If you've never heard of Dhar Mann, he's a Youtuber who makes what he calls "inspirational" videos. His channel appeals to kids, boomers and commentary Youtubers. They're mostly harmless rubbish. Trite, formulaic, unrealistic rubbish, but mostly harmless nonetheless. The formula is the same every time. Bully who seems irredeemable picks on an innocent victim. Then he's taught a lesson that makes him immediately see the error of his ways. Just like that, he does a complete 180. How this is going to inspire anyone, I don't know. Like I said, it's trite, formulaic rubbish.

The problem is when he comes up with videos like the two I'm going to highlight here. I'm sure Joinen did a reaction to both of these videos, which is how I found them, but I don't know if he's deleted them or I'm confusing him with someone else, because I can't find the videos anymore, and I'm not linking to the originals because I have no desire to financially reward Dhar Mann for these. You can easily find them on his channel if you're curious.

Dhar Mann Makes Kids Struggling With an Ill Loved-One Feel Bad

Let's start with the video titled Husband Abandons Wife With Cancer, What Happens Next Will Shock You. This could have been a really good opportunity to actually address what it's like having a loved one who's seriously ill.

And this is the truth. Living with a seriously ill person can take its toll on you. As her husband, he'd feel that he needs to be strong for her and have to put on a happy face. And if he wasn't also getting the support he needed, that could eventually cause him to break down, and yes, maybe even feel he can't do it anymore and leave. But it's the ham-fisted way Dhar Mann writes these scenarios that makes them so pointless and even harmful.

Everyone deals with these situations differently. There's no right or wrong way. When my mum got diagnosed with cancer, I couldn't even speak to her for the first few days. In fact, it was hard to even be in the same room as her. It had only been three months since another relative passed away from cancer, and she had suffered horrifically. Now we all had to face the prospect of the same thing happening to my mum. Thank God, she responded well to treatment and is doing really well now. But at the time, we were all terrified. And we all dealt with it in our own ways.

Now imagine you're a 12 year old kid watching this. Your sibling is seriously ill, and you're hurting too. You're feeling all kinds of emotions. Maybe, at the worst times, you even feel like you hate your sibling for putting you through this. The message you're getting from this video is: you're a bad person, and karma is going to bite you in the butt. And this is reinforced by your fellow 12-year-olds in the comment section. Is this really an inspirational story that's "changing lives"? Maybe, if by changing, you mean "worsening".

This video could have been so good. Instead of the husband being a comic-book villain who runs off with his wife's "friend", while making malicious comments like "well, you aren't getting any better, are you?", how about we give this more nuance?

The husband could have been supportive at first, just like in the original, but he has no real support network of his own. As his wife gets more and more ill, he struggles to cope with how much his wife is suffering. He masks his own pain, because he doesn't want to add to his wife's worry. But bottling up his feelings is only making things worse for him. Eventually, he breaks. He can't take this anymore. The fear of losing his wife to cancer is destroying him, and rightly or wrongly, he feels the best way to save himself from the pain is to get out first.

He packs his bags and leaves. His wife catches him, he explains that he's sorry, but he can't take this anymore, and that he's going.

On the way to the hotel, he breaks down crying. He loves his wife so much, and he knows how much she's hurting, and he can't forget the look on her face when he left. He doesn't know what to do anymore. He's on the ground, crying into the pavement, when an old college friend he hasn't seen in years approaches him. The husband confides in him. It's easier to talk to someone impartial, and he feels a sense of relief being able to unburden himself.

The friend listens, and tells the husband that he isn't a bad person as he thinks, but a hurting and confused one. That what he feels is more common than he thinks, and the problem isn't him, but that he's been so busy supporting his wife, that he didn't think of finding someone to support him. The stranger tells him that he went through something similar when his brother was ill. He recommends a support group that he was a member of. The husband takes the details and goes home.

He goes back to find his wife still crying in the kitchen. The husband explains that he just broke under the pressure, but he wants to be there for his wife. The wife says she was so wrapped up in her illness that she didn't even realise and apologises. The husband tells her she's nothing to apologise for, and they make up and work out a plan to make sure they both get the support they need. And then Dhar Mann could provide some links to various support groups.

And the message would not be the crap that we were given originally. The message would be: living with a seriously ill loved-one can be really hard. Your feelings are valid. The most important thing is to make sure you also get the support you need.

