My Experience With Simvicii, Oliveandoak & Their Discord
I’ve seen a lot of posts going around in regards to simvicii, oliveandoak, their discord and private channels. I felt now would be the best time to speak out about my experience with these things. I think it’s best that people have as much information as possible.
Disclaimer: I am not innocent to anything and neither is anyone else in that discord. We are all at fault for allowing simvicii and oliveandoak behave the way they did as well as enabling/aiding in their behaviors. This is partly why I left tumblr back in March because I realized I had become the same type of person as them and I was disgusted with myself. This does not exclude me from any blacklash/punishment but I recognize my mistakes and left to address them.
How We Met: Probably around November/December or earlier back in 2019 Simvicii had dm’d me asking for a sim, this was when they went by a different username. At the time I wasn’t giving sims away because poor experiences but I had just followed her blog and became a fan so I gave her one. She later gave me a sim in exchange as well. The sim I gave her is who everyone knows as Hollie Evans. (More on this later)
Joining The Discord: After exchanging sims I never talked to Simvicii again so when Oliveandoak dm’d me asking if I wanted to join their discord I was a bit surprised. But me being me and wanting to be apart of something I chose to join, probably in early January. Everything seemed pretty normal at first but within the first few weeks I noticed a good amount of gossip going on. The server was still small and hand picked individuals so I guess they didn’t have to worry quite yet. Everything started pretty small/mild but then once the private channel was made things escalated.
The Private Channel: I guess under the safety of the channel Simvicii and Oliveandoak felt more comfortable being their true selves. Admittedly, Simvicii didn’t say too many harsh things but Oliveandoak definitely did. I remember on multiple occasions she posted screenshots of her asks and mocked the senders. There were a few asks where they didn’t quite make sense, most likely result of poor english, and she would mock them saying ‘wtf does this mean/how am i supposed to read this’ and others of the like.
Most of the time we, we being the others in the channel, would just go along with what they said. I noticed a few of them didn’t actually participate in many of those types of conversations, probably because they knew it was wrong. I myself would simply go along or ignore them because whenever I had tried to call Oliveandoak out for being too rude, mocking people, or simply tried to defend whoever it was she would get very passive aggressive with me.
Some Of What Was Said: For the most part I don’t remember a lot of the actual words and phrases they used but I remember a few of the topics. I know on several occasions they mocked their followers/people who sent them asks. They mocked simblrs they didn’t like. I actually remember three very specific simblrs being brought up almost daily by either simvicii or oliveandoak. They also would complain about people asking them to include POC or LGBTQ+ sims.
About The POC/LGBTQ+ Topics: I wanted to expand on this specifically because Simvicii is very good with words and a lot of us in the discord kind of were persuaded to agree based on how she worded things. So, most of the time the conversation was about how simblr forces people to include POC/LGBTQ+ sims and Simvicii felt that it was wrong or whatever because there’s a lot of blogs doing already + why should they be forced to do something on their blog, or something of that nature.
Now, to a degree I agreed with her simply because me being apart of the LGBTQ+ community I really hate seeing straight people trying to portray us. It almost always ends up weird and cringey. I didn’t want to see another person making that type of content. I just didn’t. So, I agreed and told her I didn’t think she needed to be posting that because she can’t related and it’s better to not do something you’re not informed on. However, that does not mean she can’t have LGBTQ+ backstory characters.
I know recently there’s a post going around with a screenshot of her talking about how asians are normally excluded from the term POC, especially here on simblr, and I have to agree. However, that does not mean you do not exclude the rest of the POC community in retaliation. Now, I’m not saying this to be rude but even when Simvicii makes “asian” sims they still look an awful lot like their white sims because their sim style makes them all look fairly similar. So, even when she made asian sims you could barely tell. But making asian sims does not exclude you from making black, hispanic, latino, middle eastern, islander, etc sims. You don’t get to trade one for the others.
Same with Oliveandoak. She got asks about her lack of POC sims and she complained saying ‘I have POC sims!!’. It doesn’t count when they’re all extremely white passing. I even personally sent her a dark skinned sim to which she switched the content on and made her look several shades lighter. This is a problem. Aesthetic or not you still need to include dark skinned sims and other races.
Moving on.
Hollie Evans: So, back to the original topic of Hollie Evans. A lot of you who know who Simvicii know who this sim is. She was one of the main characters paired as Romeo’s bff/gf/whatever. Well, yes I actually made that sim. HOWEVER, Simvicii claims (after 2-3 months of use) that the Hollie we see today isn’t actually my Hollie but a replica she made herself.
She claims that she ‘remade’ Hollie and just ‘used the same presets and everything’. I’m sorry but that’s not true. If you took a side by side of the two sims you would see that the facial structures are identical and we all know even if you try to recreate someone else’s style using the exact same content it’s not going to be 100% identical, which Hollie to her core is identical.
The thing that bothers me and hurts me is that she went our whole friendship telling me it’s the sim I gave her and then when confronted claims it’s not that sim, when clearly it is she just wants out of the doghouse. She sent Hollie to people for collabs without saying anything to me. She changed all her custom content ‘to match her style’ and she no longer uses the ‘Hollie Evans by Honeyswarm’ tags. Which the tag thing only happened after I left tumblr.
I think it’s extremely rude and hurtful to ask someone for a sim and then change everything about them, claim them as yours and share them with other people. It’s simply not right and she knows it. She would constantly bring up a blogger who had forced her to give them her sims and then ripped her off. She knows what that feels like and she knows that’s wrong.
There’s probably a hell of a lot more I could talk about, like the three blogs they always mentioned, how they all but basically convinced the private channel to exclude someone in the discord, their lack of care/empathy towards other server members/myself, admitting to sending hate to people they disliked/disagreed with and just their general toxic behavior and manipulation but I think this post is long enough.
I don’t have “evidence” to everything here because I never thought I’d need it/be posting about it but considering everyone’s coming out I figured I would too. The only “evidence” I have is in relation to our conversation when she admitted she ripped my sim off. If you’d like those I can share them but otherwise that’s all I have.
I don’t know if this post will reach anyone or even mean anything but I felt like I needed to say these things and make it aware to others. It’s always best to have as much information as possible so that’s what I’m doing here. It’s really up to you to decide what you do with it.
I also want to apologize to everyone affected by the things Simvicii and Oliveandoak have said/done. I’m so sorry I allowed them to say and do the things they said and did. I’m so sorry I didn’t stick up for y’all better. I was afraid of losing ‘friends’ and I was afraid what might happen if I went against them. That doesn’t make it any better but please no I am so deeply sorry for everything said/done in that server that I either aided in or allowed to happen.
-Honeyswarm