Inside the rise and fall of Gabbie Hanna: How a decade of online feuds and controversies culminated in a TikTok frenzy that dominated the internet and had fans concerned

Internet personality Gabbie Hanna — who has around 15 million followers across YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram — concerned fans last month when she posted over 100 erratic TikTok videos over the course of 24 hours, which culminated in a police wellness check to her home, according to TMZ.

In the midst of her TikTok streak, a stranger entered her house and livestreamed with her, claiming to be there to check on her wellbeing, though many suggested the man was cynically motivated to check on Hanna for "clout."

Hanna, who has previously said she lives with bipolar disorder, later addressed the events that took place, saying she was in the throes of a manic episode at the time. She went on to say that her posts — some of which contained comments that viewers described as racist and transphobic — were a work of "genius."

The 31-year-old is no stranger to controversy, having been involved in countless explosive feuds, drama, and speculation over the course of her almost decade-long career as an influencer.

Here's a complete run-down of her tumultuous career — from posting comedy sketches on the now-defunct video platform Vine in the early 2010s, to her meteoric rise to prominence as part of David Dobrik's controversial YouTube collective the Vlog Squad, and her many high-profile feuds with fellow content creators.

Hanna, who is originally from New Castle, Pennsylvania, joined the video-sharing platform Vine in 2013. Two years later, she moved to Los Angeles to pursue content creation, according to a 2020 interview in American Songwriter magazine .

Between 2013 and 2016, she amassed over five million followers on the platform.

But in 2016, Twitter, Vine's parent company, shut down Vine. Like many other Vine stars at the time, Hanna transitioned her content over to YouTube where she would become an even bigger star thanks in part to her friendship with other prominent YouTubers.

One of Hanna's first controversies came in 2017 when she faced backlash for posting a video about a former classmate of hers who died following a drug overdose.

According to BuzzFeed News, Hanna did not consult the classmate's family before posting the video, which has since been made private.

In a follow-up video that has also been made private, which was titled "a conversation with a grieving mother and an apology," Hanna apologized for posting the video.

In 2021, the autism community criticized Hanna for comments she made about "tone indicators," which are used to help readers who are neurodivergent or autistic to discern the context of a social media post.

According to screenshots published by Dexerto in February 2021, she tweeted that "my tone is yall doin way too fuckin much hahahaha," which critics felt was "ableist."

Hanna later apologized to her fans, in a now-deleted tweet.

"Sorry to any of my neurodivergent fans who were hurt by that," she wrote. "I hope you know that's never my intention. Today is the first day I heard the term tone indicators, I thought my fans were fucking with me for being sensitive. Ironically, this could have been avoided with a tone indicator"

In 2018, Hanna was one of a number of influencers promoting a set of makeup brushes from the brand Kenza Cosmetics that only asked buyers to pay shipping costs. Her fans claimed the brushes were poorly made or were never delivered after the orders were placed.

The brushes were originally priced at $80, not including shipping, but the deal promoted by Hanna and fellow YouTuber Tana Mongeau allowed their fans to pay only $10 total, shipping included, for the entire set.

Hanna refused to apologize for promoting the brushes following widespread backlash. In a response video, she said "Are they these amazing, high-quality, can't-even-believe-it, great brushes? No. I also never said they were. I'm not sure what quality people were expecting when they paid $10 for 10 brushes."

Hanna released her first poetry collection in 2017, titled "Adultolescence."

It received mixed reviews from critics and fans when first published, and currently has 3.08 out of 5 stars on Goodreads. Despite becoming a New York Times bestseller, it also generated one of Hanna's biggest controversies.

In 2019, YouTuber Rachel Oates posted a video titled "Gabbie Hanna's Poetry is BAD," which received nearly 1.5 million views. In the video, Oates said that the poetry was "quite shallow" and that Hanna had a "very simple communication style."

Oates, who posts book reviews, poetry analysis, and social commentary on her channel, published a parody of Hanna's book called "Doggolescence."

"People aren't criticizing Gabby's work because it's silly and contains wordplay," Oates said in a 2020 YouTube video. "I, in particular, am criticizing it because it's lazy and poorly written."

Oates similarly criticized Hanna's second poetry collection, titled "Dandelion," after it was released in October 2020. "Dandelion" also became a New York Times bestseller and currently has a 3.24 rating on Goodreads.

Following that release, Hanna lashed out at her critics.

