A Dark Side To YouTube And A Loss Of Innocence

Have you ever talked to someone online only to wonder later on if they are who they appear to be? I have been on Youtube since October 2007 and have had many great experiences and made a few new friends.  In December 2007, I subscribed to a guy who seemed to have a Jekyll and Hyde personality. On his main channel he cracked jokes about religion, sex and politics. On his other channel, he talked about how stressed out he was in his life due to anxiety. He also mentioned on his main channel that there were a lot of alcoholics in his family. He is a self proclaimed ladies man and quite open about his promiscuity and relations with friends in the past. This guy doesn't initially come across as a creep, though. He's a well-liked member of the atheist community. He supports free speech and fights for people who get their accounts banned or suspended to get their accounts back. What really makes this story personal for me is this guy inspired me to go back to college. He has panic disorder, along with narcissistic personality disorder and I could relate a lot to the anxiety and stress, as a lot of people did who subscribed to his health channel.  I messaged him on his health channel in January 2008 to thank him for making the health channel because I had hit rock bottom in October 2007 when I had quit my job due to an anxiety attack and hadn't been to college for nearly five years. I figured he wouldn't have had the time to write back considering how many subscribers he had.

He has a friend Maria on youtube who had a video of them when they went to the youtube meetup for July seventh 2007 and when they were hanging out at a subscriber's house, he started poking her, asking if she gained weight and then they had a bit of a slap fest. I asked her if the slap was for real and I smiled as I didn't want to place judgments on the guy and she replied, "Yes it was. lol. He's a woman beater."

He surprised me in June 2008 when he subscribed to me out of the blue. I had talked to him quite a few times before in comments in videos, wrote to him to thank him for making the health channel that inspired me to go back to college, gave him a video response in March, in which I clearly said I was joking and participated in a video collab in May.  I hadn't thought about it at the time in July, but in June he made a video in which he admitted to hitting on girls as young as seventeen and trying to get some women naked on webcam. 


He stopped by my channel in July 2008 and left a comment on one of my videos that said: "I have a Catholic mother and Jewish grandfather. I think that's a sign we should have sloppy  make-outs together."

I had been subscribed to this guy since November 2007 and I thought he just had that kind of sense of humor in his videos so I figured he was pulling a translation joke, so I replied and joked back, using the symbol of the smile and the wink, which I hoped got my message across. But, it wasn't until later when I talked to Desire on allpoetry that I realized my message to the guy may have been skewed. Apparently, the wink may have made him
think I was saying, hey baby, you just tell me when to come around.

I took a look at his channel and I admit I was a bit shocked and dare I say
even a little bit scared. I'm not sure why. Maybe it was the shock that he even
stopped by my channel and said that to me, maybe it was because in all
my time of being online I had always seen lines like that from people who
were either women, get a lot of that at bebo, though haven't been there
in ages, or guys I hadn't talked to much to begin with. So, to hear it from
someone who I had talked to quite a bit beforehand, especially about stress
and anxiety issues was a shock to me and made me wonder, why did he say that?
Who is this guy?

I went to his health channel later that night and told him that I was going back to college this fall and said "peace and respect". I meant that I had respect for myself and was saying it more like calling a truce. I respect you, you respect me. It was very hard for me to say, though. I cried after that. I'm not sure whether it was because I really liked him or because the exchange of words we had was so traumatic. I even find it hard to talk about it with people in my immediate family. My dad asked me why I was so upset and all I could do was cry and just said I didn't want to talk about it.


I later stopped by my friend, Johnny's channel aka JohnnySmooth and told him without naming names that I had a conversation with a subscriber that night, but didn't get into the specifics of the story. Johnny had great advice for his subscribers, though. He told people to be the better person and that was the first thing that came to my mind when I dealt with the subscriber who commented on my video in July and I told Johnny that his advice was the first thing I thought of.

