she said she was *currently* BECOMING amish
The main issue that I have with it is that she was making money off of a lie. When she deleted all her videos, she kept a sponsored post, which means she was still making money off of it, and with her video views she was likely making bank off those too. If it were a character she were playing, that’s one thing. But she lied and convinced so many people that this was her genuine lifestyle. There’s something kind of scummy about that.
genuine question, what was so "offputting" about the video at 11:05? it looked far more like just someone posting their partner on the internet than anything questionable, tbh
She committed the crime of financial fraud. She is receiving donations under false pretenses. People don’t seem to understand how low the bar for “fraud” is. If you even panhandle and your sign says something about being homeless or a vet, and you are not those things, the police can and will arrest you.
It's extremely rare for an outsider to legitimately join the Amish community. They do not actively try to convert people. Both the Amish and Mennonites live alongside modern people so there is no reason to believe anyone at her job even tried to talk to her about religion (even though some Mennonite groups do seek converts the process is not fast or easy)
I find it crazy, how many of Sarah's "friends" are throwing her photos out on the internet without her permission. This is why I try not to take photos.
Considering she posted half those pics publicly it isn't much of an issue. The majority of pics came out after she was exposed. All it took was a single photo when it happened on tiktok
To be fair, she put herself out on social media in the first place. It would be one thing to post pictures of someone who has no social media following, but once you make yourself a public figure, it's a little hypocritical to say that you don't want pictures posted that expose your lies.
She's exposing someone for fooling everyone, she went way too far when she began actually sparking concern in people. Profiting off of it is also fcked up. If you're gonna lie and especially let the lie get even bigger, it's bound to blow up in your face.
They’re already on the internet. You people need to understand that once you post something on the internet and it’s easily available, it’s out there. Thats it. No permission needed (unless we’re talking paid content of course). But it was already on social media. Maybe don’t pretend to be a victim to garner sympathy and feed your main character delusion?
no, this is literally the funniest drama ever to happen. I’m always gonna think about this because I literally remember watching the video where she was like Please don’t bring up TikTok cause I’m not supposed to be on there at the store and everyone was like yeah we love you blah blah blah, and now a few days later, it’s really because she was faking it like that is so random like I wish she never got caught. I wish she kept making her coin on a fake Mennonite grift
for context: the giant woman video was a trend (even still going on/having a resurgence recently) from the tv show Steven Universe. not every video is a weird mental health conspiracy yall
OK so if she's going through something mentally we shouldn't be attacking or probing into her, we should be warning each other not to get empath-trapped. A lot of this seems to go against the rule of thumb of "seek to be right and helpful, not just right." I believe the consensus of her being fishy is correct, but the community's choice of how to help given that info is making me scratch my head
There are youtubers who do content about different time periods like medieval, colonial, post civil war, ww2, etc.. things like that. And they do it in costume and take on that role. Obviously everyone knows it's a character and its entertaining to be immersed in a world that is far removed from our own. This person could have done something like that to explore her interest in the "plain" lifestyle, costume and all. You just have to be upfront about what you're doing is all.
5:40 okay but she said her self she DOES NOT KEEP UP WITH HERR and Sarah converted before the pandemic so she reeeeeally knows nothing about Sarah joys life anymore trying to expose someone’s past but not knowing their present is crazy to me
My family belonged to a "plain" community (though they wouldnt identify it that way) until my grandma left in adulthood. The trauma of never being good enough is so real and still affects my family dynamics even though no one is in the community anymore (in my immediate family, that is). It makes me so upset that she played the part just to then make money from trauma she never experienced.
I hope your channel becomes infinitely successful, because you are covering some genuinely odd people/stuff, unlike what you find in other channels. I love weird. I need weird.
My favorite part was all the other people on tiktok acting holier than thou trying to “cancel” the person who “snitched” on Sarah. Lol. I’d be sooooo embarrassed. All these tiktok “psychologists” doing their “analysis” lmao.
my dead giveaway was the fact she still wore her clothes the same way, especially the bonnet. You'd think, while yes, shed be used to the way of dress, she'd at least get rid of the bonnet and go out of the modest norms just a bit.
Nah sorry. I’ve worked close with Amish families and was humbled enough to be invited into their home for dinner. Despite the stereotypes many of the families are very loving; they just have a different custom of living. Pretending to be in someone else’s culture and then perpetuating stories of abuse takes that away from real survivors and only solidifies these stereotypes against people. Actions are disgusting.
Ok what Sarah did was weird and kinda messed up but other little miss girl saying “she had an emo phase and a whatever phase” like babes let’s pull up what you were like when you were a tween and speculate on your mental health because of it lmao
First off, I am the Granddaughter of a Mennonite, I can trace my Mennonite heritage all the way back to Prussia and beyond. First off, Amish are 100% FORBIDDEN to use even electricity, wear modern styles of any kind, or to even have technology. Amish are also Anabaptist. Not Christian. If you read the bible for yourself in the community you are shunned until you repent, and even then you are forever marked. You cannot have friends outside of the community, listen to music, or have anything to do with the world. Even going to the dentist for an abscess is done under cover of darkness. Even if she was pretending to be Mennonite there are still loads of religious laws that go along with that. And she is making a mockery out of other people's religion and heritage. It is 100% dangerous what she has done. She has maligned an entire religion by spreading falsehoods. Religion is NOT a costume.
I am Mennonite . I am very familiar with the Amish and have some Amish relatives . Right away her demeanour, the way she talks and what she says like how she wishes she could have dyed hair and piercings or how she doesn’t like how her religion was made by men . This is definitely not what a Amish or Mennonite would ever say. Also the most obvious thing is her saying « of course if you ask me if I’m Amish or Mennonite I’m going to laugh in your face and not answer ». Truly it can be annoying for all of us answering this question but usually we are more than glad to answer and we would never laugh to your face. Truly what she did I would say is almost cultural appropriation and she spread a lot of misinformation. Like Amish and mennonites are not this scary community where you absolutely cannot do anything or else you are in danger. Kinda sucks yk
There’s a reason the running joke of r/Amish is it has 0 posts
Hilarious imo
I had to double check this..lol
There’s a reason Weird Al parodied Gangsta’s Paradise into “Amish Paradise”. They never could be offended by the jokes in it because they wouldn’t be there to see it.
I’m literally weak asf . Reddit is hilarious
@@maenad1231that wasn’t really a reason lol. He’s parodied so many people that understand all the jokes.
I love Weird Al you don’t need to make thing up about him lol
my issue isn't fully cosplaying as amish, its pretending shes in danger. Its her posting that she was a victim of some truly disgusting shit in this amish community she wasn't even apart of, its her telling businesses that sponsor her how thankful she is because they are helping her save up money to escape. She made her audience think she was a victim and they came together to support her, they were offering financial support, sending things to her p.o box and offering places to stay and she allowed it. She encouraged this and that is so deceptive and malicious
I thought she disapeared because they found her phone until i saw this pop up💔 i am so disgusted!
