Inside YouTuber Gabbie Hanna's complex feud with drama channel Angelika Oles over a murdered teenager

Gabbie Hanna is a YouTuber who has been popular since she got internet-famous on Vine. Hanna's comedic "Storytime" videos and collaborations with other LA-based YouTubers grew her online career, but a series of scandals and controversies has since set her back.

Currently, Hanna, who has over 5.5 million subscribers, is creating alternative pop music and is midway through a YouTube series called "Confessions of a Washed-Up YouTube Has-Been." In each video, Hanna has been addressing a years-old drama that impacted her reputation.

Last week, Hanna's series took aim at Angelika Oles, a YouTuber who reports and comments on drama involving celebrity YouTubers like Hanna. Oles has over 500,000 subscribers and has posted many videos about Hanna.

The two have feuded publicly over the past year regarding Oles' coverage. The drama took a new turn this month after Hanna posted her "Confessions" entry on Oles.

Hanna and Oles did not immediately respond to Insider's requests for comment for this article.

Various commentary and drama channels reported on the backlash and offered their perspective. One such YouTuber was Oles, who has been commentating on influencer drama and controversies since April 2017.

In the two videos addressing the situation, Oles said that Gabbie's video was "problematic." Oles' first video, which was titled "Will Gabbie Hanna Ever Stop," was uploaded on January 26, 2020. In this video, she accused Hanna of turning Bianca's death into an "aesthetic," noting how Hanna had skimmed past Devins' picture and discussed her as if she were still alive.

She later posted a second video entitled "Gabbie Hanna Finally Addresses Problematic Video" on February 14, 2020. Though Oles remained critical of Hanna for not directly taking accountability initially, she said that once Hanna addressed the controversy in her apology video, she "actually believed her this time."

"I appreciate the way she handled it," Oles said.

In April of this year, Oles called out Hanna for dubbing Rachel Oates, a YouTuber and poetry critic, a "bully" for posting an unfavorable review of Hanna's poetry books. As the two engaged in a back-and-forth on Twitter, Hanna called herself a "storyteller." In response to this comment, Oles reshared a controversial 'Storytime' video Hanna made on March 8 2017 in which she talked about how a classmate from her high school overdosed and died.

"Oh yes, a storyteller of other people's stories," Oles wrote. "Didn't the parents ask you to take this one down?" Calling Oles "a manipulative, narcissistic liar," Hanna tweeted that she apologized for the video "immediately" after speaking to her classmate's mother. Hanna later uploaded an apology video to the family of the girl who died, and both videos are still live on her channel.

"You, however, have ignored the calls of Bianca Devins' mother who has expressed the hurt you caused her," Hanna said. Oles later made a video entitled: "Gabbie Hanna is the REAL High School Bully," during which she discussed some of Hanna's previous controversies.

In June 2021, Hanna started a new series on her YouTube channel titled "Confessions of a Washed-Up YouTube has-been." In the second episode, during which Hanna commentates and reflects on her years as a YouTuber, Hanna defended her initial response to the backlash against the e-girl video.

"I did the right thing," she said. During the video, which is titled "Hold Tea Channels Accountable (Justice for Bianca Devins)," Hanna said that she was trying to avoid drawing any more attention to the situation by not addressing it publicly out of respect for Bianca's family. She said that by publicizing the issue and making their own videos about it, these channels were "exploiting" Devins.

"This should have never been news," she said. She singled out Oles in the video and said that she "started it," and that her YouTube video about the issue ruined her birthday. Along with other drama channels, she demanded that Oles publicly apologize to the Devins family for talking about Devins in response to Hanna's e-girl video.

In a video titled "Gabbie Hanna LIED," Oles said Hanna had lied about Bianca's mother specifically wanting an apology from drama channels. She said that she had been in contact with Bianca's mother, Kim Devins, and paraphrased some of their direct messages in the video.

"She does not want to be involved in drama, she does not want public videos, she does not want people to 'at' her, message her or talk to her about petty drama," Oles said.

"She's got more important things to worry about like being a mother and changing laws," she added.

Kim Devins is currently campaigning for Bianca's Law, which aims to stop the spread of violent and graphic images on the internet.

Following the release of the video on June 30, Hanna faced a lot of backlash and even started trending on Twitter as a result.

Soon after, Oles shared a screenshot on Twitter of the purported conversation with Bianca's mother, which appears to show Kim telling Oles that she doesn't believe her content "harmed [her] family."

Following the release of Oles' video on June 30, Kim posted a series of tweets about the situation. While she appeared to confirm some of Oles' points in her video — namely, that she didn't want a public apology — she reiterated Hanna's earlier claim that she believes that Hanna deserves apologies for being "attacked" after Devins made it clear that she wasn't upset by Hanna's use of Bianca's picture in her e-girl video.

"All of this should've ended when I said I wasn't bothered by Gabbie using B's picture," Kim wrote.

She also appeared to pre-empt backlash to Hanna's July 1 video, as she later tweeted: "Just so everyone knows, if @GabbieHanna [sic] posts something about Bianca, I have approved it."

Kim then reshared the link to a petition for Bianca's Law. "As Bianca herself would say, shut the f--- up and act like adults," she wrote. "Let's move on to more important things, like Bianca's Law."

The following day, on July 1, Kim called out Instagram and Facebook because they "allowed Bianca's death photos to be shared for a year on their platforms." She added: "Since everyone wants to bring up Bianca's name and defend her, let's talk about who really exploited Bianca for money."

Hanna responded with a video of her own titled "Angelika Oles Manipulated a Grieving Mother" on July 1. In the video, she said that Oles' response to her was "morally bankrupt" and dubbed Oles a "raging f---ing narcissist who once again made a child's death and a grieving mother about [her] and a way to exploit me."

Hanna also alleged that Oles tried to "manipulate the mother" because "what the mother of the murdered child said didn't fit your narrative."

"And then when she asked you not to and wouldn't give you the information that you wanted and asked you to stop the YouTube drama, you continued the YouTube drama in complete f---ing disregard of the family," she added.

Suggesting that Oles was responsible for the ongoing feud, Hanna said: "You don't give a f--- about the family, you don't give a f--- about Bianca, you give a f--- about me."

Hanna also said in the video that when she reached out to Kim Devins, she told Hanna that she didn't do anything wrong.

"I made a video on behalf of Kim Devins, approved by Kim Devins, encouraged by Kim Devins, because when she put out a message in February, she was f--ing ignored," she added.

Hanna also shared further snippets of her conversation with Kim on Twitter, where she wrote that according to Devins, Oles should apologize to Hanna rather than her.

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