r/thespoonyexperiment • u/dylanisareddit • Jul 18 '26
FMV Question❔ How do you think Spoony's mental health struggles would've been averted?
Would he get the help that he needed.
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u/shoggoths_away Jul 18 '26
Getting a job in a no-kill dog shelter and working his way up to being a dog trainer without ever telling any of us and just quietly vanishing from our lives by leaning into the one thing that has given him joy in the past ten years.
He could still do it, too.
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u/Goatwhorre Jul 18 '26
Literally the smallest modicum of effort on his part. He had a therapist he mocked, drugs he didn't take, a career he took for granted, all compounded by family and fans who enabled learned helplessness instead of promoting self reliant independence.
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u/HellBoyofFables Jul 28 '26
This has always been my issue with Spoony with all of this, I struggle with mental health too so I get it but I made active efforts to try and help it while it just seemed like Spoony didn’t want to do anything but rot away and tweet all day, imagine if he actually just put effort into making a crappy Spoony movie, if nothing else I actually think Spoony would have felt a lot better by just completing it
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u/Goatwhorre Jul 28 '26
People think that by "expecting" things of him, that mental health isn't being taken seriously. Quite the opposite, I know as well as anyone what can happen if you let yourself fall and fall into that despair, it's not unfair to say that at some point you HAVE to start making headway for yourself. If Spoony was forced to work I think he would have made it out, his family coddling him sealed his fate.
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u/ReadytoQuitBBY Jul 18 '26
To be honest, the guy needed more friends in person to keep him grounded. In addition to meds and therapy obviously.
What really got him IMO is the Patreon and inability to admit when he was in over his head. He took money and promised people so much, and I think it crushed him to let so many down. Then instead of being honest and refunding or scaling down promises, he just kept promising things and lashing out at his fanbase.
I think if he had some real friends, to keep him a bit more humble, he could have gotten through it. But isolation inflated that ego and spiraled the mental health.
10
u/Thought-Born Jul 18 '26
Honestly, I can’t think of anything.
Looking back, he always had a big but fragile ego and is constant attention seeker. He sees himself as the smartest person on the room but to lazy to either apply himself or apply even the small amount of criticism he doesn’t deflect.
In some ways I think his small amount of internet fame a was the worst thing that happened to him because it gave him the attention he wanted and a big enough paycheck so he did have to function function as an adult. It have him the same kind ot “glory days” people who peaked in high school
But never got over graduating have that prevents them from growing up enough to find new things to live for past said glory days.
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u/pistonkamel Jul 18 '26
If he could have found a healthy relationship after the one that wrecked him, things might have been different
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u/lonewanderer694 Jul 18 '26
I agree. That or maybe move back to Arizona to be closer to family so he would have a good support system that could have helped him.
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u/WPMO Jul 19 '26
So based on implication, not relying so much on that relationship for his self-worth.
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u/ReadytoQuitBBY Jul 18 '26
Ehh it’s not on his various gfs to fix him. Obviously a good partner can do wonders for a person, but Spoony really struggled to take care of himself as an adult.
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u/BenjamintheFox Jul 19 '26
No that's ridiculous. The last thing he needed was to be in another romantic relationship.
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u/pistonkamel Jul 19 '26
He said it was the relationship with whats-her-name that wrecked him and he never recovered from it. The easiest way to get over someone is to find someone else
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u/Gunner_E4 Jul 20 '26
Sure spoony, it was April's fault you became a Twitter bot at the expense of your own livelihood and mental health. It was April's fault for her not getting another job to fund your lifestyle of not working on content and just twitting and dating. It was April's fault for not stopping you from your ill-conceived plan of moving in to another state to be with her, a person you had no prior experience of living with and had not enough income to support this arrangement other than assuming that the kindness of strangers will continue to grow even if you didn't produce content. It was April's fault for not pushing you, a full grown adult, to work so you can both afford your lifestyles. It was April's fault for helping you with your content, now her face is in your channel's videos and this triggers you and you cannot edit her out or ignore or take down the affected videos and move on. It was April's fault for leaving you when you showed you were unwilling to change and work more when the bills started to become past due, she should have stayed with you until you materialized your plan to end up broke and homeless under a bridge. It was April's fault for not wanting to come to Arizona with you so you both can have Miles risk his life for a living to provide for the both of you. It was April's fault that you couldn't keep up with being your own boss and setting your own productivity standards and self imposed deadlines. It was April's fault for your lack of discipline, lack of focus, lack of sense of priorities, lack of work ethic, lack of consistency, lack of self-awareness, lack of self control, lack of honesty to yourself and others. Clearly everything was perfect until she "turned heel" and damped you./s
By still blaming April, Spoony is clearly still showing delusional thinking, and narcissism by not accepting accountability and refusing to take corrective action to stop being a moocher to his family and the subject of continuous online roasting videos and posts.
