Updated September 22nd, 2021
Trisha Paytas’ house of cards is collapsing as YouTube channel Mysterious has set out to uncover inconsistencies in their stories over the years.
In a new series titled ‘The Dark Side of Trisha Paytas‘, the anonymous tea channel explores the creator’s extensive history online— from what they’ve shared about their childhood and high school years, to finding fame on YouTube, to Trisha’s scandals and problematic behaviour over the course of their 10+ years as a public figure.
While the first installment aired over a month ago, the series has garnered viral attention recently after Trisha’s former Frenemies co-host, Ethan Klein, made the decision to remove one of their podcast episodes over inconsistencies in Trisha’s story about being allegedly molested by a teacher. These inconsistencies were brought to light in Mysterious’ September 7th video— which has now been removed following privacy complaints on her channel from Trisha.
In Mysterious’ video, she explains that Trisha’s “Mr. Riney story” has changed over the last six months.
Trisha first told the story on TikTok back in December 2020, claiming their teacher sexually assaulted them and was eventually arrested for having child pornography on his computer. Trisha said multiple students reported Mr. Riney and the principal made Trisha switch classes upon being made aware of the allegations.
Two separate people in the comment section of that TikTok mentioned they read that story on Reddit years prior, and Mysterious notes that Trisha has a pattern of using scenarios they’ve seen in movies to embellish their lies. Mysterious backs up this claim with a TikTok Trisha posted talking about lies they told when they were younger that were based on a TV character, as well as several clips of Trisha talking about how they base their identity off of what they see in movies.
Mysterious then compares the story Trisha told on TikTok about Mr. Riney with the story Trisha told Ethan on the Frenemies podcast in January 2021— noting that Trisha told Ethan no one believed them including the principal.
In March 2021, Trisha mentioned the story twice publicly with further discrepancies. First, Trisha told it again on Frenemies, saying that the teacher admitted to the principal that he was groping Trisha and that the principal told Trisha it was their fault because they were wearing “water bras” to school. Trisha then mentioned it on TikTok, saying they never spoke up about Mr. Riney’s sexual assault and he was only arrested because another student brought it to the principal.
It seems these discrepancies prompted Ethan and h3h3 productions to look into the claims Trisha made on Frenemies, leading them to find little evidence that corroborates Trisha’s story about Mr. Riney being arrested for child pornography— an inconsistency that was also first uncovered by Mysterious.
Ethan took to Twitter on Friday to address the team’s decision to remove episode 17 of Frenemies from YouTube, writing:
“It has come to my attention that Trisha, in episode #17 of Frenemies, called out a teacher by name and accused him of molesting her during school. She claimed this teacher was arrested and served time for possession of child pornography. She also claimed that someone else had come forward to say he molested them as well. Upon further review, these claims seem to contradict available evidence. Because of the nature of these claims against this specific teacher, and the stress it’s causing to his family, I have decided to unlist the episode for now until Trisha can better illuminate the situation. I want to emphasize that I do not believe Trisha would lie about something like this, so I want to give her the opportunity to clarify. But in the mean time, because the teacher has passed on and cannot defend himself, I feel obligated to remove it for now.”
Weeks after the series aired, however, Mysterious is facing criticism herself after resurfaced tweets revealed that she continued to support Jeffree Star and Shane Dawson following the allegations against both last year. She also reportedly has a history of questioning the stories of sexual assault survivors, including the report against Vlog Squad’s Dom Zeglaitis.
Mysterious has since deleted nearly 3,000 tweets.