I still can't decide if Anisa is retarded or malicious
I wondered about that too, but I finally watched the Johma/11 show and I felt it killed any doubts. Stupid bad people are like Russell Greer, who is proactively malevolent, but Anisa is just very stupid - borderline learning difficulty - and stupid delusional people make natural abusers because they have tunnel vision and don't think about anything beyond their immediate goal, and it's clear her sole goal is to be famous. Other people, their needs, what they think, the consequences, they never occur to her unless they're immediately connected with advancing her public image - and yet she has no perception of what it should be, because she has no sense of self. She has no idea of how to comport herself in front of other people so wraps up in extreme neurotic versions of everything deemed fashionable and popular - OnlyFans, Communism, tattoos, Muslim, iDubbbz, because that's what she's seen the cool kids do. She thinks everything is offensive because that's popular and she doesn't have the critical faculties to consider nuance. I would not be surprised if she was being fed a very, very skewed view of America and is so incurious and trained to dismiss otherwise (I certainly know that feeling).
A functional being with a working brain who could simply think ahead would consider treating employees and staff badly would lead to consequences, that dumping Froggy Fresh would lead to backlash, that not promoting the event would make it not work, that revealing embarrassing details about her husband would impact his (and her) reputation, which she
needed, that starting another Creator Clash after the disaster of the last would be bad, that Sam Hyde is a
troll, that doing a Content Cop on Ethan would be a catastrophe and stepping back from Creator Clash would an obvious backtrack. But Anisa can't think that far ahead, because she's in her tiny own world, furiously seeing people's comments about her and assuming they must antagonists. People criticising her get in the way of her dream of being a famous and popular person, so Ian is there to just make them go away, in the same way being a bit iffy about the whole trans thing make you a bigot who has to be banned. Friends who don't immediately leap to their defence are instantly considered suspect and treasonous because it simply does not occur to her sole priority there could be dozens of reasons they waited or held back - like they think Anisa was wrong. She ignores lesser creators who could build up a following and content network and goes straight for the big leagues, because that's where she wants to be.
She doesn't think about Ian unless he serves an immediate need, so why not tell embarrassing stories about his IBS. It's not abuse, its content for her. Why would Ian object to her having an OnlyFans, it's not about him. Ian has become so henpecked yet paradoxically coddled and comfortable with this existence, and his hygiene issues I suspect are just because he's naturally a slob - you could see that in some old iDubbbz videos that he was just very careless with himself. It was oddly charming then, it looks like dysfunction now. He partakes in her noxious behaviour because as all who are abused are prone to do, you turn into one yourself. When you dominate somebody with single-minded ambition but also neglect them except to make your shared life about yourself, you get Ian.
Ethan was obviously relishing his slam dunk victory, but you could see he was also shocked and in disbelief over how low Ian had fallen and how incompetent Anisa was despite controlling the relationship. The answer must be, she's just a really stupid idiot who thinks only about herself, and Sam Hyde was right.