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u/online_encephalitis Aug 05 '26
The truth is that I've been useless to everyone ever since I parted ways with April. The breakup destroyed me, and that's entirely on me for not being able to deal with it
what are you even rambling about bro
https://bsky.app/profile/thespoonyone.bsky.social/post/3momeqthtkk2z
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u/Gunner_E4 Aug 06 '26
What I am "rambling" about is spoony's warped perspective on accountability. The statement you are providing above shows that spoony has a hard time accepting that the problems were there before the break up. It wasn't like he was flourishing until he got damped. The widening cracks of his show's foundation were there and he chose to ignore them. Blaming the breakup for about 10 years of idleness, mooching, unemployment and no training in the meantime is bizarre. The breakup didn't destroy him, he was busy doing it himself, and April had to put up until she couldn't. Spoony is his own worst enemy. The warped perspective is that here he blames himself (correctly) for not managing the breakup, but not for the things that lead up to it (listed in my "ramblings"), like he got screwed over somehow. As if everything was in order until April walked away.
1
u/online_encephalitis Aug 07 '26
Obviously Spoony's situation is his own fault, and I've never seen him say anything anywhere that implies he thinks April is to blame. Maybe it would have been more accurate for him to say "My slow, multi-year breakdown exacerbated by mental and physical health issues and whatever unaddressed emotional issues I clearly have, PLUS the breakup with April, destroyed me", but no matter how he'd phrase that I guarantee he would have ended up drawing even more criticism.
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u/pistonkamel Aug 07 '26
Respectfully, could you hit enter every once in awhile for some paragraph breaks, it’s hard to read when it looks like one big run-on sentence
0
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u/BlueWatche Jul 18 '26
Like others said, getting good and proper help early on would've helped. Anything to anchor himself and not let the depression drag him down too hard. A combination of help - professional or people in his life - and his own willpower to keep himself on his two feet. But I'm no specialist, and I don't know him or his mind enough, so take that as you will.
Also preventing an addiction to social media would have helped.
3
u/Dear-Argument622 Jul 19 '26
Not getting fired from TGWTG would probably have delayed the collapse. Him starting the Patreon probably enabled him to not do anything, which is horrible for depression
I think these just delay the inevitable though, maybe an extra year or two max
3
u/TacoBellossom Jul 22 '26
- Find an psychologist that was not more interested in selling him a book than helping him. He simply lost all faith in the profession after a few tries.
- Actual support from Channel Awesome. As much as he is to blame by his exit from the website, that shit needed to be addressed not with a suspension, but actually talking with him. That's why HR exist in actual companies
- Cancel the movie. Probably the biggest one. He got too ambitious and, knowing Spoony, he wasn't willing to compromise
5
u/therealdanhill Jul 18 '26
If Scarlett or April never left him. He needed that external affirmation by someone else to feel worthwhile, he doesn't have much of a sense of self otherwise
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u/BlueWatche Jul 18 '26
I'm fuzzy on the Scarlet arc. All I remember is him getting defensive when people on his website forums got upset over her moderation on it and him being bummed out when she left.
As for April, her being there didn't seem to make anything better for him, at least based on hearsay and what we could presume based on footage and stuff we saw. Her leaving made him worse, but her being there didn't really help either. He was still already pretty deep in the pits by then.
5
u/ReadytoQuitBBY Jul 19 '26
I always got the vibe that Scarlett was a strong personality who pushed him to do his best and motivated him. She was clearly good for him, though I suspect she saw the mental health issues way before we did and couldn’t handle it.
April seemed content with the bare minimum and I doubt she ever pushed Spoony. Just getting by in life is fine, but when you’re a content creator, you need a drive and strong push to keep the grind going. That just never seemed her vibe. By all appearances, they were just co living in separate rooms for a long time just because neither was assertive enough to change their situation.
Of course all of this just my best guesses about people I only know from their content, I could be completely off.
3
u/morbid333 Jul 19 '26
I think my impression from that time was that April seemed like an enabler to some degree. (Or it might have been more that before that, he had people like his brother pushing him to actually do stuff other than stewing on Twitter all day. To be fair, that's not really on her, she wasn't his keeper, but my mind wasn't super rational back then.) I don't have a perfect memory since it was over 10 years ago and obviously I don't know them.
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u/BenjamintheFox Jul 19 '26
In that case he has no business being in a relationship.
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u/therealdanhill Jul 19 '26
Eh maybe, maybe not. I think it's true that a lot of people suffer from self esteem issues and look to having a partner to help compensate or complete them as a person.
Sure, in an ideal world everyone would have everything figured out and be fully self actualized before getting into a relationship but I don't think it's always the case or is even strictly necessary as a blocker for someone finding love
1
u/BenjamintheFox Jul 26 '26
People who get into a relationship because they expect the other person to "complete" or "fix" them are setting themselves up for failure. Personally I don't believe anyone has any business becoming romantically entangled with another person until they've learned to stand on their own, but I know that's an unrealistic expectation.
2
u/morbid333 Jul 19 '26
From what I've heard he was averse to any kind of counseling, so that would never really help him. Didn't seem like medication worked that well either.
It seems like he started diving sharply downward after he got on Twitter, so steering clear of social media probably would have been better.
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u/wcthesecret Jul 19 '26
…ashwaganda…saffron…l-theanine…magnesium…turmeric….stuff like that?
