Save a Fox snark subreddit under spotlight after founder Mikayla Raines commits suicide

The Save a Fox snark subreddit has found itself in hot water after the heartbreaking suicide of Mikayla Raines. The 29-year-old founder of the well-known fox rescue organization Save a Fox. Mikayla took her own life on June 23, 2025, and her husband, Ethan, has pointed the finger at relentless online harassment, some of which he says came from this very subreddit, as a factor in her decision. What started as a small corner of Reddit for griping about Mikayla and her work has now blown up into a full-on debate about online bullying, mental health, and whether platforms like Reddit are doing enough to stop this kind of thing.

Mikayla launched Save a Fox back in 2017, when she was only 20, turning it into one of the biggest fox rescue operations in the U.S. Based out of Minnesota, she poured her heart into saving captive-born foxes, often sharing their stories on YouTube and Instagram. With 2.4 million YouTube subscribers and over half a million Instagram followers, she built a huge following by showing the world what she was all about — rescuing animals and spreading awareness. Ethan called her a “superhero” in a tearful YouTube video, saying she’d saved hundreds of foxes from fur farms and even stopped to help turtles cross the road. But that big online presence? It also painted a target on her back.

Ethan didn’t hold back in his video. He said Mikayla had been battling depression, autism, and borderline personality disorder for years. Her sensitivity was a gift — she had endless empathy for the animals she rescued — but it also left her wide open to the hate thrown her way. According to him, the harassment wasn’t just from strangers. It came from people she knew, other wildlife rescuers, and especially places like the Save a Fox snark subreddit. “They consistently spread ridiculous claims and rumors,” Ethan said, “and being the sensitive human that she was, Mikayla took it all to heart.” That subreddit, now private after the news broke, was a space where people picked apart everything from her personal life to how she ran her rescue.

So what was this snark subreddit all about? It kicked off in April 2024, started by a user called u/Pale-Explanation-709 after rumors about a bobcat biting a volunteer at Save a Fox. From there, it grew into a hub for trashing Mikayla. According to chatter online, some posts were petty, like zooming in on a video to claim she kicked a fox when she was just nudging it away with her foot. Others spun wild stories, like accusing her of “harvesting” fox fur when she offered jars of naturally shed fur as a fundraiser. Mikayla even tried to clap back in the comments once, defending her work, but that just fueled the fire. The subreddit wasn’t huge — only 19 posts and 91 comments over a year — but for someone like Mikayla, who felt every jab, it was enough to hit hard.

I managed to grab a screenshot of the first post on the subreddit using an archived version of the page:

Naturally, her tragic death has left many users striking up a bigger discussion over “snark” subreddits. On r/youtube, one user vented, “Reddit admins are also to blame and should ban snark subreddits,” arguing they’re just breeding grounds for harassment. Over on r/changemyview, someone posted about banning them too, saying they turn into obsessive hate-fests. “What kind of sick f**ks set up a snark page for a fucking animal rescue???” an X user raged. It’s not hard to see why people are upset — Mikayla was out there saving animals, not hurting anyone, yet she became a punching bag for anonymous trolls.

Not everyone’s on board with shutting these subreddits down, though. Some say they’re a place for legit criticism, especially about public figures. But when does it stop being “criticism” and start being a pile-on? For Mikayla, that line got crossed a long time ago. Ethan said the constant negativity wore her down, and with her mental health struggles, it was a recipe for disaster. Now, the Save a Fox snark subreddit going private feels like too little, too late. The damage is done.

But people are still fighting against it. There’s now a Change.org petition that is calling on the likes of Reddit to double down on moderation and ban similar “snark” subreddits. The bottom line is that no platform, be it Facebook, Reddit, Instagram, etc. should ever allow forums like this to flourish. At the time of this writing, the petition only has over 160 signatures but the number is going up steadily.

This whole mess has people rethinking what social media platforms owe their users. Reddit’s getting heat for not cracking down harder, with calls growing louder to ban these kinds of forums outright. Ethan’s vowed to keep Save a Fox going, honoring Mikayla’s dream of saving 500 foxes from a fur farm. But her story’s a gut punch — a reminder that behind every screen is a real person, and words can cut deeper than we think. Whether Reddit steps up or not, Mikayla’s death has put snark subreddits in the spotlight, and it’s about time we figure out where to draw the line.