Web Original / Overshadowed By Controversy

Leslie: Y'know... I actually did enjoy watching that one Brickleberry retrospective that Ultimatewurmplelover put out a while back...
(Toontalker2005 and his wife express utter appall)
Brianne: Leslie!! Don't you know that Ultimatewurmplelover is the guy who manipulated Squimbledonk into making a video exposing that Pringlefuck cheated on their wife Scarlet Banana, because Pringlefuck collaborated with Glorpshit on a video taking down Finkledinkle, and Finkledinkle doxxed Snickerpoodle, because Snickerpoodle revealed problematic DMs from Hitlerdad in Toontalker2005's Discord server?
(Leslie appears both abashed and confused)

—Leslie and Brianne summing up modern internet discourse near the end of this arc

It's very easy to make your voice heard on The Internet, and just as easy to wind up Overshadowed by Controversy, so please choose your words (and actions) wisely.

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Individual creators

Sebastián Álvarez, also known as Sick Mind, was an artsy Chilean Internet celebrity known for his interest in dark and controversial topics, as well as the goth subculture. But it's hard to talk about him without also discussing multiple things: his many misogynist, racist, and fatphobic comments, to the point of creating a blog just to insult people he saw on the street and insulting the minister of Chile's National Women's Service; openly promoting anorexia; the bizarre claims he made (such as saying he has a doll possessed by the ghost of a Nazi psychic), and especially his 2017 disappearance that has yet to be solved.
The Amazing Atheist has had all of his work overshadowed by the time he bullied someone who claimed to be a rape victim. He is more known for that than any other thing he has done on his channel or otherwise.
Animated James was once a decently popular YouTube animator most well known for his series pitting characters from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic against characters from Sonic the Hedgehog. However it was eventually discovered that he had been creating Squicky fetish comics with characters from the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, including characters who are canonically young children. Him going on a drunken rant attacking his fans shortly after did not help. He eventually retired from the internet and is mostly well known for, and is a constant butt of jokes over, the fetish comics.
Very few people know anything about comedienne Nicole Arbour other than her making controversial videos to attract viewers, her most infamous being "Dear Fat People" and her This Is America parody This is Women, which many have viewed as a tone-deaf white feminist mockery of the original, and her abuse of Matthew Santoro when the two were in a relationship.
Asalieri is remembered more for his jokes and comments that were viewed as transphobic (most infamously his Steel Beth character, a parody of Iron Liz, and calling her ex-boyfriend Lewis Lovhaug gay after she revealed that she was transgender), his social media fights with Angry Joe and his fanbase, and his apparent opposition to YouTubers monetizing their videos despite monetizing his own videos, than for his Reviewing a Reviewer series.
Video game Caustic Critic and Vancouver film student Alexander Badr, better known as Game Dude, is more well known for his tendency to post spam advertising his webshow in the comments sections of other videos, poor responses to criticism (including uploading video responses to critics and constantly taking down his videos and re-uploading them with modifications whenever their ratings fell too low), and the time he didn't deliver a DVD of his show to a man who paid for it (he had stopped selling it, but an impersonator channel re-uploaded the video advertising it, complete with link to Alexander's PayPal, although Alexander eventually refunded the money several weeks later after realizing what happened). However, all of this pales compared to the fact that he was accused of stalking his ex-girlfriend after a Creator Breakdown, which led to him fleeing his country, with his whereabouts still unknown. This documentary covers the controversies in more detail.
Colleen Ballinger, better known by her online alias Miranda Sings, had her career destroyed in July 2023 after she was hit with several accusations of grooming her underage fans, which she publicly denied in an infamous apology video titled "Toxic Gossip Train" that featured her playing the ukulele. Not long after, an ex-employee of Ballinger posted screenshots of her sharing nude photos of Trisha Paytas, resulting in Paytas ending Oversharing, a podcast hosted by her and Ballinger.
Bryon "Psyguy" Beaubein was the creator of the website Fireball 20XL, a site that hosted webcomics, Sprite Comics, music, podcasts, and video series centering around video games, especially Sonic the Hedgehog. In 2014, he became subject to a large number of accusations that he was a serial abuser, sexual harasser, and child predator who had engaged in emotionally and sexually abusive behaviors toward his staff members and fans, including minors. This eventually resulted in him taking down Fireball 20XL and vanishing from the Internet. While the other staff members of the site would escape the controversy by working on their own projects, Beaubein does Let's Plays under the handle Brinnstar (formerly BitPolar) and his channel's low subscriber count and view counts indicate that he will never escape the controversy around him.
Gus Johnson, a comedy YouTuber, was revealed to have been the dismissive boyfriend of his last ex-girlfriend who had suffered an ectopic pregnancy and was pretty much neglected as she went through the pain and loss. It was soon shown through another video involving her getting a nose job where he was with his friends opening Pokémon cards and she was going through clear discomfort. He delivered a video apology (which many pointed out felt insincere) and while he continues to make videos, people will remember that.
Lorenzo Becker, a fairly popular French weightlifting YouTuber, was known for gaining an impressive muscular body after he started out looking rather feeble, and he was seen as inspirational for many aspiring weightlifters. However, his reputation crashed and burned when he had a falling-out with his coach, "Maître Yoda". While he called him a manipulative grifter, Maître Yoda himself did a long vlog in response where he described in detail everything wrong that Lorenzo did: he exposed him as an irresponsible drug-addicted psychopath, a gigolo who traded sexual favors with a gay TV producer, and a child abuser. Since then, Lorenzo has lied very low, having become the subject of massive Memetic Mutation at his expense on the French Internet.
Jeremy "Arcadum" Black, originally known as the creator and dungeon master of popular Actual Play series The Living World of Verum, is nowadays almost entirely discussed with regards to the many behind-the-scenes horror stories that popped up around August 2021, documenting a chronic history of being abusive and highly manipulative towards his players and fellow creators, including sexually harassing around 20 female participants. With just about everyone who formerly collaborated with him — players, artists, composers, business partners, etc. — verifying his history and disowning him, making it next-to-impossible for Arcadum's shows to continue, it's just as unlikely that he will ever shed the bad press.
Chris Bores, a YouTuber known as the creator of The Irate Gamer, has had a few controversies to his name:
- The only thing most people know about The Irate Gamer is the countless accusations of plagiarism he faced throughout his career due to the similarities to The Angry Video Game Nerd, to the point where he would say things that sounded like they were taken almost directly from James. Not helped by his questionable responses to it, most infamously a reply that James Rolfe copied him and then telling the one who gave him that comment to "go shove a cactus up your ass!"
- His "History of Video Games" series, itself ill-regarded, was overshadowed by several inaccuracies (most infamously misconstruing the name of Pong creator Allan Alcorn as "Al Acorn") and an incredibly crude scene in the Magnavox Odyssey episode in which he drew three fake cards from a game, which features two children on the overlay, reading "penis", "masturbation hand", and "vagina". The video was also the subject of scorn from the console's creator Ralph Baer, who Chris claimed "didn't understand the video and was honored," prompting Baer to address the inaccuracies in response.
- His E3 coverage was already considered to be lackluster, especially compared to more professional coverage, but it's mainly remembered for Chris pretending to blow up the Ubisoft building after he was denied entrance into their press conference.
