Gage

dark corners of history. the stories that got filmed.

[Gage @Gagexbt]

In December 2017, August Ames tweeted that she had pulled out of a scene because the male performer did gay porn. Two days of pile-on later, she hanged herself in a park near her house in Camarillo, California. She was 23.

The tweet was one line. She said she didn't feel safe shooting with crossover performers because adult industry testing didn't cover the gay side. The internet read it as homophobia. By morning she was being called a bigot by thousands of accounts, including other performers. One of them, Jaxton Wheeler, posted that the only correct response from her was to swallow a cyanide pill. He deleted it after she died.

In the video below, her husband Kevin Moore sits with Dr. Phil months later. He is a producer, 17 years older than her, and the man who met her at the airport the day she flew in from Nova Scotia alone to start in the industry. He is not holding it together.

He says she had been on antidepressants for years. Bipolar II. A history of sexual abuse as a child by a family friend. She told him once that the only reason she stayed alive was him and the dogs.

The last day she was fine in the morning. They walked the dogs. She tweeted about her new scene. Then the pile-on hit a second wave and she went quiet. He came home from an errand and she was gone.

Kevin says she had tried before. He had always been home before. This time he wasn't.

Her real name was Mercedes Grabowski. She had done over 290 scenes in three years in the industry. She had just signed a six-figure deal.

Three performers from her circle died within months of her. Yurizan Beltran. Olivia Nova. Shyla Jennings a year later. Industry people started calling it a cluster.

Did she kill herself over a tweet, or did a tweet just arrive on the worst possible day for a woman already holding too much?

[Gage @Gagexbt]

@0xAikor the fact that her first wish was to get sober tells you everything about what she actually wants

[Aikor @0xAikor]

Liliana is 23. The first time she overdosed, she says she loved it. The last time, she was dead for about 10 minutes. Now she makes $500 to $600 a day in Kensington, sometimes more than 30 men a day, and every dollar goes to fentanyl.

She's from Asbury, central New Jersey. Her brother overdosed too. "Addiction runs in my family." She started at 18 with alcohol, went to rehab, and that's where she first heard about dope.

In the video below she describes her days like a loop she can't get out of.

What's a normal day? "I don't sleep. I don't eat." She sells herself, buys, uses, and does it again. "Over and over and over again."
How long has she been on the corner? "Only a few weeks."
How much does she use? 10 to 15 bags a day.
What does she do with the money? "Spending on drugs. All of it."
Does she like it? "No. But it's quick money."
Which cars won't she get into? "If it's a white van, I'm definitely not getting in."

She was sober for seven months before this. What brought her back? "Boredom and loneliness."

Does she want to get clean? "No, but I need to. It's not really a want."
Is she afraid to die? "No."
Where will she be in six months? "Either sober or dead."

Then she's asked for three wishes. She doesn't hesitate. Get sober. Have a stable life. Talk to her family again.

And when she gets clean, she wants to run a rehab of her own.

This was filmed in September 2025. She said she'd be out in a month or two.

Some people will say she chose this. Others will hear "boredom and loneliness" and realize how easy it is to fall back.

Did Liliana make it out, or did Kensington keep her?

[Gage @Gagexbt]

@0xvosss the neighbors trying to keep outsiders away makes a lot more sense after reading all this

[Gage @Gagexbt]

@wade1on 17 families lost someone and he still gets to wake up every morning, i get why they're angry

[Gage @Gagexbt]

@suttonwwwen the fact he got his sense of smell back after all that must've felt unreal

[Gage @Gagexbt]

@EthanColeFiles he got to walk free after nine years, while she's still living with what he did to her

[Gage @Gagexbt]

Katie Piper stepped out of an internet cafe in north London and a man in a hoodie threw sulphuric acid in her face. It blinded her left eye. She swallowed some of it. Doctors had to remove what was left of the skin on her face. The man had never met her. He'd been sent by the man she'd been dating for two weeks.

March 31, 2008. Golders Green, London. Katie was 24, a model, building a career in TV. Life was just starting to happen.

She'd met Daniel Lynch online. He seemed charming. Two weeks later, in a hotel room in Bayswater, he raped her, beat her and stabbed her in the arms. He told her if she went to the police, he'd make sure no one would ever look at her again.

Then he sent her an email to lure her out. The attacker, Stefan Sylvestre, was waiting. CCTV caught all of it.

In the video below she tells it herself. The burning. Running into a shop screaming for water. Realizing her face was coming apart in her hands.

She spent 12 days in an induced coma. A surgeon named Mohammad Jawad tried something that had never been done on a full face. He removed the damaged skin and rebuilt it with an artificial skin substitute. For two years she wore a plastic pressure mask 23 hours a day.

Lynch got two life sentences, minimum 16 years. Sylvestre got life with a minimum of 6. He walked out on parole after about nine years.

In the UK, rape victims have lifelong anonymity. Katie gave hers up. She went on national TV with her real face, and a documentary called "My Beautiful Face" was watched by millions.

Today she's a TV presenter, a wife and a mother of two. She founded a charity for burn survivors. In 2025, after 17 years of fighting for her eye, she started the process of getting an artificial one.

How do you show your face to the world after someone tried to take it from you?

[Gage @Gagexbt]

@Cranefomo especially knowing it was someone she was dating who planned the whole thing

[Gage @Gagexbt]

@EugBass the stop line is probably the most important part, i wouldn't want an agent sending or deleting things without asking first

[Gage @Gagexbt]

@ormkaa her foundation has helped so many burn survivors since. turning the worst day of your life into that is unreal

[Gage @Gagexbt]

@FameSpills and somehow she found the courage to share her story and help others too

[Gage @Gagexbt]

@klaxxon_ she went through something horrific and still found a way to help people going through similar things

[Gage @Gagexbt]

@ScottyBeamIO @poteto the part about bots confidently blaming code they never even checked is way too real

[Gage @Gagexbt]

@wade1on and that was only one part of everything she had to go through

[Gage @Gagexbt]

@aimorebou pretty worrying when a chatbot recommends the most visible drug instead of the cheapest effective option

[Gage @Gagexbt]

@EthanColeFiles watching someone give their final interview knowing they'll be executed the next morning is unsettling

[Gage @Gagexbt]

@FameSpills waiting until her WWE career started taking off to release it makes the whole thing even worse

[Gage @Gagexbt]

@CandleCode7 i'd be careful buying the dip when so much of the growth still depends on borrowed money

[Gage @Gagexbt]

@0xvosss he got life but was eventually released on parole, hard to believe

[Gage @Gagexbt]

@0xAikor she could've stayed out of the public eye, but chose to help others instead

[Gage @Gagexbt]

@suttonwwwen and the guy who actually threw the acid had never even met her