Back to the story, and the guy I was talking about before, being the ladies man that he is, he hooked up with another woman later that night. The attention geek that he is, he just had to make a video talking about it beforehand. He wanted his subscribers to go comment on this woman's video saying nice things about it. He may have been trying to make me jealous, but honestly I was so shaken up at the time, that I could hardly think. I think that video showed signs of his insecurity more than anything else.


Once early August came around, I  asked Johnny if he was going to 888 before considering going to Toronto because I didn't want to go to the 888 meetup by myself. After July, I wasn't about to go to any youtube meetup without a friend I felt I could really trust, not to mention that I would have felt bored if I just went on my own and found out that none of my subscriber friends were there. Johnny was in the same boat as me. Johnny was going back to college too in the fall of 2008 to get his masters in teaching and couldn't afford to fly up to the meetup, so I was relieved to know I wasn't missing out on meeting one of my best youtube friends.

                                                              *******

Most of the summer passed by uneventfully. Until late August when he had problems with a girl who he was working on a blog tv show with and he made a video about it.  She was avoiding him. The reason? He made it pretty clear. He was trying to "get some".  He said he wasn't necessarily trying to "get some", but wasn't necessarily not  trying to "get some", either.


The girl in question is around 21. He is 25.
The story he related was she had invited him out to the bar, but didn't tell him which one. And, when he called her cell, her friend answered.
He kept asking the friend of the girl where they were, but couldn't hear the friend say anything. He never said whether or not he ended up talking to the girl.

It was a total transformation from the calm, cool guy he made himself out to be.
He was swearing, demeaning women, calling them a pain in the ass and had a frustrated angry look in his eyes. What was more scary was his friend Cherri, said his true personality was starting to show. It was as though the nice guy from the health channel disappeared.

I looked up what the "sloppy" translated to online and the synonyms were: dirty, dingy, untidy, wet, careless, casual and inattentive. I was aware from watching his videos that the guy had a dirty sense of humor, but I thought that just crossed the line. The guy doesn't get along with his mother, either and apparently word around is both her and his dad haven't seen him for a long time.

On American Thanksgiving, I was feeling rather frustrated with another subscriber of mine, ogdroadsong, who was posting very demeaning comments in my cosmic joker video. After arguing with ogdroadsong for two days, he says, "Jerks have feelings, too. You're starting to sound just like my mother. Where is the love?"

And, that's when everything clicked. On his health channel in January 2007, my subscriber said that he felt better when he wasn't dealing with his mother, as well.  In December 2008  he made a video with his dad with a bit of info on the side saying that his mother also has a channel, but that it was "like her, basically worthless".

This whole story feels too outrageous to believe. I don't want to think of the sweet guy from the health channel, my inspiration to go back to college, as a ladies man who demeans women and is only after one thing. Maybe what others say is true. When someone is really charismatic and likable, we become blind to their darkest faults.  But, at the same time, I don't blame this guy. He is a narcissist and is angry at his mother as she molded him into how dysfunctional he is. And, is angry at all women, hence calling them a pain in the ass. His persona is different in public than in private. It wasn't about him not just getting any.


He is said to have narcissistic personality disorder. Despite narcissism being self love, deep down, he is unable to love because he doesn't love himself. The crazy thing is, I really liked him.  But, the guy I liked was a mask. I liked the sweet guy from the health channel. I liked  the cocky guy who told dirty jokes. The guy I liked doesn't exist. Who I liked was a reflection of a false self. But, despite all of this, I realize I am the lucky one. As I am the only woman on his subscriptions list with any self respect.

Point to be made, why I said peace and respect. It was all a test. You can't trust weasels, even when you are subscribed to them for a long time. Jealousy isn't a sign of love, it's a sign of insecurity. Love requires trust and respect. Honestly, in my experience, July 5th 2008, my guard goes up if I get the sense a guy is only after one thing.

Busted. The truth is all this time I thought I was hated, the truth is I was feared. Just like fakesagan. How ironic since fakesagan blocked me for defending that guy in the first place. Ironically, after I told fakesagan what happened, Kevin decided he wanted to be friends. I will honestly never figure that guy out.