This is going to be yet another feels post on top of the countless others that have already been made, but I need to get it off my chest. I guess that'll make it my second and only other contribution to this trashfire of a thread. Call me late, dumb, whatever if others have already said stuff like this but it's been hell the last few days both with this drama and IRL so I need to vent.
I'll preface this by saying that I am not defending Nick or Kayla. I know it won't happen, but 25 years in prison isn't even close to what they deserve for what they've done to their kids. The lawtube faggots defending them should be relentlessly mocked and deserve every single bad thing coming for them as a result of defending Nick.
The first time I watched Nick was around 2020 or so via the crossover streams with Josh. It was a breath of fresh air to finally see someone outside of the farms give the site a fair shake, and I distinctly remember one of Josh's earliest streams (might have been the first? I can't recall) mention how Rekieta was one of the first people he was able to reach out to in order to get the word out about the metric ton of shit like Vordrak that he had to go through just to keep the site running. Josh's point from what I can remember was that he had tried to run the site as an isolated entity, disconnected from the mainstream view, but it took the near death of the farms before he was able to reach out to someone else. Obviously, Nick's position has drastically shifted since then, but it's the main reason many users, myself included, tended to have a slight bias toward him and were skeptical of a lot of the stuff that was coming out about him 1.5+ years ago. Needless to say, the goodwill from most if not everyone in that group has long since expired, at least speaking for myself.
I continued to watch the recordings of his streams semi-regularly for a couple years after that, including the Chauvin, Rittenhouse, and Depp trials. I look back on those fondly. As a non-practicing non-lawyer, I found them to be fairly informative, even if Nick wasn't the most insightful source of information. At the very least I appreciated when he brought on the other lawyers to offer more perspectives (even if most of them had more or less the same political leanings as Nick). Above all that, it was refreshing and encouraging to actually see an ostensibly successful, small-town, self-made streamer who by all accounts also was a loving husband and father and wasn't afraid to go to bat for the Farms and talk about his faith. It wasn't long after the Depp trial that I stopped watching Nick completely, not in small part due to the fact that he just stopped covering interesting law stuff but also because it became apparent that something wasn't the same as when I started watching him a few years ago.
Without getting into the debate of whether or not the trad Christian dad thing was all an act as far back as 4-5 years ago or if it was a gradual (or not so gradual) shift into a disgusting degenerate, I was genuinely convinced for a long time that it was legitimate. I don't remember if this was brought up already or not (probably has, feel free to leave clocks), but during one of the old crossover streams with Josh I distinctly remember them having a conversation about Christianity and Nick brought up that he taught Sunday school at their church. To me, the fact that someone would take time out of their weekend to talk about the Gospel to a bunch of kids is at the very least an indication that he takes his faith seriously. Even now I'm still conflicted, but the more that comes out from people like Aaron - assuming what most or even half of what he said is the truth - the less I'm inclined to believe that it was anything other than a farce. Either that or something truly catastrophic happened to him or his family that fucked him up. Regardless, Nick is not the paragon of traditional Christian values that he may or may not have espoused earlier on in his streaming career, if ever. Against my better judgement, part of me still hopes that there was a time where he meant it, even though I know it likely never was. Not to mention the number of people coming out of the woodwork as a result of this to say "SEE? All trads are just like this guy, all closeted degenerates." ON second thought, anyone who makes a career using their faith as a prop probably isn't sincere after all.
I don't know if anyone else had this experience, but watching the cokestream was jarring to the point of being surreal. I hadn't watched any of his stuff since the Depp trial, and it's very obvious that he's not the same man as two years ago. He looks terrible. He can barely get through a thought without rambling or slurring his words to the point it's almost unintelligible at times. He's like a caricature of people he used to mock on stream constantly, like handling your own criminal case pro se and NOT TALKING TO THE FUCKING COPS OR DOING RETARDED SHIT THAT CAN BE USED AGAINST YOU IN COURT. His mental faculties (if they're even functional at this point) have degraded to the point where I'm genuinely convinced he's developed some kind of psychosis or mental fuckery, because at the risk of sounding naive I just cannot see the Nick Rekieta of 2+ years ago being this fucking oblivious and stupid.
I feel nauseated, not just from what's come out about what Nick and Kayla but from how quickly these fucking grifting, oxygen-stealing sacks of shit jump to his defense. I genuinely enjoyed watching lawtube a few years ago and thought that at least most of them can set aside kissing Nick's ass if there's fucking children being abused and starving in their crack den of a house. The only one I have any respect for is Rendazza since - as others have mentioned - he has a financial incentive to keep silent and have Nick continue his downward spiral. There is nothing about any of this that brings me joy. Watching a man, a fucking father, someone who I didn't look up to per se but certainly respected, degenerate into a husk of a man at the expense of his own children fills me with indescribable sadness. I pray that his children will be able to live (semi-)normal lives and that he and Kayla seek help, but there are few tragedies greater than watching a father upend his own family due to his own selfishness, and few things as despicable as refusing to take responsibility for destroying your children's lives.
