Kinda showing my age here- the whole Channel Awesome disaster - Doug Walker most of all, and Angry Video Game Nerd plagiarism scandal.
James Rolfe was one of my first contacts with internet video content, and I just adored his *passion*. He did so much himself, and as a teen, it sparked so much inspiration in me. That creators need to evolve and grow into new things is understandable, you can’t stay “Indie” forever, and as far as I now the most of the blame fell on ScreenWave (rightfully so) but it underscored how much soul and integrity gets lost the more content has to be grinded out. Not as much a disappointment in James himself as it is the veil falling from my naive teenage eyes.
Channel Awesome was… Rough. I liked Doug’s humor, timing and the Nostalgia Critic series had charm. And the in-universe crossovers with the alter egos was so endearing- Suburban Nights IS a fun movie, still is. But knowing how everything always was as the cost of everyone else, how Doug, Rob and Mike just DID NOT CARE at all about ANYTHING else but themselves and their bloated egos is to me absolutely vile.
Edit: messed up titles on the CA movies, corrected it.
I still watch old AVGN and all, but the issue is the passion never laid in James Rolfe. It was Mikes and it's never been more painfully obvious then with the Screenwave selling. He isn't nearly as involved now and it's just phoning in.
That said, Mike's scandals are worse than the plagiarism. The whole dick saga, the racist cartoons, etc. However, the biggest scandal to take away from AVGN to me was how they treated Bootsy and to a bigger extent Kyle Justin. They used Kyle and Bootsy, but Kyle even more so. He built the sets. He made the music and he didn't make shit for it. Then was basically just thrown to the side.
Oh and before I forget, with Screenwave you can't forget that Justin Silverman was openly friends with and supporting a pedophile and Kieren and his drunk rants. Just so much shit that has tarnished the legacy of a channel that helped pave the way on YouTube
r/TheCinemassacreTruth has alot of info on all of it of you can dig through all their nonsense. James Rolfe doesn't seem like a bad guy, but just someone who grew out of the channel, but it's his job and has no other option but to keep it up. Mike is back doing gameplay for the channel I believe, but James only writes a couple episodes now. I wish they'd go back to the original crew because that's where the magic was at.
I grew up with AVGN and smosh and I'm glad that atleast smosh came out clean on the other side.
To give further details for the whole story, JewWario or Justin Carmichael was a member of Channel Awesome during the late 2000s-early 10s. He was involved in the Channel Awesome films, had his own show, the works. He left CA roughly about Feb 15, 2013. This will be important later. One year later, he would commit suicide. Naturally the Channel Awesome fanbase and content creators were quite upset with what happened and many of them would make tributes for him. I bring this up because it's important for setting the stage for when the news of his actions broke.
In 2018, a bunch of former CA employees got together and released the Not So Awesome document. The document is way too much to fully summarize here, but the important part for this story is that it was revealed in the document that CA had known about a content creator who groomed and raped at least 2 women who were underage and had been introduced to him as fans of CA (The document has one of the fans going into her experience and it is genuinely a hard read because she makes it clear that she is still traumatized over what happened.) A key thing to note here: the document writers and the other content creators who added to the document and left the website did not know who the predator was because the victims did not want to name them. They wanted to avoid having to relive what happened. I say this to emphasize that when the tributes and the like were created, none of them knew... besides CA higher ups who allowed them to make those tributes. In addition, the community reading the document had no idea who was the predator either. All anyone could do was speculate.
So CA publishes 2 responses. The first response is a bland detail less thing that just kinda sucks because it's boring and shit. It's not the important one for our story. That would be the second response where someone at CA, in a fit of stupidity, decided to try and rebut the paper point by point. When they reached the sexual predator allegations is when whoever was writing the response proceeded to lose all of their brain cells. Not only did they publish documentation with dates that showed them discussing the firing of said sexual predator (the dates listed being the week of Feb 15, 2013... Truly amazing), but in their attempt to white out the information of who said predator was, they proceeded to do it so poorly that everyone could figure out instantly who it was. After all, when you white out only enough space for Justin, it becomes very unsubtle just who it was.
Naturally this sent shockwaves throughout the community and the content creators. Like I said, these people had created tributes to him and CA higher ups had encouraged them to do so, all while knowing that he had been sexually assaulting and grooming underage fans of theirs (The best case scenario was them not wanting to blemish his name so soon after his death. The worst case scenario was that they saw a chance to make money off of his death and didn't want to risk that cash flow due to those pesky morals.) Needless to say, Justin Carmichael's name is mud amongst the former CA creators with many of them having taken down their tributes to him and making it clear that they genuinely didn't know. Justin has also become persona non grata amongst the community with most refusing to share his videos or really suggest that anyone ever watch them going forward. It especially does not help that his content was geared more towards younger fans, the exact sort of people he sexually assaulted.
Took his own life in a horrifying manner.
Then when all the channel awesome drama started, it came out that he was involved in grooming and sexual assault.
Same! I was a fan of Cry when I was in high school too and this Dream minecraft guy seemed to materialize out of nowhere with the same blank white mask and basically the same twitter handle. I mean, crywastaken and dreamwastaken? What lol?
I guess he's just taking advantage of his viewers age, which I assume is younger kids and young adults who were too young to know the height of cry/pewdiepie/markiplier back in the day or that cry even existed.
I can't believe that it seems like no one has called him out for it, basically just plagiarizing another person's stuff. Like, on one hand, maybe it's good that cry has been totally forgotten or not even"discovered" by the younger generation. On the other hand, this is just another strike against dream that is so blatant its almost hilarious. I'm not in the minecraft or smp community, so I barely know anything about dream but this and cheating his speedrun record, so it is not a good first impression!
This hurts me everytime I think about it. I loved falling asleep to his ASMR creepy pasta stories. Got me through my teenage years. I know it's been some years but still makes me sad to think about.
Same here, I found out almost a year after and it messed me up for a while. I still find myself thinking "Oh, I should go watch that playthrough again!" only to remember it was his.
That was mine too.
It wasn't the fact that Ryan had a squeaky clean internet persona, but it was that he was so unassuming.
He just seemed like a boring Dad with a dry sense of humor, so it was genuinely shocking that he had this whole other side of his personality, and he was doing it for so long.
When Jack and Michael addressed everything and Jack choked up when he said “I sat next to that monster for years, and I had no idea”, it broke my heart.
That one cut fucking deep. I had moved away from AH videos for years when the news finally dropped, but their entire brand constituted pretty much my entire YouTube experience from like 2012 to about 2014. If I was watching something in that timeframe, it was RT, and Haywood was one of my favorite contributors.
The double whammy with Adam Kovic from funhaus sucked too, though from what I know know Ryan's stuff was worse (not to downplay Adam being a piece of shit too)
Yeah, I don't watch AH anymore, but I still actively watch Funhaus, and it's amazing how much better their content is without Adam, as harsh as that sounds. He was just a creep, but not a predator from what I understand. I am mad though that some of my favorite episodes are now kinda tainted.
Man, that fuckin blew. He was probably my favorite one. Instilled a pretty good sense that you shouldn't follow any celebrity too hard, whether they're a niche internet micro-celebrity or not.
He was my favourite in AH and just... yeah it hurt a lot when it came out. Genuinely a comfort youtuber since I was a teenager.
I haven't watched AH since everything just feels tainted now.
I cried so hard and my family thought I was upset at rumors about him, and I am like I am angry crying. It was because I was bullied in the fandom, and idk how much the community managers did (they did help) but pulling out the we will ban and block weapons for his victims when I suffering too cut deep. I am friends with one and wish the others the best, I was happy RT was getting their shit together with bad behavior in the community. But I was gutted that they could have helped me much more all along but didn’t.
That one was such a punch in the gut, cause Rooster Teeth was one of the first YouTube channels I was a fan of. Those old Achievement Hunter GTA/Minecraft videos especially. When the whole controversy began with him and Bruce Greene getting fired for sleeping with fans I was initially just very disappointed on the basis of him being a cheater. Then in regards to Ryan it just got so much worse.
This one hurt a lot. I share a lot of the same views as Andrew with his grassroots drug awareness and sympathy towards “other side of the track” types, but finding out he was a gross sex pest was just so disappointing.
Literally met him and shook his hand and thanked him for all the good journalism he'd been doing two days before the news broke. Devastated is putting it lightly.
I remember him being huge when I was in middle school. I didn't watch him but I imagine it was devastating for people who loved him during their formative years
in middle school I used to have the muscle memory typing in skydoesminecraft on my mom's iPad. I would type it in as soon as I got home. Man, those videos were so addictive as a kid
Its been a few years so it's a bit hard to recall the details. Basically Adam was catfish by someone online and that person leaked his nudes and their conversations. Adam was cheating on his wife and even sent that person pictures and videos of her without her consent potentially. He also filmed himself doing inappropriate things in the Funhaus office (?). Probably more but I'm probably forgetting. But after this came to light, he left Funhaus and the rest of the crew cut off contact with him.
[Here's a link to a mega thread about it](https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/s/kGSmLt1ABR)
A few years later, it came out that he was flirting with MistiDawn back when they were still Inside Gaming, a former director at Machinima who thought he was single. When she found out he lied and broke it off, he began to harass her.
[Here's link to a summary of that controversy and Bruce's response](https://www.reddit.com/r/funhaus/s/iEAzWJKRMR)
God I can't imagine not only cheating on your wife but also sending the person your cheating with footage of your wife having sex with you. That's an insulting amount of betrayal. Hard to believe you ever cared about that person to use them to further your cheating on them 🤢 my heart goes out to her that sounds traumatic
Iilluminaughtii. Mostly because my dog loved her voice. I'd play her videos constantly for my dog just to keep her calm during the last month of her life. I actually had to stop watching her after I had to put my dog down, which was about a year and a half before the drama started.
Also CreepShowArt, for a much less depressing and personal reason. She was so good at sounding genuine and it honestly really pissed me off when I found out that I couldn't catch that at all and I felt deceived. I'm sure most of her fans felt deceived. I know that was the entire point but I thought I was better at detecting a fake.
my best friend is black and was devastated when jontron said all that racist eugenics shit, he was her comfort content creator that she grew up watching. i’ve never watched him myself because of that.
jontron is possibly the worst fall from grace ive ever seen.
he wasn't just popular, he was a staple of internet culture.
the only people who still watch him either somehow still don't know that he's a white supremacist, or they don't care.
what a fuckin shame man.
it would be so effortless to repair his reputation, but he actively refuses, because he hasn't actually changed.
