This is all seriously happening because she compared Raya to ATLA? I think that speaks volumes to how cult-like and toxic the left is.
The Raya thing wasn't really what put her over the edge, it was just a dumb comment she made.
Following up with the squint tweet that an Asian woman called out just added fuel to a fire that probably would have burned out within a day or two.
It wasn't really about the Raya thing, or the squint tweet. Like when Hontra was set upon by angry trannies and their handmaidens over Buck Angel and non-binaries to the point he left Twitter (a pattern), it's about the disillusionment coupled with paranoia that sets in after being thrown to the wolves by your own 'side'. From her final testament (the pomposity istg), she sounds deeply resentful that more people didn't rally to her side and defend her. It's funny in a way, because many did. There were Lindsay Ellis appreciation threads by blue checks after the Raya thing and most not-extremely online people reacted with bemusement that such an innocuous tweet would set off such a firestorm. But again, the problem wasn't the tweet, it was her reaction to it.
The catalyst for the goodbye spiel is less clear, because people had mostly forgotten about the tweetstorm. But for the first time, her channel wasn't growing and her paypig level was lower than it had been the previous year. She correctly stated that her channel was stagnant, her new videos weren't attracting new subs, and those who watched them said she sounded disinterested while mostly rehashing old topics. She threw herself into her book, doing the publicity that she had found beneath her for book 1, and it sold less than 10k copies. That number would be respectable for a newbie author without her platform but for her, it was a betrayal of her fans as they failed to put their money where their mouth was. In truth, it was about right as 10k was the high end of her Patreon numbers.
What she really wants is legitimacy outside YouTube and it just hasn't happened for her. You can argue that she isn't a lolcow and in a lot of ways, that's correct; she's no Chris-chan. But her freakout goodbye coming from nowhere perfectly encapsulates her cowishness and why she hasn't succeeded outside her Doug Walker-granted sphere. Arrogance, entitlement, ingratitude coupled with self-righteous wokescold tendencies and exacerbated by alcoholism. Rather than learn from her experience and try to mitigate the toxicity of her lefty circles, she simultaneously managed to cry about mistreatment from the woke while blaming it on capitalist cis white men, the ones who she'd built her career appealing to. She had a LOT of opportunities to move on after being a YouTuber and instead she burned her bridges and made herself a professional Victim of the Internet, and most businesses don't want to hire a troublemaking drama cyclone.
Get off the cross Lindsay, we need the wood.