Sixpenceee Heals

Overview

Sixpenceee Heals refers to a controversy on Tumblr in which horror/supernatural blogger Sixpenceee attempted to launch a project in which she would charge people $30 to listen to their problems and mental troubles in exchange for advice. Many Tumblr users found this exploitative as Sixpenceee is not a mental health professional, leading to criticism and jokes about the project.

Background

Sixpenceee is a blogger who usually posts about events related to horror and the supernatural.^[1] On May 26th, 2017, she announced the project Sixpenceee Heals, a project in which she would accept submissions of people who want to talk about their problems and mental health, and for a $30 fee, she would write an individualized guide to help that person. The post has since been deleted (reblogged version shown below).

Developments

The project was quickly criticized. One of the most widely spread critiques came from Tumblr user v1als,^[2] who took several issues with the project. First, they thought that Sixpenceee was taking advantage of people desperate enough for help they would seek the advice of a horror blogger rather than a professional therapist. Second, v1als believed Sixpenceee was hardly qualified to be offering mental health advice, and that it was potentially dangerous for someone as unqualified as Sixpenceee to be doling out mental health advice to a person she barely knows (portion of the critique shown below). v1als' post, which features Sixpenceee's original post, has over 18,000 notes.

"This would be a really lovely thing to do if you were just offering an ear but you’re taking so much responsibility and putting so much liability on yourself. You’re also providing paid therapy services to people when you have no qualifications, and that’s just so exploitative to me. If you want to help people lend an ear, but you can’t charge for being a friend. You certainly can’t charge people for services you have no right to be giving."

Further critique of Sixpenceee Heals centered on the fact she had displayed ableism in the sort of horror and supernatural stories she would post, further disqualifying her from being a sound mental health counselor. v1als^[3] compiled a list of such stories in response to a user asking them about it. The day after she announced the project, Sixpenceee^[4] apologized for it, saying she would not follow through with it, and directed users to free websites that offered a similar service.

Tumblr Jokes

Meanwhile, other members of Tumblr mocked the incident with jokes about Sixpenceee's naïveté. For example, user Roosterboost^[7] uploaded a mock ad for the service (shown below), gaining 7,500 notes.

A thread was posted to /r/OutOfTheLoop^[5] was posted on May 31st asking about the incident, particularly jokes about Sixpenceee having a "child slave." That reference is to the fact Sixpenceee's white family living in India has a child servant. Memedocumentation^[6] also covered the meme.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References