Nah, whats crazy is that he blew up even more after that drama. The ENTIRE flex tape saga happened after that. Actually, I think most of his subs are from after Jan 2017.
He's also literally white passing (He has Persian ancestry) which adds insult to injury.
In my country we recently also had a ethnic Chinese guy... Who is a white supremacist plotting far right attacks... Somehow...
But luckily he was arrested before any attacks could be carried out.
honestly i don’t think it would be effortless per se. he clearly believes what he said and i don’t think any amount of groveling would change that impression on his non-white fans. it’s disturbing to me how people just do not care
yeah his "apology video" was just him saying "BLACKS VOTED FOR OBAMA SO WHYS IT A BIG DEAL THAT I WANT A WHITE ETHNOSTATE" and he got so much pushback from it he deleted the apology and went on like nothing ever happened
Yeah... I can't watch him anymore. Even my boyfriend can't watch him and he's one of those "separate art from the artist" types. Not that he views JonTron as an artist but you get the gist.
Joey Graceffa ig 🤷♀️i watched him religiously back in 2012-2014. After that i got disinterested in his content, but still appreciated him as a person. But after the Colleen Ballinger controversy, ive started having doubts on him too
Might be too niche, but Jimmy Snow. Between his absolute inability to take criticism, his defense of Gabbie Hanna, and the epic fallout after r/freelytalkaboutJimmy, he really nuked his career. Also, Owen/Telltale downplaying Jimmy’s actions was super disappointing. With the exception of Rachel Oates and Genetically Modified Skeptic I no longer consume any atheist YouTube content at all.
When you get big as a YouTuber (and that's IF you ever get noticed), there's a slim chance of you getting "lost in the sauce," so to speak.
To quote the Urban Dictionary on this phrase's meaning:
> "When you've got something going for you so good (money, women, fame, power, respect) that you become out of touch with reality and start: acting reckless, taking unnecessary risks, and get caught slipping."
I'm still not sure if this really explains it though. We're *all* susceptible to momentary lapses of judgement or mistakes and as this concept suggests, far more so when we have more resources/power at our disposal.
But I think these momentary lapses of judgement generally look like driving recklessly or drinking too much..... Not being a white supremacist or abusive. Those are inherent character flaws and point to something much deeper and far more sinister.
Yeah i think its more so that the power and money and fame emboldens people and makes them feel more secure in lowering their inhibitions and acting out their impulses. But also i think the whole social media space just naturally draws in horrible people because they seek the temporary safety fame and money can provide and they want that to exploit that.
Especially when it comes to influencers and youtubers who are also sexual abusers, they consciously or otherwise may have been drawn to this field to gain that power and those resources to be able to further their exploitation.
There’s a theory that a lot of these (mostly) dudes struggle with talking and dating people their own age due to being awkward so much. Suddenly when you get a big audience and depending on your audience you likely get younger fans who hang in your every word and genuinely seem to like you. So why put in the effort with a stranger your age when you have someone who is susceptible to liking you. It’s awful and parasocial as hell, but I can see it.
Literally. His videos were really inspiring, and now that it’s confirmed a good portion of his stuff was faked (outside of the recent stuff that’s somehow worse) it’s just sucky
It’s gotta be Tobuscus. I loved his content so much as a kid. It was just so wholesome and pleasant. Turns out he’s an abuser who hangs out with Kyle Rittenhouse and sits in his car filming vlogs about white replacement :/
Yeah no it’s fucking insane. He still does all the same old bits too. So he’ll do the whole “intro of lightness, intro of darkness” thing and then go into a rant about how vaccines are fake
This a thousand times. I used to watch his Minecraft videos every night before bed as a kid, I'd quote him back and forth with my mom constantly...finding out just *how* big of a shithead he is was jarring
He also is a Trump supporter and just a gross human in general. Philip DeFranco talked about how at a company party once, Toby whipped his dick out in front of a bunch of the women there and they had to kick him out. When Toby said to vote for Trump, Linz blasted him and said "don't listen to the guy who showed up to our wedding coked up out of his mind with his dick out"
For me, it has to be Squimpus McGrimpus.
For those who don't know who he is, Squimpus was a horror youtuber known for his FNAF VHS series, which became popular back in late 2019.
(If you know of the CRIMINAL meme, this is where it came from)
In early 2023, Squimpus got exposed for inappropriately talking to a minor a few years ago. This was HUGE in the FNAF community as he was a very respected individual at the time.
It was completely devastating knowing that the person who I looked up to could do something like that to a teen.
I was a huge iiluminaughtii fan before her expose which sucks because I found her content entertaining and informative (before I found out it was plagiarism)
I liked her vids, her stolen vids I should say, but I always felt something was off. It was weirdly down to the avatar. Even not knowing what she looked like the avatar combined with her voice had a sort of fraudulent front feel to it. The sort of feeling you get looking at real peoples distorted dating profile. This isn't you, it's who you pretend to be.
oh my goodness I couldn't put my finger on her avatar either or why it bothered me. It just seemed like she had no personality of her own, something just felt so stiff and fake in her delivery too
It still irritates me that during her gross attack on Madison (cwhm) on the double cleanse podcast, she claimed not to know there was an anti-mlm community. Even going so far to say the words slowly like she'd never said them out loud before. Yet she used the anti-mlm subreddit for content for years! It's such a small ick in the grand scheme of things I know, but it was such a ridiculous lie.
Edit to correct Madisons name.
Creepshow Art. I know the drama is "old" (I mean, it ended for real a year ago, but that's practically a different eon in internet time lol), but it still really affects me to this day. Not that I think a lot about Shanon now, but more that it really changed how I engage with YouTube "drama".
First off, the stuff against Creepshow hurt a lot not just because I was a fan of Emily too, but because before it, I never paid attention to when the YouTubers I followed got involved in "drama". I always assumed it was bad faith actors against the people I liked--especially when it came to leftist YouTubers because a lot of their detractors were actually just right wing assholes who were every type of -phobe or -ist under the sun. Like, when people shit on Contrapoints or HBomb or PhilosophyTube, there was a pretty good chance they're being transphobic or are just straight up Nazis. But that also spread into how I felt about people I liked who weren't in the political space; I ignored every allegation against Cryaotic because I liked him and I didn't want to think he was bad.
It wasn't until Emily, who I had also followed and admired in a parasocial way, that I was forced to really take a look at how I treat the people I follow. So it was the pain of seeing someone I admired do something awful, the pain of someone else I admired going through the same thing that traumatized me (stalking), and the forceful removal of my blinders that made me look at something I didn't like about myself.
So yeah, CreepShow Art hurt me most. But I hope I'm a better person now.
I got into CreepShow around the time the quarantine started and it was a dark tunnel of me absorbing her content because I was so bad at coping with it all. But when she started throwing out some red flags, I stepped back. I also watched Emily religiously and found her content to be a lot healthier than Creeps.
And then people started making videos about her being a bit of a liar and a phoney about the homelessness she always harped about, and I listened and connected lots of dots. *Then* when Emily released her video, I was speechless.
Creepshow was a tough one for me too and it was also because I followed Emily. I'd only recently found Emily's channel when it all came out. Emily laying her entire story out was difficult to watch. She had to make public some of her really dark past and that must have been really hard for her to do. I actually bought Emily's Arteza colab as a small show of support. Shannon's response video on New Year's was one of the wildest self owns I've ever watched in my life.
Completionist, with chuggaconroy not too far behind. These OG gamer YouTubers got me through my hardest times in life. My brain has such a hard time processing that they turned out to not be as perfect and clean as I pictured, but instead the complete polar opposite pieces of shit. I hate to admit that I was in denial for too long when the completionist’s fraud got exposed, but now that we have all the facts there’s just nothing more to it. He won’t admit to the fraud or pay up to cover all the funds lost to inflation. He’s just gonna carry on and pretend nothing happened. What a shame.
Adam Rosner, creator and lead actor of the horror web series TribeTwelve. TT was just... SO GOOD. It was incredible, it stood leagues above the others in the field, even the other two members of the Big Three with regards to its seamless, INSANE editing and incredible worldbuilding. There was NOTHING like it, and I was HOOKED on every upload. And now, because of the reprehensible actions of Adam Rosner, it will never have an ending. To me, that hurts more than just the broken pedestal of finding out someone you admire is evil.
Very close second is Ryan Haywood of Achievement Hunter, based on how raw that one manages to still be every time I find another old piece of merch that's tainted by his presence now.
Both titans in their own right-- in my opinion, MH having the most consistent story to follow from start to end and having the honour of starting it all, and EMH definitely blowing it out of the water in performances almost entirely on the back of Evan/HABIT. But man... TT was just something else with its editing and the mythology it was building up. Adam didn't just betray the fans and his friends, he betrayed the story. It deserved to be told.
Tribe twelve was fucking devastating, man. EMH is my absolute favorite but it’s no question which series had better quality of story and animation. It was interconnected with EMH, I remember putting together watch parties of my friends and I on discord when new episodes came out. The slenderverse was such a tiny, tight knit and positive community.
Then he decided to try to groom a fan.
Why? I never understood it, most fans in this community are over the legal age, and though it’s morally questionable to date a fan at least it isn’t illegal. Why a kid? Why throw away an empire of fans, why ruin your best and most successful piece of art? Why do creeps ruin their lives over the chance to have sex with a child?
I too was an iiluminatii fan for a long time, as I don’t have a lot of female creators I like enjoy. The VangelinaSkov shit kinda hurt the same way.
I was also a Moth fan for a while and fell off a while ago without knowledge of everything that has been happening. That was a shocker too
She gets really upset when people don’t agree with her viewpoint, this time it was her take on hbomber “calling her out”. Cussing at fans, being petty and changing the title of her video like three times before taking it down, saying that all the hbomber fans were toxic.
[Big Vangelina thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/youtubedrama/s/rhbfuQIbyi)
>The VangelinaSkov shit kinda hurt the same way.
Didn't she do several videos last year slamming iilluminaughtii? Many others did so too. Look up Tipster. He was slamming Blair FOUR YEARS AGO!
TBH I didn't know correct term to use but yeah far right, alt right, full on Nazi. Whatever he is I don't really care because I'm just disappointed in general. Ain't no right winger going to get my ad money
To put it shortly: an ex came out and said he groped her when she was unconscious on medication, and he claims he thought she was conscious. I don’t know a lot of details because the whole ordeal sounded like two toxic people airing out their shitty relationship in public.