It's definitely a good reason for people to call her out but I don't think the sympathy should end when a person's actions are harmful and make us angry, it's a very typical escalation of mental illness and in particular pathological lying. A pathological (as in, related to an illness) will go to great lengths to build up their lies, because they are something they wear like armor. And mentally ill people in general make terrible, selfish decisions. But it's because they need help they aren't getting.
Anyway, mental illness is very difficult to understand from the outside looking in, but people really do not do things out of malice. She seems pretty naive and immature, I don't think she understood how crappy her actions were and how it would scare and concern people. If she doesn't value herself to the point where she pretends to be someone she isn't, I don't think she could ever understand that people really do care about her, but she would try to test the limits of their caring by asking for help with a non-existent situation.
I hope she does get help. These situations often continue to escalate towards suicide attempts when the person gets called out. Though the attempts are only intended for attention, it can end with a terrible accident.
Amish not armish
Cosplaying as a religion without disclosing (even w disclosing tbh) is definitely disrespectful and problematic on its own (not inherently ig, but we don’t live in a vacuum so it wouldn’t be anymore than someone playing up stereotypes without the experience/knowledge needed to actually show what it’s like)
@dami5154 why not, though? unlike aspects of us like skin color or where we're born, religion is not an intrinsic part of someone's person that cannot be changed. someone getting made fun of for their religion is fair play tbh
The saddest thing is, she didn't need to lie. She could have easily gained a platform by sharing what it's like to work in the plain store and work alongside the community without actually being a part of it. She could have also gained a platform by saying "I'm cosplaying, this is a story."
No she wouldn’t have
@@hotmess9640 Exactly lmfao
I disagree. While she did have some content on the lifestyle, most of her stuff was funny skits and sounds with the joke being she was in the community. She got popular because of her more funny tiktoks and then people looked into her and thought she was in the community. She wasn't interested in teaching people about the community. She just wanted quick popularity on tiktok and used the amish thing as an interesting hook.
Oh, that's true! Carolyn Easom does that, and she's pretty well known for it. She has a series that criticizes the faults of family vloggers, via POVs where she plays each character. She's obviously drawn inspiration from real life vloggers - For example, one of her characters has a chronic illness, which her mother exploits for attention. But of COURSE, Carolyn has made it clear from day 1 that these are characters and she is acting. She has ALWAYS called them "POVs." And like I said, her series has both drawn attention to these issues, AND gained her a lot of popularity. So you're completely right, Sarah Joy didn't need to lie at all. People love POVs and getting invested in fictional characters, it could've worked out great for her.
If she was in the community, why and how did she have a phone?
My first hint that she wasn't actually Amish or Mennonite was that her clothes were often wrinkled. I used to live near a Mennonite community, and their clothing was pressed and spotless.
I live in PA Dutch country and that was my first tip-off too. I was willing to believe her using a smartphone and internet because yeah, some of the folks here actually do. But not having her clothes steamed and pressed is huge. Even the teenage boys who wear Nike t-shirts under their suspenders (for playing sports) always look put together.
I used to work at a pizza ranch and since it was technically a Christian restaurant they would all come to eat there and yes, they looked proper as hell. No wrinkles no folds no stains. Although, I was shocked when they all came out of a little mini van instead of a horse carriage.
yep! while i dont live near them i do know a lot about em cuz my family kinda looked into becoming amish since we love the simple farm life. either way they work hard and they dont skip corners on things and like you said, they iron their clothing daily even if it means just to work on the damn farm. they're what i like to call "professionals"
it’s pretty common for them to use mini vans. i worked at canadian tire which carries pretty much everything. amish/mennonites would come in a van and would usually buy sporting goods, fishing lures and home supplies. some used credit cards, or would just use cash. it was pretty interesting!
Really it wasn't that she was on tiktok?
my issue is that she made *almost ALL* of her content about the systemic/institutionalized abuse that can happen in these reclusive religious communities and allusions to how much "trouble" she'd be in if the community elders knew she posted like that, to then make that last video where she acts so nervous. She knew exactly what she was doing with that "last video as part of the community" thing and you can't convince me otherwise. I don't agree that it "wasn't hurting anyone" before, either, because the lie cheapens the REAL abuse that plenty of women face in those communities
This is why I have no sympathy for her.
This is how I feel too. And depending on which Anabaptist community, they’re really not all that reclusive. It seems like a mental health issue with this girl. Receiving attention for victimizing herself reinforced the positives in lying so she continued to do it. It maybe made her feel in control of her life. She seems lost. Ultimately I hope she gets help.
I think some onus is on the viewers. The way the viewers sensationalized everything and were quick to shell out money and support to an internet stranger is absolutely wild and was driven by ignorance. There are a few things that people had no clue about that had them in a tizzy
1. not every anabaptist community is amish. Many of them can have phones and things. They are all different. Mennonite is very different from amish and it should have raised red flags that she was tagging both and not specifying
2. not every anabapist community is abusive. People were right away jumping to the worst conclusions when for the most part, people of those communities grew up that way and find it normal and live normal lives. It may seem very oppressive to outsiders but I would say that about a lot of cultures and religions that we turn a blind eye to.
3. automatically assuming she is fine because she is merely in a "strict christian" household and can wear makeup is WILD. there is just as much abuse in homeschooling "strict christian" families. Again people are just so ignorant. They saw the amish law & order episode and think they know everything. lol.
people need to scrutinize a lot more when it comes to strangers they don't know online. Any person could put on a costume and pretend anything and you have to not be so gullible to believe it.
@@new0news naw sorry but this reads like victim blaming honestly. If someone is telling a lie the onus is on them for being, you know, a liar. yeah obviously being skeptical can keep you safe in this fucked up world full of fucked up people but no one did anything *wrong* by extending empathy and it's a pretty jaded outlook to suggest so
Yeah it was so disrespectful. For people who are victims, it harms them, and for the people who live just fine within the community, they would be insulted too. Like, there isn't a single person she didn't step on
I will never understand people who just blatantly lie about who they are when they could be exposed at any time.
I'll never understand why people have the need to expose someone who isn't hurting anyone and is just cosplaying
I’ve never seen a time where there are more efficient unofficial detectives! I guess people tell themselves “no one will notice.”
@@who__cares__ What she did was blatant cultural appropriation and furthermore, she also lied about being an abuse victim too.
@@who__cares__ Pretending to be a fairy on tiktok is cosplaying. Pretending to be a trapped cult victim for internet clout and money is weird and harmful.
It's ego
imho, i personally don't think shes in a community even as a convert. i think sarah joy seemed to find this a good outlet to roleplay a lifestyle, forgetting just how easily she could get caught out, especially if she has a history of going in and out of lifestyle changes like they described. it's really, really easy to lie to people on the internet. however, it's just as easy to get caught.
