Dear Fat People

2015Viral video / YouTube monologuedead
Dear Fat People is a 2015 YouTube monologue by Canadian comedian Nicole Arbour arguing fat-shaming "is not a thing," becoming one of that year's most polarizing viral controversies.

"Dear Fat People" is a six-minute YouTube monologue posted by Canadian comedian Nicole Arbour on September 3, 2015, in which she openly criticized the fat acceptance movement and argued that fat-shaming "is not a thing"1. The video sparked massive backlash across YouTube, Facebook, and mainstream media, racking up over 20 million Facebook views and triggering dozens of response videos from prominent creators6. It became one of 2015's most polarizing viral moments, leading to Arbour's temporary channel suspension, her firing from a film project, and a broader public debate about body shaming online3.

TL;DR

"Dear Fat People" is a six-minute YouTube monologue posted by Canadian comedian Nicole Arbour on September 3, 2015, in which she openly criticized the fat acceptance movement and argued that fat-shaming "is not a thing".

Overview

The video features Arbour speaking directly to camera in a rapid-fire comedic rant style, criticizing overweight people for what she characterized as making excuses for unhealthy lifestyles. She declared "fat-shaming is not a thing" and compared it to a "race card with no race," while mocking body positivity hashtags and telling an anecdote about sitting next to an obese passenger on a plane4. Arbour framed the video as comedy and concern-trolling under the guise of health advice, telling viewers "I'm not saying all this to be an asshole, I'm saying this because your friends should be saying it to you"7.

On September 3, 2015, Nicole Arbour, a Canadian YouTuber with around 159,000 subscribers at the time, uploaded the video titled "Dear Fat People" to her YouTube channel11. The following day, she reposted it to her Facebook page5. Arbour was already known for provocative opinion-based content, having previously gone viral with a video called "Dear Instagram Models" that targeted women's social media self-expression2. The "Dear Fat People" video was, by her own later admission, part of a deliberate marketing strategy. "I made a marketing plan behind it, the same way that anyone makes marketing plans for anything," she told Cosmopolitan. "I kind of loaded the bases, like baseball"9.

Origin & Background

Platform
YouTube
Creator
Nicole Arbour
Date
2015
Year
2015

On September 3, 2015, Nicole Arbour, a Canadian YouTuber with around 159,000 subscribers at the time, uploaded the video titled "Dear Fat People" to her YouTube channel. The following day, she reposted it to her Facebook page. Arbour was already known for provocative opinion-based content, having previously gone viral with a video called "Dear Instagram Models" that targeted women's social media self-expression. The "Dear Fat People" video was, by her own later admission, part of a deliberate marketing strategy. "I made a marketing plan behind it, the same way that anyone makes marketing plans for anything," she told Cosmopolitan. "I kind of loaded the bases, like baseball".

How It Spread

The video picked up speed fast. Within one week, it hit 1.3 million views on YouTube, while the Facebook repost blew past 20 million views with 194,000 likes and 133,000 shares. On September 5, Whitney Way Thore, star of TLC's "My Big Fat Fabulous Life," posted a direct video response that itself drew over 11 million views. "Fat-shaming is a thing. It's a really big thing, no pun intended," Thore said, noting that as someone with polycystic ovary syndrome, "you cannot tell a person's health, physical or otherwise, from looking at them". That same day, YouTuber boogie2988 posted a response arguing fat-shaming causes more harm than good.

On September 5-6, YouTube disabled Arbour's entire channel. Arbour immediately tweeted a screenshot of her disabled page with the caption "We broke the Internet… With comedy. #censorship" and claimed to be "the first comedian in the history of @YouTube to be #censored". YouTube later confirmed through a spokesperson that the suspension was a mistake and moved quickly to reinstate the channel. By Monday morning, everything was back online.

The controversy drew responses from across the YouTube ecosystem. Philip DeFranco said he agreed with some of Arbour's points but accused her of expressing them "like an asshole". Tyler Oakley tweeted that "you are worthy of self love & inner peace no matter your size or shape". Grace Helbig said she was unexpectedly "triggered" by the video and called out Arbour for leveraging subscribers through negativity. Shane Dawson weighed in with a tweet mocking Arbour's hair.