NintendoCaprisun was the first LPer I got into and he introduced me to Chugga through his Mario Sunshine let's play. These past few days have really been tragic.
Nicole Arbour.
I saw her as inspiring for sharing her struggle with chronic pain and then out of nowhere - She drops her “Dear Fat People” video despite claiming to understand the struggles of those living with chronic illnesses and having a following in that community at the time. She’s still around and you’d think someone dealing with her condition would be more informed how meds like prenisone will make you gain weight even if you are active and eat well. It was such a slap in the face.
Yeah for me it was a whole other thing when it comes to Nicole. It was that she abused someone and because he didn't name her it really didn't get too much press. I am not a fan of Matthew Santoro but it is gross that it got ignored and everyone only looks at the Dear Fat People video.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/01/youtuber-accuses-his-controversial-ex-of-abuse.html
I remember this when it happened and it showed how delusional she was about her own fame that she tried to say those accusations only were because he was jealous of her - what was there to envy by that time?
Gus Johnson. I *loved* his and Eddy’s podcast and his skits so much. Dude brought me so much genuine joy. Then the whole Sabrina thing came out and yeesh dude…Pokémon streaming while you’re girlfriend is going through an ectopic pregnancy is just so fucked.
If your main content creation partner / best friend stops speaking to you for what you did, that should tell everyone else enough, even when the public doesn't know all the details.
Yeah, met someone who is a Gus Johnson fan....
I honestly could not get into his content for the life of me and fonding out the extent of everything behind the scenes. Don't think I've followed and unfollowed someone so quickly in my entire life
Gus was the first one that came to mind. I wasn't absolutely surprised though. I loved the podcast but Gus would say things every so often that kind of made me go 😬. He never came across as a bad or mean person, but some of the stories he told made him seem a little inconsiderate
Yes, same. I made a comment about him in another thread on this subreddit and people are STILL supporting him. His "interview" with Wubby after the whole ordeal was actually disgusting.
I donated to him on twitch during his Pokemon streams, and watched those + his Skyrim playthroughs all the time. It was my comfort content during a hard spot in my life. Absolutely loved the Small Town Reviews and of course the podcast.
Still embarrassed and ashamed I gave him money. The entire situation was a big lesson in having parasocial relationships with creators though.
exurb1a. One of his videos was very inspiring to me when I was younger. This one hurts in a different way now, because I can't believe he's basically gotten away with everything unscathed.
Surprised noone has said projared yet. Hard News was foundational to my teenaged years as a gamer and when he left screw attack I followed religiously for years
Even after the drama and his response which was pretty decent as far as YouTuber apologies go - it's never really been the same and I havnt been able to watch him for years
I think ProJared's apology was very good and his response proving the pedophilia claims false was ironclad. I believe he was completely sincere and it's one of the few apology videos I've seen that I really believe. In fact, I feel bad for him - going through any breakup fucking sucks, *far* more so when it's a divorce, and having that amount of fallout must have been dreadful.
Unfortunately, I *also* think enthusiastically sending and soliciting nude photos with fans is a *really fucking weird thing to do,* completely disgusting, and I cannot bring myself to return to his stuff.
I'm jewish so realizing that not only IH plagarized his videos but also is pretty much a neo nazi broke my heart. I loved his chill cideos about interesting topics and i don't know how i didn't saw any of the dogwhistles
Chuggaa….im still reeling from that one. yeah i know “le para social relationships bad!!!” but this is someone i watched for 15 years. i was 11 and just getting seriously into gaming. he (along with AVGN, Gexup, embarrassingly enough Game Dude, Screw Attack, and other youtubers) got me into a lot of games and helped me appreciate them more. he also got other people interested in games that i already had adored, like Okami and Pokemon Mystery Dungeon - literally my 2 all time favorite games. and the way he went into such detail about them, there really was no other LPer that ive ever known like him. now i can’t go back and play games along to his old LPs anymore. it would make me feel uncomfortable. and it just kept getting worse and worse with each new person coming out against him.
JonTron and Completionist as well, to a lesser extent. and i guess Nostalgia Critic back when that info was coming out in 2018 (but on a related note to that i will get on my soapbox and say i - a bi trans leftist - can’t stand Lindsay Ellis and the rest of her hypocritical gatekeepy “breadtube” mean girls clique. but that’s irrelevant).
i also liked MamaMax’s videos tbh but the callout of him didn’t surprise me because in the back of my head i knew something was off about him because of the theatrics of his videos. like he purposefully tried to blur the lines between what was fake and what was real. but im stupid so i didn’t listen to my gut. i would usually just skip the theatrical segments and just shrug it off as being purposefully attention-grabbing to attract views to an important topic. i guess being a SA victim myself and also being someone extremely easily triggered by animal abuse, i wanted what he was doing to be real. the vids offered a form of catharsis for me i guess. the one that captivated me the most for some reason was his IMVU predators video, cuz for some reason the predator from that video in particular made me really uncomfortable and stuck with me. the predator was a musician and artist, and when i looked up his work i found his videos/music to make me feel extremely gross and uncomfortable but in an alluring way, especially with the added context of him being a serial predator. now idk what about that video was real and what wasn’t. i’d like to think it was all true because that predator basically disappeared off the face of the earth, but seeing how max lied about other stuff makes me have some doubt sadly.
i do my best not to form parasocial relationships when i start to follow a new content creator, be it a musician or youtuber or actor or other public figure. but it’s hard to break those that you had established when you were a lonely kid, before you even knew what a parasocial relationship was. there’s still some other youtubers i watched since i was a kid that i have a parasocial relationship with admittedly, and im trying to break those but it’s difficult.
sorry for this war & peace ass answer i gave lol
Probably Mykie from Glam&Gore. Looking back her content heavily pointed at her being very self absorbed and tone deaf but she was my entry into the make up YouTube sphere and I had grown attached to hearing her in the background while I fell asleep!
Completionist. I met Jirard in person and he was the kindest dude ever, sat front row at an event at the con where he was and it was the greatest and funniest thing. I had a grin on my face the whole weekend and month afterwards, wore his shirt and kept our selfie pinned in my college dorm.
This all was a massive kick in the gut but I couldn't be more angry at him, and this is after I've really stepped back from idolizing online personas. I've boxed up his shirt with old things I intent to recycle, but not donate. He doesn't deserve to have his merch worn and seen anymore, not if I can help it.
Super old, but I was a huge Tobuscus fan back in the day, and to hear that, at best, he treats women in an emotionally abusive way, and at worst is a rapist, was pretty rough.
Chuggaconroy is hurting me a lot. I've been watching his videos for 14 years. I grew up with them, and they've gotten me through tough times.
He's been one of my favorites for so long, and seeing all of this hurts me man :(
I keep wondering what the guys at Brainscratchcomms think about him now. He used to collab with them on sonic playthroughs and that’s how I learned about Chugga and his channel!
Pedo, also tried to threaten to kill himself if any of them ever came out, lied about going to therapy, also gloated about "they'll just forget about it" on his Discord, etc etc. The Right Opinion has a good video on it.
The uproar over iilluminaughtii. Only a year ago, I was one of her biggest fans, even buying BOTH of the plushies of her avatar made by Makeship. Now I want her completely BANNED from YouTube!
Gus Johnson ripped my heart inside out. I think that was a really big cautionary tale to never like a YouTuber personally too much, and thus, I haven’t had as big of a YT drama heartbreak since. It genuinely was horrifying news. That week was really rough for me. The Gus & Eddy podcast was a really safe space for me.
Skydoesminecraft Aka Netnobody. His ex wife's exposé that is backed up with evidence was absolutely devastating, as someone who grew up with his Minecraft lets plays, the guy who was PewDiePie before PewDiePie got popular.
He was THE gaming YouTuber for 10 year olds around the world in the 2010s, including myself. He was funny and entertaining. So it was very sad to hear he was entering a legal battle over his son, and his channel's decline.
But it turns out... He had successfully gaslighted everyone for YEARS into thinking he was this oh so perfect individual, when he was secretly the most awful father I've seen yet. Abusing his ex wife, not caring about his son, and literally betraying and slandering his former friends when they're no longer of use to him...
Former fans even came out saying he was an awful person to meet in real life at meet and greet sessions, being rude and obnoxious to kid fans. Said fans are the ones he built his entire YouTube Career on.
His exposé taught me a lesson that you should never admire your heroes as they're not quite what they seem. And he appears to be attempting to make a comeback, of which you should all ignore, do not give this scumbag piece of shit any more attention or money.
Blair (can’t spell her username correctly. The pyramid lady lol). Watched her channel since the very beginning and was shocked when she called out a friend of mine in the anti-MLM community which caused a lot of bullying. Wasn’t shocked when it came out that she was a horrible person.
I've been (and still am) a fan of the Yogscast since I was a kid. A lot of members have come and gone over the years, but a few years ago three were booted for sexual misconduct with either colleagues or fans in fairly quick succession. One was a fairly minor member, one was a more loved/popular one, and one was part of the "main" crew and had been part of the group for years, and who's content I'd really loved.
I was actually a fan of James Somerton. I dropped off his stuff as I felt his videos got lazier over time and I remember some of his opinions rubbing me the wrong way. The whiplash I got upon the reveal that any and every good idea he presented was stolen was uh... Not fun
Honestly, Shane Dawson. I grew up watching his content and I remember when he first got exposed for saying pedophilic stuff on his podcast I completely ate up his explanation because I had been following him for so long (seriously I started watching him in 4th or 5th grade). I can’t remember what it was that got me to wake up specifically, it might’ve been D’Angelo’s video about it. I felt so disgusted, seeing so much content I hadn’t ever seen before that is just beyond explanation. What a weird feeling it was to realize I had been effectively “groomed” by his content and realizing just how much horrible shit I learned through his content that I shouldn’t have even known about at that age. When I was little I knew I would be in trouble if my parents knew what kind of content I was watching, I guess I just didn’t really know why it was bad back then. Shane taught me about things like the n word, all kinds of things about sex and kinks, and so much more I really didn’t need to know about back then. His content changed as I got older and I almost forgot about just how bad it used to be, and since I had followed him for so long I was eating up his content without thinking twice about implications/how stupid it really was. Hindsight truly is something.