- In general, Bores is infamous for his egotistical behavior, crass sense of humor, unwillingness to put any actual research into his videos, and seeming inability to take criticism.
MarioTehPlumber (real name John Burris, no relation to the American civil rights attorney) was already extremely unpopular among the Sonic the Hedgehog (and later Nintendo) fandom for his biased, profanity-laden, and nonsensical "reviews" on YouTube that prioritized character design over gameplay, along with insulting his own viewers and attacking anybody who criticizes or disagrees with him. However, outside of the Sonic and Nintendo fanbases, he's mostly known only as the man who purchased over a hundred Rosalina amiibos in 2015, to spite those who wanted an amiibo of her because he hated her "Hentai" character design (his words; note that "hentai" is a common word he uses to attack Sonic's design from Sonic Adventure onwards, suggesting an All Anime Is Naughty Tentacles mentality taken to ludicrous extremes). This incident was reported by video game journalists. He's also somewhat infamous among the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate community for being a suspect in the 2018 "Grinch Leak" hoax, though there isn't any actual confirmation that he was the culprit. Since the Rosalina amiibo incident, he has been largely recognized as being a Troll the whole time, but expect any discussions about him to mention his rabid purchasing.
Tom Cassell aka ProSyndicate is now known less for his gaming commentary videos and more for his repeated advertising violations, in particular him promoting a gambling website called CSGOLotto.com without disclosing that he was one of the site's owners.
Beauty YouTuber James Charles has become a very polarizing figure due to making comments some have interpreted as being racist and/or transphobic, falsifying his past, and a video produced by longtime collaborator Tati Westbrook titled "BYE SISTER ..." accusing him of betrayal, dishonesty, manipulative behavior and sexual predation. While Charles was able to defend himself against the allegations quite well with a video entitled "No More Lies" that presented evidence that seemed to refute many of Westbrook's accusations, he's still a contentious individual, especially in the Beauty YouTube community.
- On the flip side, many people found out that Tati's video has a few holes and several unfounded accusations. What's more, in 2020, she released a video revealing that "BYE SISTER ..." was the result of pressure from Jeffree Star and Shane Dawson (both of them infamous for their controversies) and they threw her under the bus after the video was released. However, Tati's video was criticized for not taking accountability, shifting the blame, emotional manipulation and saying that she didn't do it out of malice or jealousy despite the original video being quite malicious. All three of them lost subscribers in response^note while James Charles' own subscriber count rose.
Hyojin Choi, better known as Squizzy or Squizxy, is an Australian animator and artist who was originally known for their animations on popular memes. Her reputation started to take a nosedive in 2019, where, during the controversy involving the YouTuber Slazo being falsely accused of rape by an ex-girlfriend, not only did Choi refuse to change her viewpoint despite it being thoroughly debunked, but anecdotes came out alleging they 'spearheaded' the rumor for the sake of ruining Slazo's reputation. Following further digging in light of this, she came under continued fire for allegations of animal abuse, toxic behavior and bullying, use of racist slurs, and a NSFW alt account that contained pornographic drawings of other YouTubers, some of whom were minors at the time.
Slazo was very popular on youtube before his ex-girlfriend said he raped and abused her which led to many people from different sides of the internet to ridicule, unsub, and read the texts in question. It seemed he was guilty when he remained silent for a while, but he soon posted a video revealing that while he wasn't the best boyfriend (he admitted that) he never raped or abused her. A small few of the people who tried to ruin his reputation did eventually apologize, but users such as Hyojin Choi refused to apologize and she even said she would still believe the friend even though evidence proved she was lying. A former friend of Slazo even admitted that while the evidence Slazo submitted was strong, he still believed his friend was a rapist and he still hasn't apologized as well. The damage was done either way and even though Slazo proved his Innocence, he sadly left YouTube a few months later. His ex-girlfriend never seemed to admit she was lying or even issued Slazo an apology.
You might have known Minecraft Hardcore Factions player Graham Ivan Clark under his username Open back around 2016 for notoriously scamming his audience and DDOSing anyone who slain his avatar in Factions, among other things. No, he's well known for escalating his actions to SIM Swapping accounts to the point where he managed to hack the entire Twitter website, which resulted in multiple accounts being hacked and his arrest not long after. Nowadays, his Minecraft days are usually considered to be the beginning of his hacking career.
It's hard to talk about the Magic: The Gathering channel The Commander's Quarters without getting into the Captain fiasco: The crossover Secret Lair with The Walking Dead had a highly negative reception from established players because it consisted of time-limited, mechanically unique cards.^note When it was announced that the Commander Rules Committee would not be banning these cards, Mitch responded to the outrage by creating Captain, a format identical to Commander except for its democratic structure. The project's Discord server was unfortunately overrun with hate speech and griefers, and while Mitch was quick to deactivate it and distance himself from Captain, the incident badly tarnished his reputation. It also killed Captain right out of the gate, with community attempts to revive the format being unsuccessful.
Cosmodore (also known as Cosmo) was once an animation critic from Germany, who had a reputation for likability and was a friend of and frequent collaborator with other popular critics like Saberspark and PieGuyRulz. However, beginning in 2020, he became better known for publicly admitting to have dated an underage ^notesaid to have been at least 14-years-old artist outside of his home country, which was followed by several other incidents involving child grooming. He has tried justifying his relationship by pointing out that Germany's age of consent laws are different from those in America, but it has (understandably) fallen on deaf ears. Afterwards, he flat-out embraced his new reputation as a predator when he changed his Twitter bio to say "proud groomer" and "actively grooming: 1".
Count Dankula is less known for his humorous skits and more well known for his "M8 Yer Dugs A Nazi" video, in which his teaching of his girlfriend's Pug to lift his paw to the phrase "Sieg Heil!" got him in trouble with UK police (as it is illegal in the UK to idolize Nazism even jokingly), which ended in him being hit with an £800 fine. He still is appreciated for his comedy, but a lot of people still found him through that video alone, and his later vocal support of the deeply polarizing UK Independence Party only attracted further controversy though he later made a video as to why he ended up leaving.
Creepshow Art was a commentary channel with over 500,000 subscribers, known for her art commentary videos, discussing serious topics, and her speedpaint videos, the latter of which have become popular with commentary videos. However, in June 2021 she was exposed for her posts on lolcow — an anonymous imageboard site targeted towards content creators — that trash-talked several YouTube content creators, often using various bigoted slurs, and anonymously promoting her channel. Soon after, the channel Emily Artful revealed that Creepshow and her husband had stalked her for years, an allegation that Creepshow attempted to refute by dredging up long-deleted personal information about Emily, which only affirmed Emily's case in the eyes of many. Creepshow left YouTube after, and her content has been overshadowed by the stalking allegations.
Family prank channel DaddyOFive is better known for allegations that their videos went beyond comedy into outright child abuse, with massive amounts of evidence supporting the claim posted on YouTube, and the controversy over their "Invisible Ink Prank" video. The backlash eventually grew so big that two of the five children shown in the videos were removed from their parents' custody, and every single one of their channel's videos was taken down. They attempted several comebacks with their new channels being under the radar for months at a time but they were all taken down after YouTube was alerted.