Major news outlets jumped on the story between September 6-10, including CNN, The Guardian, Salon, BuzzFeed, E! Online, USA Today, Cosmopolitan, Time, and the Daily Mail.

How to Use This Meme

"Dear Fat People" isn't a meme template in the traditional sense. It's a specific viral video that became a reference point and debate topic. People typically engage with it by:

1

Referencing the video's title or Arbour's quotes (especially "fat-shaming is not a thing") as shorthand for tone-deaf or harmful "tough love" arguments about weight

2

Creating response videos arguing for or against the video's points

3

Using screenshots or clips of Arbour in discussions about body shaming, YouTube controversy, or concern trolling

Cultural Impact

The "Dear Fat People" controversy arrived at a turning point in online discourse about body image. By 2015, the body positivity movement had gained enough mainstream traction that Arbour's approach read as dated to many observers. West wrote that "even comedy has moved away from fat jokes that obvious" and called Arbour's rhetoric "positively 2009". Salon declared the video was "not satire in any way, shape, or form".

The incident also highlighted tensions around YouTube's content moderation policies. The accidental channel suspension created a censorship narrative that played directly into the broader culture war over political correctness, even though YouTube's own spokesperson confirmed it was a mistake. Arbour's framing of herself as a martyr anticipated a pattern that became increasingly common among controversial creators: using platform enforcement (real or perceived) as a marketing tool.

The professional fallout for Arbour was real but limited. Beyond the firing from "Don't Talk to Irene", multiple celebrities spoke out against the video, including model Ashley Graham, who called Arbour's comments "disgusting". Chrissy Teigen and Margaret Cho also publicly criticized the video. Despite Arbour's claims of incoming TV offers and brand deals, the attention-through-outrage model proved difficult to sustain, and she gradually faded from mainstream cultural conversation.

Full History

Before "Dear Fat People," Nicole Arbour was a relatively obscure Canadian YouTuber whose popularity relied on what The Guardian's Lindy West described as "the supposed novelty of a woman being simultaneously opinionated, funny and conventionally attractive". Her previous videos included provocative takes aimed at Instagram models and divorce, but none had broken through to mainstream attention.

The September 3 upload changed that overnight. Arbour's key claims in the video were blunt: obesity is entirely within people's control, the body positivity movement enables unhealthy behavior, and fat people are "taking your body for granted". She told viewers that if they were offended enough to lose weight, "I'm OK with that. I'll sleep at night". She mocked fat people with lines like "What are you going to do? You going to chase me? I can get away from you by walking at a reasonable pace" and described overweight airplane passengers as smelling "like sausages".

The backlash was swift and multi-pronged. Everyday Feminism's Managing Editor Melissa A. Fabello identified the video as textbook "concern trolling," noting that "so long as people believe that harassing and threatening people under the guise of being 'concerned for their health' is acceptable, attitudes like this one will not only exist, but also thrive". Lindsey Averill, producer of the documentary "Fattitude," called it "definitely hate speech" and "bullying".

The YouTube channel suspension, brief as it was, became a pivotal moment. While Arbour positioned herself as a free speech martyr, the reality was more mundane. A YouTube spokesperson told CNN the company "mistakenly suspended the channel on Sunday afternoon and moved quickly to reinstate it". But the perception of censorship amplified the story's reach dramatically, giving Arbour additional ammunition on social media. As one USA Today commenter noted, "She's like the Donald Trump of YouTube".

The professional consequences arrived on September 10 when Canadian film director Pat Mills publicly fired Arbour from her role as choreographer on his upcoming film "Don't Talk to Irene." The irony was thick: the movie was "a body-positive teen dance movie" about "a 16-year-old girl who dreams of being a cheerleader, but she is constantly being bullied for being fat". Mills, who is gay and was bullied as a child, said the video made him "never want to see her again" and that he "was so upset I was shaking". Arbour denied she had ever been formally attached to the project, tweeting that Mills was "using my YouTube story to get a low budget film press".