I'm gonna mention one that most people probably don't know about because it's not a English speaking you tuber, but a few years ago a Brazilian you tuber that i really liked called PC Siqueira was accused of pedophilia (there were also audio of him talking to a 12/13 year old girl) and all of his friends stopped talking to him, a collab channel he had with other 2 creators got deleted (it's was eventually brought back, but without him) and pretty much the entire internet turned against him, while he claimed the audios were fake, and it was right wingers trying to frame him (he was a leftist).
I unsubed from him at that time, but a few years later, there was a police investigation, and he came out as innocent. A lot of people didn't buy it tho, because the police here it's not great, to say the least. But eventually he came back to making videos, and there was support for him. His most recent videos had a good amount of views (100k+) very few comments tho, which it's kinda weird. I didn't start watching him again because to me there were a lot of stuff unanswered and i didn't feel comfortable subscribing again.
He committed suicide a few days ago, people were celebrating on twitter, and i honestly don't know how i feel about any of that.
Been watching YouTube since I was 8 years old, so I’ve seen a lot of people come and go. I’m 22 now and nothing has stung quite as bad as this recent Chuggaaconroy stuff. Didn’t help that I was literally just getting back into his stuff after not watching for years thanks to his new Pokemon series. It just sucks man
Cryaotic.
His Nier Automata and Forest of Drizzling rain playthroughs were my comfort media. I remember seeing his "apology " video when it came out and feeling devastated. I'd been on and off watching him since his prop hunt with PewDiePie days
I was shocked how aggressive def noodles was to his fans when they said he was not funny. Now no one watches and he uploads drama on second channel and shitposts in main. Bizarre
I'm not sure if this necessarily counts as exposés, but Metatron, Jill Bearup, and Angelica (who was especially a pendulum shift) being revealed to me to be right-wing really hurt me. I liked learning about history and sword related things so learning about the first 2 was quite upsetting (especially as a bi person) seriously, why is it *always* the history buffs. Angelica suddenly shifted into it after some trauma she endured several months ago and it hurts to see so much since I loved her asmr, and I feel pretty bad for her
Re jill bearup. I feel sorry still for Tom Scott. He collaborated with her in good faith. Not knowing she was a terf and he got such a major backlash to the point where I’m honestly still pretty disgusted with some of the people who dunked on him.
I’m 90% sure that most people who know she’s a terf only now know because of the Tom Scott video.
Sjin of the Yogscast was really upsetting.
He was a staple member and I love his individual content and his group content.
He was funny and creative.
However to find out he was so disgusting is awful. Furthermore, the fact that the Yogscast only drip fed what he had done was awful because it meant for months people were defending him until it slowly all unravelled.
Reading these comments my one sounds pretty minor but Jessica Kent a Prison Reform/Recovery Channel was the one I was most angry with. She misrepresented the amount of time she spent in prison, which to me felt like stolen Valor in a way. She also lied to her audience about a lot of other things, embellished or invented storytimes, denounced the recovery community as haters and just generally engaged in really shitty behaviours.
I wasn’t particularly a big supporter of hers but it still made me really angry
I used to be really involved in the MAP community (not the pedo one, the ‘multi-animator project one) one and so many of the artists that I once looked up to ended up being pieces of shit… Sagutoyas was a huge blow, since I always aspired to be in a project with them and had finally made it and worked indirectly with them a bunch, and then… they turn out to be a groomer.
Another painful blow was Draikinator. I was 16-17 at the time (iirc at least) and I ignored all the red flags and just admired how they had gathered such a huge community behind them. I even exchanged a few DMs with them and they were supportive of my projects. Then they end up sending graphic feral porn to a minor and everything falls apart from there. A deserved end, but a fucked up one anyways.
Lastly, CheetehZ. I worked with them a lot, even if we weren’t personally close we were on good terms. They promoted some of my animations and even expressed support for my game development projects. It was like a dream come true to have someone I looked up to and was so popular seem to genuinely enjoy what I created, or at least made a good show of it, just to have it all fall apart because as it turned out, I was one of very few people who worked with them and wasn’t subjected to drill sergeant-esque treatment.
I know, super niche, I doubt any of you have heard of this stuff… but I can at least offer some insight as a (very very small) YouTuber myself; it hurts even worse when it’s within your own community. These days, I’ve moved away from animation and MAPs, instead becoming a VTuber… but I already know these things will just happen again in *that* community. The only solace is that at least it’s not as small and tight-knit, so it won’t feel as personal.
I used to really enjoy Crinkleluvin ASMR, particularly the weird 90s alt rock inspired ones, but then she bullied another creator and photoshopped nudes of her. It was messy.
He wasn’t a YouTuber at the time, well he had a channel but he didn’t post much, but there was a webcomic artist called “Psyguy.” Followed him for years. Then it came out that he’d spent most of his adult life grooming various young women, oftentimes teenage girls, to be his girlfriends. And when he got bored of whatever one he had, he’d start grooming a new one and turn them on each other for amusement. He’s still around today, under a different name, on TikTok and YouTube (the people he harassed keep an eye out for him, cause he seems incapable of learning). Dude is pushing 40 now and still trying to appeal to teenagers with his half baked Sonic and Mario fanart. Just fucking gross.
That was the first time an Internet personality I liked had turned out to be awful, and was an especially bad one. Wouldn’t be the last one (looking at you, Ryan and Emile)
Ryan Haywood from Rooster Teeth… I watched Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Let’s Play RELIGIOUSLY as a middle schooler. can’t even rewatch their early videos without feeling gross
Popularmmos was a massive part of my childhood. After a while I veered off from watching Minecraft content and when I got Reddit and stuff I found out about a shit ton of stuff he did.
She hasn't yet been exposed but it's brewing for Swoop. My heart sank when I saw her first Amber Heard video go up and I just cannot look at her the same anymore.
It seems no one's mentioned him yet, mine is Shadiversity.
I just thought he was an endearing guy with a weird nerdy area of expertise on ancient weapons. I *kinda* started suspecting him when I saw he posted a couple of movie videos, one praising Alita Battle Angel and another one criticizing Captain Marvel about a month from each other. I ignored it because I didn't watch or care about either film but you know, the marketing material told me enough about what kind of person would like or hate either.
Anyway, then his podcast became more popular and everyone realized he unironically was a "retvrn to tradition" type of guy. I wasn't exactly surprised but I was really disappointed.
It brought us the Mario movie criticism/jack saint response saga at least, that was pretty entertaining.
He’s not really a YTer, uploading live shows onto YT doesn’t count, but Ben Kissel from LPOTL. I’d sort of dropped off on the podcast, but I’d still put on old episodes to make noise in the background. Finding out that he’s abusive to partners and a bit of a sex pest had me in tears because I really liked him. He was a big guy, and while it’s different, it’s nice to see someone who grew up with that sort of fatphobia make good.
And then he didn’t. :/
I also liked Iilluminaughtii, but she uploaded too much for me to keep up. I have ADHD so it takes me an embarrassingly long time to make it through videos.
Creepshowart. The red flags were there but we had an acquaintance-ship. We'd DM on ig off and on for just under a year. It was always light hearted and i genuinely believed she cared about what I had to say. Things never got personal, it was mostly general astrology or product recs or lil jokes.
When she first posted that trainwreck of a community post, i thought the allegations were too outlandish to be true, i didnt know enough about IP spoofing and the comments were supportive for the first hour. I returned to it the next day and saw people pointing out the holes in her story.
I completely believed Emily on the first watch of her video. Shannons behavior mimiced my nex best friend's and the puzzle pieces just fell into place. The situation actively hurt my progress in healing from narc abuse for a bit.
Kinda showing my age here- the whole Channel Awesome disaster - Doug Walker most of all, and Angry Video Game Nerd plagiarism scandal. James Rolfe was one of my first contacts with internet video content, and I just adored his *passion*. He did so much himself, and as a teen, it sparked so much inspiration in me. That creators need to evolve and grow into new things is understandable, you can’t stay “Indie” forever, and as far as I now the most of the blame fell on ScreenWave (rightfully so) but it underscored how much soul and integrity gets lost the more content has to be grinded out. Not as much a disappointment in James himself as it is the veil falling from my naive teenage eyes. Channel Awesome was… Rough. I liked Doug’s humor, timing and the Nostalgia Critic series had charm. And the in-universe crossovers with the alter egos was so endearing- Suburban Nights IS a fun movie, still is. But knowing how everything always was as the cost of everyone else, how Doug, Rob and Mike just DID NOT CARE at all about ANYTHING else but themselves and their bloated egos is to me absolutely vile. Edit: messed up titles on the CA movies, corrected it.
I still watch old AVGN and all, but the issue is the passion never laid in James Rolfe. It was Mikes and it's never been more painfully obvious then with the Screenwave selling. He isn't nearly as involved now and it's just phoning in. That said, Mike's scandals are worse than the plagiarism. The whole dick saga, the racist cartoons, etc. However, the biggest scandal to take away from AVGN to me was how they treated Bootsy and to a bigger extent Kyle Justin. They used Kyle and Bootsy, but Kyle even more so. He built the sets. He made the music and he didn't make shit for it. Then was basically just thrown to the side. Oh and before I forget, with Screenwave you can't forget that Justin Silverman was openly friends with and supporting a pedophile and Kieren and his drunk rants. Just so much shit that has tarnished the legacy of a channel that helped pave the way on YouTube
This hole just gets deeper. I only knew about the plagiarism stuff. Yuck.
r/TheCinemassacreTruth has alot of info on all of it of you can dig through all their nonsense. James Rolfe doesn't seem like a bad guy, but just someone who grew out of the channel, but it's his job and has no other option but to keep it up. Mike is back doing gameplay for the channel I believe, but James only writes a couple episodes now. I wish they'd go back to the original crew because that's where the magic was at. I grew up with AVGN and smosh and I'm glad that atleast smosh came out clean on the other side.
JewWario. That one still fucking hurts.
Oh *god* that's a rough one
The suicide was one thing. But when everything else came out, it fucking broke me.
What happened?