"I think it's really lame that a bunch of non-creative, insecure, neurotypical people dragged my poetry for months for views on youtube and tiktok instead of creating their own art," she said in a now-deleted tweet, Insider previously reported. Hanna directly mentioned Oates, and then took to Instagram to say Oates had "bullied and harassed her for months."

In a subsequent video, Oates said that her Instagram was removed after Hanna's fans reported her account.

"She can literally initiate a targeted harassment campaign against me and have my account removed, and she's allowed to do that and get away with it," Oates said in an unlisted video on her channel.

Hanna similarly called out Angelika Oles, who runs an internet commentary YouTube channel with 560,000 subscribers, after Oles accused Hanna of being "a bully." Hanna later said she thought was "weird that a grown woman constantly inserts herself into my life and situations," referring to Oles' videos.

Though Hanna has been involved in a number of feuds, one of the longest-running involved fellow internet personality Trisha Paytas.

Hanna and Paytas, who has nearly five million subscribers, were both a part of David Dobrik's Vlog Squad but were not closely associated with each other prior to their public feud.

Paytas left the Vlog Squad soon after their breakup with Vlog Squad member Jason Nash in 2019.

In November 2019, Paytas uploaded a video titled "WHY I DON'T TRUST GABBIE HANNA," accusing Hanna of telling Nash that Paytas had herpes while the two were still together, Insider previously reported.

Paytas publicly denied the diagnosis and accused Hanna of harassing and slandering them in the now-deleted YouTube video.

Hanna acknowledged she made the comments and said it was because she wanted to protect Nash. She wrote in a now-deleted tweet that "it wasn't my business to know if trisha had herpes, i have no reason for her to tell me. it WAS my business to warn a friend that he might be at risk. know what i mean? asking her would just be gossip. telling him to be safe and find out is caring for his health," Insider previously reported.

Hanna further ignited the feud when she spoke about it in a 2021 interview with BuzzFeed.

"Imagine you had a friend six years ago who, to this day, is contacting your employers, contacting everyone you know, and trying to ruin your reputation," she told the outlet. The author, Scaachi Koul, said Hanna's comment was partly about Paytas.

After the article's publication, Paytas was upset with the outlet for mentioning them in Hanna's profile.

Paytas repeatedly said that they never considered Hanna a "friend" and disputed that they contacted any of Hanna's employers or associates.

Metro and Newsweek both reported that Hanna posted a video to YouTube on June 16, 2021, titled "The Fight I Tried To Hide From You – Trisha Paytas vs. Gabbie Hanna." In the 21-minute video, which has since been deleted, Hanna shared a clip from the podcast they recorded in February 2021, which showed Paytas accusing Hanna of harassment.

In June 2021, Dexterto reported that Hanna posted another video titled "TRISHA PAYTAS CAN'T STOP LYING." The now-private video was 47 minutes long and reportedly showed Hanna accusing Paytas of "lying" and "gaslighting" her.

In January 2020, Hanna posted a YouTube video titled, "Turning myself into an E-girl." "E-girl" is a slang term used to describe social media users who borrow their style from anime and subcultures such as "scene" and "emo."

In the video, Hanna showed a screen shot of a Vox article about the E-girl aesthetic that included the image of teen Instagram influencer Bianca Devins, who was murdered in 2019.

In a clip that has been re-uploaded online, Hanna comments on the shirt Devins is wearing in a picture in the article without addressing information about her murder that was written next to the image.

Hanna faced intense backlash to the video for showing the image of Devins without context and was accused of being insensitive, with viewers demanding that she apologize.

On February 14, Hanna posted an apology video, saying she "completely missed" the paragraph in the article referring to her death, and that she had sent a private apology to Devins' family. The video is no longer available to view, and a notice on the webpage says it has been made "private."

Various YouTube drama channels — which typically post about influencer controversy — covered the backlash and made critical comments about Hanna.

Angelika Oles, who had previously criticized Hanna for her feud with Rachel Oates, made two videos in early 2020 about the situation and accused Hanna of turning Devins' death into an "aesthetic."

A year later, in April 2021, Oles again feuded with Hanna on Twitter, calling Hanna a "bully" for lashing out at Oates.

During the feud, Hanna referenced Oles' criticism of her "E-girl" video. In now-deleted tweets seen by Insider Hanna accused Oles of ignoring calls from Devins' mother who was purportedly "hurt" by Oles' coverage of Hanna's controversial video.

In a response to Hanna's criticism, Oles tweeted that she was never contacted by anyone from Devins' family.

Oles did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

In June 2021, Hanna posted a YouTube video titled, "Hold Tea Channels Accountable (Justice for Bianca Devins)." The video is no longer available to view and a notice on the webpage says it has been made "private."