I think this is the opinion of 99%. She's just cosplaying. Which is fine. When you don't lie to your audience, pull on heartstrings, gain money and worry the people that put you where you are. She's a catfish, that's as simple as that. Catfishing is a staple of internet since the 90's.
She already said in one of her videos an incident when she was growing up Amish!
As long as she didn't harm anyone, who cares! They act like all these UA-cam videos are actually real!! Sorry, but I just don't believe one youtuber's dog can talk, lol! So many people make videos that are bs. She shouldn't have made the video where she appears scared, that did worry some, imo.
@@GrandmaJoJo-gd6yhit’s real when money is involved, it seems she was getting donations
@@redbeaniechild4117 oh wow! What type of donations? Like a couple bucks, like through superchats or like a gofundme? Idc about money she got through superchats, etc because people were enjoying her videos and that's what its meant for, but if she's starting a gofundme type of donations, I'd like to know what its for! But lying on a yt video is done everyday! Most people lie!
Lmao I love how she can’t use tik tok anymore in this morbid sad video then suddenly when someone is talking shit her ass is right back on there
well if she fr converted and her friend told her abt her being exposed/attacked online and her family being doxxed, itd make sense that she'd get back online to clear her name and tell ppl to stop doxxing her and her family
Pathological liars often bring humiliation and grief to their loved ones. 🤷🏻♂️
@@kaitlynmorgan4613not really. The community says to leave tiktok if she was really “all in” she wouldn’t waste her time to come back and “clear her name” to strangers who aren’t in their community. Imagine someone telling the community elders you’re back on tiktok after they told you to pick one. That’s grounds for excommunication.
Ik like she said she will delete tiktok then how did she know someone exposed her in a video? Am i the only one noticing this
She tired to do a creepy goodbye video looking to the side and pull a Marina Joyce to get views but it backfired lol
Omg marina Joyce 😂
The other videos were a little credible but that one was just goofy
that shit pissed me off. People with no real problems and like to bait people into giving them attention is one of the few things that makes my blood BOIL
Wasn't Marina Joyce in a drug spiral, and thats why she was doing all sort of weird shit?
The thing that really irks me about it all is how she changed her story.
Before being called out a lot of her videos where about the abuse she suffered under the community and how she wishes/wants to escape. She crafted a whole story about how she was going to be trapped to be a mother/wife when she really wanted to be a hairdresser.
Now after she was called out, suddenly she switched and she was a convert and no actually she really really wanted to stay in the community and was going to take the steps to be part of the community and if we believed she was in danger then we were all just reading too much into it.
It's so manipulative and horrible to pretend to suffer abuse from a community that has a a lot of real victims in it.
"I had to choose between my community or tiktok and I chose my community" she says IN A TIKTOK VIDEO
and then makes another tiktok days later lmfao
and she post about how unfair the community even when she has a choice to leave
When people pretend to be veterans, it’s stolen valor. Is pretending to be Amish stolen boredom? lol
She never claim to be amish she said she was mennonite
Underappreciated comment! 😂
@@mortthereefer3343false the hashtags in her videos also say Amish.
Simply claiming to be a veteran is not legally stolen valor. It has to be a running fraud gaining financial benefits from those lies. I can go sit in a bar all night long until someone I'm a Navy SEAL but as long as I do not use that lie to Garner income or donations then I'm not breaking any law whatsoever
Who cares if you pretend to be in a religion? Doesn’t come close to pretending to be a vet
"I'm not kidnapped, I'm just at my house." I want that on a tshirt.
saw this all over tiktok but couldn’t be bothered to try and piece it all together, appreciate you austin 🙏🏾🙏🏾 love from da uk !!!
I’m ethnically mennonite. I am queer, so I and my direct family are excommunicated now. On my mom’s side, the majority of my family grew up in a strict mennonite colony. I don’t really understand WHY someone would want to convert, but if she truly wanted to convert she wouldn’t have been posting the way she was. I don’t have a problem with her converting, but I wish she wouldn’t have made it seem like she was in the situation that my family was - being completely socially and financially isolated with no way to leave.
That said, I do have some sympathy for her. This seems like something I would have done when I was twelve or thirteen and struggling with mental health issues. I just wish she didn’t co-opt experiences that weren’t hers.
I’ve lived in the Lancaster PA area for almost my entire life and have known many people in the Amish and Mennonite communities personally. that’s exactly what I thought too, there’s no way her community wouldn’t have issues with what she was posting! I really appreciated your perspective as I didn’t see any other comments talking about this as someone who was in the community
Surely the main reason to convert is to marry into it, but she doesn't seem to be posting about any relationship within the community. The only other reason is having an identity crisis like a mid life crisis and comitting to it when you weren't in a healthy state of mind.
That’s what I’m saying like who’s converting to amish
I’m so sorry your story truly makes me so sad, I hope you and your family are well off now!
@@brookesearfossss There are people that convert to Amish or Mennonite. It's really not that hard of a concept to grasp. It's rare, but not unheard of. The culture can be very appealing to some people like myself, that if in a better situation, would certainly uproot my life to live in a community and fully learn their ways and language. I yearn for a lifestyle off the grid. Where I can be 100% self sufficient and don't have to rely on government, grocery stores, banks, jobs, and just the everyday battle to barely scrape by. I'll probably never end up Amish, but given the opportunity, I might take it. Instead for now, I'll keep my goal of building a farm/ranch on a big plot of land with all my animals and equipment. I want to build a log cabin with a wood stove and hunt and butcher my own meat and grow my own food. Everything from scratch. Find a good man to marry and have some babies...hopefully. I have some fertility issues, but if children are what God has planned for me, then I will have them.
"'You're all in, or you're all out.' And I chose the plain community... I am all in", she proudly proclaimed to the world by *USING HER CELLPHONE TO POST ABOUT IT ON TIKTOK.*
_Lord, give me strength! _*_I don't want to live on this planet anymore._*
Of all the things to call her out for this seems the silliest. She closed her TikTok account when she decided to go all in on being a Mennonite, and then she reactivated it for one day so she could respond to the woman who called her out, and then immediately closed it again afterwards.
@@sfdntk yeah but most Amish and Mennonite communities wouldn't even accept her having a phone, let alone using one to make videos to post online. I don't know how well you know of those types of communities but they tend to shun technology and while some communities allow some simple technologies, most wouldn't ever allow a smart phone. Heck plenty of them don't even allow a wall phone or even plumbing and running water.
@@sfdntktechnically, she probably shouldn’t even have that cellphone. Plus, she was clearly on social media in some capacity if she was able to see that she was being called out
@@sfdntk If she was "all-in" the appropriate response would be to turn off all of her devices, deactivate her accounts, and never look at or appear on social media again - _that_ would be going "all in", and I could respect that. But clearly she was in fact _still_ online checking what everyone was saying about her, and then went out of her way to publicly post a response. That is hardly, "all in". She was LARPing for clout, and she's a clown more than she's a Mennonite. Actions speak much louder than words, and her actions make her intentions very clear. 'Back in my day', we would call someone who did this (male or female) an "attention whore".
