Gabbie Hanna is known for her several controversies on the internet. Yet, her manic episode that she posted on her TikTok can make the internet wonder whether the hate being put upon her had gone too far. With the intensity of Hanna’s episode, people are questioning social media’s power on mental health and the image of mental health on social media.
Gabbie Hanna, an ex-Viner, YouTuber, musician, and TikToker, has been a prevalent figure on the internet due to her several controversies. Due to these controversies, Hanna receives a lot of hate, trolls, and general backlash on her posts. However, on August 23rd, Hanna began to post hundreds of TikToks on her account. These TikTok had Hanna showing signs of having a manic episode. With this activity on her account occurring for several days, the internet became more and more worried for the influencer. This worry only increased when an unfamiliar man entered her home.
Regarding mental health episodes like Hanna’s on social media, one can wonder: what happened here? How much social media fueled this fire? What are the repercussions of episodes like these on social media as a whole?
Gabbie Hanna’s Manic Episode
Gabbie Hanna began showing signs of a manic episode on August 23rd. Hanna posted over 100 TikToks on August 23rd. Many of these TikToks showed religious rants and the influencer claiming to be the second coming of Christ. One TikTok shows Hanna discussing “babies dying on the…street” (@gabbiehanna/TikTok). Both fans and critics worried about Hanna’s health and well-being due to her behavior.
Fans sent several police-ran wellness checks to Hanna’s home during this public episode. Hanna was never removed from her home by the police. From August 23rd to August 27th, Hanna continued posting TikToks on her account. Gabbie Hanna has since deleted all the posts she made during this episode, other than the ones that contained sounds that went viral.
A Worse Danger: Hanna’s Intruder
However, the scariest part of Hanna’s breakdown is that a man broke into her home in the middle of it. The man, named ‘Nicholas, ‘ lied to get into Hanna’s home by stating he needed to use the restroom. Hanna let him into her home under these false pretenses, which was why the man appeared in several of her now deleted TikToks. She called him a “brother in Christ” and “lost soul” in these TikToks. Nicholas also recorded several of his own TikToks in her home and posted them on social media.
The encounter ended with a TikTok in which Hanna says that she knows Nicholas lied and demands that he leave. Ultimately, while Nicholas claims he was concerned for Hanna’s mental well-being and wanted to help her, many fans claim that he manipulated Hanna during her breakdown for views and attention. The weak claims and arguments he made in a TikTok live following the incident didn’t help against these allegations.
The Aftermath
Since the end of her manic episode, Hanna has posted a 19-part series of TikToks, along with several other responses to comments, clarifying aspects of her episode. Hanna claimed that it was her first time experiencing a manic state as part of her bipolar disorder. She stated that the episode became intense for her when Nicholas came into her home. She was shaken up after making him leave her home as she was “[trying] to do the right thing” (@gabbiehanna/TikTok).
Hanna stated that the TikTok in which she shouts “help me” was a “performance” towards a poem. She also stated that people called the police for wellness checks because “they [were] not listening to what [she] was saying in context, and [were] just looking into the drama” (@gabbiehanna/TikTok). This statement annoyed many viewers, as they felt they were being blamed for Hanna’s manic episode. Overall, the greatly-divided responses in Hanna’s TikTok comments say a lot about social media. While some people are glad to see that Hanna has recovered from her episode, others believe that Hanna faked it. They think her reason for faking this mania was to gain attention for her new album “Trauma Queen.” It is important to note that these allegations have not been confirmed or denied by any source.
The Dangers of Social Media on Mental Health
Here lie two critical questions: how much did social media fuel this fire, and what repercussions do episodes like these have on social media? In her follow-up series to her manic TikToks, Hanna seems to blame the escalation of her episode from hypo-manic to manic on her social media viewers. With the number of people consistently criticizing her, one can wonder if the human mind could handle so much hate. Hanna’s episode discusses how ‘cancel culture’ and trolling on the internet can significantly damage an influencer’s psyche to the point of mania. It further demonstrates that receiving hate on social media isn’t a joke and can present an emotional and mental danger to influencers.
Hanna’s episode also conveys the issue of the image of mental health present on the internet. Many viewers responded to Hanna’s TikToks believing they were faked, as Hanna has faked mental instability before on social media for views. Some people in her comments section refer to her as ‘the girl who cried wolf,’ as many don’t believe her recent manic episode was real due to her past actions. This creation
Social media continues to take terrifying turns for the people using it. With hate and cancel culture becoming stronger and more prevalent in comments sections, episodes and incidents like this will become more and more common on social media. This incident shows that while the availability of social media can be a blessing, it can also be a curse on the human mind.