Shane Dawson has had a number of controversies over the years including videos containing racist jokes (including his usage of the N-word as well as blackface), as well as his many allegations of sexual misconduct (including towards minors and his cat). This all came to a head in June 2020 when during an attempt to cancel James Charles (himself no stranger to controversy), a video resurfaced of him pretending to masturbate to a poster of a then 11-year old Willow Smith, unsurprisingly earning him the wrath of her brother, Jaden Smith, and her mother, Jada Pinkett. He attempted to save his reputation with an apology video but it was criticized for him using his depression and anxiety to justify his behavior, and still got his channels demonetized and for Target to stop selling his books. His reputation, not helped by his edgy humor and occasional videos about conspiracy theories, would reach the point of him moving out of California due to becoming a pariah among celebrities.
Alex Day, a YouTuber and musician previously known for his geeky and entertaining videos and music, is now known for accusations of sexual abuse towards him and his admittance of "manipulative relationships", which cost him plenty of fans and reputation.
EDP445 dug a big grave for himself in summer and fall 2020 after he was stricken with allegations of inappropriate conversations with underage girls. While he denied these allegations, they would be proven true in April 2021, after he was caught texting and attempting to meet up with a 13-year-old girl, unaware that it was all a set-up by the Predator Poachers. When confronted, he ended up admitting to his pedophilic behavior, resulting in his account being terminated.
Jason Ethier, best known as ImJayStation, was originally infamous for his "3 AM CHALLENGE" videos and accusations of arrogant behavior. However, he started gaining infamy for creating monetized videos that centered on dead creators, such as Mac Miller, XXXTentacion and Etika, often being uploaded mere days after their deaths. This backfired on him when he claimed his girlfriend Alexia Marano had supposedly died as part of a prank to promote his secondary channel. Marano ended their relationship publicly soon after citing that Ethier had assaulted her, which he was later arrested for, and the backlash resulted in Ethier's channel being demonetized and eventually kicked off YouTube.
N&A Productions was a relatively annoying and unpopular YouTuber for his 3am videos, as well as his extremely broken and unintelligible English (most likely due to the thickness of his accent), but wasn't really in the scope of controversy. Then he made a video about Etika and calling him, went over as well as the Jaystation video. Then he uploaded an "apology" where he showed no remorse for what he did and even seemed confused at what he did wrong seeming to ignoring the fact he tried to use a YouTuber's death for clicks.
Gaming YouTuber and livestreamer Etika was beloved for his over-the-top reactions to trailers, particularly Super Smash Bros. character reveals and other content. However, in his final months, he became more known for his mental health problems. Not helping that a large part (or vocal minority) of his fanbase handled it in a manner that has been criticized as being unhelpful and perhaps even outright harmful towards Etika and other folks with mental issues, such as denouncing Etika's breakdowns as staged due to Etika claiming his first breakdown in October 2018 was faked or supporting Etika's harmful behavior during his episodes, which has been criticized as eventually leading to his suicide in June 2019. The affair was already high-profile, and Etika's suicide only boosted its publicity further, resulting in mainstream perception of Etika focusing on his breakdown and the circumstances of his suicide first and his actual career second (to the point where he only got a Wikipedia article six days after his death, with the article prominently focusing on his mental health issues).
The Fine Brothers were fairly well-known as directors/producers of popular YouTube web series, most notably the React series which consisted of people of various ages (kids, teens, and adults) reacting to different forms of media like cartoons, music, movies, etc. However, in early 2016, the brothers announced a program known as React World, in which they attempted to copyright the term "React". This caused massive backlash, since many saw it as the brothers attempting to create a monopoly in a genre they didn't even invent, as well as trying to make money off of other channels they had no involvement with. It didn't help that many other YouTubers had their reaction videos get copyright strikes shortly after the announcement. The brothers later tried to address the controversy, but only created more problems when they referred to the genre as their "brand". The brothers later shot back up into controversy in June 2020 when they were exposed for allegations of casual racism, which was made worse when it was discovered that one of the brothers, Benny Fine, made an appearance in the above-mentioned Shane Dawson blackface video. Shortly afterwards, the brothers officially resigned from React Media and have not been heard ever since.
Mommyblogger Ruby Franke had her YouTube channel 8 Passengers subject to mass ridicule and deleted after one of her children was found by the neighbors starved and with open wounds. The channel had been declining in popularity for months due to allegations of abuse but this time the police were called. Franke lost all her social media accounts and was sentenced to prison after a guilty plea.
GeePM (a.k.a. GPM or Gay Purple Man) was a huge fan of Vinesauce who was connected to the Games Repainted group, and helped create the now-infamous Super Mario Galaxy Repainted hack before joining Vinesauce as one of its streamers. However, it's difficult to talk about him without bringing up the fact that he solicited donations for personal indulgences under the guise of resolving personal financial issues, Games Repainted attributes a good portion of their eventual shuttering to his egotistical behavior, or his heavy involvement in the smear campaign against Vinny despite having participated in a cover-up of severe misconduct within his own community. Following the latter incident, he quit streaming altogether and completely disappeared from the internet.
Olivia Jade Giannulli was a fairly popular YouTuber who made beauty and fashion videos. However, her reputation took a hit in March 2019 with the 2019 college admissions bribery scandal, in which her parents were charged with paying $500,000 in bribes to a coach at the University of Southern California in order for their daughters to gain admission as athletic prospects when they might otherwise have not been able to. The backlash was so great that she eventually disabled comments on her Instagram account.
Twitch streamer ZilianOP (real name Angel Hamilton) is known solely for pretending to be paraplegic so he could bilk more money out of people by falsely claiming he needed to buy a new wheelchair and pay for medical treatment. His ruse was discovered after he stood up from his wheelchair on camera without realizing he was still recording. In the ensuing backlash, he falsely claimed he fell down, but nobody believed it and Twitch permanently banned him and refunded the money he conned out of his subscribers.
No B.S. (real name Brooks Russell Heatherly) is a conservative political commentator on YouTube. However, people generally know him less for his commentary videos and more for him saying things widely viewed as racist and anti-Semitic, as well as his reputation for acting smarter than he actually is. The latter was cemented when he had a discussion with Turkey Tom and No Time for Nonsense where it quickly became clear that he had no idea what socialism was, even though he'd previously described some people he disagreed with as "socialists".
It's difficult to talk about AnimeBroMii (real names Angel and Issac Hernandez) without bringing up the litany of allegations against them including several instances of grooming, emotional manipulation, ripping off other plush YouTubers such as SuperMarioLogan and SonicSong182, and weaponizing their large fanbase to attack smaller creators, which they have all denied. A document (NSFW warning) created by a friend of many of the victims was created that explained many of the allegations, some of which go back as far as 2012, and is still being updated as of this writing.
"Beautuber" Jaclyn Hill's disastrous "moldy" lipsticks launch. To elaborate, she was immediately blasted on the internet after the launch of her own makeup brand, Jaclyn Cosmetics, with a line of lipsticks that were found to be in awful condition. Consumers reported to have found spots and fibers, which they suspected to be mold or bacteria. Other Beauty YouTubers such as RawBeautyKristi even went as far as to examine them under a microscope, showing them in all their horrific glory.◊ She only added fuel to the fire after uploading a video claiming that her products were safe instead of recalling them after numerous complaints.
Vlogger Brooke Houts destroyed her reputation overnight when she accidentally uploaded footage of herself hitting and spitting on her dog. She became a target of widespread hatred immediately, and it's almost certain that she will forever be known solely as an animal abuser. It doesn't help that in another video she revealed to have rehomed her dog when he started attacking others (probably caused by her abuse).
