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Screengrab via Marina Joyce / YouTube

Police confirm British YouTuber’s safety after kidnapping rumors spark global concern

#SaveMarinaJoyce becomes startling trending topic.

 

Michelle Jaworski

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Posted on Jul 27, 2016   Updated on May 26, 2021, 9:40 am CDT

Police confirmed that Marina Joyce, a 19-year-old British fashion and beauty YouTuber, is safe after her fans expressed concern over her welfare in the wake of recent videos and sparked a worldwide trending hashtag late Tuesday.

Joyce posts tutorials, fashion videos, challenges, and Q&As for her more than 700,000 subscribers, but some of them recently began to worry about her safety after a series of recent videos. They cited the recent presence of a gun on Joyce’s nightstand (though some say it’s been there since 2012), bruises on her body, and the presence of a man behind the camera. Some began to suspect that her boyfriend or someone else had taken control of her channel, and in a recent video some allege that you can hear Joyce faintly say “help me” in two instances.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqhFUbtpiB4

On a makeup tutorial video, a fan asked Joyce if she was OK, and while Joyce initially responded “yes,” she replied with “no” underneath it. The comment was later deleted.

https://twitter.com/almuugameplayer/status/758041535837511683

JustPaste.It has a more comprehensive breakdown of recent incidents some fans found troubling.

Tuesday night, Joyce tweeted about an upcoming meetup, something many content creators attend as a chance for their fans to hang out with them off the screen.

But the early meetup time of 6:30am worried people, and even fellow YouTubers advised against attending. According to the Mirror, some fans worried that Joyce had been kidnapped by ISIS.

#SaveMarinaJoyce began to trend worldwide on Twitter. For her part, Joyce liked tweets that said she wasn’t OK. Some fans even contacted police to check on her.

The Enfield Borough Metropolitan Police Service later confirmed that it had checked on Joyce, who eventually put out a message to her fans that she was fine. Joyce planned a livestream on YouNow later to chat with them.

But that hasn’t convinced some fans. Some instances of trolling appeared in the hashtag, but others pointed to instances in the livestream when she appeared scared or abruptly changed the subject.

https://twitter.com/louxndhaz/status/758259337319985152

H/T Mirror

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*First Published: Jul 27, 2016, 9:36 am CDT