Trisha Paytas Admits 'I'll Spend My Whole Life Apologizing' in New Memoir

Trisha Paytas uploaded her first YouTube video on January 4, 2007, and now, nearly two decades and millions of followers later, she is telling the full story in a memoir titled Crying on the Kitchen Floor. NPR's Juana Summers interviewed Paytas about the book, her history of trolling and lying, and her recovery from what she describes as her lowest point in 2019.

What does the memoir admit?

Paytas, who joined YouTube at 18 and built an audience through music, dancing, shopping hauls and morning-routine videos — as well as very public meltdowns — told Summers she wanted fame from childhood. "Just the attention. I just - I wanted attention so bad as a kid," Paytas said. "My parents just worked a lot, and so I just was like, how do I get attention?"

Reality shows such as The Girls Next Door, Anna Nicole Smith's program and The Osbournes shaped her ambitions in high school, but she had no television connections. "YouTube started when I was 18, and I started when I was 18, so we kind of started at the same time, and I just got really lucky," she said.

Summers pressed her directly: given that she has admitted lying for attention and money, why should readers believe the memoir? Paytas gave a two-part answer. First, legal vetting: "you have to go through a lot of legal teams when you write a book, so everything had to be a hundred percent factual." Second, sourcing: "if I couldn't recollect something where I could prove it, we didn't put it in the book." She said she rebuilt her memories through old videos and emails.

One working title, she noted, was "the boy who cried wolf" — recast as "the girl who cried on the kitchen floor." She opens the book with the words "lies ahead," in case her memory failed her. It didn't, she said.

What is her biggest regret?

The book's title comes from the video in which Paytas outed a man she was dating, without his consent, tearfully announcing he was gay. She calls it the biggest regret of her career.

"It really did a lot of harm and damage to this person," Paytas said. "I've been able to apologize to him time and time again. Years later, we reconciled on my podcast." She said she should never have taken her heartbreak to the internet: "It wasn't my intention to harm, and it did."

She frames her other trolling as desperation. "I would consider my trolling an act of desperation for money," she said, adding that she often "dumbed myself down for the joke" rather than targeting others intentionally.

How does she account for the past?

Paytas was blunt about her conduct during the worst years. "The internet's forever. What you say will not be erased," she said. "My digital footprint has been horrible for quite a time. And just the past six years, I mean, I was very mentally unwell. I was abusing drugs."

She called that period "not an excuse, but a reason." She also acknowledged a practical consequence: "if this social media wasn't my job, it would be hard for me to get employment." Her stance on forgiveness is conditional: "I'll spend my whole life apologizing for past mistakes. And the people who can look past it, I appreciate. And the people who don't, I completely understand as well."

What changed after 2019?

Paytas said she hit a point where "nobody wanted to be associated with me" — in her words, "I don't think you could have gotten lower than Trisha Paytas in 2019." She was not diagnosed with any mental illness until 31, and that diagnosis came only after an involuntary stay in a mental hospital.

She now lives with borderline personality disorder, she said, managing "emotional triggers and spiraling and splitting" daily — especially as a mother. "I really hold myself accountability to not have public meltdowns or exposing people, and it's worked for the past five, six years," she told Summers.

Asked what she thinks when she sees another creator's public crashout online, she answered: "It's a cry for help, you know? It really is." She credited the wellness checks that people called in on her. She also argued platforms bear responsibility, saying they "reward crashouts" and should "step in a little bit more."

To her past self — the woman crying on the kitchen floor who, she said, "did not want to continue living" — Paytas's message is simple: "life is so good... you got to hang in there because it gets really good." She now prays, she said, "for another 50 years here on Earth with my kids." All the dreams came true, she told NPR, "times a hundred."