I first heard about this on Friday. I have read all the posts here, there is a lot to go through so I am sorry if I mis-remember some comments people have made, but there is just too much to quote etc.
Firstly..... when my eldest brother was in university he made a lot of friends, a core group who shared similar interests. There was one person who we are going to call Nathan, or as my mum called him Nice Nathan because he was. He was quiet, polite, perfectly normal. For years and years and years this group of friends stayed the same. Went to each others weddings etc etc. Nice Nathan was at my brother's wedding, he sat next to me for quite some time before the wedding began. I was 14 then.
Many years passed, now all into their mid-30's. They had seen each other's relationships come and go, children being born etc.
Next thing my mum knew was that my brother had just discovered that Nice Nathan had been arrested for putting a camera in the shower of the house he shared with his partner..... and her two teenage daughters.
Needless to say
absolutely no one in this group of friends could fathom how this could have happened. Never a hint that anything like that could even possibly be part of his personality. Needless to say also, his name became Mud as soon as this came to light. (He went to prison by the way but he's out now). One friend in particular was upset due to him having a young daughter himself.
Judging my 2020 standards, I think people would doubt that fact that my brother knew nothing about this. He lived with this man, shared most of his young adult life in his company went on holiday with him and he could never have imagined that Nice Nathan was like that.
My point is..... just because you know someone
doesn't mean you actually do know them.
And knowing someone who turns out to be bad doesn't make you a bad person as well.
Some points I'd like to make and questions I have.
Just to add: I set out trying to clearly put my thoughts and while I am not denying the allegations are serious, I am so disgusted by how the vast majority of people are reacting (although weirdly not so much on instagram) and how everyone is racing the to the finish line before the whistle has been blown.... I'm finding it very hard to rein it in. So I'm half shocked by this and half saddened. Shocked by the allegations and saddened by what his happening to TPWW when as of yet everyone is
innocent. (Remember that word Twitter? No, I don't mean the smoothies).
- If this sort of alleged behaviour is known to happen in the theme park community (someone said this here I believe)... then heads up people.... you're in that community. What are you doing about it? (Unless you mean specifically theme park vloggers, then that might narrow it down.) This is the first I've heard about rampant abuse of girls and women, so I'd like more clarity on this idea that there are a lot of sexual predators in the theme park community.
- To those who seemingly possess knowledge of the bad deeds done by Shawn and TPWW over the years, there have been many pages devoted to him on here, yet apart from recent days (and the odd brawl about the bookworm) I've never read anything really negative about the channel in this thread. I'm happy to stand corrected if someone could point me to a post detailing previous transgressions. I'm enjoying reading on FB the people coming out of the woodwork with the knowing "I knew there was something" comments.... I remember reading similar comments for a certain Cliff Richard.......
- If any of the alleged sexual harassment incidents prove to be true, then no one is denying the fact that this will indeed be serious and those involved should be punished. Whatever punishment that is deemed correct by law, not the keyboard warriors out there. However, I stand by my brother's story, it will take a lot more than this to be true to simply make Shawn accountable for anything that may have happened (if it happened at all)
- I'm not 100% sure about the timeline of all of this, and what was posted when by TPWW but I know there has been a heap of criticism regarding what has/hasn't been done. I'm going to say that most people are not prepared for things like this, no one plans for dealing with this sort of thing for a theme park channel. Also, I have seen the way some messages about this whole thing have been spread around twitter..... he has a family friendly channel, people are liking and re-tweeting like there is no tomorrow.... and there is something going on with the police. How do we know he hasn't been advised to remove comments? How do we know the police are not involved with it? How do we know how we would deal with something like this?
- Not sure what he is meant to have done/said to be branded a racist. Does anyone really know this? Or is it just something being peddled around the internet? I just hope everyone the world over trusts their friends enough to never send a message they wouldn't want repeated to anyone else (was it to a friend)?. I find it hard to believe that the vast majority of people have never said inappropriate maybe even offensive things to someone else. If you could send me all your sent messages please so i can judge them and choose the size pitchfork I should buy? Was he wrong to say what he said.... It is something that is a massive deal..... urm... I don't know. I don't know in what context it was said, why it was said or even how the hell it got onto the internet? I genuinely can't judge something until I've been given the full facts and as this was likely never meant to be seen by the internet.... who would have put it out there? What was the reason? Is is genuine? I've read somewhere he said something about people who are autistic. I know Alex has said he has Tourette's Syndrome, which I believe is a form of autism. I'm struggling to understand how a seriously hurtful jibe (if that's what it was, do we even know?) at autistic people fits in with that.