I grew up with Anna and Sarah. I found out about all this yesterday when a friend sent a video to my sister in which both of us in a picture with the girls was featured. I haven't spoken to either of them in years but this is all very sad to see.
Wow! That's so interesting. Yes, it's very sad
Sure you did
@@mortthereefer3343 “SuRe YoU dId” 🤓
I like how she's blaming haters online for keeping her online to "set the record straight" and that they're at fault for her possibly being kicked out of the community. Like, no girl. If you wanted to join this religious community, maintaining your TikTok account is your fault and nobody else's. She should have deleted it the moment she "chose" the plains community, not once the bishop was already on his way and apparently already aware of her transgression. I mean, if she was actually serious about converting.
True she posted the “last video” and then immediately posted another once the scandal was outted. So clearly still wasn’t being truthful about choosing the plain life.
She _did_ delete her TikTok account the moment she "chose" the plain community, did you not watch the video? She then reactivated her account to respond to the woman who called her out, and then immediately closed her account again.
@@sfdntkyou’ve posted this comment a few times on a few different threads and I don’t see anyone responding so I will.
If she legitimately took the conversion to the Amish lifestyle seriously, then she would know that continuing to post online goes against the agreement she makes with the community during conversion. This idea that she only posted that last time in retaliation doesn’t matter. Because the outside world wouldn’t matter to you once you’ve given up that lifestyle.
The decision to post a second time actually shows her to be either a) lying about her conversion, b) converting but not taking it seriously, c) converting but showing that she needs more maturing before converting fully, or d) that she is so naive about the lifestyle that she is converting to that she thinks they won’t have an issue with her just doing it one more time.
That’s not how the Amish feel. It’s a serious commitment that is a total shut off of your previous life.
Personally, I think she’s full of it. It’s nice to see that some people want to give her the benefit of the doubt, as I think it’s good to have multiple perspectives, but the Amish are very all or nothing. There are no exceptions to the rules, like defending yourself to your audience. They’d tell you to put away your pride and focus on god and your work.
I think this idea that “oh it’s just one more time to defend herself” is similar to when someone gives up something for lent, like their phones or meat. Deciding to go ahead and do it one time during lent is precisely the issue. You’re supposed to be suffering and giving up in order to refocus yourself. It’s all or nothing in lent. It’s supposed to be taken seriously.
I can see how easy it would be to be flippant about this. It’s just one more post, who cares? The community she proposes she’s joining cares. And that’s who she says she cares about. So while it means nothing to us, it’s a pretty severe issue for that community and she should have taken that seriously.
Sorry for the rambling response, but I grew up baptist and while I don’t consider myself baptist anymore, I’m familiar with how strict religions feel about sacrificing the influences of the outside world.
SHE FAKED IT 😨😨 that’s wild
Very likely but don't trust the youtuber. She never claims to be amish she said she was mennonite
My dad grew up Amish and all my extended family on my dad’s side is Amish (some of my cousins have since left) …
1. You can join the community as an outsider but you would need to be established in a church. No you wouldn’t be able to dress English or have a cell phone after you join the church you would give all those “worldly” things up. Only the teens in their Rumspringa use cell phones and have TikTok
2. You’re either Mennonite OR Amish. You don’t bounce between the two. They’re not the same. Mennonites use cell phones so maybe she thought that would be her excuse to why she’s using a phone ?
3. Yes they live a plain lifestyle but I’ve never heard them referred to as a “plain community” or working in a “plain” store.
4. You wouldn’t see any adult Amish people on TikTok who are still joined to a church . They would either be Ex-Amish who left the church or Amish teens who have not yet joined the church.
Ways to tell Mennonite and Amish a part. …
Mennonite can wear prints on their dresses, ie …floral prints while Amish dresses are always plain colors.
Mennonite women will wear partial coverings on their head (which is what it looked like SarahJoy was wearing) Amish woman will wear coverings hiding all their hair (except maybe a bit around their forehead)
Mennonite can drive and have cell phones while Amish use horse and buggy or Bike and only community phone (think like a phone booth).
Looks like SarahJoy was mixing the two .. so huge red flag 🚩
Rumspringa! Thank you! I was trying to remember the name for the time of exploring the world outside the Amish community!
The mixing is really funny. I went to shul, did communion, and then prayed on the floor toward Mecca… what do you mean you don’t believe I’m Jewish? Worst. Cosplay. Ever. Frodo in a Hogwarts house is about as close.
My grandparents are Mennonite and it’s so obnoxious that the majority of her content was her yearning for a “regular” life. Pretending she’s in this awful community that she can’t escape
I had not heard of this young woman, and perhaps my opinion might be different from that of younger people. Pretending to be part of a religious (or disability, or ethnic, or other) community is NOT just harmless cosplay; it could potentially give serious misinformation about that community. That's not fair to the community and its real members. It's cultural appropriation writ-large. Basically this young woman was getting attention (and perhaps money?) by larping around pretending to be what she wasn't. I believe that a community deserves to have it's authentic voice presented to the world in whatever way IT chooses, not have poseurs play dress-up just to garner attention.
Most ex-mennonites I've heard from say that her story is really believable. I grew up theologically/geographically close to Mennonites as an evangelical Quaker and her story largely makes a lot of sense to me.
Also, Amish culture is absolutely rife with abuse. I don't think we need to be protecting it's reputation from Sarah Joy. It needs protection from itself at this point.
Same with many conservative Mennonite groups, they can be incredibly awful places. It's hard watching everyone side against a woman who's story doesn't seem to have had very many holes punched in it if you ask me.
Also, to add on, looking into it. Sarah Joy and Anna's parents are extremely conservative Christians. The church Bethal Asymble is a subset of penicostal that has had issues before. Some sects of Bethel have been called out for cult behavior and abuse similar to the Mennonite and amaisj community. We don't fully know Sarah and Anna home life, but they were, in fact, home-schooled. And usually, when home school and conservative Christians are involved, there is some form of abuse going on .
@@hinatahyuuga120are you insinuating that homeschooled + Christian + conservative household = abuse?
While those are the situations that make headlines, that’s not the norm or even an average experience. I was homeschooled in a conservative Christian home and was never abused. I’m late 20’s now, and while I’m aware of a few stories like this that make headlines, I don’t think it happens enough to associate the two as one leading to the other. Plenty of public school teachers have run off with their students (I have two friends from different schools who each had a situation in their school with a teacher either resigning in disgrace after getting caught with a minor or running away with a student who happened to be 18 whom they had been grooming for years before they came of age). Those are awful stories, but they make headlines or are notable enough to mention because they’re unusual. Homeschooling doesn’t equal abuse any more than public schooling does. There are certainly some sects of Christianity that have questionable ideas about child rearing, but just because someone is a homeschooled Christian doesn’t mean that’s their situation. The vast majority of homeschoolers are very normal people. My homeschool program had almost 800 kids in it from all over the world. We had prom, clubs, everything. It’s not what you think.
