Lindsay Ellis 'Omelas' Meaning As Vlogger Quits YouTube Over 'Raya' Controversy

YouTuber Lindsay Ellis has quit social media months after she was at the center of a Twitter controversy over her criticism of the film, Raya and the Last Dragon.

On March 26 of this year, the film critic and content creator ignited a frenzy among movie fans when she compared the Pixar movie to Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Since then, the 36-year-old—who has 1.19 million subscribers on YouTube—has faced a lot of criticism for her take on the film which saw her opinion being labeled as racist and expressing anti-Asian sentiment.

Now as of December 28, Ellis announced she was quitting social media and published a lengthy post explaining her decision on the platform Patreon.

In the now-deleted tweet from March, she wrote: "Also watched Raya and the Last Dragon and I think we need to come up with a name for this genre that is basically Avatar: the Last Airbender reduxes. It's like half of all YA fantasy published in the last few years anyway."

She clarified in a later tweet, per HITC: "I can see where if you squint I was implying all Asian-inspired properties are the same, especially if you were already privy to those conversations where I had not seen them. But the basic framework of TLA is becoming popular in fantasy fiction outside of Asian-inspired stuff."

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This controversy led to Ellis deleting her Twitter account for a while, which led to more criticism from fans.

In April, around a month after the controversy ignited, Ellis posted a YouTube video titled "Mask off" in which she spoke about being "canceled."

In the video, Ellis said that in the controversial tweets, she was "ascribed in an intentionality which wasn't there."

She added: "You shouldn't tweet in the morning. You shouldn't tweet at all. Nobody should tweet. That very poorly worded frustration was met with even more outrage."

Now on December 28, Ellis took to Twitter to share a Patreon post explaining her decision to quit YouTube and Twitter.

Simply captioned: "Goodbye," Elli' titled her essay: "Walking Away From Omelas."

The full post is available to read for Patreon subscribers.

Newsweek has seen the post and in it, Ellis discusses her difficult year following the Raya controversy and how she is exhausted by the barrage of criticism she faces online.

The full post is available to read here for Patreon subscribers.