- Just to clear any confusion, I am going to refer to the ladies who have made the accusations as "alleged victims". If you're really interested why I am going to call them alleged victims and not "victims" please google it. I personally feel this could be a reason why Shawn has not said anything about alleged victims as legally he's most likely bound not to. People need to stop treating a supposed "lack of empathy" for good old fashioned legality. Oh, and please stop with the Prince Andrew reference. This is a 29 year old, who can't pronounce Shenandoah and other such words correctly. He's not some mastermind or someone with a PR team behind him. He's probably reeling from all this, I'm sure he didn't set out to create a statement that would have him likened to someone who went around with a known pedo. If I was him I'd be in a ball crying somewhere.... which incidentally is pretty much what happened when I was younger, I was bullied on a Lord of the Rings forum, set up my own, and they found me, hacking into passwords and trashed my forum with pornographic images and hateful things they said about me...it still causes me pain to this day.
- Goes to the theme parks.... "what a nerve, how dare you"...... doesn't go to the theme parks.... "hmmm... he must be hiding... he must be guilty...." . If I was advising Shawn what to do.... I do not know what I would say to him. There is nothing he can do that will please everybody and what thing will anger some people the other will convince them of guilt.
- As we are currently living in times when we can't say too much about alleged victims for fear of shaming/blaming them... I will say only this. I don't know why this came out now and it's none of my business, but Twitter isn't the route for this sort of serious allegation. Because it just let's everyone in. The Good, the Bad and the downright Ugly. The Trial by Twitter has been declared open, and the door has been blown off and won't be closed again. I am really not enjoying seeing someone currently being destroyed by association only, while tweets about follower counts going up are being discussed amongst certain accounts. Also, anyone who supports the alleged victims fully.... but then go onto the personal accounts and start bullying people from TPWW.... shame on you. If any of the alleged victims are doing this..... shame on you. I don't care what they are alleged to have done, it doesn't make internet bullying the right way to go. I really, really hope that the rumour surrounding Alex in hospital is not true and it's just another Twitter thing.
- "Theme Park Worldwide should be taken off Youtube.... the parks need to ban him.... no more vlogging for him". A) as of yet he has done nothing wrong, if AT move away from his channel because of this, then honestly I will seriously have to consider whether I go to AT this season. Giving into internet pressure (by the way, I can find no comments on their social accounts regarding TPWW, so unless they're deleting messages as well...) which is the modern way of doing things where everyone is allowed to be judge, jury and executioner, it will be ridiculous on their part. This isn't the Tom Cruise of theme parks, most people going to AT won't know him from Adam. If him being there will affect them that badly....well he can make or break the park with one of his vlogs surely, the power he must have. B) if people feel so strongly about Shawn being at parks over something that has yet to be proven and may not have directly had anything to do with him anyway...... do these same people feel the same way about Roman Polanski, the films he has made, the people he knew back them when he was convicted of raping a young girl.... what do we say about the actresses who have worked with him since? Must everything be so black or white?
If there is something that I have learnt from reading posts on here, instagram, twitter, etc it's this.
You can agree the allegations are serious but hope they're not true and still be a good person.
You can also agree the allegations themselves are serious but have doubts and still be a good person.
You can agree that whatever happens, whoever is in the wrong, they should be punished and still be a good person.
You can also be a bit of all three and still be a good person.
There is in all of this, only one thing I can say for absolute certainty. There are some people who would love a Netflix series,
"The Rise and Fall of Shawn Sanbrooke". There are people out there absolutely rolling around the floor in their glee in all of this. I'll bet they run of out clean underwear by the time they finish wetting themselves with laughter.
And that makes me sad to know there are people out there who are enjoying this so much. Because there is nothing funny about this for anyone involved, the alleged victims, their families, and everyone who is on TPWW, their families, their work colleagues etc. And also the viewers who enjoy what Shawn provides. I think if you're enjoying any of this you need to take a good hard look at yourself. If ultimately Shawn loses everything yet has fundamentally done nothing wrong, nothing worth losing his channel over.... it won't say much about supposed theme park fans out there who were waiting for this to happen.
I'm not going to apologise for liking his channel, and not wanting his channel or himself to be tainted by what others may or may not have done. I'm also not going to blindly believe everything I'm being told but neither am I going to defend something if it turns out to be indefensible. But I am allowing myself to feel genuinely sad for someone who has really helped me while I have been struggling for months with mental illness. And whatever he is meant to have done, and whatever he may be found to have done or known, for me, nothing is going to change that. I genuinely do not know how I would have got through some of my days without his videos. You can call it sad if you want, but it's absolutely true.
