I knew Travis of WhatTravisSays -another account to add to the books...
I’ve stayed silent for long enough. This is extremely emotional for me to write as i have sat on this for a year (almost to the day). I’m not even sure i should come forward still, but I am anyways, as you can read.
I knew Travis of WhatTravisSays. I dated Travis, I had an online and very brief physical sexual relationship with him, he was one of my best friends for a long time. I knew him for approx. 10 years off and on and while I was of age when I met him, he has done much of the emotional manipulation to me as he had done to many other young women who have come forward.
I’ll be honest, when I first heard about the Carson accusation (he called me a couple weeks after it was posted, basically as soon as it became known to him), I didn’t want to believe it. In fact I did everything in my power to assure him it would blow over. Here I was a woman who truly thought I loved this man. He was my world for a long time. But as I did my own investigating, my own inquiring (sometimes almost interrogation like) things didn’t add up. Dates that he had conversations with girls fell around the time he had trips to come see me, names were coming out with details that started to make sense of past lies he had told and convinced me of. The more questions I asked, the more I started to doubt him and his story. In turn this made him more irritated and angry with me. He did confess to me that he had an online sexual relationship with her. That he knew she was underage for awhile and did not stop or even want to stop, that he had pictures and conversations that he was deleting (which I witness him delete) for whatever reason. We went to a consultation with a lawyer and he lied to the lawyer. When I inquired why he did that he said (I’m paraphrasing this is not verbatim), “If I tell him I knew and had pictures then he knows I’m guilty of this and will get in trouble for something that was consensual”.
Now people here are going to ask “what a stupid girl! why did she stay!? see she must be making this up, why would you stay if you knew he was lying”. My answer to skeptics is this: I wanted to know every piece of details i could get my hands on before i moved for good away from him. I wanted to try to piece together all the years of lies and manipulation I was finally waking up to. It was hard, I was depressed, I was lonely. I was going against everything I believed in, compromising my values on so many issues just to get to the bottom of what had happened. I was disgusted with myself for giving him the time of day still, but for my own piece of mind, I wanted to know and TRY to understand why.
I spent 4 months waking up. Coming to terms with what my friends and family have been telling me for years. I didn’t believe them for years when they told me of course i said “You don’t know him like I do!” or some stupid shit like that is common lingo for emotional abuse victims. I learned as much as I could in the time i had and to this day i am STILL piecing together the timeline of our relationships (friendship and romantic). It breaks my heart that so many young women have been suckered into his game. I now have to seek psychological help for the emotional abuse he put me through. I hate that can I crack open a book on emotional abusers/sociopaths and it’s like reading an autobiography of his.
I get this won’t change people’s minds. In fact it may piss off a lot of his loyal fans, but just understand that I was one of his original loyal fans, I helped fund a couple of his projects. I was the sounding board for a lot of his ideas, I believed in him just as so many of his fans do now. But let me tell you, his YouTube persona is NOT who he is. You cannot know who anyone is based off of some video clips that they choose to splice together to make their best side shine. Be careful, be skeptical and do NOT get charmed by him if he makes you feel special. He likes coming of age girls, who are vulnerable and desperately want to be seen as special and unique and to be told “you’re the only one”. If you’re one of the few who say “he didn’t do it to me!” Good! Be grateful. But just because he did not do it to you, doesn’t mean he wasn’t seeing other women on the side and lying to you about it. He knows he has to save face with the majority of people and he does it well. Manipulators know and play the game well to gain the trust of people who they interact with. So the few people they choose to get their claws into, if they come forward they seem absolutely crazy. Why? Because he knows you’ll say something like: “that’s not the Travis I know! He’s charming and nice, so understanding and fights for human rights like gay rights and women’s rights!”
I will share my personal experiences at a later date, but for now this is all I have. I wanted to throw this in the pot of experiences and tumblr seemed like the place to do it for now. I want to sincerely apologize to any women who have been emotionally and/or physically hurt by Travis. I hope all of you get the help you deserve and please even if his viewership keeps going up, DO NOT give up the fight for justice and to have a normal life again. Come forward and say your story to the authorities if you were underage. The statute of limitations is not over and technology can retrieve a lot of the digital evidence to build a case against him. If you were of age but he still manipulated you, reach out to any of the women, who has come forward and say your truth.
Note: I want to explicitly add, I DO NOT support anyone dishing out death threats or cyber bullying whether they are guilty or not. It’s wrong for someone to wish death or harm upon someone as much as we may hate them. Those individuals have family and friends who would sincerely miss them so wishing harm on people you may or may not know (Carson included) is pathetic. Those words do real damage and time and time again we have seen people cyber bullied to the point of suicide.
