Who is Trisha Paytas and why are they so controversial?

Daily, YouTube provides its audience a plethora of unique content from controversial individuals. From videos of them crying on the kitchen floor to pranks, YouTube has it all. This type of content and more has been provided by the one and only lifestyle influencer, Trisha Paytas. Known for their numerous controversial opinions, takes, and even self-diagnosis, Trisha Paytas has recently been the hot topic all across the internet, namely, due to the conspiracy theories surrounding the influencer’s baby being the reincarnation of late Queen Elizabeth.

Every few years, Paytas’ name seems to resurface online, even recently concerning their baby’s unique name, and the vlogger is still causing quite a commotion. If the name Trisha Paytas has been catching your eye lately, here is all the information you need about this influencer from the primordial times of YouTube.

Who is Trisha Paytas?

Trisha Paytas is an American lifestyle vlogger born in Riverside, California. The 34-year-old influencer kick-started their career on YouTube in 2007, venturing into music in 2015 after releasing their first single “Fat Chicks”. The singer would also release their first EP “Daddy Issues” just a mere year later, making its debut on the Billboard Top Heatseekers albums chart. As of 2022, Paytas has gathered a whopping 5 million subscribers on YouTube, and 7.5 million followers on TikTok.

Paytas’ YouTube channel offers a wide variety of content, mainly focused on vlogs showing the influencer navigating through their daily life and the famous mass-eating videos known as “mukbangs”. Paytas has also had many collaborations with other YouTubers, including the controversial Shane Dawson, Ethan “H3H3” Klein, and Vlog Squad’s Jason Nash, with whom they had a relationship.

The influencer has been a particularly prominent figure online, not only due to their eerily bizarre and overly-sexual videos on YouTube, but also because of their lengthy list of controversies across the years. Paytas has had their fair share of heated altercations with several YouTubers, including Gabbie Hanna, Jeffree Starr, David Dobrik, and even their podcast co-star Ethan Klein, however, their true controversies lie in their own self-diagnoses of mental health issues and even their gender identity. Here are the main controversies surrounding YouTube star Trisha Paytas.

Trisha Paytas gender identity

On October 2019, Paytas posted a video on YouTube coming out as transgender, with the video titled “I AM TRANSGENDER (FEMALE TO MALE)”, in which the vlogger shared that they identify as a gay man who enjoys dressing in drag. In the controversial video, Paytas admits not only to being a gay man but to also feeling attracted to strictly other gay men, sharing that they had “penis envy” and still enjoyed “glam” in spite of it all. The video has since been deleted.

Not long after, Trisha made a celebrity cameo on the show “The Doctors”, where the singer shared their thoughts regarding the backlash received after their gender identity reveal, where they said, “I’ve dated gay men, and this is what offended people in my video when I date gay men, a lot of gay men think I’m not man enough because I don’t have a penis.”.

Naturally, Paytas’ video sparked quite a lot of controversy among the masses, who shared that not only did Paytas not know what being trans was, but also that the YouTuber had been fetishizing gay men and gay relationships. The trans community has been fighting for rights for years on end, and Paytas’ video only spread more misinformation regarding the struggles faced by the trans community in today’s society.

About a year ago, Paytas posted a video talking about their gender, where they came out as non-binary and gender fluid, going by all pronouns. In the video, Paytas also brings up their past controversy surrounding past allegations, sharing that “that video was never meant to be offensive or a troll. It came across as bad and wrong and I didn’t know ‘non-binary’ back then. I really just thought, ‘I’m really a male.'”. Paytas also shared that they “have days where [they] really identify as he/him, [they] really identify as a man,” but that their appearance is “more of a cis female or a girlie girl or a drag queen or whatever, people don’t really understand it.” In that same video, the vlogger thanked TikTok and Gen Z for bringing light to gender identity and allowing the singer to finally find themselves and the term nonbinary.

Trisha Paytas’ Japanese character “Trishii”

In 2012, Paytas created a YouTube character named “Trishii”, a “Japanese pop star” persona with a suspicious amount of foundation. Upon creating this character, Paytas posted a video introducing Trishii, however, that has also been deleted, most likely due to eventual backlash. During that time, it wasn’t a foreign concept for YouTubers to create characters for comedic bits and skits, however, cultural appropriation, mocking, and near blackface was something that wasn’t acceptable then, and much less now.

Trisha Paytas’ dissociative identity disorder

In 2020, the vlogger posted a video titled “MEET MY ALTERS”, which is now deleted, in which Paytas shared the news that they self-diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), a mental health condition where an individual has multiple and distinct personalities that control their behavior at any given time. In that same video, Trisha introduced their alleged alters, T, Trixie, Tyson, Tierney, and Tobolter.

This video was naturally met with massive outrage, as the influencer was never officially diagnosed by a mental health professional, opting for simply relating to someone with DID. In the video, Paytas also voluntarily “switched” between the alters in a very obvious manner, spreading complete misinformation about this mental health disorder.

Paytas then posted two other videos talking about DID, one aimed at YouTuber Anthony Padilla for questioning their disorder, and another where they allegedly caught their alters switching on the camera. Several people who have DID came forward, talking about the misinformation and the damage caused by Paytas’ behavior. In a detailed video, YouTuber DissociaDID came forward talking about Paytas, and the alter presenting called Nin said “It’s hard to sit here and watch someone call me crazy and spread information that’s very incorrect and damaging about our community, which undoes a lot of the hard work that I and a lot of other content creators in the DID community have done.”.

Although there is plenty to be discussed when it comes to Trisha Paytas, the singer and YouTuber has recently welcomed their first child, Malibu Barbie with their husband and Israel photographer, Moses Hacmon and we wish nothing but the best for the handful influencer.