Arbour refused to apologize at any point. In a Time interview on September 10, she defended the video as satire and said, "I feel it's really important that we make fun of everybody. I think what brings us together and unites us as people is that we can poke fun at all of us". She bristled at comparisons to bullying, claiming "I find seeing someone's head being blown off offensive. I find children starving in a country with more than enough food offensive. But words and satire I don't find offensive".

Months later, Arbour told Cosmopolitan that the entire controversy was part of a calculated marketing plan. "There's been tens of thousands of dollars just from that one specifically," she said about the video. "It's changed my life financially". YouTube talent manager Naomi Lennon warned that a career built on hate-watching carries real risks: "If they're controversial, it becomes a lot more about their reach. It's certainly not brand-friendly".

The broader cultural conversation the video ignited was significant. A study published in the journal Obesity, cited in multiple reports, found that people who experienced weight-based discrimination were actually more likely to gain weight, directly contradicting Arbour's premise that shaming motivates change. West's Guardian op-ed offered one of the most widely shared rebuttals, arguing that Arbour's rhetoric "feels positively 2009" and that body-positive activists had already moved the mainstream conversation past such crude attacks.

Fun Facts

Arbour disabled comments on the original YouTube video, tweeting "It doesn't mean I'm scared, it means that I don't give a f**k what u have 2 say".

The Facebook version of the video actually outperformed the YouTube original by a massive margin, pulling over 20 million views compared to YouTube's 1.3 million in the first week.

Director Pat Mills said watching the video made him feel "like I had been punched in the gut" and that he was "shaking like Shelley Duvall in The Shining".

Arbour compared her own bravery to "Braveheart," a claim West mocked by adding "or the brave girl from Brave, or the weird old guy who used to come into my work when I was 17 and try to sell me pyramid scheme weight-loss pills".

Before posting "Dear Fat People," Arbour uploaded a video titled "Most Offensive Video EVER" the day after, which tackled race, childhood obesity, and violence as if to pre-empt the backlash.

Frequently Asked Questions

Dear Fat People

2015Viral video / YouTube monologuedead
Dear Fat People is a 2015 YouTube monologue by Canadian comedian Nicole Arbour arguing fat-shaming "is not a thing," becoming one of that year's most polarizing viral controversies.

"Dear Fat People" is a six-minute YouTube monologue posted by Canadian comedian Nicole Arbour on September 3, 2015, in which she openly criticized the fat acceptance movement and argued that fat-shaming "is not a thing". The video sparked massive backlash across YouTube, Facebook, and mainstream media, racking up over 20 million Facebook views and triggering dozens of response videos from prominent creators. It became one of 2015's most polarizing viral moments, leading to Arbour's temporary channel suspension, her firing from a film project, and a broader public debate about body shaming online.

TL;DR

"Dear Fat People" is a six-minute YouTube monologue posted by Canadian comedian Nicole Arbour on September 3, 2015, in which she openly criticized the fat acceptance movement and argued that fat-shaming "is not a thing".

Overview

The video features Arbour speaking directly to camera in a rapid-fire comedic rant style, criticizing overweight people for what she characterized as making excuses for unhealthy lifestyles. She declared "fat-shaming is not a thing" and compared it to a "race card with no race," while mocking body positivity hashtags and telling an anecdote about sitting next to an obese passenger on a plane. Arbour framed the video as comedy and concern-trolling under the guise of health advice, telling viewers "I'm not saying all this to be an asshole, I'm saying this because your friends should be saying it to you".

On September 3, 2015, Nicole Arbour, a Canadian YouTuber with around 159,000 subscribers at the time, uploaded the video titled "Dear Fat People" to her YouTube channel. The following day, she reposted it to her Facebook page. Arbour was already known for provocative opinion-based content, having previously gone viral with a video called "Dear Instagram Models" that targeted women's social media self-expression. The "Dear Fat People" video was, by her own later admission, part of a deliberate marketing strategy. "I made a marketing plan behind it, the same way that anyone makes marketing plans for anything," she told Cosmopolitan. "I kind of loaded the bases, like baseball".