Done.

This didn't even take a lot of brain-power. That's how simple it is to write a nuanced story that actually could provide a positive impact on someone's life. But Dhar Mann is a lazy hack, who would rather sit back and get rich writing this crap than actually putting a bit of thought into his work.

Domestic Abuse is Easily Fixed With a So-You-See Moment

Trigger warning.

Now this one just makes my blood boil. In this video, we have a clear case of emotional abuse. And we can tell from the wife's reaction that this isn't an isolated incident, but a common pattern of behaviour.

The video starts with the wife giving her husband a surprise cake for his birthday. Unlike a healthy-minded person, his response isn't "Wow, thank you!", but "This all you got for me?".

Look at the wife's face. This actress knows. She's already trying to go into damage control mode. Her response is a meek "Yes, why?".

Tell me, if someone you had always known to be loving had uncharacteristically responded with aggression to a kind gesture, would this be your response? No, you'd be shocked, you'd be all WTH, man? Not a meek "Yes, why?". So this relationship has been abusive for a while. She was half-expecting this.

The abusive husband then responds with a list of all the stuff he pays for, ie, everything. Which is what you'd freakin' expect if he's the breadwinner, and she's the stay-at-home wife. That's how it works. But when you're an abuser, anything can be weaponised. I mean, if he resents paying for things so much, why have a stay-at-home wife? He even uses the fact that he pays for the toilet brush as a weapon.

And it gets worse. This is an outright threat. It's a reminder that he can make her homeless at any moment. He's reminding her of the power he has over her.

The wife is sobbing now, as he continues his vitriol against her. There's no doubt that this is something she's been living with for a long time.

Look at this face here. He is clearly an experienced abuser. Here, he's using the DARVO tactic of making himself out to be the victim. Poor him, spending all that money on her, and all she gets him is a cake, that his money paid for anyway. So even though he's abusing her right now, she feels like she's the one in the wrong.

Dhar Mann is surprisingly good at writing a realistic abusive husband. This is straight out of The Abuser's Manual:

His anger reaches a peak at this moment, and she's taking it, like a good victim. Again, it's so obvious that this is something she's come to expect. This isn't a one-off.

Up until this point, this video could have been saved. You've noticed I'm not actually criticising the video yet, just calling out abusive behaviour and analysing the relationship, and so far, I would say this is pretty realistic. This is the part that really makes my blood boil though. This bit right here. The wife writes her own list of all the things she does for him, which is, you know, how having a stay-at-home spouse works, and just like that, all is well.

I'm not kidding. Dhar Mann is literally telling impressionable kids that all you need to "fix" an abusive partner is to show them the error of their ways. In real life, this is NOT how this story would end.

Again, look at the wife's face. That is a face that's saying, "I've stopped him hitting me this time." The actress knows. She knows what's going on here.

A lot of people preface their critiques with "This isn't a personal attack on Dhar Mann himself, but his content". None of that from me; this is exactly an attack on Dhar Mann. When you post this stuff publicly, when it's obvious from your comment section that most of your viewers are kids, when you have that number of views, you have a responsibility. Kids and teens are already getting so many messages from the media that abusive partners are fine as long as they're hot and rich (I'm looking at you, Stephenie Meyer), and now we have people like Dhar Mann telling 8-year-olds that all you have to do to fix an abuser is show them why they are wrong. Is Daddy hitting Mummy? It's because Mummy's list of things she does for free isn't long enough. Mummy needs to do more work. It's Mummy's fault!

This is so dangerous. Kids that age won't know how abusive relationships work. They think that if someone shouted at them like that, they'd just leave. They don't know the years of manipulation, isolation, gaslighting, and wearing down of your sense of self that brings the abused partner into a state where they will put up with the abuse. They don't know that the abuser can go from this vision from hell into an angel from heaven at the drop of a hat. That abusers can be really charming and caring when they want to be, just like the husband at the end of this video, because it's all a part of their game. They don't know that the situation isn't black-and-white. They don't know that physical violence is the final stage, and by then the damage is long done, the victim is already broken. The scars of the emotional abuse take way longer to heal. They don't know these things. And you, Dhar Mann, have a responsibility to correctly educate your viewers, not teach them how to be a good victim.

Dhar Mann, you make me sick.