When I first saw chatter about Richard Gadd’s YouTube breakdown popping everywhere, honestly I thought it was just another influencer drama. But man, was I wrong.
How I started digging into this mess
Opened YouTube Tuesday morning while drinking my coffee, searching “Richard Gadd rant”. Boom – there it was. A 45-minute unedited video posted straight from his phone camera. Hit play thinking it’d be background noise while I worked.
Around minute 7, his voice started cracking. This dude was pacing in what looked like a messy apartment, shirt half untucked, eyes red as hell. He wasn’t yelling though – that’s what got me. Just whispering painfully slow about creative burnout and stalker trauma, pausing like he forgot how words worked. My coffee went cold cause I couldn’t look away.
What made me obsessed with analyzing it
Next thing I know, I’m pausing every 5 minutes writing notes:
- That breakdown wasn’t performative – no cuts, no retakes. Real snotty crying when his voice gave out.
- People kept commenting “this is trauma vomit” – spot on. Like watching someone mentally throw up on camera.
- He mentioned Netflix pressure 12 times – apparently that Baby Reindeer fame became a cage.
Started cross-checking with news articles. Every outlet kept using phrases like “raw vulnerability” and “unfiltered celebrity breakdown”. But none captured how bizarrely intimate it felt – like we accidentally walked into his therapy session.
Why the internet won’t shut up about it
Here’s my theory after rewatching that trainwreck 3 times: We’ve never seen fame implode this honestly. Most meltdowns happen backstage or get polished into PR statements. This was just… dude hitting record while drowning.
Hit Twitter later and everyone had hot takes – mental health advocates cheering his bravery, comedians roasting the cringe, even film critics dissecting it as performance art. But the crazy part? Nobody called it boring. You couldn’t look away even when it hurt watching.
My own two cents? The internet’s so full of curated perfection that this felt like tripping over a live wire. Scary but real. Still see new reaction videos popping up daily dissecting his eyeblinks or coffee cup tremors. Wild times.