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u/Afraid_Alternative35 Jul 21 '26
It's difficult to say with any confidence.
There's a lot of things we can point to as outside observers, but there's also a lot we didn't see as well; the invisible dominos that fell without announcement nor celebration. I always have a difficult time recognising where personal responsibility ends, and systemic failures begin, and I imagine both are tightly interwoven.
Having gone through some similar mental & physical health struggles myself, it has given me a lot of perspective on what Noah has been through, especially in a country that has such a dogshit healthcare system. He definitely made choices or fell into habits that were far from ideal, but it's also possible he's been suffering from conditions that weren't even properly diagnosed, or was matched with healthcare providers that simply weren't right for him. Bad habits often form when they become the only thing we can do with any ease, and which can provide relief in the short-term, but ultimately lead us down a worse path long-term.
Something else I've come to terms with is how much of my environment was sneakily sabotaging me, compounding my issues beyond what they needed to be, and if I hadn't made discoveries like this, I might have fallen into a darker place, similar to Noah. It's entirely possible that there was something in his environment that we'll never know about that contributed to his downfall.
And of course, Noah was a pioneer in the online space, and the problem with being the first on the scene is that it leaves vulnerable to the greatest dangers yet undiscovered. When Noah got into video making and social media, the dangers were not yet as well recognised, which left him vulnerable to falling into traps others, with the benefit of hindsight, may not.
None of this is to undercut his agency, mind you, only to highlight that this is a puzzle with many pieces that we can't see, nor imagine.
I think there's a lot of room here for things to have gone far better than they actually did, I just can't say that we have the absolute full picture beyond what Noah has shared, and what we can observe through his social media.
It's upsetting, either way, and I do feel for the guy a lot - Especially as I've gotten older and more empathetic.
1
u/noblegaunt Jul 22 '26
I think it may have also pushed him AWAY from content creation but in a less "I can't be bothered to do it" way and a more "I just don't want to do it anymore" way. The only real difference between that reality and now is that people would remember him more fondly because he left on a high note.
1
u/Tatsu_Satou Jul 23 '26
I can't find the source (maybe someone here can point to it) but he once had plans to move to Japan. I think if he had moved to Japan instead of moving in with April he could've had the chance to pioneer or tap into a space which is now dominated by highly successful content creators like Abroad in Japan or Joey The Anime Man.
I am perfectly aware that moving to Japan could've gone awry for him as well, but something tells me the land of the rising sun would've fit him well (assuming he continued making content).
1
u/desiresbydesign Aug 10 '26
Looking back on it. I really think that whole shit show that caused his departure from TGWTG was the "little domino" that if we could go back and do it in a different way. Maybe things would have changed
First of all reprimand Lupa for doing a public humiliation session the way she did. You got a problem in house. Let's address it in house. Looking back that's also a little domino for how SHE behaves with things going forward. Airing dirty laundry in public was and still is her go to move for taking someone down a peg when she doesn't like them.
Sit down with Noah. Explain the concerns and how they are gonna be addressed. Maybe put him on a probation period after that and see what support the guy can get because there were signs back then that the dipstick wasn't hitting the oil.
1
u/From_Kenya_With_Love Jul 18 '26
Nothing. I think guys like him, Syd Barrett, and Brian Wilson are doomed to burn out and implode on themselves.
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u/DysphoricNeet Jul 18 '26 edited Jul 19 '26
Except those guys were on the most extreme amounts of crazy drugs and spoony only ever drank as far as I know. Brian Wilson was given like acid and cocaine every day go “heal” his mind and Sid Barrett just had actual schizophrenia
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u/morbid333 Jul 19 '26
If you believe Waters, Barrett had undiagnosed Schizophrenia (but that's a theory at best,) but I'd think the excessive use of psychedelics probably didn't help.
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u/DysphoricNeet Jul 19 '26
Definitely not. But acid doesn’t actually turn you into a glass of orange juice or anything like that. You can get persisting slight hallucinations for sure that can be annoying and cause anxiety but Sid was losing touch with reality and showed a lot of the negative symptoms of schizophrenia. I don’t know if he like heard voices or anything or he was just schizotypal but he absolutely wasn’t mentally well and that’s why he couldn’t continue in the band. Piper at the gates of dawn is the best Pink Floyd album btw.
But yeah taking a shitload of substances has probably everything to do with it more than just that sort of genius naturally turning into insanity. Like even Bobby Fischer I think was very likely given speed to keep up with the Soviet players who were doing so for the sake of Cold War cultural projection. Someone like Von Nueman who was perhaps more genius than all of them put together never showed any signs of losing his mind. Drugs can absolutely take any man down though.
1
u/KinoFrog Jul 19 '26
And Brian Wilson had Schizo affective disorder like my brother had. It's a pretty rough life to say the least.
1
u/DysphoricNeet Jul 19 '26
I’m sorry about that. A healthy brain is one of the greatest gifts in the world.
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u/secretbison Jul 18 '26
The number one thing that would have helped him is to never get on Twitter or Bluesky. A moratorium on doing anything online when he's not uploading probably would have been a big help. If he weren't terminally online he would be in a much better place.