Origin & Background

Platform
YouTube
Creator
Nicole Arbour
Date
2015
Year
2015

On September 3, 2015, Nicole Arbour, a Canadian YouTuber with around 159,000 subscribers at the time, uploaded the video titled "Dear Fat People" to her YouTube channel. The following day, she reposted it to her Facebook page. Arbour was already known for provocative opinion-based content, having previously gone viral with a video called "Dear Instagram Models" that targeted women's social media self-expression. The "Dear Fat People" video was, by her own later admission, part of a deliberate marketing strategy. "I made a marketing plan behind it, the same way that anyone makes marketing plans for anything," she told Cosmopolitan. "I kind of loaded the bases, like baseball".

How It Spread

The video picked up speed fast. Within one week, it hit 1.3 million views on YouTube, while the Facebook repost blew past 20 million views with 194,000 likes and 133,000 shares. On September 5, Whitney Way Thore, star of TLC's "My Big Fat Fabulous Life," posted a direct video response that itself drew over 11 million views. "Fat-shaming is a thing. It's a really big thing, no pun intended," Thore said, noting that as someone with polycystic ovary syndrome, "you cannot tell a person's health, physical or otherwise, from looking at them". That same day, YouTuber boogie2988 posted a response arguing fat-shaming causes more harm than good.

On September 5-6, YouTube disabled Arbour's entire channel. Arbour immediately tweeted a screenshot of her disabled page with the caption "We broke the Internet… With comedy. #censorship" and claimed to be "the first comedian in the history of @YouTube to be #censored". YouTube later confirmed through a spokesperson that the suspension was a mistake and moved quickly to reinstate the channel. By Monday morning, everything was back online.

The controversy drew responses from across the YouTube ecosystem. Philip DeFranco said he agreed with some of Arbour's points but accused her of expressing them "like an asshole". Tyler Oakley tweeted that "you are worthy of self love & inner peace no matter your size or shape". Grace Helbig said she was unexpectedly "triggered" by the video and called out Arbour for leveraging subscribers through negativity. Shane Dawson weighed in with a tweet mocking Arbour's hair.

Major news outlets jumped on the story between September 6-10, including CNN, The Guardian, Salon, BuzzFeed, E! Online, USA Today, Cosmopolitan, Time, and the Daily Mail.

How to Use This Meme

"Dear Fat People" isn't a meme template in the traditional sense. It's a specific viral video that became a reference point and debate topic. People typically engage with it by:

1

Referencing the video's title or Arbour's quotes (especially "fat-shaming is not a thing") as shorthand for tone-deaf or harmful "tough love" arguments about weight

2

Creating response videos arguing for or against the video's points

3

Using screenshots or clips of Arbour in discussions about body shaming, YouTube controversy, or concern trolling

Cultural Impact

The "Dear Fat People" controversy arrived at a turning point in online discourse about body image. By 2015, the body positivity movement had gained enough mainstream traction that Arbour's approach read as dated to many observers. West wrote that "even comedy has moved away from fat jokes that obvious" and called Arbour's rhetoric "positively 2009". Salon declared the video was "not satire in any way, shape, or form".

The incident also highlighted tensions around YouTube's content moderation policies. The accidental channel suspension created a censorship narrative that played directly into the broader culture war over political correctness, even though YouTube's own spokesperson confirmed it was a mistake. Arbour's framing of herself as a martyr anticipated a pattern that became increasingly common among controversial creators: using platform enforcement (real or perceived) as a marketing tool.

The professional fallout for Arbour was real but limited. Beyond the firing from "Don't Talk to Irene", multiple celebrities spoke out against the video, including model Ashley Graham, who called Arbour's comments "disgusting". Chrissy Teigen and Margaret Cho also publicly criticized the video. Despite Arbour's claims of incoming TV offers and brand deals, the attention-through-outrage model proved difficult to sustain, and she gradually faded from mainstream cultural conversation.