Popular Instagrammer Kayla Itsines also fell victim to controversy in 2017, due to people claiming that her Instagram page was promoting "fake news", mainly because of the attitude from 2017 onwards towards the media, with some people claiming that it was either astroturfing, and some conspiracy theorists believed it was part of an attempt to distract people from Brexit and Donald Trump. As of November 2018, it still remains controversial and there was also controversy over whether she had ties to the Trump campaign or not.
Gregory Daniel Jackson, better known as Onision, started off as a relatively popular skit YouTuber, but is now mostly known for allegations that he's abused and groomed young girls. This also extends to his husband Kai (formerly known as Laineybot), who started a relationship with Greg while underage and also is accused of sexual behavior towards young girls. These allegations became so prolific that Chris Hansen created a Netflix documentary about it.
While JonTron (real name Jon Jafari) is still a famous and beloved online comedian known for pioneering the absurdist comedy style of media reviewing and for his stint as the original co-host of Game Grumps, he is also known for getting his voicework removed from Yooka-Laylee after expressing statements that were viewed as racist and nativist on Twitter and during a livestreamed debate with well-known streamer Destiny. He has since apologized and if the views and comments on his two videos when he returned in August 2017 are any indication, it appears many of his fans have since forgiven him. However, outside of his core fanbase, the Destiny debate and its repercussions still continue to affect public perception of him.
JC-the-Hyena, the author of infamous Creepypasta Sonic.exe, had been a controversial figure within the Creepypasta community due to his massive ego, his inability to take criticism, and his infamous temper tantrum on social media when the original story was moved to the Trollpasta Wiki, where it remained until it shut down in 2018. However, in the summer of 2021, several current and former Sonic.exe fans came forward and alleged that JC-the-Hyena had been taking part in sexual roleplays with them while they were still underage. This, combined with the revelation that JC had been emotionally abusing his at-the-time girlfriend and making her believe such actions were normal, his attempted comeback under another username, and later actions including hacking another person's Discord account, only served to sour both his and the story's reputation to the general public. A more in-depth analysis can be found here.
British-born aspiring singer/songwriter "Jeyaia" made a small, but decent growing YouTube and Instagram career with her cover songs in Australia and Indonesia. But since November 2020, she has become more known for her promotion of controversial pseudoscience on YouTube and (following Donald Trump's twitter suspension the next year) numerous Big Tech "whistleblower" conspiracy theories on Instagram than her singing. Not helping matters was her hostile attitude towards followers who disagreed with her views, which made her reputation irreversibly divisive.
Austin Jones started off as a relatively popular YouTube star from the early 2010s, who gained fame thanks to his musical talent, songwriting, and A Cappella song covers. However, in mid-2015, Jones was accused of sexual misconduct towards several underage fans shortly before he was scheduled to appear at the Vans Warped Tour, of which Jones later admitted to. While this scandal already put a bit of a stink on his reputation, it later came to a head in 2017 when Jones was arrested and, as of 2019, convicted for the production and possession of child pornography.
Jordie Jordan, better known by his handle WingsOfRedemption, was one of the pioneers of gaming commentary videos. But despite his early success, his reputation has been clouded by toxic behavior towards his fans and former friends, poor sportsmanship, multiple incidents of dishonest behavior (most notoriously attempting to fix a Call of Duty rematch in an attempt to save his own ego after a previous loss), and making comments widely viewed as transphobic.
Max Karson, known on YouTube as Mr.Girl, earned infamy for his extremely racist, misogynistic, and homophobic statements in the past, as well as verbally abusing his girlfriend, and threatening to shoot up a college (the latter of which resulted in police being called on him). However, all of this was overshadowed however by his review of the already controversial Cuties, where he praised the film in such a manner that came across as him being a pedophile. The review both reinforced that movie's controversies and made him into one of the most genuinely hated figures on the site, as his insistence that the film making young girls look "sexy" was a positive reinforced the perception that he was a pedophile (which he has denied).
Twitch and YouTuber livestreamer Katerino is now known for cheating on fellow YouTuber CallMeCarson with his friend GoodGuyFitz and having another boyfriend (her manager) while leading Carson on. Her apology video where she didn't take accountability for her actions, her blaming her cheating on her mental illness and multiple other boyfriends coming out did not go well with many fans.
Kero The Wolf, a fairly popular Furry YouTuber, was outed as being a part of a zoosadist^note Telegram group in September of 2018, leading to him swiftly being condemned and cast out by the fandom and leading to him being investigated by the police. While he was ultimately let off by the police due to his actions either falling outside the statute of limitations or other legal technicalities, and subsequently returned to making videos, his return was met with massive backlash and widespread disownment by the rest of the Furry Fandom.
CallMeCarson (real name Carson King) was once an extremely popular Minecraft player and comedian, as well as a founding member of the comedy podcast Lunch Club. In January 2021, Carson's reputation soured when a Twitter user accused King of sexting her when she was underage (King was 19 at the time whereas the user was 17), allegations that were confirmed by two members of Lunch Club. Carson's reputation soured overnight, with several creators unlisting videos featuring him, and he deleted his Discord and Subreddit in response. He has managed to bounce back from it by the end of the year (with emphasis put on his personal growth through means such as ongoing charity donations), but his reputation has diminished significantly by this point.
PewDiePie (real name Felix Kjellberg) was the most-subscribed individual on YouTube for almost a decade, and remains among the most watched YouTubers. Starting in 2017, however, his reputation started to derail due to making videos that were perceived as being anti-Semitic,^note which resulted in him getting dropped by Disney and Google, brought the rape jokes he made (and had already apologized for) early in his career back into the spotlight, and is speculated by some to have been a partial catalyst for the first Adpocalypse^note. His reputation was further tarnished by him using the N-word during a livestream and shouting out ER, a YouTube channel featuring offensive and politically-charged humor, among nearly 20 other channels. Things got even worse when the white supremacist perpetrator of the 2019 Christchurch massacre endorsed him while livestreaming the atrocity. While PewDiePie has since toned down his behavior and apologized, he remains controversial outside of his fanbase, and you'd be hard-pressed to find an article on him after 2017 that fails to mention his controversies, even if that it was years beforehand.
ProJared (real name Jared Knabenbauer) was a popular video game reviewer, a former member of ScrewAttack and Normal Boots, and a collaborator with Game Grumps. Today, however, he's better known for his ex-wife's accusations of cheating on her with Game Grumps associate Holly Conrad and multiple fans' claims that he solicited nudes from them while they were underage. Jared managed to recover his goodwill with fans by explaining in a rebuttal video that the affair was mutually consensual between his and Conrad's spouses and that his accusers lied about their age and were cut off before anything sexual occurred. However, it's still difficult to discuss him without circling back to the allegations.
Brazilian YouTuber Lara, better known by the handle 'Mirth' (and earlier on by Kodomodachi or Kodo), was previously well-known in the Friday Night Funkin' community for her game mods, and has currently moved on to animations of popular media. Despite her popularity, she's become particularly controversial for having dated and groomed a 13-year-old while she herself was 18; her reactions to allegations, which alternate between insincere apologies for her actions, to claiming it's not a big deal and blaming cancel culture; trying to silence any commenters who bring up her actions; emotional manipulation of her fanbase, and generally coming off as more concerned with avoiding being labeled as a predator than actually taking responsibility or making amends. In wake of the initial controversy, she's also come under fire for doing the same thing (dating minors) in the Ace Attorney fandom, and dating someone (known as Enzo or Z03Y/Zoey) who has also groomed, solicited sexual photos from, and emotionally abused and manipulated minors, and hiding behind them when having to face the backlash of her own allegations; the two of them have also been accused of trying to slander and harrass one of Zoey's victims to get the heat off themselves.