@juliabuonincontro8617 homeschooling + ultra consecutive right wing + extreme consecutive Christianity together that specific combinations is known to have a lot of abuse and religious trauma involved And it's not a few cases like you wanna make it out to be.
Add on the type of people she would have normally been around. If she has any mental illness what so every it wpuld be swept under the rug or forced for ehr to act normal.
@@uikmnhj4meAny environment that keeps a child away from “outside adults” that could report to the authorities if abuse is going on is inherently going to have more abuse. Glad to hear nothing happened to you but that specific combo does make people wary and for good reason.
Giselle Waldner isn’t Mennonite but rather Hutterite, and her channel is a really interesting look into her closed community and how it all works. She’s based in Canada and has been posting for some time, so it gives you a sense of life throughout the year there.
There is also a youtuber called Megan Fox (ironic right) who is a mennonite. Been following her for years.
To answer the question asked at the end about whether the Amish can use TikTok: it really depends. There are multiple sects (types) of Amish and they all have different rules about technology. Necessity is usually a driving factor. Refrigerators might be allowed in a community that lives further south, cars might be allowed if roads have been constructed in a way where buggies would be unsafe. Using something versus owning something is a big deal. Like you can hire someone to drive you somewhere but you can't own a car in some communities. Cell phones are more common than they used to be. But it's a whole thing. And adding in Mennonites complicates it even further as they have different rules than the Amish about tech. A social media account that is being used for non work related purposes would almost definitely be against the rules in the vast majority of communities but smart phones are small and easy to hide and young people sometimes do just that. I would be surprised to find an actual Amish TikToker but it wouldn't be completely impossible.
Hope that clarifies things (even though I basically said yes and no). I'm originally from Amish country and saw their buggies all the time, we had some quilts we bought from them, and there's a bunch of Mennonites at my local farmer's market so I have a little bit of experience with them but keep in mind I'm not answering as someone actually in the community.
I live VERY close to an Amish community, and have bought many things from local Amish folks and businesses (I have some lovely Amish made cabinets. It would be EXTREMELY UNLIKELY (but not impossible!) for a tiktoker to be genuinely Amish. I've basically heard the same as you (that technology use is based on necessity) directly from local Amish folks. But still some people in the community (usually teens, but sometimes adults) will have things they aren't supposed to like phones, which they take great effort to hide so they don't get into trouble. Which, I have specifically heard from ex-Amish folks who have done those things before they left the lifestyle and religion.
I'm in PA and there is a large Amish community near me. One farm near me still uses horses to plow their fields, but they also have an electric fence, to keep in the livestock (it's hooked up to solar) Some have ID's that say "valid without photo" while others do have a photo on their ID. It depends on the order that that they're in.
That's not even taking into account rumschpringa, where anything technically goes.
4:44 I take issue with the girl insinuating that having "phases" is a mental health issue... I know she didn't outright SAY that, but pretty heavily implied.
I didn't really get that from her but also, I dont have phases so... "let it fly if it dont apply"
yea, it made me laugh because she made it sound like having an emo phase equals mental illness. i'm sure that's not what she meant, but that's how it sounded.
Even though it seems pretty obvious Miss Sarah was lying, the ex-friend who exposed her also seemed pretty nasty. Just terrible vibes from her
she should’ve just said that the woman has had issues with her identity or something? i think that’s what she was getting at. like she tries to fit somewhere, anywhere
i think she was trying to refer that Sarah didn't have an identity and just liked following the latest trend or the thing that drew attention to her, she might have worded it incorrectly but I get her point
I am from South Central Pennsylvania, which if you know anything about that area it's got the highest concentration of Amish and Mennonites in the US. I could tell something was fishy when she at first wouldn't say which she was and then claimed to be Amish later meanwhile the stuff she wears would only be acceptable if she was a more conservative Mennonite (fun fact, the difference is that Amish people can't wear patterned or brightly colored clothes).
How to tell if someone is a pathological liar: "This is my last Tik Tok 😞" [5 seconds later] "Friends, it has come to my attention that..."🤦♀
My dude why is your speech pattern set to “unconvincing AI” 😭
literally. it’s kinda scary
Don’t make fun of the way someone speaks.. that’s very rude.
And you’ve completely lost the plot by saying a real humans voice sounds like “AI” when the purpose of AI is to copy _humans_ …
@@iceheader^
i'm so glad i'm not the only one who noticed this 😭 it lowkey almost made the video unwatchable
@@drpeppergurl there are some creators I cannot watch solely because of their speech patterns. They might have content that interests me but I just can’t do it
To everyone saying this isn't a big deal, it is. She lied about being a part of another person's culture for clout and money. Another person's culture is not another person's costume regardless of what race, or ethnicity they are. She shouldn't have been doxxed, but what she did was not okay.
Furthermore, a lot of her videos were her posing as a victim in a culture that actually does have a major problem with systematic abuse. She didn't just pretend to be Amish. She also pretended to be an abuse victim when she wasn't.
sorry, literally no one gives sh*t about the amish. its really not worth the harassment over faking a lifestyle that is essentially can be mimicked as living "traditional"
They’re not informed…in these comments….people have gotten dumber over the years
i think using 'culture not a costume' for a white christian misogynistic and abusive cult is pretty demeaning to literally every colonized culture on the planet. obviously pretending others stories of abuse are yours is wrong but amish really fucking isnt
Right. There is no need to lie about these things happening. When you do lie, it makes things so much harder for those trying to escape and seek justice. And what is that old phrase, once bitten twice shy? Those that she fooled who were genuinely trying to help her, when they're presented with a real Amish trying to get out of that life will not be as compassionate or willing to listen to their stories.
And another matter! Because most people in these communities don't have phones or internet, she's becoming one of the world's limited representations of a community she is not even in. That's like if one guy played every Native American man on TV, but he was from Spain. Or because Muslim people do not depict Muhammed, all depictions of him are made by outsiders- often political cartoonists, who are famous for making people look unflattering.
No way! I believed her🥺 I was a little scared for her, she had us thinkin she was in danger yall! how dare she!!!
Don’t worry I saw her once before and thought she was Amish to although never cared enough to keep up, she was kind of believable to average people
@@fart4453average? Wow no need to be rude :(
@@MsTinkerbelle87 all they said was average omg thats not even rude
@@MsTinkerbelle87wtf did they say that was rude to you?
obviously what sarah did was not cool, but the way Kenzie kept saying she has "a lot of mental health issues" and "stuff to figure out" and 'proof' of this in the past was her having an emo phase / going through different phases?? pretty gross and rubbed me the wrong way, I hate sm when ppl do shit you don't like and you bring up their mental health, like just say u hate ppl with psychotic disorders and leave
yeah i didnt like that at all it felt icky😭
also it implies that neurotypicals can never be mean, cruel or lack empathy and etc. everytime someone does something bad, people accuse them of being mentally ill, its exhausting
okay but you yourself just diagnosed her with a psychotic disorder. how is saying she has mental health issues/stuff to figure out any different than when you call her psychotic?
