Interneter of the Week: Sadie, a.k.a. UltraNeko

This week’s Interneter is Sadie, a once minor YouTube celebrity who operated the channel UltraNeko. She has disappeared, or rather, her internet presence has, including her videos, blog, and Twitter account. When she was active on YouTube, I considered her one of my favourites. She’d play games, swear at them, and generally be really hot.

I wrote Sadie an open letter nearly a year ago now, complaining about the mysterious video-producing hiatus she had gone on. It turns out that she never paid any heed to my words, and only came back to close her once mighty YouTube account.

Reading others discuss this issue (all of whom seemed to prefer white text on black backgrounds, much to the detriment of my eyes), it seems Sadie decided to leave the internet for good in order to concentrate on her schoolwork. She was probably never pregnant, despite the rumours, and her now ex-boyfriend probably had a lot to do with the production of her videos. In fact, she probably didn’t like video games all that much. There is a lot of inferring going on here, a fake Twitter account and a deleted blog make fact checking difficult.

I have to take serious issue with what Sadie has done for two reasons. Firstly, building up a large fanbase and then abandoning those people with no explanation demonstrates a lack of appreciation for those fans, which offends me as someone in search of that kind of following. Secondly, that no one can go back and look at her past work demonstrates the strange frailty published material now lives with on the internet. In the past, a person could write a book, and people who ended up buying and enjoying it could theoretically enjoy it almost indefinitely. Now, published work can be readily un-published by its author on a whim. That has to be a serious concern for fans of all digital media, as well as future historians.

Sadie, Shufflingdead salutes you for causing us to reflect deeply on what we’re doing here on the internet.