Bit of history.
I used to know Lou, back in the days when she was at Uni. She was never particularly bright, and always wanted to be the center of attention, but overall she was reasonably nice to be around. Usual teenage stuff - house parties, fair amount of weed, occasional MDMA, but nothing too heavy. Then came the legal highs.
Redcar is a deprived area with nothing to do, significant poverty and it got instantly hit with incredibly cheap drugs, mainly through a few enterprising idiots who knew how to use the internet (a genuinely rare skill at that time and in that area) and had somewhere to have the drugs ordered to. The town got worse, fast - think how manchester had the "spice zombies" issue, but nobody gave a s, because it's a crap former industrial seaside town. Not a unique story, nothing being done about it.
Channel 4 showed up and made a documentary about this crowd - "legally high", I'll see if I can find a copy. It's exploitative as hell, and yes, they were paying for people to party to get footage (i.e. indirectly funding the drug habit), but it gives a bit of context/footage of the time. Primary focus of the doc was Stephen Baxter, who started out rebranding legal highs as "Baxtercaine" to supply to teens, and then eventually moved on to heroin. He's dead now (
Call centre worker died just weeks after completing heroin detox), and won't be missed by many. Lou's in the background of a few shots of the documentary but wasn't heavily featured.
I can't really speak for James/Jabba. He honestly seemed nice enough when I met him, but plenty of people are nice in public and another behind closed doors.
Steminem has always been a reptile since day 1 though - literally robbing grannies when needed. He's a scourge on the town, frequently begging outside shops and known for assaulting/robbing friends, family, and anyone within a 5m radius of him.
I'm shamed to admit I got taken in by Lou's lies at one point, when she was in the hostel - to the point of paying for a morrisons veg box, and some food/hygiene essentials, where all she had to do was show up to the store and pick it up. It will not surprise you to know that she didn't show up.
There's a whole crowd of people with similar stories in that area, now completely destroyed - it's just Lou has combined that with a desire to internet famous. It's quite the show.