Usually, when I’m getting ready in the morning, I listen to my favorite music or the newest episode of a podcast I like. However, on June 26, my morning routine changed entirely when I opened TikTok to influencer Brooke Schofield’s 16-part video exposé on her ex-boyfriend, singer-songwriter Clinton Kane.
A few weeks earlier—on her podcast, Cancelled, with YouTuber Tana Mongeau—Schofield had shockingly stated that during their three-month relationship, Kane had lied about his mother and brother being dead and his Australian accent being real, among other absurd facts.
Following the release of the podcast episode, Kane responded with a video promoting his new song with the caption, “When you’ve been over the relationship for two years, but she won’t stop yapping.” Kane’s video prompted Schofield’s 16-part series, “Who The F*** Did I Marry,” to be posted two days later, and the internet blew up around the two creators.
In her videos, Schofield goes into detail about the events leading up to, during, and following their three-month relationship, exposing all the lies and emotional manipulation Kane subjected both Schofield and his own fanbase to.
From his age to the death of two of his family members to what country he was from and even his accent, after watching Schofield’s videos, it seemed as if almost nothing Kane told her about himself was true. The weirdest part about the whole affair was that Kane is not just some random person but a well-known musical artist with a large fanbase and many songs. Some of these songs are, in fact, about events Schofield claims he was lying about the entire time, including the death of his mother. Kane has not only been lying about himself to his girlfriend but also to the rest of the world.
Weeks later, on July 13, Kane finally responded with his extensive 29-part video series, reviewing everything Schofield said about him. Kane kept the comments off on his videos and spent most of the time nitpicking the smallest details of Schofield’s stories in an attempt to “debunk” her lies. For example, Kane explains that Schofield actually found out he was lying about his age when they got pulled over on the way home from Joshua Tree and not on the way there.
After the incident, many other people also began to speak up about their experiences with Kane. From videos of other girls proving he was cheating on Schofield to people with photo proof of him growing up in his actual hometown with them, the evidence that Schofield wasn’t lying about any of it was there. Needless to say, aside from maybe a few gullible people, the internet was very much on Schofield’s side after the incident.
She had always been a very popular and well-liked influencer, but after the incident with Kane, it seemed that nobody had a single bad thing to say about the internet personality. Her heightened fame did not last forever, though, and soon, all of her positive support would fly out the window, turning her fame into infamy.
The collapse of her fame and fanbase came when someone posted some of her old tweets. From 2012 to 2016, Schofield tweeted multiple racist and homophobic things, using homophobic slurs and blatantly racist language. Most horrifyingly, she came to the defense of George Zimmerman, the man who killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in 2012.
Days after the tweets resurfaced, Schofield publicly apologized for the scandal. In the apology, Schofield owned up to her mistakes, saying she felt the same way about the tweets that her audience did, and she gave reasoning for why she had thought that way growing up, citing her family’s political views and claiming she “just a kid” when she made the tweets—although at 16 to 20 years old this is highly debatable.
It’s hard to apologize well for something like this, and while some of her fans forgave her, most did not. Many fans and haters alike felt that the apology was less genuine sorrow and more about giving her fans a reason not to feel guilty about continuing to consume her content.
Whether her apology was sincere or not, the entire incident is not something new to the internet, but instead, more of an “another day, another celebrity being outed as a horrible person” situation. Many times, people put too much adoration and hope into someone famous they love, when in reality, all celebrities are real people, and most are very far from perfect. The heartbreak many fans felt over Schofield’s Twitter scandal just proves the point that idolizing celebrities is a futile hobby that will almost always end in disappointment and despair.
