ICYMI, last July, the 20-year-old YouTuber posted a seemingly innocent video called "Date Outfit Ideas" which sparked one of the biggest online frenzies of 2016! Fans noticed that she wasn't herself and that she had bruises on the backs of her arms.
Nek minute, people started endless conspiracy theories — from suspected domestic abuse to kidnapping — and the hashtag #SaveMarinaJoyce was trending everywhere.
A few days later, she broke her silence on her own channel and with fellow YouTuber, Phillip DeFranco. "I haven't been paying as much attention to everything as everybody else has," Marina said at the time. "I don't know how to tell [the story of how I was bruised], but I don't know if it's a good idea for my YouTube channel to tell what happened."
But David pressed her again, asking her to explain the mysterious bruises that started an entire social media campaign to save her life. This is what she said:
"I went to the forest once and I stepped over something and I got really badly bruised and I bruise quite easily but I had quite a fall and it wasn't very good and so, yeah, because I like to go adventure in the park and do stuff like that and I ended up falling over and, yeah, basically, that ended up happening, and it got me a load of bruises, and um, yeah, I just ended up having all these bruises. And that's the reason why everyone said #SaveMarinaJoyce, so that's how that happened."
But now, in a new video called "Saving Marina Joyce," she has explained the truth behind her concerning behaviour. Turns out Marina was in a really bad place with depression during the whole #SaveMarinaJoyce situation.
"The reasons why I did not give you an answer before was because I was not in the right mindset to give you one," she says.
"I had to get better to give you an answer... I did suffer from depression. It was so bad. It hurts me to this day to think of all the reckless things I did that showed that I did not care about my life. Things that I would look back upon and feel so grateful that I am still alive. I lived in isolation of what happened to me, of people not understanding what I was truly going through."
She also mentions how it was her fans who actually made her realise she needed to do something to turn her life around. "I'm getting better now, which is why I decided to make this video," she adds. "I feel so grateful for #SaveMarinaJoyce because it did actually save me."
But she does ask for privacy and guarantees that NONE of those crazy conspiracy theories are true.
We're so glad to hear you're in a much better place, babe.
If you or a friend is struggling with similar feelings, there is help at hand. You can speak confidentially to a trained counsellor 24 hours a day at headspace.org.au or Kids Helpline: 1800 55 1800.