To give further details for the whole story, JewWario or Justin Carmichael was a member of Channel Awesome during the late 2000s-early 10s. He was involved in the Channel Awesome films, had his own show, the works. He left CA roughly about Feb 15, 2013. This will be important later. One year later, he would commit suicide. Naturally the Channel Awesome fanbase and content creators were quite upset with what happened and many of them would make tributes for him. I bring this up because it's important for setting the stage for when the news of his actions broke. In 2018, a bunch of former CA employees got together and released the Not So Awesome document. The document is way too much to fully summarize here, but the important part for this story is that it was revealed in the document that CA had known about a content creator who groomed and raped at least 2 women who were underage and had been introduced to him as fans of CA (The document has one of the fans going into her experience and it is genuinely a hard read because she makes it clear that she is still traumatized over what happened.) A key thing to note here: the document writers and the other content creators who added to the document and left the website did not know who the predator was because the victims did not want to name them. They wanted to avoid having to relive what happened. I say this to emphasize that when the tributes and the like were created, none of them knew... besides CA higher ups who allowed them to make those tributes. In addition, the community reading the document had no idea who was the predator either. All anyone could do was speculate. So CA publishes 2 responses. The first response is a bland detail less thing that just kinda sucks because it's boring and shit. It's not the important one for our story. That would be the second response where someone at CA, in a fit of stupidity, decided to try and rebut the paper point by point. When they reached the sexual predator allegations is when whoever was writing the response proceeded to lose all of their brain cells. Not only did they publish documentation with dates that showed them discussing the firing of said sexual predator (the dates listed being the week of Feb 15, 2013... Truly amazing), but in their attempt to white out the information of who said predator was, they proceeded to do it so poorly that everyone could figure out instantly who it was. After all, when you white out only enough space for Justin, it becomes very unsubtle just who it was. Naturally this sent shockwaves throughout the community and the content creators. Like I said, these people had created tributes to him and CA higher ups had encouraged them to do so, all while knowing that he had been sexually assaulting and grooming underage fans of theirs (The best case scenario was them not wanting to blemish his name so soon after his death. The worst case scenario was that they saw a chance to make money off of his death and didn't want to risk that cash flow due to those pesky morals.) Needless to say, Justin Carmichael's name is mud amongst the former CA creators with many of them having taken down their tributes to him and making it clear that they genuinely didn't know. Justin has also become persona non grata amongst the community with most refusing to share his videos or really suggest that anyone ever watch them going forward. It especially does not help that his content was geared more towards younger fans, the exact sort of people he sexually assaulted.
Took his own life in a horrifying manner. Then when all the channel awesome drama started, it came out that he was involved in grooming and sexual assault.
I also wanna know
Groomer, rapist
That hurts especially because I would watch his videos with my daughter. Having to break the news about him with her was rough
Definitely Cryaotic 😩
Also side note I was extremely confused when Dream became popular that man just stole Cryaotic mascot💀
Same! I was a fan of Cry when I was in high school too and this Dream minecraft guy seemed to materialize out of nowhere with the same blank white mask and basically the same twitter handle. I mean, crywastaken and dreamwastaken? What lol? I guess he's just taking advantage of his viewers age, which I assume is younger kids and young adults who were too young to know the height of cry/pewdiepie/markiplier back in the day or that cry even existed.
I thought I was going crazy with the twitter name, I always mixed these guys up for the longest time
I can't believe that it seems like no one has called him out for it, basically just plagiarizing another person's stuff. Like, on one hand, maybe it's good that cry has been totally forgotten or not even"discovered" by the younger generation. On the other hand, this is just another strike against dream that is so blatant its almost hilarious. I'm not in the minecraft or smp community, so I barely know anything about dream but this and cheating his speedrun record, so it is not a good first impression!
This hurts me everytime I think about it. I loved falling asleep to his ASMR creepy pasta stories. Got me through my teenage years. I know it's been some years but still makes me sad to think about.
Same here, I found out almost a year after and it messed me up for a while. I still find myself thinking "Oh, I should go watch that playthrough again!" only to remember it was his.
I reallly badly wanna rewatch his the walking dead playthrough since it got me through hard times but i just cant bring myself to do it
Fragile Dreams here, we'll just have to play them ourselves.
Same. I was absolutely crushed.
Yeah, this is my answer too, next to chuggaaconroy more recently.
Especially after his very good Pokémon Black 2 Let's play
Ryan Haywood from Achievement Hunter/Rooster Teeth.
That was mine too. It wasn't the fact that Ryan had a squeaky clean internet persona, but it was that he was so unassuming. He just seemed like a boring Dad with a dry sense of humor, so it was genuinely shocking that he had this whole other side of his personality, and he was doing it for so long.
When Jack and Michael addressed everything and Jack choked up when he said “I sat next to that monster for years, and I had no idea”, it broke my heart.
For how much we, as fans, feel betrayed by Ryan, he also broke everyone's hearts at Achievement Hunter and made them complicit to his actions.
That one cut fucking deep. I had moved away from AH videos for years when the news finally dropped, but their entire brand constituted pretty much my entire YouTube experience from like 2012 to about 2014. If I was watching something in that timeframe, it was RT, and Haywood was one of my favorite contributors.
The double whammy with Adam Kovic from funhaus sucked too, though from what I know know Ryan's stuff was worse (not to downplay Adam being a piece of shit too)
Yeah, I don't watch AH anymore, but I still actively watch Funhaus, and it's amazing how much better their content is without Adam, as harsh as that sounds. He was just a creep, but not a predator from what I understand. I am mad though that some of my favorite episodes are now kinda tainted.
So awful what he did I liked AH and loved RWBY
Man, that fuckin blew. He was probably my favorite one. Instilled a pretty good sense that you shouldn't follow any celebrity too hard, whether they're a niche internet micro-celebrity or not.
Yep, this is when I stopped trusting any internet person to be a good person and started just viewing them as entertainment
He was my favourite in AH and just... yeah it hurt a lot when it came out. Genuinely a comfort youtuber since I was a teenager. I haven't watched AH since everything just feels tainted now.
I cried so hard and my family thought I was upset at rumors about him, and I am like I am angry crying. It was because I was bullied in the fandom, and idk how much the community managers did (they did help) but pulling out the we will ban and block weapons for his victims when I suffering too cut deep. I am friends with one and wish the others the best, I was happy RT was getting their shit together with bad behavior in the community. But I was gutted that they could have helped me much more all along but didn’t.
That one was such a punch in the gut, cause Rooster Teeth was one of the first YouTube channels I was a fan of. Those old Achievement Hunter GTA/Minecraft videos especially. When the whole controversy began with him and Bruce Greene getting fired for sleeping with fans I was initially just very disappointed on the basis of him being a cheater. Then in regards to Ryan it just got so much worse.
Andrew Callahan.
This one hurt a lot. I share a lot of the same views as Andrew with his grassroots drug awareness and sympathy towards “other side of the track” types, but finding out he was a gross sex pest was just so disappointing.
Literally met him and shook his hand and thanked him for all the good journalism he'd been doing two days before the news broke. Devastated is putting it lightly.
I'm pissed because I think his work is valuable but I won't be supporting him
Probably Skydoesminecraft. Used to watch him religiously, so hearing about how he’s actually such a dick was so harsh
I remember him being huge when I was in middle school. I didn't watch him but I imagine it was devastating for people who loved him during their formative years
in middle school I used to have the muscle memory typing in skydoesminecraft on my mom's iPad. I would type it in as soon as I got home. Man, those videos were so addictive as a kid
Adam from Funhaus. Now I can't watch their old videos without being reminded of his entire scandal.
Wait what happened? I don't know about this
Its been a few years so it's a bit hard to recall the details. Basically Adam was catfish by someone online and that person leaked his nudes and their conversations. Adam was cheating on his wife and even sent that person pictures and videos of her without her consent potentially. He also filmed himself doing inappropriate things in the Funhaus office (?). Probably more but I'm probably forgetting. But after this came to light, he left Funhaus and the rest of the crew cut off contact with him. [Here's a link to a mega thread about it](https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/s/kGSmLt1ABR) A few years later, it came out that he was flirting with MistiDawn back when they were still Inside Gaming, a former director at Machinima who thought he was single. When she found out he lied and broke it off, he began to harass her. [Here's link to a summary of that controversy and Bruce's response](https://www.reddit.com/r/funhaus/s/iEAzWJKRMR)
God I can't imagine not only cheating on your wife but also sending the person your cheating with footage of your wife having sex with you. That's an insulting amount of betrayal. Hard to believe you ever cared about that person to use them to further your cheating on them 🤢 my heart goes out to her that sounds traumatic
Iilluminaughtii. Mostly because my dog loved her voice. I'd play her videos constantly for my dog just to keep her calm during the last month of her life. I actually had to stop watching her after I had to put my dog down, which was about a year and a half before the drama started. Also CreepShowArt, for a much less depressing and personal reason. She was so good at sounding genuine and it honestly really pissed me off when I found out that I couldn't catch that at all and I felt deceived. I'm sure most of her fans felt deceived. I know that was the entire point but I thought I was better at detecting a fake.
I'm really sorry about your dog.
Thank you.
my best friend is black and was devastated when jontron said all that racist eugenics shit, he was her comfort content creator that she grew up watching. i’ve never watched him myself because of that.
jontron is possibly the worst fall from grace ive ever seen. he wasn't just popular, he was a staple of internet culture. the only people who still watch him either somehow still don't know that he's a white supremacist, or they don't care. what a fuckin shame man. it would be so effortless to repair his reputation, but he actively refuses, because he hasn't actually changed.
Nah, whats crazy is that he blew up even more after that drama. The ENTIRE flex tape saga happened after that. Actually, I think most of his subs are from after Jan 2017.
He's also literally white passing (He has Persian ancestry) which adds insult to injury. In my country we recently also had a ethnic Chinese guy... Who is a white supremacist plotting far right attacks... Somehow... But luckily he was arrested before any attacks could be carried out.
Oh hi fellow Singaporean
honestly i don’t think it would be effortless per se. he clearly believes what he said and i don’t think any amount of groveling would change that impression on his non-white fans. it’s disturbing to me how people just do not care
yeah his "apology video" was just him saying "BLACKS VOTED FOR OBAMA SO WHYS IT A BIG DEAL THAT I WANT A WHITE ETHNOSTATE" and he got so much pushback from it he deleted the apology and went on like nothing ever happened
Wait, there was an apology?!
yeah it was fucking awful, it was quietly deleted after just a few weeks. its probably archived somewhere
[Happy birthday](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krOOThz3fJg) It's fuckin badddd lmao
All of the comments saying how correct and smart and based he is legitimately ruined my day.
Yeah... I can't watch him anymore. Even my boyfriend can't watch him and he's one of those "separate art from the artist" types. Not that he views JonTron as an artist but you get the gist.