SrlOctober23, also known as TheMessiahOfTheDead and by the pseudonym "Shannon Love", was known in the community for being the co-creator of Sonic.exe as well has her vocal dislike of the Sonic.exe Nightmare Universe and other such adaptations for their portrayal of Sonic.exe himself, claiming it to be disrespectful to his character. However, in the summer of 2021, she was one of the many people who had accused JC-the-Hyena, Shannon's at-the-time boyfriend and the author of the original story, of doing sexual roleplays with underage people on websites like DeviantArt and FurAffinity. While JC received most of the backlash, many people have since come forward and alleged that Shannon herself was also part of the sexual roleplaying due to JC normalizing it on her. Unlike JC, who still continues to have an online presence, Shannon has willingly relinquished ownership of Sonic.exe, and disappeared from the internet to seek therapy as of 2021.
Josh Macedo was formerly a very popular and very well-liked blogger on both YouTube and Tumblr, known for his dorky nerd persona, his "I'm late for school" meme, and being an outspoken male feminist, all of which helped garner him legions of fangirls. That is, until various women, a majority of them being underage, came out stating that Josh had sent them sexually explicit messages pressuring them for sex, along with images of himself either naked or masturbating. This ultimately destroyed Josh's reputation, and Josh himself has long since disappeared from Internet life, with his current whereabouts being unknown.
MagicScrumpy was a YouTuber who specialized in making mods for Super Smash Bros. Melee. However, he is mostly remembered for the combo video "600 Hours", a tool-assisted video he tried to pass off as real and submitted to a competition with a cash prize (he did not win). When it was discovered to be a TAS, he didn't publicly address the issue for months, and on his public Discord, he harshly attacked the community, dismissed the accusations as "drama" and admitted to putting unskippable advertisements on "600 Hours" to make money on those who wanted to scrutinize the video. Shortly afterwards, it was discovered that most of his "Rebalancing Melee" series was plagiarized from Melee SD Remix, a mod he had previously criticized for making characters too powerful. Together, these scandals destroyed his reputation in the Melee community.
LifeInATent (real name Brian Martin) is less remembered for his content as a whole, and more remembered for his video exploiting the 2011 Japanese earthquake (most infamously, telling his viewers to "thumbs up this video for epic earthquake") and his subsequent apology video which many interpreted as illegitimate. His apparent attempts to silence people by copyright claiming their videos condemning his actions only added fuel to the fire.
Atheist YouTube vlogger and chemist Phil Mason (better known as Thunderf00t) is well known for his exposing of creationism and other forms of pseudoscience, as well as his work on the reactions of alkali metals with water. However, he's even more well known for his extremely caustic attitude and his willingness to go after the social justice movement... in particular, being banned from Free Thought Blogs after one week, then publishing the members' mailing list in retaliation, mostly for refusing to go along with their feminist-positive ideology. His videos about Anita Sarkeesian in particular have brought about the most heat of all of his videos, leading many viewers to label him an unrepentant misogynist because of them.
- The controversy with Thunderf00t also spilled over to tech-oriented YouTuber Mayiandjay (later known as MJTech), when Mason accused Mayiandjay of promoting a deceptive product, i.e. a portable air conditioner allegedly of dubious effectiveness. Mason's fans took to Mayiandjay's channel and threw ad hominem attacks and harassment towards Jay and his family. This led to Mayiandjay disabling comments on his channel for a period until the harassment died down.
Mike Matei used to be generally well-respected for the most part by fans of The Angry Video Game Nerd for his role as a contributor who would help James out. However, nowadays Mike is more known for the time when he boasted about his penis size on social media, complete with him showing a picture on the official Cinemassacre subreddit (which turned out to have been sourced from pornography), and deleted comments mentioning the incident, as well as his infamous Minecraft With Gadget video and his tendency to take down any criticism of it, which only made it more infamous due to the Streisand Effect.
Gaming YouTuber Filip Miucin once had a decent following, but his career was torpedoed when Boomstick Gaming, a fellow gaming YouTube channel, alleged he ripped off their review of Dead Cells and posted a video playing their reviews side by side to prove it. This led to Miucin being fired from his job as a contributor for IGN after they reached the same conclusion. After gaming news site Kotaku found evidence that Miucin had plagiarised his review of FIFA 18 from a NintendoLife article, Miucin released an infamous now-deleted video that denied any responsibility for his actions, but essentially dared Kotaku and the Internet to try and find more plagiarised reviews. So they did, and several more examples of plagiarism on his part were found. Now no mention of Miucin can go without discussing his plagiarism, his complete avoidance of responsibility and how long he got away with it.
Twitch streamer Alinity (real name Natalia Mogollon) is primarily known nowadays for accusations of animal abuse after footage of her throwing her pet cat over her head on-stream surfaced in July of 2019, which resulted in an investigation by the Saskatoon Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
Storytime YouTuber Tana Mongeau will most likely be remembered for the failure of TanaCon, a convention organized after VidCon 2017 refused to give her "featured creator" status. The convention quickly became infamous for the venue becoming overcrowded, the lack of food and drinks, and the lack of protection from the heat that resulted in some people needing medical attention.
While The Mysterious Mr. Enter (real name Johnathan Rozanski) has been no stranger to controversy over the years, he earned particular notoriety for his review of Turning Red in April of 2022, in which he criticized the film for not touching on post-9/11 paranoia because it was set in 2002. The criticism became a widespread subject of online debate and mockery, with many netizens noting how inappropriate such a subject would be in the context of the film's plot and tone, along with the Fridge Logic of why a movie set six months later in a different country would reference the terrorist attacks. Even though Mr. Enter admitted he made a mistake and that he deserved the backlash he got for the review, it was too little, too late. As a result, Mr. Enter became primarily known outside the animation community as "the Turning Red 9/11 guy."
ONLYUSEmeBLADE is a YouTube streamer nowadays better known for being a severe alcoholic who has groped women, abused animals multiple times (including a moment in a livestream in April 2019 that prompted Keemstar to end their friendship, where he threw a dog off of himself) and has dropped the N-word on livestreams multiple times, not to mention the fact that he has an immature attitude, which gained him a reputation for being one of the most hated content creators on the platform. It wasn't until November 2020 that his channel was terminated.
YouTuber and blogger Lily Orchard (also known as Lily Peet) was already a divisive figure on social media, but her videos have created quite a bit of controversy, especially her Glass of Water series. The most noteworthy incidents involving Orchard include her mangled relationship with former friend Josh Scorcher, various statements that were regarded as sexist and ableist, her virulent anti-conservative political beliefs, and expressing support for a friend of hers who was discovered to have possessed child pornography. Orchard also has pretty harsh reactions to critiques of her and her work, including the fanfic Stockholm and her entire "(Show X) is Garbage and Here's Why" video series, especially her Steven Universe video where she implies its creator Rebecca Sugar is a Nazi sympathizer (despite Sugar being Jewish) and many people believe she stole this format from H.Bomberguy. All of this made Orchard an extremely controversial figure online, and it's become impossible to even mention Orchard's name without bringing up her radical political views and arrogant behavior. The controversy surrounding Orchard eventually got to the point where her Twitter account was banned^note.