@@arcanealchemist3190in which part does OP say, she is Psychotic? Can you even read 😂💀
I’m pretty sure they meant psychiatric just autocorrect flopped again
What’s so weird is there are modern Amish/Mennonites who dress just like everyone else. So why she felt the need to cosplay a more conservative sect makes no sense to me.
I grew up around Amish and Mennonite people my whole life and watched them interact with eachother and the “outside” world.
Technically each Amish person gets a choice to leave or stay but due to the social and familial consequences they never end up leaving. Women and girls are only educated to 6th grade I believe.
I say all of this to better explain my position. Sarah joy has no idea what she was really doing but what she did was gross. There are real women who would die to live freely with choices and for her to make it a little quirky thing about her is wrong and kind of gross to me.
I don’t think she had evil intentions but what she did was just wrong. She didn’t deserve being doxxed at all.
I feel like the friend wanted to get back at Sarah so she just used whatever excuse she could. There are so much more serious things to be concerned about than some woman on tiktok pretending to be amish or Mennonite
@@NicoNicoNessieSubThat's just What Aboutism. Most things you can dismiss by saying "why are we focusing on this when-" and then point to something else entirely. It's not an either/or situation.
What she did apparently minimized the plight of other women for her own self-gain and popularity online. I think it's more than fair to call that out.
@@kylec8015but you have to consider intent as well, considering how horrible it must be to get doxxed and hated in masses on the internet. It's worth asking if she did all this with malicious intent or if she didn't know the harm she could be causing
@@urioriari34 It's hard to see how one could claim she didn't know the harm she was creating by directly portraying herself as a victim, coopting it for herself... Especially when she posts a final video where she alludes to harm being done to her...
Something about that... seems just a tad deliberate, selfish, and intentional. I disagree with doxxing/threats, but harsh (and I mean harsh) critique is 100% fair in my book. She was more than willing to bask in the Sun of internet popularity and adulation under false pretenses, now she's being dragged publically for the truth. If she doesn't like it, maybe she should have thought twice about her actions.
Regardless, the heat she's getting will eventally disappear, and people will largely forget. Hopefully she doesn't and it's a lesson learned.
They would “die” to live freely? They can just leave. This crap about being “trapped” is ridiculous garbage to pedal more hatred toward these minority religions. No sect of mennonite or amish will force anyone to stay. If you want to be in their community you follow their rules, it is VERY simple. Your comment is doing as much or more than her entire account to discriminate and breed hate towards the amish.
I think she may have been *trying* to convert. That is, the Amish notoriously don't go around trying to convert people and while it's technically possible to convert, they are very wary and cautious about it. I think she started working at the plain store, wore the dresses to fit in, liked the people and decided to attempt to be allowed to convert to Amish. Probably the Amish were getting to know her but hadn't yet accepted her as one of them. But the bishop heard about her Tiktok and was like if you're sincere you will stop that, hence her trying to quit. But then that person who vaguely knew her posted and she felt she had to respond-- and posted again. Posting again probably made the bishop think she wasn't serious about converting, so she probably was rejected from the community, and thus went back to dressing normally and going to her parents church, hence being seen in the background of her sister's socials. I think both things can be true, that she was sincerely trying to convert but also that she never was fully allowed to, so she never actually was Amish.
But she also regularly made videos complaining about stuff like systematic abuse in the Amish community. Why would she do that if she was genuinely trying to convert?
It's nice of you that you're trying to give her the benefit of the doubt but this scenario you have made up seems pretty far fetched to me.
If she was serious at all joining the community, why would she be posting at all on tiktok.
Nah, she apparently had a social media history of fighting oppression and patriarchy. She saw abuse in the community while working at a plain store and instead of discussing that from an outside perspective, which wouldn't get attention, she cosplayed and then benefited from people donating money to her so she could 'escape' a life she wasn't even part of.
Wouldn't make much sense. So the bishop forbids phones but sees this tik tok ? Explain how you think that would work ?
@@sithvaultboyalso the bishop would have no way of knowing she posted again unless she felt so guilty about it that she confessed.
Wow, Rolling Stone must be running out of actual rock news! Bizarre that they would run a story about her!
Rolling Stone has been a gossip rag for years now.
@@HarryFlashmanVC sad. I haven't read it in years 😊
My ONLY thing with this is everyone who knows her from the past is showing proof or talking about when they were teens, when Sara Joy said she didn’t “convert” until like 2019 so of course she’d be like a regular American teenager when she was younger/growing up.
A problem that people have is that Sarah Joy made a lot of videos alluding to systematic abuse that she was allegedly going through, as if she did not have a choice to be in that community or not.
People found her old TikTok account from 2022 where she was pretending to be a Norwegian Immigrant, and photos of her on family's social media dressed normally in 2020 through the present time. She never converted, it's all cosplay. Which would be fine if she wasn't collecting donations for an 'escape'.
@@glassribbon4219They're saying though, if it WERE true there would be no reason for her middle-highschool "friends" to spill nonexistent tea
If you’re using TikTok then you’re obviously not Amish
This! Like, the controversy is so interesting/amusing, soley because people believed a Tiktok account purported to be run by an Amish woman was REAL 😂
There are a lot of younger people in the amish community who have Phones and such.
I just don't understand why this got as much attention as it did. The stakes are so low. It's not a good thing to pretend you're a part of a community you aren't, but like good lord, did it warrant an exposé, harassment, a news story? God no.
And for people saying like "oh but she did all these other bad things" like yeah but you only knew that after some weirdos dug through her and her sister's whole internet footprint. Doing something bad is not grounds to find literally anything possible to additionally condemn someone. It just comes across as people wanting to be absolved of their weirdo prying behavior.
It's just a really dumb battle to fight. Just ignore her and move on.
Totally agree. I think it's weirder to dig so deeply into somebody's history to try to catch them in a lie, than to lie on the internet.
I agree. Especially when the girl who posted the first expose tiktok said she had mental health issues. So why put her on blast for the entire internet just because... she pretended she was Amish?
You guys obviously don't know that you, yourself, shouldn't be putting all of that information in the public's view anyways. If you don't want it to be seen by anyone, don't post it.
Also, don't lie?? Especially when it could be traced back to you, and so publicly at that. This is why people get scammed. You guys are justifying not doing research. Whether it's on a person or not. It's called a digital footprint for a reason.
Does she deserve to have her life ruined? No, but that's what you're talking about, right? (Before anyone says anything.)
Yeah, genuinely bizarre to me that rolling stone got involved. It honestly feels almost invasive. I'm unsure if an online lie like this should warrant that kind of public investigation.
This. The ex friend is so weird for doing this over something so harmless. I could understand if Sarah was scamming people but just pretending to be Amish for social media is not really that bad. Because it's not like pretending to have a disability or lgbtq because those aren't a Choice. Being Amish at her age is a choice.