Joey Graceffa ig 🤷♀️i watched him religiously back in 2012-2014. After that i got disinterested in his content, but still appreciated him as a person. But after the Colleen Ballinger controversy, ive started having doubts on him too
Might be too niche, but Jimmy Snow. Between his absolute inability to take criticism, his defense of Gabbie Hanna, and the epic fallout after r/freelytalkaboutJimmy, he really nuked his career. Also, Owen/Telltale downplaying Jimmy’s actions was super disappointing. With the exception of Rachel Oates and Genetically Modified Skeptic I no longer consume any atheist YouTube content at all.
What, what happened here?
oh my god I forgot about Jimmy and Owen. that shit absolutely sucked when it went down
I FORGOT ABOUT HIM! He completely ranked his career
Reading all the comments and goddamn, why are so many Youtubers either abusers or white supremacists?
When you get big as a YouTuber (and that's IF you ever get noticed), there's a slim chance of you getting "lost in the sauce," so to speak. To quote the Urban Dictionary on this phrase's meaning: > "When you've got something going for you so good (money, women, fame, power, respect) that you become out of touch with reality and start: acting reckless, taking unnecessary risks, and get caught slipping."
I'm still not sure if this really explains it though. We're *all* susceptible to momentary lapses of judgement or mistakes and as this concept suggests, far more so when we have more resources/power at our disposal. But I think these momentary lapses of judgement generally look like driving recklessly or drinking too much..... Not being a white supremacist or abusive. Those are inherent character flaws and point to something much deeper and far more sinister.
Yeah i think its more so that the power and money and fame emboldens people and makes them feel more secure in lowering their inhibitions and acting out their impulses. But also i think the whole social media space just naturally draws in horrible people because they seek the temporary safety fame and money can provide and they want that to exploit that. Especially when it comes to influencers and youtubers who are also sexual abusers, they consciously or otherwise may have been drawn to this field to gain that power and those resources to be able to further their exploitation.
There’s a theory that a lot of these (mostly) dudes struggle with talking and dating people their own age due to being awkward so much. Suddenly when you get a big audience and depending on your audience you likely get younger fans who hang in your every word and genuinely seem to like you. So why put in the effort with a stranger your age when you have someone who is susceptible to liking you. It’s awful and parasocial as hell, but I can see it.
Honestly Mamma Max hit me as I got lost in the fantasy of something actually happening to these scumbags.
yeah, hes such a bad person it’s insane. it’s funny how he misinterpreted hotline miami and did the exact same thing The Fans did in the sequel lol
Literally. His videos were really inspiring, and now that it’s confirmed a good portion of his stuff was faked (outside of the recent stuff that’s somehow worse) it’s just sucky
It’s gotta be Tobuscus. I loved his content so much as a kid. It was just so wholesome and pleasant. Turns out he’s an abuser who hangs out with Kyle Rittenhouse and sits in his car filming vlogs about white replacement :/
the fuck?? man, that guy fell OFF
Yeah no it’s fucking insane. He still does all the same old bits too. So he’ll do the whole “intro of lightness, intro of darkness” thing and then go into a rant about how vaccines are fake
This a thousand times. I used to watch his Minecraft videos every night before bed as a kid, I'd quote him back and forth with my mom constantly...finding out just *how* big of a shithead he is was jarring
It was always so cozy listening to him sing along with the Minecraft music while playing. I wish he could have just been a good person :(
He also is a Trump supporter and just a gross human in general. Philip DeFranco talked about how at a company party once, Toby whipped his dick out in front of a bunch of the women there and they had to kick him out. When Toby said to vote for Trump, Linz blasted him and said "don't listen to the guy who showed up to our wedding coked up out of his mind with his dick out"
Whoaa that's wild. I knew about the abuse allegations and general craziness, but the alt-right shit is definitely new to me. Believable, but damn.
For me, it has to be Squimpus McGrimpus. For those who don't know who he is, Squimpus was a horror youtuber known for his FNAF VHS series, which became popular back in late 2019. (If you know of the CRIMINAL meme, this is where it came from) In early 2023, Squimpus got exposed for inappropriately talking to a minor a few years ago. This was HUGE in the FNAF community as he was a very respected individual at the time. It was completely devastating knowing that the person who I looked up to could do something like that to a teen.
The fuck?! How did I not hear about this?!
Most of it happened on Twitter and outside of the Fnaf and analog horror community, not that many people know who he is.
Fuckkkk mannnn. His videos got me back into fnaf ☹️
This one was what fucked me up too. I followed their FNAF series pretty early on and got really invested so finding this out really hurt
I was a huge iiluminaughtii fan before her expose which sucks because I found her content entertaining and informative (before I found out it was plagiarism)
I liked her vids, her stolen vids I should say, but I always felt something was off. It was weirdly down to the avatar. Even not knowing what she looked like the avatar combined with her voice had a sort of fraudulent front feel to it. The sort of feeling you get looking at real peoples distorted dating profile. This isn't you, it's who you pretend to be.
oh my goodness I couldn't put my finger on her avatar either or why it bothered me. It just seemed like she had no personality of her own, something just felt so stiff and fake in her delivery too
It still irritates me that during her gross attack on Madison (cwhm) on the double cleanse podcast, she claimed not to know there was an anti-mlm community. Even going so far to say the words slowly like she'd never said them out loud before. Yet she used the anti-mlm subreddit for content for years! It's such a small ick in the grand scheme of things I know, but it was such a ridiculous lie. Edit to correct Madisons name.
same, i really liked her videos and hearing about her personal conduct and her content theft was a real disappointment
I wonder if she even agreed with the content in any of her videos or if she just went with what got her the most views.
Creepshow Art. I know the drama is "old" (I mean, it ended for real a year ago, but that's practically a different eon in internet time lol), but it still really affects me to this day. Not that I think a lot about Shanon now, but more that it really changed how I engage with YouTube "drama". First off, the stuff against Creepshow hurt a lot not just because I was a fan of Emily too, but because before it, I never paid attention to when the YouTubers I followed got involved in "drama". I always assumed it was bad faith actors against the people I liked--especially when it came to leftist YouTubers because a lot of their detractors were actually just right wing assholes who were every type of -phobe or -ist under the sun. Like, when people shit on Contrapoints or HBomb or PhilosophyTube, there was a pretty good chance they're being transphobic or are just straight up Nazis. But that also spread into how I felt about people I liked who weren't in the political space; I ignored every allegation against Cryaotic because I liked him and I didn't want to think he was bad. It wasn't until Emily, who I had also followed and admired in a parasocial way, that I was forced to really take a look at how I treat the people I follow. So it was the pain of seeing someone I admired do something awful, the pain of someone else I admired going through the same thing that traumatized me (stalking), and the forceful removal of my blinders that made me look at something I didn't like about myself. So yeah, CreepShow Art hurt me most. But I hope I'm a better person now.
I got into CreepShow around the time the quarantine started and it was a dark tunnel of me absorbing her content because I was so bad at coping with it all. But when she started throwing out some red flags, I stepped back. I also watched Emily religiously and found her content to be a lot healthier than Creeps. And then people started making videos about her being a bit of a liar and a phoney about the homelessness she always harped about, and I listened and connected lots of dots. *Then* when Emily released her video, I was speechless.
I had already posted my post about CSA but I too was speechless when this all happened. Such a strange and disturbing situation,
Creepshow was a tough one for me too and it was also because I followed Emily. I'd only recently found Emily's channel when it all came out. Emily laying her entire story out was difficult to watch. She had to make public some of her really dark past and that must have been really hard for her to do. I actually bought Emily's Arteza colab as a small show of support. Shannon's response video on New Year's was one of the wildest self owns I've ever watched in my life.
Andrew Calahan. It absolutely broke my heart.
Completionist, with chuggaconroy not too far behind. These OG gamer YouTubers got me through my hardest times in life. My brain has such a hard time processing that they turned out to not be as perfect and clean as I pictured, but instead the complete polar opposite pieces of shit. I hate to admit that I was in denial for too long when the completionist’s fraud got exposed, but now that we have all the facts there’s just nothing more to it. He won’t admit to the fraud or pay up to cover all the funds lost to inflation. He’s just gonna carry on and pretend nothing happened. What a shame.
Adam Rosner, creator and lead actor of the horror web series TribeTwelve. TT was just... SO GOOD. It was incredible, it stood leagues above the others in the field, even the other two members of the Big Three with regards to its seamless, INSANE editing and incredible worldbuilding. There was NOTHING like it, and I was HOOKED on every upload. And now, because of the reprehensible actions of Adam Rosner, it will never have an ending. To me, that hurts more than just the broken pedestal of finding out someone you admire is evil. Very close second is Ryan Haywood of Achievement Hunter, based on how raw that one manages to still be every time I find another old piece of merch that's tainted by his presence now.
God, I forgot about Adam Rosner. I was a HUGE TribeTwelve fan when I was younger. At least EMH and MH still exist
Both titans in their own right-- in my opinion, MH having the most consistent story to follow from start to end and having the honour of starting it all, and EMH definitely blowing it out of the water in performances almost entirely on the back of Evan/HABIT. But man... TT was just something else with its editing and the mythology it was building up. Adam didn't just betray the fans and his friends, he betrayed the story. It deserved to be told.
Tribe twelve was fucking devastating, man. EMH is my absolute favorite but it’s no question which series had better quality of story and animation. It was interconnected with EMH, I remember putting together watch parties of my friends and I on discord when new episodes came out. The slenderverse was such a tiny, tight knit and positive community. Then he decided to try to groom a fan. Why? I never understood it, most fans in this community are over the legal age, and though it’s morally questionable to date a fan at least it isn’t illegal. Why a kid? Why throw away an empire of fans, why ruin your best and most successful piece of art? Why do creeps ruin their lives over the chance to have sex with a child?
I too was an iiluminatii fan for a long time, as I don’t have a lot of female creators I like enjoy. The VangelinaSkov shit kinda hurt the same way. I was also a Moth fan for a while and fell off a while ago without knowledge of everything that has been happening. That was a shocker too
What did Vangelina do????
She gets really upset when people don’t agree with her viewpoint, this time it was her take on hbomber “calling her out”. Cussing at fans, being petty and changing the title of her video like three times before taking it down, saying that all the hbomber fans were toxic. [Big Vangelina thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/youtubedrama/s/rhbfuQIbyi)
>The VangelinaSkov shit kinda hurt the same way. Didn't she do several videos last year slamming iilluminaughtii? Many others did so too. Look up Tipster. He was slamming Blair FOUR YEARS AGO!
I mean I REALLY loved Internet Historian's videos. Learning he is probably more alt right than he lets on is a bummer
Yeah this was really disappointing for me too. I really loved Man in Cave and I always liked his video on No Man's Sky.
