Who Is Holly Conrad? New Details On The Gamer Who Had Affair With ProJared Behind His Wife's Back
Yikes!
Twitter It doesn't matter who you are: breaking up with someone you once loved, and maybe STILL love, is a painful, arduous process. It's often a difficult decision to make and when you finally do go your separate ways, the last thing you want is for everyone in the planet to be talking about your split, giving unwanted advice and taking sides. Unfortunately, that often happens to couples who split up when one of them is in the public eye. When successful gamer ProJared announced his divorce, he hoped a simple statement on Twitter would quiet things down and give him the privacy he wanted. However, his wife Heidi had other plans... Who is Holly Conrad?
1. The Alleged Affair
The internet is no place to air your dirty laundry, especially when it comes to the particulars of your marriage. Be that as it may, people are still doing it. Take, for example, the end of YouTube gaming star ProJared's marriage. His wife, Heidi O'Ferrall has taken to the web to announce that Jared cheated on her with a friend and fellow gamer, Holly Conrad (known sometimes as Commander Holly). Of course, these accusations didn't come out of nowhere. Heidi began tweeting her claims of cheating immediately after Jared announced that their marriage was over. He said the decision to end his marriage “was reached after extensive therapy on my part and couples therapy on my part and couples therapy together.”
2. Standing by ProJared
Holly is doing her best to keep a low profile particularly in light of Heidi's accusations. That said, she's making it clear in her social media interactions that whatever the truth is, she is quite close with Jared, and plans on staying that way. In response to his divorce announcement, she replied with: “I’m so sorry you’re going through this. I’m here for you if you need me.”
Holly also seems to know full-well just how hateful the social media community can be when things like this break. Keeping that in mind, she wrote a statement of her own: "I understand some shit is going down on the Internet. If you want to believe a hyperbolic statement from someone you don’t know on the Internet with no previous background information and use it to demonize strangers, so be it. This isn’t anyone’s business but theirs. If it’s worth anything, you all know me. I’d never hurt anyone and I only want the best and happiness for those around me. If you’ve followed me for a long time, you know that. Gonna get off twitter for a while."
3. End Of A Friendship
To me, because I am a human woman, the saddest thing about all of this is that Heidi and Holly used to be friends! Obviously, that's no longer going to be the case. Heidi has not hesitated to lash out at Holly in light of the discovery of this affair, claiming that she sent her husband nudes and she aggressively pursued him sexually. She called out Holly as looking "ashamed and insecure" in the nudes, too. While the dissolution of a marriage is sad, the dissolution of a friendship is also heartbreaking. In fact, when Holly was feeling particularly down or suffering from bouts of low self-esteem, it was Heidi who often offered her an ear or a shoulder of support. Last year, Holly tweeted: "Feeling so shi**ty and 'not good enough' tonight. IT HAPPENS. IT'S FINE. But it still sucks." It wasn't Jared who replied to bolster her spirits, it was Heidi who replied saying simply "You're the best."
4. Who Is Holly?
According to her social media, Holly calls herself a “special effects artist, prop maker, cosplayer, Illustrator, Youtuber, and bird-lover!” She graduated from University of California Santa Barbara with a degree in Medieval history. She was inspired to get this degree after her love of Harry Potter directed her towards all things medieval. Hope she wasn't bummed to learn that wizards aren't, uh, real? In addition to this, Holly also owns her own clothing shop. This is worth noting because Jared's soon-to-be ex-wife Heidi...also has her own clothing store. There is nothing to indicate that Holly was going out of her way to try and "take" Heidi's life, but moving closer to where she lives, opening a competing business and trying to seduce her husband don't make things look good.
5. The Disney Connection
Believe it or not, this whole story does, in fact, connect back to the classic films of Walt Disney (weird, right?). That's because Holly basically is the direct descendent of animation royalty. Her grandfather was the Disney animator Dorse Lanpher who worked for the Disney animation studios for well over 40 years! He worked on movies like The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, and many more. When he passed away, Holly wrote a statement about her grandfather's passing:
"Dorse Lanpher was my hero. He made my artistic career possible with his encouragement and talent, he was like a father to me and his only complaint was that I couldn’t get more famous than him (that would never happen, Grandpa). His animation will live on and so will all that he taught me, even how to play the ukulele. He was proud of me enough to write about me on his blog and in his book and I’m never going to forget to live my life as art, as he always wanted and encouraged me to. And neither should any of us. He lives on in his art and in his words. He liked like Cherry Pie from Marie Callender’s and Greyhounds. I recommend we all have one in his name, and in the name of those amazing effects that were animated by hand by so many talented artists, my grandpa included, and may they inspire generations of creative people with their magic. They inspired me."
Rebecca Jane Stokes is a writer living in Brooklyn, New York with her cats, Batman and Margot. She's an experienced generalist with a passion for lifestyle, geek news, pop culture, and true crime. For more of her work, check out her Tumblr.