The public back-and-forth between exes Brooke Schofield and Clinton Kane enraptured the internet this summer, attracting tens of millions of viewers who tuned in to the mounting drama. Even Vice President Kamala Harris's office got in on the fun, using an audio from one of Schofield's videos to taunt Donald Trump on TikTok, and the video currently has over 21 million views.
Kane, a singer with about 2 million followers on TikTok, sparked the online drama at the end of June when he posted a video to promote a new song. The video's text says, "When you've been over the relationship for two years, but she won't stop yapping," a reference to Schofield, a podcaster and content creator, talking publicly about how she discovered Kane had been lying to her while they were dating.
His initial video drew millions of views and kicked off an online battle with Schofield. She posted a 16-part video series on TikTok in which she shared that over their relationship, Kane lied to her about many things, including his age and the death of his mother. The videos got over 121 million views and led many social media users to accuse Kane of emotional abuse and manipulation.
Kane countered this with his own 30-part video series that accumulated over 69 million views. He turned off the comments section for every video, signaling an unwillingness to engage in any debate or discussion with his followers. And though he posted so many videos, viewers made it clear that he had not cleared up all their questions, leading to backlash.
Audiences wanted answers from Kane about Schofield's claims, including the lies she said he told. One was Kane's claim about the death of his mother. In 2022, Kane said in an interview with Zach Sang that his mother, brother, and dad died within the same year and that one of his songs was about grieving the death of his mom, with whom he'd had a complicated relationship. Sang invited Schofield's Cancelled podcast co-host, Tana Mongeau on the show in April 2023 and in that conversation, he claimed that Kane had lied about his mom dying. Mongeau agreed and added that at the time, Kane had written on Instagram that he was not talking about his birth mother, but a "mother figure."
In one of the videos Schofield posted on TikTok, she says that when she learned that Kane was faking his mother's death, she tried to confront him and he maintained that it was true and got upset with her. "He made me feel so f-cking horrible for ever possibly accusing him of lying about something like that," she says in the video. "I felt so disgusting and so guilty. I thought I was going crazy."
TIME reached out to Schofield for an interview, but her representatives declined to comment. In an interview with Glamour published Aug. 1, Schofield spoke about how she navigated the situation and ended up collaborating with a brand aptly named Boys Lie to release a sweatsuit that features a baby angel holding up a sign that reads, "Block his number."
Kane, whose mother and brother are alive, framed the lies that Schofield called out as "mistakes" and blamed the online backlash on "group think" in an interview with TIME. He says content creators online or public figures in general are not able to "make mistakes anymore" because they are always front and center.
Kane's latest song, dropped Aug. 1 and called "Make Me Your Monster," pointedly dwells on the drama with lyrics like, "Burn the house down, baby. What are exes for? Go ahead, make me your monster." He says he wrote it for people "who are bullied, people who are let down in life, people who have gone through it."
Kane says there was no thought process behind posting the initial video in June that started the argument. "She's been talking about it for two years… it was just spur of the moment," he says. "I haven't said anything about anything as far as the relationship or her name or talked badly about it in the longest time. So I was like, 'Why not? This will be funny.'"
"It's like, 'How does anyone grow as a human being as a person if they don't make mistakes?'" Kane says. "I think that's the saddest part about it because I did highlight the mistakes, and I took accountability for the mistakes I made in that relationship. There's nothing I can do to change anyone's mind; you believe what you believe, and I totally respect that."
That's why he disabled the comments section on all 30 of his response videos. "The purpose of those videos wasn't to get approval, views, or likes… No one else's opinions on the subject really matter on the subject. It was for me to put sh-t out that I needed to put out, and people can say what they need to say."
When asked about why he lied about his mother being dead, he referred to his 10-minute video discussing the situation.
In a statement Kane's representatives sent later, he says that his birth mother is still alive and that he is estranged from her because he grew up in a very religious environment. "When I was traveling, I met someone I had a really wonderful, beautiful connection with, who was a mother figure to me from there on out. And when she got sick and ended up passing away, to me – the emotions were so intense that to me it felt as though a parent had died," he writes. "Unfortunately, at the time, I didn't have the tools to process these emotions, and it led to where we are now. When I went on that podcast, it was all still so fresh, and I didn't want to talk about it, so I said I wasn't comfortable. I'm not making an excuse."
Kane adds in the statement that he didn't know how to publicly convey that the woman he saw as his mother, not his birth mother, had passed away and that he wishes he had spoken about and clarified that privately.
But Schofield's characterization of their relationship drew additional ire online. In other stories Schofield shared in her video series, she says they quarantined together during COVID for days and when she attempted to leave to get alone time and refresh at home, he would get upset and ask to go with her. He also accused Schofield of "worsening his trauma," she says, and would say that she reminded him of his mother who "was so horrible to him and I should be way more sensitive to everything that he is going through."
When asked about Schofield's claims in her videos, Kane says, "Did I make mistakes in the relationship? Do I think each relationship is 50% each person's responsibility? Yeah. All these people commenting and thinking and all this stuff are making it out to be something more than two people that just didn't work after three months. And that's it."
He says he feels he needs to give himself grace for being a person who, at 22, didn't know how to properly navigate a healthy relationship. "The only thing I can do is learn to be better and I feel like I've tried to do that," he says. "I mean I'm in therapy four to five times a week in the past two years of this happening, and it costs a pretty f-cking penny."
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