The House of My Mother: A Daughter's Quest for Freedom

Ruby’s first 8 Passengers video introduced the world to Shari’s baby sister, including shots from Ruby’s gender reveal party and scenes from the hospital when the baby was born. Her next upload depicted Ruby trying sushi for the first time, and the third video introduced Chad. Soon, the Frankes’ lives “revolved around nonstop content creation” (46). Shari and her siblings had no say in the matter. At 11 years old, Shari was in the midst of awkward adolescence and began feeling “like a sideshow freak” (47). Everything the family did, from “epic tantrums” to “first steps,” was “mined for content” (47).

Ruby was determined to reach 1,000 subscribers, the number required to qualify for YouTube’s AdSense program and begin earning money for content. She reached the milestone in July, after just six months. Soon after, a video of Shari’s baby sister climbing out of her crib became the first piece of 8 Passengers content to go viral, amassing 50 million views.

Shari felt that her mother’s new obsession was turning her family’s lives “upside down,” and she was anxious to get back to “normal.” However, as Ruby’s subscribers grew to over 400,000 over the next year, she began to realize “that ‘normal’ was a luxury [they] had already left far behind” (49).

As the Frankes’ popularity grew, Ruby remodeled their home to make it more “photogenic,” creating a home that felt “too perfect for real life” (50). Shari still hated being on camera, but she quickly learned that agreeing to be her mother’s “happy, smiling costar” (51) gave her bargaining power. If Shari and her siblings agreed to film various outings, they were allowed to use the 8 Passengers’ credit card, and Shari quickly began learning the ins and outs of tax loopholes. The family got their first brand deal, and soon, the Frankes were going on vacations paid for by sponsors and receiving products to “review” faster than they could open boxes.

October 15th, 2015, was Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day, and Ruby posted a video about her miscarriage in 2009. The video was “vulnerable” and “powerful,” and Shari is glad her mother was able to have the healing experience of sharing her loss. However, she notes that “the line between authenticity and exploitation becomes dangerously blurred when children are involved” (53). While Shari’s lost baby brother is safe from the impact of his mother’s public sharing, Shari wonders about “the lasting repercussions of growing up on camera” (53) for her and the rest of her siblings. She notes that none of them had a choice but to go along with Ruby’s vision, and “precious formative years” (53) were lost along the way. 8 Passengers’ success had dangerous repercussions for Ruby’s ego: Her “relentless ambition” was suddenly “the driving force of [the Frankes’] existence” (53).

At 14, Shari started her own YouTube channel with her mother’s permission. She wasn’t old enough for her own AdSense account, so Ruby managed it for her. However, Ruby refused to mention Shari’s new channel on 8 Passengers, claiming her daughter had to get to 100,000 subscribers the old-fashioned way. Shari “hated” filming, but she took the work seriously and “follow[ed] the blueprint Ruby had laid out” (55), using her younger siblings to fuel her content and talking about “personal stuff” like periods to get more views. Meanwhile, Ruby’s channel was filling up with comments about how viewers felt as if they had found a place they belonged in 8 Passengers. This success was “enabling” Ruby and pushing her “further and further away from reality” (57).

Shari’s internet fame from 8 Passengers earned her access to the popular cliques at school and a date with her crush, a boy named Jake. Shari was forbidden from dating boys until she turned 16, but she was ready to “rebel” for the first time. She exchanged numbers with Jake and secretly downloaded Snapchat, which was also “expressly forbidden” by Ruby. She started to imagine what it would be like to be “a regular teenage girl” (59). Ruby also had to approve anything that Shari and her siblings posed on social media. On the one hand, this represented a common maternal impulse to protect one’s children from the dangers of the internet, but often it was difficult to tell the difference between “genuine parental concern and brand management” (59).

Jake and Shari had their first date and shared a kiss. Shari felt elated on her way home, but her parents were waiting for her. They had discovered her Snapchat account. Ruby warned her that unapproved social media use could “jeopardize” the family’s “entire livelihood.” She wasn’t concerned about Shari’s safety; she was fully focused on “maintaining the perfect image for her precious audience” (62). Shari’s smartphone was confiscated, although she sometimes snuck into Ruby’s room to look at Jake’s stories on Snapchat. The risk was worth this small “taste” of freedom.

One day, in a moment of “clarity,” Shari wrote in her journal, “I don’t think my mother loves me” (63). This felt like a “very real” realization, but what she didn’t understand was what she had done to “repel” Ruby. Some of the comments on 8 Passengers complained that Shari was “a kiss-ass,” and she wondered if that was the problem. However, Shari felt that she had no choice but to be “Ruby’s obedient little puppet” (64) if she wanted to survive. She became consumed by a sense of “emptiness” that she identified as depression after taking a class on mental health in high school.

