this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2025
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Raines created a successful YouTube channel dedicated to her advocacy efforts rescuing foxes from fur farms.

Animal rescue activist and YouTube star Mikayla Raines has died by suicide, according to her husband. She was 29.

Ethan Raines announced her death in an emotional video he posted to her YouTube channel on Monday.

He said that for years his wife suffered from various mental health issues and struggled to cope with online criticism.

"She couldn’t bear what she was feeling any longer, and she ended her life," he said. "And it breaks my heart that someone who is selfless and devoted her life to animals could have so much negativity pointed at her."

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[–] xiwi@lemmy.dbzer0.com 68 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Why the fuck would you harass someone for saving foxes? Is it because she's a woman?

[–] Bytemeister@lemmy.world 28 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

God gave us dominion over all creatures read the Bible!

There are children dying in the streets here, why don't you do anything about them?

The foxes bread for fur here are not capable of living in the wild, "rescuing" and releasing them is the real animal abuse.

I think fox fur is fancy, fuck you lady!

Just some examples I can think of off the top of my head. People can get pretty polarized when it comes to killing, or not killing animals.

[–] DarkSurferZA@lemmy.world 21 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I would also like to know what the criticism was, but at the same time, I also feel like the internet can be shit sometimes whether there was reason to criticise or not.

Pretty sad story.

[–] WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.com 45 points 7 months ago (4 children)

I did the research in the muck mines of the internet for y’all, and it is more complicated than it looks on the surface.

Several animals died in her care due to neglect, including leaving foxes on leashes and letting them get tangled up and baked alive in the sun. There are text messages that leaked of her having paperwork forged to make some animals look like they were bred in captivity. Her organization was registered as a fur farm to avoid some taxes and regulations. Lastly, she had an OnlyFans page where the regularly posed with dogs and foxes in ways that suggested she was trying to appeal to zoofiles, including text descriptions that are very questionable.

A subreddit was created called Save A Fox Snark that was tracking her questionable methods, and one user in particular, seemingly a furry, was very active in screenshotting all of her questionable content in hope that she would get shut down for animal cruelty. That furry is now also being targeted for harassment.

I went straight into the swamp for this info—you can read it all on KiwiFarms, Soyjak, OnlyFans, and the internet archive pages of the Save A Fox Snark subreddit.

[–] SkyeStarfall@lemmy.blahaj.zone 35 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Yeah sorry if I don't believe this when the source is fucking kiwifarms

[–] WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 points 7 months ago (2 children)

The source isn’t just kiwifarms—the internet archive pages of the subreddit are still up to see exactly what they were posting. The OnlyFans photos have been archived and there are many of them.

Believe whatever you want, but there was a whole mountain of information out there.

[–] SkyeStarfall@lemmy.blahaj.zone 17 points 7 months ago (1 children)

And you need to keep in mind that targeted harassment campaigns are perfectly content twisting and manipulating the truth. I have plenty of experience with shit like that from my personal life. So I do not put a lot of stock in info sourced from places like those

In addition, I highly doubt the founder would have been this deeply affected by the harassment if she actually was a person that didn't care much for the animals or others and their opinions

[–] WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 7 months ago

I do keep that in mind, that’s why I just report what I saw and where I saw it. The OnlyFans posts were created by her directly, I don’t think there is any dispute that the account was hers.

People can believe what they want, I just did some digging to see what the accusations were that made her feel like suicide was her only option.

[–] TheObviousSolution@lemm.ee -1 points 7 months ago

There's a whole mountain of misinformation as well, and you decided that looking into the loaded conclusions and supposed "leaks" that had no other facts to back them up than what they were telling you.

[–] barneypiccolo@lemm.ee 11 points 7 months ago

She was the subject of harassment for reasons, and here were some of them. Whether the allegations were true or not isn't the point, she still felt harassed enough to do something terrible.

[–] ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 5 points 7 months ago

Kiwifarms isn't always wrong, but they like to fuck up things major ways, usually by focusing too much on someone being a leftist and/or trans, and sometimes even covering up abusers. They managed to cover up a rapist by not only focusing on her being trans, but also harassed multiple of her victims as it usually were "drunken sex", which wasn't considered as rape by many. Also Kiwifarms has an obsession with the "let's paint our targets as irredeemable assholes, so driving them into suicide will be heroic, and also can be weaponized against the same group later on". (BPD, while often seem like a misdiagnosis of badly mishandled CPTSD, is pretty much "asshole disorder" in many people's minds.)

[–] NeonNight@lemm.ee 9 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Never, ever source Kiwifarms. That org is fucking disturbing

[–] WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 7 months ago

They were the ones organizing some of the bullying—I wanted to see the posts she was seeing to better understand the nature of the harassment.

[–] icelimit@lemmy.ml 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I don't think the veracity of claims on these sites is important, moreso what was said and how it might have affected the narrative and her.

[–] barneypiccolo@lemm.ee 6 points 7 months ago

Thanks for the context. Very helpful.

[–] TheObviousSolution@lemm.ee 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

So basically, you consider going to the people who drove her to commit suicide "doing the research".

[–] WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Doing the research to see what they were saying about her that might lead her to commit suicide, yes. If you want to know what the cyber bullying was that caused someone to commit suicide, it makes sense to look at the posts themselves, which is what I did.

[–] Itdidnttrickledown@lemmy.world 15 points 7 months ago

They claimed she was not taking proper care of the foxes. I haven't read one thing that was in any way proven. It was just trash talking trolls doing what they do best, telling lies. They had story after story about the conditions. The woman was trying to do good, something none of those trolls harassing her have ever did. The trash reddit sub went private because now they fear consequences.