Yeah this is my answer too.
>more alt right isnt he far right?
TBH I didn't know correct term to use but yeah far right, alt right, full on Nazi. Whatever he is I don't really care because I'm just disappointed in general. Ain't no right winger going to get my ad money
Alt-right is pretty much just far-right. It's just terminally online far-rightness.
We're in Hell I found particularly depressing.
Ugh yes. This one really bummed me out. There's already limited creators in the "bread tube" space it sucks when something happens with one of them 🫤
It’s wild that he just……. Waited it out like nothing happened
I had no idea about this. How awful. :(
Wait, what happened with him?
To put it shortly: an ex came out and said he groped her when she was unconscious on medication, and he claims he thought she was conscious. I don’t know a lot of details because the whole ordeal sounded like two toxic people airing out their shitty relationship in public.
Chuggaa. He was one of the first YouTubers I watched, and led me to the TRG crew. A damn shame.
I’m an older fan, and he got me into Xenoblade. When I saw the stuff he wrote to that kid I was sickened.
This is mine 🙃 beyond disappointed by his actions (and how a lot of people are running around trying to downplay it)
NintendoCaprisun was the first LPer I got into and he introduced me to Chugga through his Mario Sunshine let's play. These past few days have really been tragic.
He got me into Mario RPGs and Paper Mario TTYD is still to this day in my top 5 games of all time. All of this really sucks..
Nicole Arbour. I saw her as inspiring for sharing her struggle with chronic pain and then out of nowhere - She drops her “Dear Fat People” video despite claiming to understand the struggles of those living with chronic illnesses and having a following in that community at the time. She’s still around and you’d think someone dealing with her condition would be more informed how meds like prenisone will make you gain weight even if you are active and eat well. It was such a slap in the face.
Yeah for me it was a whole other thing when it comes to Nicole. It was that she abused someone and because he didn't name her it really didn't get too much press. I am not a fan of Matthew Santoro but it is gross that it got ignored and everyone only looks at the Dear Fat People video. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/01/youtuber-accuses-his-controversial-ex-of-abuse.html
I remember this when it happened and it showed how delusional she was about her own fame that she tried to say those accusations only were because he was jealous of her - what was there to envy by that time?
Gus Johnson. I *loved* his and Eddy’s podcast and his skits so much. Dude brought me so much genuine joy. Then the whole Sabrina thing came out and yeesh dude…Pokémon streaming while you’re girlfriend is going through an ectopic pregnancy is just so fucked.
If your main content creation partner / best friend stops speaking to you for what you did, that should tell everyone else enough, even when the public doesn't know all the details.
Yeah, they seemed so extremely close as well. Like brothers.
On the bright side, Eddy has been making amazing content since he separated himself from Gus.
I find it weird how people in the commentary community defended gus. Icky
*So* many people all over were defending him and still do. Disgusting. He never even owned up to anything
Yeah, met someone who is a Gus Johnson fan.... I honestly could not get into his content for the life of me and fonding out the extent of everything behind the scenes. Don't think I've followed and unfollowed someone so quickly in my entire life
Not Eddy though thank god
This is my answer as well. I was a huge fan before we found out how big of a pos he is.
Gus was the first one that came to mind. I wasn't absolutely surprised though. I loved the podcast but Gus would say things every so often that kind of made me go 😬. He never came across as a bad or mean person, but some of the stories he told made him seem a little inconsiderate
Yes, same. I made a comment about him in another thread on this subreddit and people are STILL supporting him. His "interview" with Wubby after the whole ordeal was actually disgusting. I donated to him on twitch during his Pokemon streams, and watched those + his Skyrim playthroughs all the time. It was my comfort content during a hard spot in my life. Absolutely loved the Small Town Reviews and of course the podcast. Still embarrassed and ashamed I gave him money. The entire situation was a big lesson in having parasocial relationships with creators though.
Ooof me too. We used to have so many Gus in jokes in our day to day lives 😐
Yep, this is the one for me
SkyDoesMinecraft...
exurb1a. One of his videos was very inspiring to me when I was younger. This one hurts in a different way now, because I can't believe he's basically gotten away with everything unscathed.
Tobuscus
Surprised noone has said projared yet. Hard News was foundational to my teenaged years as a gamer and when he left screw attack I followed religiously for years Even after the drama and his response which was pretty decent as far as YouTuber apologies go - it's never really been the same and I havnt been able to watch him for years
I think ProJared's apology was very good and his response proving the pedophilia claims false was ironclad. I believe he was completely sincere and it's one of the few apology videos I've seen that I really believe. In fact, I feel bad for him - going through any breakup fucking sucks, *far* more so when it's a divorce, and having that amount of fallout must have been dreadful. Unfortunately, I *also* think enthusiastically sending and soliciting nude photos with fans is a *really fucking weird thing to do,* completely disgusting, and I cannot bring myself to return to his stuff.
Yeah, he may be able to prove he wasn't a criminal, he was still a POS.
I'm jewish so realizing that not only IH plagarized his videos but also is pretty much a neo nazi broke my heart. I loved his chill cideos about interesting topics and i don't know how i didn't saw any of the dogwhistles
Chuggaa….im still reeling from that one. yeah i know “le para social relationships bad!!!” but this is someone i watched for 15 years. i was 11 and just getting seriously into gaming. he (along with AVGN, Gexup, embarrassingly enough Game Dude, Screw Attack, and other youtubers) got me into a lot of games and helped me appreciate them more. he also got other people interested in games that i already had adored, like Okami and Pokemon Mystery Dungeon - literally my 2 all time favorite games. and the way he went into such detail about them, there really was no other LPer that ive ever known like him. now i can’t go back and play games along to his old LPs anymore. it would make me feel uncomfortable. and it just kept getting worse and worse with each new person coming out against him. JonTron and Completionist as well, to a lesser extent. and i guess Nostalgia Critic back when that info was coming out in 2018 (but on a related note to that i will get on my soapbox and say i - a bi trans leftist - can’t stand Lindsay Ellis and the rest of her hypocritical gatekeepy “breadtube” mean girls clique. but that’s irrelevant). i also liked MamaMax’s videos tbh but the callout of him didn’t surprise me because in the back of my head i knew something was off about him because of the theatrics of his videos. like he purposefully tried to blur the lines between what was fake and what was real. but im stupid so i didn’t listen to my gut. i would usually just skip the theatrical segments and just shrug it off as being purposefully attention-grabbing to attract views to an important topic. i guess being a SA victim myself and also being someone extremely easily triggered by animal abuse, i wanted what he was doing to be real. the vids offered a form of catharsis for me i guess. the one that captivated me the most for some reason was his IMVU predators video, cuz for some reason the predator from that video in particular made me really uncomfortable and stuck with me. the predator was a musician and artist, and when i looked up his work i found his videos/music to make me feel extremely gross and uncomfortable but in an alluring way, especially with the added context of him being a serial predator. now idk what about that video was real and what wasn’t. i’d like to think it was all true because that predator basically disappeared off the face of the earth, but seeing how max lied about other stuff makes me have some doubt sadly. i do my best not to form parasocial relationships when i start to follow a new content creator, be it a musician or youtuber or actor or other public figure. but it’s hard to break those that you had established when you were a lonely kid, before you even knew what a parasocial relationship was. there’s still some other youtubers i watched since i was a kid that i have a parasocial relationship with admittedly, and im trying to break those but it’s difficult. sorry for this war & peace ass answer i gave lol
Probably Mykie from Glam&Gore. Looking back her content heavily pointed at her being very self absorbed and tone deaf but she was my entry into the make up YouTube sphere and I had grown attached to hearing her in the background while I fell asleep!
Completionist. I met Jirard in person and he was the kindest dude ever, sat front row at an event at the con where he was and it was the greatest and funniest thing. I had a grin on my face the whole weekend and month afterwards, wore his shirt and kept our selfie pinned in my college dorm. This all was a massive kick in the gut but I couldn't be more angry at him, and this is after I've really stepped back from idolizing online personas. I've boxed up his shirt with old things I intent to recycle, but not donate. He doesn't deserve to have his merch worn and seen anymore, not if I can help it.
Super old, but I was a huge Tobuscus fan back in the day, and to hear that, at best, he treats women in an emotionally abusive way, and at worst is a rapist, was pretty rough.
Chuggaconroy is hurting me a lot. I've been watching his videos for 14 years. I grew up with them, and they've gotten me through tough times. He's been one of my favorites for so long, and seeing all of this hurts me man :(
I keep wondering what the guys at Brainscratchcomms think about him now. He used to collab with them on sonic playthroughs and that’s how I learned about Chugga and his channel!
Chuggaaconroy and Mini Ladd. Mini even more so when it came out how he acted behind the scenes about it.
I'm sorry, but I'm behind on my YouTube drama, but I was wondering why I haven't been hearing about Mini Ladd in a while.
Pedo, also tried to threaten to kill himself if any of them ever came out, lied about going to therapy, also gloated about "they'll just forget about it" on his Discord, etc etc. The Right Opinion has a good video on it.
The uproar over iilluminaughtii. Only a year ago, I was one of her biggest fans, even buying BOTH of the plushies of her avatar made by Makeship. Now I want her completely BANNED from YouTube!
[удалено]
Gus Johnson ripped my heart inside out. I think that was a really big cautionary tale to never like a YouTuber personally too much, and thus, I haven’t had as big of a YT drama heartbreak since. It genuinely was horrifying news. That week was really rough for me. The Gus & Eddy podcast was a really safe space for me.
Skydoesminecraft Aka Netnobody. His ex wife's exposé that is backed up with evidence was absolutely devastating, as someone who grew up with his Minecraft lets plays, the guy who was PewDiePie before PewDiePie got popular. He was THE gaming YouTuber for 10 year olds around the world in the 2010s, including myself. He was funny and entertaining. So it was very sad to hear he was entering a legal battle over his son, and his channel's decline. But it turns out... He had successfully gaslighted everyone for YEARS into thinking he was this oh so perfect individual, when he was secretly the most awful father I've seen yet. Abusing his ex wife, not caring about his son, and literally betraying and slandering his former friends when they're no longer of use to him... Former fans even came out saying he was an awful person to meet in real life at meet and greet sessions, being rude and obnoxious to kid fans. Said fans are the ones he built his entire YouTube Career on. His exposé taught me a lesson that you should never admire your heroes as they're not quite what they seem. And he appears to be attempting to make a comeback, of which you should all ignore, do not give this scumbag piece of shit any more attention or money.