Former Vine user, YouTuber and former Bizaardvark star Jake Paul is better known for his many bouts of controversy than his career. This includes his reckless behavior during his three-month stay in Beverly Grove in Los Angeles, his infamous feud with RiceGum, doxxing the address of Post Malone in a vlog out of spite from Post Malone joking about how bad It's Everyday Bro is, and numerous accusations of arrogance, rude behavior and abuse from former members of his Team 10 group. This has resulted in his reputation going downhill, his eventual departure from Bizaardvark and the disbanding of Team 10.
Vlogger and former Vine user Logan Paul, the older brother of the aforementioned Jake Paul, quickly rose up through his vlogging videos. However, he made himself the target of a major controversy in 2017, when he posted a now-deleted video on YouTube featuring himself and three others finding a man who hung himself in the Aokigahara forest (infamous for the high number of suicides that have taken place in it) of Japan and made insensitive jokes at the victim's expense, even including the dead body in the video's thumbnail. Not only did this lead to Paul getting temporarily suspended and demonetized from YouTube, but his reputation has never fully recovered from the incident. In addition, the incident caused YouTube to make significant and divisive changes to their creator program.
Monalisa Perez, aka La MonaLisa, is only known for when she made mainstream news by attempting a dangerous stunt: shooting a bullet at an encyclopedia shielding her husband's chest, seeing if the encyclopedia would block the bullet. It did not work and the husband ended up dying, leading to her conviction of involuntary manslaughter. Because the controversy was used to highlight the unfortunate phenomenon of how stupid YouTubers will be just to rack up views, it has stuck to her, and to this day, her videos tended to have more dislikes than likes until it was terminated.
While her videos were frequent targets of mockery, comedienne Lele Pons has become better known for several accounts of arrogant behavior from some of her former co-stars, including allegations that she attempted to sabotage her friend Amanda Cerny's career, as well as a time that she was caught lying about donating her hair to charity.
Prison Mate Luke is a commentary YouTube channel dedicated to ongoing drama across the internet that exploded in popularity in 2020, likely due to his clear (if unremarkable) presentation and deadpan delivery. However, he was soon criticized by other commentators for his lack of research on delicate topics and Manipulative Editing to the point of borderline defamation (for instance, when covering the then-controversy surrounding art channel Hopeless Peaches, he dismissed her depression as fake despite there being a lot of evidence that she did, indeed, have depression - none of which he showed in the video, of course). While he made a video defending himself, his claim that commentary channels only need an opinion, not definite evidence sunk his reputation within the commentary community further.
Although gaming YouTuber ProsafiaGaming is highly successful, having over 3 million subscribers, any discussions of him will focus less on his content and more on his tendency to put major spoilers for recently-released (or, in some cases, upcoming) video games in the thumbnails and titles of his videos, which has earned him the ire of many gamers who aren't Spoiler Hounds, especially since his high subscriber count means that his videos often show up in the recommendations of anyone watching anything related to the game in question (Prosafia's response to the controversy was that the spoilers are necessary to avoid being misleading, and that anyone who wants to avoid spoilers should use a third-party browser extension to block his channel). The hate for him was so severe that he started getting death threats, and when he narrowly missed being shot in March of 2020, most people jumped to the conclusion that it was the work of a hater actually acting on those threats (although some commenters noted that it's more likely to be a stray bullet from an unrelated incident).
RelaxAlax is a moderately popular Nintendo-centric essayist and analyst who was accused in 2019 by an ex-girlfriend and YouTuber, Ray Mona (aka Bobdunga) of inflicting sexual, mental, and emotional abuse on her. Her story was eventually corroborated by several people who knew of Alax personally. This story would not pick up steam until 2020 where many of his supporters left in protest and many fellow personalities cut ties with him (including Scott The Woz cutting his cameo at his 200th episode, Borderline Forever). Alax still commits to making the same content he always had after addressing the allegations directly though the controversy still clouds his reputation, to the point when searching his name it would bring up the allegations against him and discussion around them first.
It's impossible to discuss the videos of postmodern feminist critic Anita Sarkeesian from the Women Vs. Tropes web series without discussing the critics she attracted, both legitimate and sexist, particularly during the Gamergate controversy.
Draikinator (Real name Nathan Schoonover) was an animator known for their Multi-Animator Projects and already a polarizing figure in the Warrior Cats fandom due to their reactions to younger members of the fandom (including an incident where a kid commented on one of their videos they didn't like their LGBT content, with Nate replying the kid should get run over by a train) and opposing opinions from others on their headcanons, along with the plots of their MAPs, such as Cabinet Man [COMPLETE Evil!Spottedleaf MAP] thanks to the content in Spottedleaf's Heart (covered on the literature page). However, their already shaky reputation was shot into orbit in the summer of 2019, when Nate sent porn to a 14 year old Twitter user during another incident where they were calling out another user for drawing NSFW content. The outrage was so large they were essentially scrubbed from the whole community soon after it was revealed they did this, with legal action from the 14 year old's family reportedly getting involved. They made an apology video six months later and had promised to stay away from the Warriors fandom… only to delist it and upload an amv they made based on Mapleshade's Vengeance. While Nate still makes content on their YouTube channel, the controversy hangs over their head, especially in the Warriors fandom, which they've strayed away from.
While online anime critic Trey Eric Sesler (a.k.a. Mr. Anime and later Mr. Bryko and LensCap Productions) was the subject of considerable praise and attention during his lifetime as part of the first wave of reviewer YouTubers to rise to prominence on the platform, today he is mainly remembered for committing familicide in 2012, with the later revelation that he was plotting a school shooting only driving more nails into the coffin and ultimately resulting in his channel being terminated 8 years later.
Antoons (real name Anton Severtnik) is an Estonian YouTuber and animator best known as the creator of Deathbed and YouTube Animations. However, beginning in 2020, Antoons became involved in numerous controversies that saw irreparable damage to his reputation. First off, he was accused of tracing other people's artwork for his animations, which Antoons responded by sending false copyright strikes (one of which was successful) towards anybody who criticized him. Then he began creating politically charged comic strips that drew criticism for their bigoted overtones, which wasn't helped by him defending blackface in a video with fellow YouTuber Censored Anon. Most infamously, after being criticized by a then-underaged artist named Puppychan on Twitter, Antoons created a game titled Pillfighter which featured Puppychan's eponymous fursona battling Antoons' own persona Mr. Freaks with period blood.