8:27 She just said she never knew this girl and then in the next breath says they were talking at a wedding. Which is it?
Whenever people get caught doing something they shouldn't be doing on the internet and then come back crying in a video about "People are actually digging and finding out stuff about me and sharing it all over the internet" I go through this weird back and forth of, yeah that sucks and people shouldn't be doing that, but also WELCOME TO THE INTERNET. That's what the internet does when they sniff out someone's lying or making a fool of themselves. We all know this. Don't act brand new. Maybe don't lie to everyone's faces and people won't come forward with proof that you're lying.
you couldn’t say it better🤞🏼
Assuming this is as fake as it appears to be, I vehemently disagree that it's as harmless as many seemed to believe. There are still horrific things happening within Amish communities to both humans and animals, and anything that calls really victims stories into question in any scenario is unacceptable.
Eli Yoder is a content creator from an old order Amish community who is definitely worth a watch. His story highlights how deeply engrained beliefs can be and makes it clear how difficult it must be for some to escape. His father was shunned and pushed to suicide and his own mother will barely tolerate his existence since he left.
Why is your videos so clear and crisp?? You are the only channel I watch where the video quality is perfect 👌
"I feel like I'll never be good enough!" She says, actively breaking one of the biggest rules of the community she claims to be in love with
Is this how I find out it was ALL FAKE???? People were seriously worried for her safety
The comparison of "goth phase" to presenting as amish. 😅
theyre both costumes for sarah.
It's wild to say someone is spreading nasty rumors about you when they showed photo evidence
Oh thank you for covering this- I wanted to observe from the sidelines but not be involved- I did think the video where she said it was her last video in the community was odd bc it sounded like a lot of cars were going by in the background- not that they *cant* be in areas where there are cars but it was interesting
Thank you for covering this!
To be clear, Amish folks drive their horses and buggies alongside cars. They use the bike lane. Some communities may be more isolated but where I’m at they’re very integrated with the rest of us and I do pass them frequently on my own drive to work.
I've been to many amish areas and a lot of homes are located along highways
So I live in PA Dutch country (I’m not Amish myself). I was willing to extend to grace and belief to this girl because practices can differ between households; ex. some Amish families do in fact have smartphones and social media, some don’t. (Amish Facebook is wild if you’re interested in a deep dive.) But at this point with her accusing the Amish community, my neighbors, of some horrible things that did not happen, she is putting them in danger. Nope. Glad she’s deleted her accounts. Honestly this seems like a mental health and identity issue that I hope she’ll get professional help for. Maybe she really did like religious modesty and wanted to participate. But she could have actually converted to an Anabaptist fellowship or even just covered her hair/crown without labeling herself as anything. That’s okay too. I’m agnostic but have covered my own hair/shoulders/knees/etc. before in certain situations to be respectful, like when entering a mosque or cathedral or synagogue. There are many ways to practice modesty and many reasons to do so.
Amish Facebook sounds like such a trip
I really like your style of covering a story. You have a calming, clear voice and didn't sensationalize things. I've subscribed and I look forward to watching more of your videos.
I find it strange that she says she wanted to be a part of the lifestyle yet in her videos she complains about the specific problems within the community that have pushed women to leave. Soooo, do you want to be down or not? It wasn't like she was born into it, she could freely leave and have a safe home. So, it was just all weird from the beginnning.
In fairness, you can criticise something and still believe in it. Someone can believe the Amish way is the Godly way but also recognise that some parts of their doctrine is down to human intervention, and not their Bible
This just proves my theory that there are no normal homeschooled kids
this is .... just really creepy.
I've heard bits and pieces of this spectacle but not the full story. Grateful for the recap.
I genuinely think this kind of lying on social media is so strange. We live in a day and age where you and your whereabouts can be identified by the wallpaper in your house so to play with people's emotions like this to the point where they get really concerned for your safety is WILD.
I never believed her, she leaned way too hard into the ohhhhh im not supposed to be in tiktok or have a phone ooohhhhhhh. so obvious.
How are they calling her home? Plain folk usually don't have phones in their home, unless she's talking about her secret cell phone
i feel to a certain degree the community that followed her also holds some responsibility to look at themselves after all of this. she was able to get away with the lie because people really *really* liked the story she was selling. i saw that tiktok about being jealous of girls going to university prior to all the drama, and i thought it was kinda weird - like, what amish girl that's so trapped in the life she can't go to school is posting that on tiktok? she's talking about how she might face consequences, yet she's filming in her place of employment all the time? like, half of the proof in this video was public the entire time she was going viral on tiktok 💀
but that's was the story everyone wanted. she was the perfect cult victim you can feel good about helping (or feel better about your own life and worldview by watching) because she wasn't actually a victim. you don't have to deal with the consequences of undereducation and a lifetime of brainwashing, because there weren't any.
no one is responsible for her actions and the harm they caused but sarah joy. but this story was extremely sketchy and contrived from the start - why were you so invested it, and so uncritical?
i dont fully understand tho. she said she was CONVERTING, meaning she previously wasnt, to amish. so people use old pics and stories to contradict her? she never said she's always been amish, she said she was *currently* BECOMING amish
She said she converted on 2019 but they showed pics and video from 2022-2023.
The pics were recent lol
The main issue that I have with it is that she was making money off of a lie. When she deleted all her videos, she kept a sponsored post, which means she was still making money off of it, and with her video views she was likely making bank off those too. If it were a character she were playing, that’s one thing. But she lied and convinced so many people that this was her genuine lifestyle. There’s something kind of scummy about that.
genuine question, what was so "offputting" about the video at 11:05? it looked far more like just someone posting their partner on the internet than anything questionable, tbh
Yeah I'm kinda confused about that one and the giant woman one, i'm not seeing the relevancy 😅
She committed the crime of financial fraud. She is receiving donations under false pretenses. People don’t seem to understand how low the bar for “fraud” is. If you even panhandle and your sign says something about being homeless or a vet, and you are not those things, the police can and will arrest you.
It's extremely rare for an outsider to legitimately join the Amish community. They do not actively try to convert people. Both the Amish and Mennonites live alongside modern people so there is no reason to believe anyone at her job even tried to talk to her about religion (even though some Mennonite groups do seek converts the process is not fast or easy)
people need to turn notifications off when taking a screen recording lmao
“you havent logged your breakfast today”
OMG I SAW THIS!!!!! I’ve literally been wondering for months what happened, and this is the first time I’ve seen it being covered
Omg what😭 she was lying??
I find it crazy, how many of Sarah's "friends" are throwing her photos out on the internet without her permission. This is why I try not to take photos.
Literally. On one hand it's good her fraud has been revealed but on the other, damn. What snakes.
Considering she posted half those pics publicly it isn't much of an issue. The majority of pics came out after she was exposed. All it took was a single photo when it happened on tiktok
To be fair, she put herself out on social media in the first place. It would be one thing to post pictures of someone who has no social media following, but once you make yourself a public figure, it's a little hypocritical to say that you don't want pictures posted that expose your lies.