Full History

Before "Dear Fat People," Nicole Arbour was a relatively obscure Canadian YouTuber whose popularity relied on what The Guardian's Lindy West described as "the supposed novelty of a woman being simultaneously opinionated, funny and conventionally attractive". Her previous videos included provocative takes aimed at Instagram models and divorce, but none had broken through to mainstream attention.

The September 3 upload changed that overnight. Arbour's key claims in the video were blunt: obesity is entirely within people's control, the body positivity movement enables unhealthy behavior, and fat people are "taking your body for granted". She told viewers that if they were offended enough to lose weight, "I'm OK with that. I'll sleep at night". She mocked fat people with lines like "What are you going to do? You going to chase me? I can get away from you by walking at a reasonable pace" and described overweight airplane passengers as smelling "like sausages".

The backlash was swift and multi-pronged. Everyday Feminism's Managing Editor Melissa A. Fabello identified the video as textbook "concern trolling," noting that "so long as people believe that harassing and threatening people under the guise of being 'concerned for their health' is acceptable, attitudes like this one will not only exist, but also thrive". Lindsey Averill, producer of the documentary "Fattitude," called it "definitely hate speech" and "bullying".

The YouTube channel suspension, brief as it was, became a pivotal moment. While Arbour positioned herself as a free speech martyr, the reality was more mundane. A YouTube spokesperson told CNN the company "mistakenly suspended the channel on Sunday afternoon and moved quickly to reinstate it". But the perception of censorship amplified the story's reach dramatically, giving Arbour additional ammunition on social media. As one USA Today commenter noted, "She's like the Donald Trump of YouTube".

The professional consequences arrived on September 10 when Canadian film director Pat Mills publicly fired Arbour from her role as choreographer on his upcoming film "Don't Talk to Irene." The irony was thick: the movie was "a body-positive teen dance movie" about "a 16-year-old girl who dreams of being a cheerleader, but she is constantly being bullied for being fat". Mills, who is gay and was bullied as a child, said the video made him "never want to see her again" and that he "was so upset I was shaking". Arbour denied she had ever been formally attached to the project, tweeting that Mills was "using my YouTube story to get a low budget film press".

Arbour refused to apologize at any point. In a Time interview on September 10, she defended the video as satire and said, "I feel it's really important that we make fun of everybody. I think what brings us together and unites us as people is that we can poke fun at all of us". She bristled at comparisons to bullying, claiming "I find seeing someone's head being blown off offensive. I find children starving in a country with more than enough food offensive. But words and satire I don't find offensive".

Months later, Arbour told Cosmopolitan that the entire controversy was part of a calculated marketing plan. "There's been tens of thousands of dollars just from that one specifically," she said about the video. "It's changed my life financially". YouTube talent manager Naomi Lennon warned that a career built on hate-watching carries real risks: "If they're controversial, it becomes a lot more about their reach. It's certainly not brand-friendly".

The broader cultural conversation the video ignited was significant. A study published in the journal Obesity, cited in multiple reports, found that people who experienced weight-based discrimination were actually more likely to gain weight, directly contradicting Arbour's premise that shaming motivates change. West's Guardian op-ed offered one of the most widely shared rebuttals, arguing that Arbour's rhetoric "feels positively 2009" and that body-positive activists had already moved the mainstream conversation past such crude attacks.

Fun Facts

Arbour disabled comments on the original YouTube video, tweeting "It doesn't mean I'm scared, it means that I don't give a f**k what u have 2 say".

The Facebook version of the video actually outperformed the YouTube original by a massive margin, pulling over 20 million views compared to YouTube's 1.3 million in the first week.

Director Pat Mills said watching the video made him feel "like I had been punched in the gut" and that he was "shaking like Shelley Duvall in The Shining".

Arbour compared her own bravery to "Braveheart," a claim West mocked by adding "or the brave girl from Brave, or the weird old guy who used to come into my work when I was 17 and try to sell me pyramid scheme weight-loss pills".

Before posting "Dear Fat People," Arbour uploaded a video titled "Most Offensive Video EVER" the day after, which tackled race, childhood obesity, and violence as if to pre-empt the backlash.

Frequently Asked Questions