Tumblr blogger Sixpenceee was widely known for posting interesting facts and horror stories; however, her public image took a turn in 2017, starting with her offering a service called "Sixpenceee Heals": people would pay her to essentially receive amateur therapy from her. This was widely mocked, to the point where Sixpencee apologized and cancelled the service. Other controversies, such as allegations of plagiarism and ableism, started to pop up, but everything came to a head when she revealed that her extended family members in Bengladesh utilized child labor. Nowadays, she's mainly known as "that tumblr blogger who had a child slave."^note
Benjamin "Apollo Legend" Smith was once revered in certain parts of the Speedrun and Score Attack community for helping expose cheaters—most notably Todd Rogers and Billy Mitchell—but is now known for making a now-unlisted video in 2018 that criticized Games Done Quick for permanently banning speedrunner RWhiteGoose for making bigoted comments on a forum. He claimed that GDQ was banning him simply because a member of Antifa pointed it out to them, while intentionally neglecting to mention what Goose had said, before telling people to boycott GDQ for being "ban-happy" (despite them only perma-banning eight people throughout the event's history with this being the first outside event ban). This controversy reached its breaking point in December 2018 when DarkViperAU made a video calling him out for lying to his fans about the situation. The resulting fallout caused many people to believe that Apollo was overly sympathetic towards Goose, an allegation that was confirmed in a livestream where he and another person not only admitted to knowing about Goose's behavior for years before the messages leaked, they also thought it wasn't a big deal and felt that people were overreacting. Backlash was swift and fierce with many saying that they would no longer support him.
- Then, in 2020, he shot himself back into relevance when he flamed DarkViper on Twitter, then deleted the tweets and made a video saying that Viper attacked him. This only reignited the controversy and introduced a whole new audience to the drama, leading to him becoming a pariah among speedrunners. Tragically, at the end of the year, due to several severe and incurable physical health problems, as well as mental health problems, Apollo committed suicide, but not without referring to DarkViperAU, as well as another speedrunner, EZScape first. This instigated further drama in the speedrun YouTube community, with people arguing about DarkViper and EZScape's level of responsibility for the suicide. However, it appears that health problems were by far the primary reason for Apollo's suicide, and the line about DarkViper and EZScape was simply a final jab from Apollo as he decided to let it all out in his final moments.
Low Tier God (real name Dalauan Sparrow) has become a very polarizing figure in the Fighting Game Community due to his toxic behavior, his Hair-Trigger Temper, his Sore Loser tendencies, his habit of starting feuds with other people, his inability to take criticism, and the multiple racist rants he's made against black people despite being African-American himself. This finally reached its logical endpoint in April of 2020, when he quit a match with Christina "CeroBlast" Tran on stream and hurled homophobic and transphobic slurs at them before going on a lengthy rant that took many shots at their pre-op transgender status. This was enough to get Capcom to personally step in and hand LTG an indefinite (read: lifetime) ban from all officially-sponsored competitive events. Ironically, immediately after the ban, LTG posted a video of CeroBlast repeatedly using the N-word on one of their streams, netting them a ban as well.
YouTuber Randy Stair aka Andrew Blaze is known less for the content he produced and more for perpetrating a shooting spree at a grocery store before killing himself, with his mindset believing that he would be reincarnated as Ember McLain from Danny Phantom, whom he had an obsession over.
Internet celebrity, singer-songwriter and entrepreneur Jeffree Star was once known for being the most followed person on MySpace and more generally as an LGBTQ+ icon for the scene era, and is currently known for his extremely successful beauty company. But this claim to fame has been eclipsed by his feuds with various celebrities (especially tattoo artist Kat Von D), his lengthy history of extremely offensive racist and misogynistic comments (that he has repeatedly apologized for but continues to make), and sexual harassment allegations (including him groping a member of a band on the 2010 Warped Tour), and, as of June 2020, an old website called "Lipstick Nazi" that was unearthed where he displayed swastikas and posted self-harm pictures.
Northern Irish YouTuber Craig "Mini Ladd" Thompson is nowadays less known for being a former and frequent collaborator of Vanoss and his crew, as well as for his content, and better known for the allegations against him, where in June 2020 he was accused of sending inappropriate messages to underage fans while he was in his twenties, to which he tweeted out his admission. It gets even more egregious by the fact that it was later revealed he attempted to stop these issues from coming out and when that didn't work, he would just ignore them. To make matters worse, in his "apology" video, he kept mentioning his troubled past and his deteriorating mental health in an attempt to defend his actions. However, by doing so, he destroyed his reputation and career. Then, in February 2021, his Twitch channel was permanently banned.
Toby Turner, better known as Tobuscus, was a fairly popular YouTuber thanks to his parody videos and comedy songs. In 2016, allegations of rape, abuse, lewd behavior and peer pressure from several of his various ex-girlfriends as well as other YouTube influencers such as Philip De Franco were made against Turner, causing many within Turner's fanbase and sponsors to turn against him. Although the allegations have yet to be proven, and no one ever took Turner to court for his alleged abuse, the accusations have defined his reputation on the internet today. Not helping matters was his inconsistent responses to the accusations, as he went from calling the woman who fired the opening salvo his ex-girlfriend in one video to calling her an obsessed fangirl pretending to be his girlfriend in another. He is nowhere near as popular as he once was thanks to the scandal.
Chilean YouTuber Peluchin Entertainment (Matías Vera) already had a divisive reputation for his videos' reputation for amateurishness, his badgering of other users, and sexual misconduct allegations from his classmates. His reputation was destroyed when he uploaded a video of him abusing his cats, one of which was killed. Many Spanish-speaking YouTubers condemned his attitude, including AuronPlay or Jordi Wild, and the outrage was so momentous that it even crossed the language barrier. YouTube also received criticism for refusing to take action against Peluchin, although pressure from Cr1TiKaL resulted in his channel getting terminated in September 2020.
YouTuber Matt Watson, aka MattsWhatItIs, uploaded a video in early 2019 in which he discovered and exposed a secret pedophilia ring on the site and started up the hashtag movement #YouTubeWakeUp in an attempt to get it removed from the platform. However, as time went on, it seemed as though Matt cared less about actually taking measures to stop these groups and more about wanting YouTube to suffer and to make them look bad for letting this go unnoticed for so long, mainly by calling for advertisers to pull their ads. This was met with pleas from YouTubers who suffered from the 2017 adpocalypse, who knew that this would be catastrophic. But Matt ignored said YouTubers and misrepresented them by accusing them of only caring about their money over the well-being of children (such as mocking Keemstar after he said he and his team were working close with YouTube to get many of these channels removed and YouTube themselves confirming this to be true on Twitter by saying Keem is only doing it for attention and ignoring other channels that reported CP for years), his utter refusal to accept that YouTube was doing anything to solve the problem, his lack of knowledge on how the site and the algorithm works, and his complete satisfaction and overjoyed reactions when more advertisers started pulling their ads from the site much to the dismay of many YouTubers. It was then revealed that Watson had previously tried to be a content creator on the site years prior without much success, and with the irony that one of his videos had him propose to an underage girl "as a joke". To this day, he's now fallen back into the background after the event died down, with many remembering him now as "the man who caused the second adpocalypse" out of spite.
boogie2988 (real name Steven Jay Williams) was once a popular YouTuber whose main claim to fame was his rant videos as the character Francis. Nowadays he's more famous for his numerous scandals, which include several comments that were widely seen as insensitive or offensive (such as comparing his trolls to Nazis and rapists), an ex-girlfriend's allegations of manipulation and abuse, accounts of him lying to and manipulating his fans about topics including his mental and physical health, and that time when Frank Hassle came to Boogie's house and Boogie fired a warning shot at him because he wouldn't leave.
Belgian YouTuber Marcos Wilton, better known as LionMaker, was once a significant presence in the Minecraft community. This changed when he was exposed as a sexual predator who groomed underage fans and solicited minors for nudes. Now his pedophilic tendencies and subsequent mental breakdown from the fallout have become the first things anyone associates with him.
