Lindsay Ellis

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About

Lindsay Ellis is an American YouTuber and video essayist best known for extended looks at pieces of pop culture and her work with Channel Awesome as "The Nostalgia Chick."

History

Lindsay Ellis was born November 24th, 1984 in Tennessee.^[1] She first appeared online as "The Nostalgia Chick" on Channel Awesome in 2008, and worked with the channel until 2014.^[2] She later changed her character to the "Nostalgic Woman," where she did less shtick and more straightforward reviews of old media (examples shown below).

After leaving Channel Awesome, Ellis continued to do more straightforward and thoughtful essays on pop culture on her own channel. Her channel launched on October 10th, 2013,^[3] and has grown to over 874,000 subscribers in six and a half years. Her most popular videos are "How Aladdin Changed Animation (by Screwing Over Robin Williams)," which has gained over 4.7 million views (shown below, left), and "Hercules, Disney's Beautiful Hot Mess: a Video Essay," which gained over 3 million views (shown below, right).

Ellis is also the host of the PBS Digital Studios show It's Lit! which discusses books and reading.^[7]

Online Presence

In addition to her sizable YouTube presence, Ellis is active elsewhere on social media. On Twitter,^[4] she has gained over 226,000 followers since joining in December of 2008. Her subreddit launched in August of 2017, but has only gained 800 subscribers.^[5] He has 7,000 Patreon subscribers^[6] and is reported to be making over $10,000 a month.^[2] She has been the subject of several harassment campaigns in her time as a public figure.^[2] In 2019, she was profiled by Wired.^[2]

"Mask Off" Video

Lindsay Ellis' "Mask Off" Video is an hour and forty minute long video posted by Ellis in which she discusses a recent controversy she found herself in and cancel culture in general. The video divided onlookers, with many arguing it was a lengthy overreaction to a controversy when a simple apology would have sufficed and many others arguing it made valid points about Twitter culture.

On March 26th, 2021, Lindsay Ellis tweeted that she found the film Raya and the Last Dragon and the cartoon series Avatar: The Last Airbender similar, writing, "Also watched Raya and the Last Dragon and I think we need to come up with a name for this genre that is basically Avatar: the Last Airbender reduxes. It’s like half of all YA fantasy published in the last few years anyway." The tweet is now deleted. She received some backlash for the tweet due to some people believing she was implying that Asian-inspired properties are the same. She responded to the claim by tweeting, "I can see where if you squint I was implying all Asian-inspired properties are the same, especially if you were already privy to those conversations where I had not seen them. But the basic framework of TLA is becoming popular in fantasy fiction outside of Asian inspired stuff" (shown below). The "squint" comment was interpreted by some as anti-Asian racism and led to people calling for her to be "canceled."

Ellis tweeted she was tired of having her opinions taken in bad faith, and stopped tweeting for several weeks. On April 15th, 2021, she uploaded an hour-and-forty-minute-long video titled "Mask Off" where she addressed the controversy as well as some of her past incidents and mistakes, including her Movie Bob Snub, and discussed cancel culture and Twitter's "villain of the day" ideology. She clarified in the beginning of the video that it was neither an apology video or a video complaining about cancel culture. The video gained over 754,000 views in less than 24 hours.

Quitting YouTube

On December 27th, 2021, Ellis announced she was quitting YouTube, citing exhaustion from the Raya backlash. She posted the statement to her Patreon behind a paywall, but it has been reposted elsewhere online, such as the /r/LindsayEllis^[8] subreddit.