At the time, Insider reported that Hanna defended her response to the backlash against the "E-girl" video, and said that drama channels were "exploiting" Devins by continuing to publicize Hanna's video and drawing more attention to it.

In a July 2020 interview with Insider, Hanna said she thought drama channels had been allowed to profit off of "slander and defamation" about influencers, adding, "They have created a culture of exploitation, mental abuse, and gaslighting."

Devins' mother Kim eventually weighed in, tweeting that she thought Hanna deserved an apology from drama channels after being "attacked" by them.

In June 2021, Hanna leaked a three-hour phone call with her former friend, YouTuber Jessi Smiles (real name is Jessi Vazquez), in an attempt to clear up a controversy brewing between the influencers for many years.

Hanna and Vazquez became friends when Hanna was still active on Vine, but had a falling out in 2014 after Hanna, in a now-deleted tweet, said she was skeptical of Vasquez's rape allegations against another Vine star, Curtis Lepore, who later pleaded guilty to felony assault.

During the leaked call between the two, Hanna reportedly apologized to Vazquez, and Vazquez accepted her apology.

But the call failed to convince everyone.

In 2019, a fan named Deanna tweeted an accusation that appeared to reference Hanna's now-deleted tweet. "Gabbie Hanna chose a rapist (a rapist who admitted and wrote/signed a confession to the cops) over her then best friend, who was the victim. And she didn't just do it privately, but publicly," she wrote.

Hanna contacted Deanna by direct message, denying that she ever tweeted in support of Lepore and shared screenshots of previous conversations she'd had with Vazquez to support her claims. Deanna then shared Hanna's messages with Vazquez, who showed a screen recording of the conversation between Deanna and Hanna in a YouTube video. Vazquez said Deanna shared the messages with her because she felt "manipulated" by Hanna's denial of the tweet.

Hanna responded to Vazquez's video exposé in a now-deleted tweet, and apologized for sending screenshots to Deanna, and for her past behavior.

The leaked three-hour call was included as part of a YouTube series called "Confessions of a Washed-Up YouTube Has-Been," in which Hanna addressed various scandals she'd been involved in over time. The series is no longer available to view.

Hanna re-addressed the years-long feud between her and Vazquez in the video. The leaked call included a segment in which Hanna claimed that Lepore and Vazquez tried to "blackmail" her at one point. She said Lepore called her and edited the audio of their conversation together to make it sound like Hanna was taking his side and did not believe Vazquez's allegations.

Discussion about the feud between Hanna and Vazquez exploded on Twitter in the days and weeks after Hanna leaked their phone call, with many users saying they believed Hanna was wrong for how she handled the situation.

Hanna's "Confessions of a Washed-Up YouTube Has-Been" series was poorly received by many viewers.

Various content creators mentioned in the series, including Vazquez, made videos disputing many of Hanna's claims about them, leading viewers to question Hanna's version of events.

On July 20, 2021, Hanna announced she was going "offline entirely" in a lengthy caption underneath a video showing her singing in a bathtub.

In the caption, she discussed criticism of her series and her mental health, saying, "In starting this series, I was also just starting treatment. As I was editing, I was able to look back at the situations I was describing and recognize how my lack of understanding (and treatment) exacerbated otherwise trivial situations. I began medicating shortly after I finished filming and it changed my life."

Hanna stopped posting her typical lifestyle content on YouTube but continued to post new music on the platform over the following months, and in early 2022, she briefly co-hosted a podcast with reality TV star Farrah Abraham.

In late August, Hanna began posting hundreds of TikToks to her account in quick succession.

"Gabbie Hanna" trended on Twitter as concerned fans and onlookers analyzed the endless stream of videos. Some speculated that a mental health episode might have triggered the videos.

Influencer Ethan Klein, the host of internet commentary channel h3h3productions, tweeted that fans should "be considerate" towards Hanna because of her mental health. "She needs help right now, not ridicule," he wrote.

Amid her episode, a TikTok user named @p.ui_ posted a series of TikToks from inside Hanna's home. In a TikTok livestream —which is no longer available to view but has been reuploaded online — @p.ui_ said he went to Hanna's house to "help her whether she wants it or not." After around 30 minutes in the house, Hanna yelled at him to leave.

According to a report from TMZ and in a post confirmed by Hanna and seen by The Metro, police visited Hanna's home to conduct a wellness check after receiving an influx of calls from worried fans.

She's since made the 100 or so videos private.

The LAPD did not respond to Insider's request for comment.