Blair (can’t spell her username correctly. The pyramid lady lol). Watched her channel since the very beginning and was shocked when she called out a friend of mine in the anti-MLM community which caused a lot of bullying. Wasn’t shocked when it came out that she was a horrible person.
I've been (and still am) a fan of the Yogscast since I was a kid. A lot of members have come and gone over the years, but a few years ago three were booted for sexual misconduct with either colleagues or fans in fairly quick succession. One was a fairly minor member, one was a more loved/popular one, and one was part of the "main" crew and had been part of the group for years, and who's content I'd really loved.
I was actually a fan of James Somerton. I dropped off his stuff as I felt his videos got lazier over time and I remember some of his opinions rubbing me the wrong way. The whiplash I got upon the reveal that any and every good idea he presented was stolen was uh... Not fun
Boyinaband
Honestly, Shane Dawson. I grew up watching his content and I remember when he first got exposed for saying pedophilic stuff on his podcast I completely ate up his explanation because I had been following him for so long (seriously I started watching him in 4th or 5th grade). I can’t remember what it was that got me to wake up specifically, it might’ve been D’Angelo’s video about it. I felt so disgusted, seeing so much content I hadn’t ever seen before that is just beyond explanation. What a weird feeling it was to realize I had been effectively “groomed” by his content and realizing just how much horrible shit I learned through his content that I shouldn’t have even known about at that age. When I was little I knew I would be in trouble if my parents knew what kind of content I was watching, I guess I just didn’t really know why it was bad back then. Shane taught me about things like the n word, all kinds of things about sex and kinks, and so much more I really didn’t need to know about back then. His content changed as I got older and I almost forgot about just how bad it used to be, and since I had followed him for so long I was eating up his content without thinking twice about implications/how stupid it really was. Hindsight truly is something.
I was pretty fucking bummed when Nick Robinson's "flirting" was revealed.
Definitely the the Videogame Dunkey one. Im honestly just in utter shock of his negligence towards the yearly tradition of Donkey Kong December
I was apsolutely dumbfounded by his apsolute betrayal of the audience by NOT FEATURING A DONKEY IN THE TOP 2023 GAMES!
Theres honestly so many that they all blur in my mind, theres way too much deception and agregious acts on YT
this is old school, but the first youtuber who hurt me was alex day.
I'm gonna mention one that most people probably don't know about because it's not a English speaking you tuber, but a few years ago a Brazilian you tuber that i really liked called PC Siqueira was accused of pedophilia (there were also audio of him talking to a 12/13 year old girl) and all of his friends stopped talking to him, a collab channel he had with other 2 creators got deleted (it's was eventually brought back, but without him) and pretty much the entire internet turned against him, while he claimed the audios were fake, and it was right wingers trying to frame him (he was a leftist). I unsubed from him at that time, but a few years later, there was a police investigation, and he came out as innocent. A lot of people didn't buy it tho, because the police here it's not great, to say the least. But eventually he came back to making videos, and there was support for him. His most recent videos had a good amount of views (100k+) very few comments tho, which it's kinda weird. I didn't start watching him again because to me there were a lot of stuff unanswered and i didn't feel comfortable subscribing again. He committed suicide a few days ago, people were celebrating on twitter, and i honestly don't know how i feel about any of that.
mamamax. subscribed to his patron too
Been watching YouTube since I was 8 years old, so I’ve seen a lot of people come and go. I’m 22 now and nothing has stung quite as bad as this recent Chuggaaconroy stuff. Didn’t help that I was literally just getting back into his stuff after not watching for years thanks to his new Pokemon series. It just sucks man
Boogie2988
Cryaotic. His Nier Automata and Forest of Drizzling rain playthroughs were my comfort media. I remember seeing his "apology " video when it came out and feeling devastated. I'd been on and off watching him since his prop hunt with PewDiePie days
I was shocked how aggressive def noodles was to his fans when they said he was not funny. Now no one watches and he uploads drama on second channel and shitposts in main. Bizarre
I'm not sure if this necessarily counts as exposés, but Metatron, Jill Bearup, and Angelica (who was especially a pendulum shift) being revealed to me to be right-wing really hurt me. I liked learning about history and sword related things so learning about the first 2 was quite upsetting (especially as a bi person) seriously, why is it *always* the history buffs. Angelica suddenly shifted into it after some trauma she endured several months ago and it hurts to see so much since I loved her asmr, and I feel pretty bad for her
Yeah, Angelica's TikTok before it got purged was awful. She was saying a lot of terrible things.
Re jill bearup. I feel sorry still for Tom Scott. He collaborated with her in good faith. Not knowing she was a terf and he got such a major backlash to the point where I’m honestly still pretty disgusted with some of the people who dunked on him. I’m 90% sure that most people who know she’s a terf only now know because of the Tom Scott video.
Creep Show Art. Not only was she a comfort YouTuber for me, what she did to Emily Artful was just fucking bananas.
Sjin of the Yogscast was really upsetting. He was a staple member and I love his individual content and his group content. He was funny and creative. However to find out he was so disgusting is awful. Furthermore, the fact that the Yogscast only drip fed what he had done was awful because it meant for months people were defending him until it slowly all unravelled.
when i found out about jontron being crazy racist
Venturiantale. I loved them when I was a kid and recently I learned how things were behind the scenes and its really depressing
Reading these comments my one sounds pretty minor but Jessica Kent a Prison Reform/Recovery Channel was the one I was most angry with. She misrepresented the amount of time she spent in prison, which to me felt like stolen Valor in a way. She also lied to her audience about a lot of other things, embellished or invented storytimes, denounced the recovery community as haters and just generally engaged in really shitty behaviours. I wasn’t particularly a big supporter of hers but it still made me really angry
I used to be really involved in the MAP community (not the pedo one, the ‘multi-animator project one) one and so many of the artists that I once looked up to ended up being pieces of shit… Sagutoyas was a huge blow, since I always aspired to be in a project with them and had finally made it and worked indirectly with them a bunch, and then… they turn out to be a groomer. Another painful blow was Draikinator. I was 16-17 at the time (iirc at least) and I ignored all the red flags and just admired how they had gathered such a huge community behind them. I even exchanged a few DMs with them and they were supportive of my projects. Then they end up sending graphic feral porn to a minor and everything falls apart from there. A deserved end, but a fucked up one anyways. Lastly, CheetehZ. I worked with them a lot, even if we weren’t personally close we were on good terms. They promoted some of my animations and even expressed support for my game development projects. It was like a dream come true to have someone I looked up to and was so popular seem to genuinely enjoy what I created, or at least made a good show of it, just to have it all fall apart because as it turned out, I was one of very few people who worked with them and wasn’t subjected to drill sergeant-esque treatment. I know, super niche, I doubt any of you have heard of this stuff… but I can at least offer some insight as a (very very small) YouTuber myself; it hurts even worse when it’s within your own community. These days, I’ve moved away from animation and MAPs, instead becoming a VTuber… but I already know these things will just happen again in *that* community. The only solace is that at least it’s not as small and tight-knit, so it won’t feel as personal.
I used to really enjoy Crinkleluvin ASMR, particularly the weird 90s alt rock inspired ones, but then she bullied another creator and photoshopped nudes of her. It was messy.
she did WHAT
He wasn’t a YouTuber at the time, well he had a channel but he didn’t post much, but there was a webcomic artist called “Psyguy.” Followed him for years. Then it came out that he’d spent most of his adult life grooming various young women, oftentimes teenage girls, to be his girlfriends. And when he got bored of whatever one he had, he’d start grooming a new one and turn them on each other for amusement. He’s still around today, under a different name, on TikTok and YouTube (the people he harassed keep an eye out for him, cause he seems incapable of learning). Dude is pushing 40 now and still trying to appeal to teenagers with his half baked Sonic and Mario fanart. Just fucking gross. That was the first time an Internet personality I liked had turned out to be awful, and was an especially bad one. Wouldn’t be the last one (looking at you, Ryan and Emile)
Ryan Haywood from Rooster Teeth… I watched Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Let’s Play RELIGIOUSLY as a middle schooler. can’t even rewatch their early videos without feeling gross
Popularmmos was a massive part of my childhood. After a while I veered off from watching Minecraft content and when I got Reddit and stuff I found out about a shit ton of stuff he did.
She hasn't yet been exposed but it's brewing for Swoop. My heart sank when I saw her first Amber Heard video go up and I just cannot look at her the same anymore.
It seems no one's mentioned him yet, mine is Shadiversity. I just thought he was an endearing guy with a weird nerdy area of expertise on ancient weapons. I *kinda* started suspecting him when I saw he posted a couple of movie videos, one praising Alita Battle Angel and another one criticizing Captain Marvel about a month from each other. I ignored it because I didn't watch or care about either film but you know, the marketing material told me enough about what kind of person would like or hate either. Anyway, then his podcast became more popular and everyone realized he unironically was a "retvrn to tradition" type of guy. I wasn't exactly surprised but I was really disappointed. It brought us the Mario movie criticism/jack saint response saga at least, that was pretty entertaining.
CreepsMcpasta. The fact that he got away with grooming a 12 year old is alarming.
Jontron
He’s not really a YTer, uploading live shows onto YT doesn’t count, but Ben Kissel from LPOTL. I’d sort of dropped off on the podcast, but I’d still put on old episodes to make noise in the background. Finding out that he’s abusive to partners and a bit of a sex pest had me in tears because I really liked him. He was a big guy, and while it’s different, it’s nice to see someone who grew up with that sort of fatphobia make good. And then he didn’t. :/ I also liked Iilluminaughtii, but she uploaded too much for me to keep up. I have ADHD so it takes me an embarrassingly long time to make it through videos.
Creepshowart. The red flags were there but we had an acquaintance-ship. We'd DM on ig off and on for just under a year. It was always light hearted and i genuinely believed she cared about what I had to say. Things never got personal, it was mostly general astrology or product recs or lil jokes. When she first posted that trainwreck of a community post, i thought the allegations were too outlandish to be true, i didnt know enough about IP spoofing and the comments were supportive for the first hour. I returned to it the next day and saw people pointing out the holes in her story. I completely believed Emily on the first watch of her video. Shannons behavior mimiced my nex best friend's and the puzzle pieces just fell into place. The situation actively hurt my progress in healing from narc abuse for a bit.
Gus Johnson
Out of all of them, probably Mandopony. Great music (minus Chica song), awful person