She's exposing someone for fooling everyone, she went way too far when she began actually sparking concern in people. Profiting off of it is also fcked up. If you're gonna lie and especially let the lie get even bigger, it's bound to blow up in your face.
They’re already on the internet. You people need to understand that once you post something on the internet and it’s easily available, it’s out there. Thats it. No permission needed (unless we’re talking paid content of course). But it was already on social media. Maybe don’t pretend to be a victim to garner sympathy and feed your main character delusion?
no, this is literally the funniest drama ever to happen. I’m always gonna think about this because I literally remember watching the video where she was like Please don’t bring up TikTok cause I’m not supposed to be on there at the store and everyone was like yeah we love you blah blah blah, and now a few days later, it’s really because she was faking it like that is so random like I wish she never got caught. I wish she kept making her coin on a fake Mennonite grift
Eli Yoder is former Amish. He's great. He's been on Cults to Consciousness
When people’s content centers around their life but the life is fake, I’m really confused on what they’re getting out of it
Attention
I'm sick to death of the mental health excuse. Some people are just twisted and that's all.
for context: the giant woman video was a trend (even still going on/having a resurgence recently) from the tv show Steven Universe. not every video is a weird mental health conspiracy yall
Cosplaying as Amish was fine, when she started lying about different kinds of traumas and profiting off that was where she went wrong.
This is the most pathetic, bizarre thing ever
How to prove a tiktok’er isn’t Amish: they’re using TikTok.
this made me so sad, i loved her content and she seemed so genuine and wholesome of a person, it sucks how people are on the internet sometimes :(
And this is why you don’t believe most online stuff. It’s all fake.
OK so if she's going through something mentally we shouldn't be attacking or probing into her, we should be warning each other not to get empath-trapped. A lot of this seems to go against the rule of thumb of "seek to be right and helpful, not just right." I believe the consensus of her being fishy is correct, but the community's choice of how to help given that info is making me scratch my head
How…. How…. How did people not realize she wasn’t Amish earlier? She’s literally using technology.
There are youtubers who do content about different time periods like medieval, colonial, post civil war, ww2, etc.. things like that. And they do it in costume and take on that role. Obviously everyone knows it's a character and its entertaining to be immersed in a world that is far removed from our own. This person could have done something like that to explore her interest in the "plain" lifestyle, costume and all. You just have to be upfront about what you're doing is all.
Hell yeah a video essay about a controversy that I've never heard of or cared about!!! Amazing dinner + UA-cam combo.
5:40 okay but she said her self she DOES NOT KEEP UP WITH HERR and Sarah converted before the pandemic so she reeeeeally knows nothing about Sarah joys life anymore trying to expose someone’s past but not knowing their present is crazy to me
She claimed she used to work in the fields as a kid and it made her suicidal
Her never working the fields is relevant.
Shame is an important social tool.
My family belonged to a "plain" community (though they wouldnt identify it that way) until my grandma left in adulthood. The trauma of never being good enough is so real and still affects my family dynamics even though no one is in the community anymore (in my immediate family, that is). It makes me so upset that she played the part just to then make money from trauma she never experienced.
I hope your channel becomes infinitely successful, because you are covering some genuinely odd people/stuff, unlike what you find in other channels. I love weird. I need weird.
COMMENTING BEFORE AND AFTER WATCHING:
Before: didn’t she convert later in life?
After: OH.
She’s not cosplaying she’s larping
💯😂
My favorite part was all the other people on tiktok acting holier than thou trying to “cancel” the person who “snitched” on Sarah. Lol. I’d be sooooo embarrassed. All these tiktok “psychologists” doing their “analysis” lmao.
So sad that people feel the need to do this for clout
It’s almost like you’re using AI to write a script and then reading it out loud lol… I’m on to ya aren’t I ? Lolol
my dead giveaway was the fact she still wore her clothes the same way, especially the bonnet. You'd think, while yes, shed be used to the way of dress, she'd at least get rid of the bonnet and go out of the modest norms just a bit.
this drama was so weird thankyou for explaining 🙏🫶
I really don’t understand what the big deal is anyways?! Like ppl do this every day, this doesn’t make her a bad person.
This is some bizarre sh**. Smh. I will never understand this type of crazy
Nah sorry. I’ve worked close with Amish families and was humbled enough to be invited into their home for dinner. Despite the stereotypes many of the families are very loving; they just have a different custom of living. Pretending to be in someone else’s culture and then perpetuating stories of abuse takes that away from real survivors and only solidifies these stereotypes against people. Actions are disgusting.
My like is for Yoda, and Yoda only. But you, as usual, did a great job, Austin!
Ok what Sarah did was weird and kinda messed up but other little miss girl saying “she had an emo phase and a whatever phase” like babes let’s pull up what you were like when you were a tween and speculate on your mental health because of it lmao
First off, I am the Granddaughter of a Mennonite, I can trace my Mennonite heritage all the way back to Prussia and beyond. First off, Amish are 100% FORBIDDEN to use even electricity, wear modern styles of any kind, or to even have technology. Amish are also Anabaptist. Not Christian. If you read the bible for yourself in the community you are shunned until you repent, and even then you are forever marked. You cannot have friends outside of the community, listen to music, or have anything to do with the world. Even going to the dentist for an abscess is done under cover of darkness. Even if she was pretending to be Mennonite there are still loads of religious laws that go along with that. And she is making a mockery out of other people's religion and heritage.
It is 100% dangerous what she has done. She has maligned an entire religion by spreading falsehoods. Religion is NOT a costume.
Not all of them are so strict actually. It all depends on the community.
@@frutcakes6370 social media is still 100% forbidden, no matter what class of Amish.
My point still stands. Religion is not a costume.
@@skeinofadifferentcolor2090 lol i knew someone would come on here and tell YOU they know more about your life than you do. I hate people
@@mariya_tortilla seriously!
😂😂😂
I live around a ton of Amish people, so I clocked right away that she wasn’t. Thought it was some super weird roleplay or something.
I am Mennonite . I am very familiar with the Amish and have some Amish relatives . Right away her demeanour, the way she talks and what she says like how she wishes she could have dyed hair and piercings or how she doesn’t like how her religion was made by men . This is definitely not what a Amish or Mennonite would ever say. Also the most obvious thing is her saying « of course if you ask me if I’m Amish or Mennonite I’m going to laugh in your face and not answer ». Truly it can be annoying for all of us answering this question but usually we are more than glad to answer and we would never laugh to your face. Truly what she did I would say is almost cultural appropriation and she spread a lot of misinformation. Like Amish and mennonites are not this scary community where you absolutely cannot do anything or else you are in danger. Kinda sucks yk
If she was Amish she wouldn't have tiktok..... sooooo.
dont agree with what she did but holy shit the amount people dug into her past. the internet has become so much more involved as ive been online
good i hope all liars get exposed