She immediately texted her father, telling him she didn’t “want to live anymore” (65). Kevin suggested that Shari try therapy and even stood up to Ruby when she claimed that Shari’s depression could be fixed through sleep, diet, and exercise. Shari felt like her father was “really seeing [her]” (66) and this made her hopeful. However, Ruby refused to let Shari see a therapist, and Shari began coping by shutting down around her mother. She also began speaking to her bishop more, confiding her kiss with Jake over and over, caught in a “relentless cycle of guilt and self-flagellation” (68) until the bishop himself suggested therapy.

Eventually, Ruby and Kevin found out about Shari’s budding romance with Jake and decided to send her to a different school. This made Shari feel like her “life was being reshaped without [her] consent” again (72). She locked herself in the bathroom, where she had a panic attack. She thought that she wanted to die, and she heard voices telling her she was “worthless” and deserved her pain because she was “ungrateful.” As the attack subsided, she found “a small, defiant” (73) voice in herself that reminded her that God loved her.

The panic attack finally made Ruby agree to send Shari to therapy, but Shari struggled to open up to her therapist. She worried about what would happen if she talked about Ruby and her mother found out. Slowly, she began speaking more honestly, finally confessing that playing piano with Ruby was “a huge source of stress” (75). Shari agreed that Ruby could come into the session, and she and the therapist told her together that Shari no longer wanted to take piano lessons. To her surprise, Ruby agreed immediately.

Nevertheless, this victory felt suspicious, and Shari’s feelings of depression and self-loathing continued unabated. She put on her “happy smile” for the 8 Passengers’ video announcing her school transfer and decided she would cope by focusing on her studies. Shari’s brother Chad, now a “budding athlete,” also attended the same school, and the siblings shared a special connection despite their divergent interests. On her first day, Shari analyzed Lord of the Rings in English class and hurried home to eat dinner before her therapy session.

However, Ruby interrupted to announce that her doctor had told Ruby that Shari was “fine” and no longer needed sessions. Shari, who had recently confessed suicidal thoughts to her therapist, was shocked and confused. She asked Ruby if she could continue anyway, but Ruby insisted that she was “a very well-adjusted girl with […] an active imagination” (80). Floored by the implication that she was making up her mental health challenges, Shari began to feel that “the only safe emotion was no emotion at all” (81).

In September 2017, 8 Passengers hit a million followers as Ruby was driving Shari to urgent care with a fever. When she turned the camera on her daughter, Shari immediately tried to smile even though she was “[v]isibly weak and exhausted” (83).

In the winter, the Frankes loved to hit the ski slopes. They often made the drive to Snowbasin, just an hour from their house. Shari, in an attempt to set herself apart, chose a snowboard instead of skis and made a silly Olympic parody video for her YouTube channel. Her channel was nearing 100,000 subscribers, and for her 15th birthday, Ruby gave her daughter a tripod and finally shared Shari’s channel with the 8 Passengers’ audience. The shout-out resulted in a flood of new subscribers, but Shari was most pleased with receiving “validation” from Ruby.

Shari’s channel started making a few thousand dollars per month, but all the income was managed by Ruby, who placed it in a savings account after taking a 10% “management fee.” Ruby didn’t tell Shari about this “Mom Tax” until months after her channel started making money.

Little by little, Shari began confiding her troubles at home in a trusted teacher, Mr. Haymond. One day, she finally told him everything in “a torrent of pent-up pain and frustration” (89). It was the first time she had been honest with someone about what her mother was really like. Mr. Haymond’s response was just to listen “patiently” and with “empathy,” an acknowledgment that was a revelation for Shari.

While Shari dealt with stress at home by shutting down, Chad coped by acting out, taking “his clownish behavior and defiance” (89) to ever greater lengths until he was expelled from school. Later that year, the Frankes took a road trip to Universal Studios for an all-expenses-paid brand collaboration vacation, and “Chad brought the chaos” (90). He photobombed Ruby’s picture-perfect shots at Universal Studios with “gargoyle faces” until he was banished to the hotel room.

Undeterred, he managed to sneak back into the park, where he spent the day enjoying the sites by himself, and was gone when the family returned to the hotel. Ruby and Kevin feared that Chad was on the path to “becoming some kind of juvenile delinquent” (91). They sent him to numerous therapists and considered a military academy. Then, however, Ruby met “[a] monster named Jodi Hildebrandt” (92).