Ms Yeah, a Chinese YouTuber known for her videos of experimenting with office supplies to cook dishes, is known more for an incident when two girls, a teenager and a preteen, attempted to copy her popcorn cooker experiment and ended up with very severe burns, with the teenager dying later. Ms Yeah did apologize and compensated the family - however, she also denied responsibility for how she added Don't Try This at Home notices on her videos and noted the girls didn't copy the video exactly. After being branded as a murderer by users and taking a hiatus, she still continues her web business, though it has significantly died down.
Iilluminaughtii (real name Blair Zoń) is a video essayist who built her reputation calling out shady businesses, particularly multilevel marketing schemes. Her reputation soured in May 2023 when she accused LegalEagle's editing team of plagiarism, based on his videos using highlighting and ripped paper effects similar to hers, both of which are standard effects plugins; this led to Hbomberguy accusing Iilluminaughtii of engaging in actual plagiarism in some of her videos, including quoting at least one documentary word-for-word without specifying such. She didn't take this well, insisting that she never plagiarized despite mounting evidence to the contrary. She also doubled down on trying to shift blame onto Legal Eagle's editor, ruining her reputation further. This would spiral into her past abuse against fellow content creators and staff coming out, later leading to her posting a response video that only made it worse (among other things, she aired out a past team member's suicide note to try and make him look unstable and accused another of willfully harbouring pedophiles because he wasn't awake to personally kick one out of his Discord server). As a result of the controversy, she's become a pariah among YouTubers and lost a staggering 95% of her previous viewership rates that continues to plummet. Due to people constantly bringing up all her actions in the comments sections of any new uploads, she eventually disabled the comments completely.
Inquisitor was a cosplayer for Call of Duty on TikTok who had asked for some assistance from a cosplayer designer and at the time wasn't aware of her age and sent flirtatious texts, but soon the partnership fizzled out. Afterward the costume designer, along with her boyfriend who was the same age as Inquisitor but had been dating the designer when she was underage, message Inquisitor trying to trap him as a predator from the texts, but he made it clear he wasn't into that since he knew her age and had put on his profile no minors to message him. The designer doctored messages and sent them to another cosplayer in that community named, Kegans Mask who with the help of the boyfriend and another party made a smear campaign against Inquisitor which culminated in him starting a livestream where he ended his life. It was fully revealed the lie that the designer did, but Keagan and the other person did not give up, even on Inquisitor's stream Keagan was there taunting him and even went so far as to say he faked his death to avoid controversy! The other party went on to even call Inquisitor's grieving father and harass him ^note. To say this went bad for the party is an understatement. The designer sadly had her suicide attempt, before issuing an apology and leaving TikTok, her boyfriend did the same before leaving, but Keagan flat out refused to admit she was in the wrong which led to an onslaught of hate her way before she eventually left as well.

Web videos and webseries

ContraPoints video Opulence is most frequently associated with the massive backlash following a short voice clip of Buck Angel, an older generation trans man infamous for his support of transmedicalist^note, transmisogynist and anti-non-binary views. Natalie's actions in around the time of its release ^note did little to sway her detractors, and the follow up video Cancelling would include a more in-depth response to the controversy.
Game Grumps' playthrough of Disney Princess: Enchanted Journey is primarily known for a graphic rape joke about the very young player character, to the point they had to include a trigger warning and an apology. While the Grumps have made a lot of jokes about sensitive topics, this joke in particular gets brought up the most for using pedophilia as the punchline.
Game Life was once celebrated for being the first YouTube channel centered towards gaming, with talks of making the channel into a television show. Nowadays, they're not known for anything but the fact that the founder of the channel, Andrew Rosenblum, was arrested after threatening to shoot up his ex-girlfriend's school the day after the Virginia Tech shooting.
Very few knew of the web film Innocence Of Muslims on YouTube until after protests against it in Muslim-majority countries were sparked by an excerpt that aired on an Egyptian television station. The video actually led to YouTube being banned in many countries with said majorities.
While MLP Analysis continues to be popular with most My Little Pony fans, it’s safe to say that their reputation will forever be tainted after an incident in January 2018 where one of the community's members, ToonKriticY2K, was discovered to have been engaging in sexual roleplays with underage girls. Made worse when people started accusing other members of the analysis community of either keeping quiet on Toon's crimes or outright being pedophiles themselves. For example, when Dr. Wolf and Silver Quill made a video that explained the issue, some mistook it as them defending ToonKritic and his actions. While that was eventually cleared up — Dr. Wolf and Silver Quill had nothing to do with ToonKritic's behavior, and were not defending his actions — they later posted videos emphasizing that ToonKriticY2K's victims should forgive him to find closure. This was perceived by a few people as Victim-Blaming, causing the controversy to flare up again.
Rooster Teeth
- During a 2013 Let's Build of Dark Achievement City, Geoff Ramsey and Gavin Free casually discussed a "game" they would play occasionally where they would discreetly follow attractive young women around for a bit. Almost immediately, there was a massive outcry, accusing the duo of sexism and stalking, and even the most forgiving tended to find it extremely crass and tasteless at best. While the backlash towards this has died down over the years, there are several who continue to hold this against them.
- gen:LOCK was intended to put RT on the map for animation projects, having high-profile backers (Michael B. Jordan) and voice actors (e.g., Maisie Williams, Kōichi Yamadera and David Tennant). Despite a promising start and critical acclaim, Season 1's production suffered from toxic working conditions and financial mismanagement at the hands of animation head Grey Haddock, generating poor reviews from employees on Glassdoor and blogsites, being picked up by local and tech industry media outlets, and leading Haddock to resign in disgrace. Despite internal efforts to improve the working environment, that reputational damage continues to loom over both the company and the gen:LOCK project. And once the series was out of RT's hands in season 2, one moment that could be positive, a tasteful, creative, and trans-affirming sex scene between Kazu and Val, entered this trope by being ruined by the circumstances around it: one episode prior, an heterosexual sex scene that came out of nowhere and was mostly focused on its parties' lack of chemistry made fans a bit too taken aback by the awkwardness to be receptive to a good sex scene an episode later; and then later in the episode Kazu is killed, making viewers unhappy at such a blatant case of Bury Your Gays.
The Slender Man Mythos was once one of the most well-known creepypastas, but its reputation was tarnished after two girls stabbed another girl in 2014, citing their motivation as a desire to please Slenderman. The incident has eclipsed much discussion of the creepypasta, with a film on the creepypasta having to edit scenes to avoid resemblance to the incident.
- One major series in the mythos was Tribe Twelve, which was often praised for the high quality of its visual effects. However, it's now known more for the controversy surrounding the series' creator, Adam Rosner, who was exposed in 2020 of having groomed and financially exploited several underage fangirls during the series' run (and sexually assaulted two adult female friends). Rosner has since deleted his social media accounts, and all of his former friends and collaborators have cut ties, leaving the series effectively dead.
The 2017 SuperMarioLogan episode "Jeffy's Tantrum" is mostly known for when a 7-year-old fan imitated a scene in which the character Jeffy attempts to hang himself. When the kid's mother discovered what had happened, Logan issued an apology for the incident, with the subsequent age-restricting of his channel by YouTube only further cementing the incident's place in people's perceptions of the video.

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