Felt like I should comment on this given my own trauma, but I put this thread on ignore because discussions of this entire situation are extremely triggering for me for reasons that will become apparent down below:
LostSkullKid gets this completely. I think it's fair to say he did not intend to groom or abuse any minors, and did not have knowledge he was doing so. That said, he did create a situation with a serious imbalance of power where he used that power to get sexual gratification from his fans, and created an environment where even his underage fans felt pressure to engage in that behavior to seek his attention and approval. That is condemnable.
I was abused by online predators in sexual spaces I should not have been in when I was a teenager. When the abuse/grooming I suffered started, the people grooming me knew I was underage and still sought sexual gratification from me. They groomed me into behaving in certain way in those online spaces for their own gratification. Eventually, I would go onto interact with other people who were not my original abusers in those spaces, who did not know I was underage. Sometimes people would ask if I was 18+, I would lie and say yes because I wanted the validation my abusers groomed me to seek out in these places I didn't belong. Those people did not knowingly abuse me, but those interactions were still harmful to me despite their ignorance. I bring this up because the situation with Jared is very similar. Is he a child abuser? No. Is he a person who created situations that abused his power over his audience, a situation in which minors felt like they needed to get validation through behavior harmful to themselves? Yes.
The fact that some underage people lied to him about how old they were when they sent him nudes does not let him off the hook for creating a predatory environment. He's not a child abuser, but those people were still harmed, and he created the conditions for that harm to occur.
