From Horrible to Deplorable - Leafyishere's Story (Calvin Lee Vail)

Calvin Lee Vale before he was known for tearing down channels a fraction of his size as leafy is here he owned a Minecraft server that grossed over 100 000 before he hit his 20s the stresses of running this server were unexpectedly worse than any stress he incurred through YouTube this in a way primed him for the immense grow with his channel received a channel that for many initially served as a window to the stranger and darker parts of YouTube Leaf he acted as a guide that spewed almost nothing but words of denouncement towards his subjects from children to people with disabilities leafy attacked them all with little remorse growing faster and faster with each one of his controversies at his Peak leafy seemed Unstoppable though it was only poetic that the subjugation of constant ridicule that he brought upon others was also brought upon him through a single video that spread far and wide through YouTube many think the this is what caused his initial downfall but in actuality there were hidden powers that brought on a slow and painful decline to his channel that stopped posting in 2017 but to everyone's surprise he came back what up [ __ ] welcome back to a brand new video and when he came back he came back strong in 2020 what the last caricaturized version of himself and received wide support but these hidden Powers had had enough of his Antics and overnight banned him without warning a move that many content creators rallied against but their outcries were ignored as the Banning a leafy and similar content creators served as a clear message from YouTube that they can and will strip you from your channel if you give them bad publicity that is why this story must be told the story of the rise and fall of leafy is here [Music] The Story begins with the beginnings of leafy's Channel which was created October 7 2011 by a 16 year old Calvin Lee Vale beyond the traditional roles a typical American team takes like attending high school or going to parties leafy while still partaking in these was also learning to code using Java a highly popular programming language that at the time was used for things as big as web browsers or as small as jrats as for what a j-ren is the exact definition changes depending on who you ask the J stands for Java easy enough the rat can stand for remote access tool remote admin tool or remote access Trojan different definitions describing a similar virus a virus that can be used to remotely access the infected computer by doing things such as implementing a key logger that records keystrokes in order to steal passwords and all forms of personal data which can see many malicious applications online it is unknown for what purpose leafy coded these perhaps to sell the code for monetary gain or to use a software for his own online attacks regardless of the intent coding these how leafy sharpen his Java coding skills and something else that ran on Java was the fast to popularized game taking the Internet by storm Minecraft like many players that knew how to code using Java whether teens or full-grown adults began hosting their own Minecraft servers spending hundreds of dollars to launch them a simple idea soured when it was discovered how much money people can make by monetizing their Minecraft servers keep in mind that this was far before Mojang started cracking down on server they're relied on a pay-to-win motto as the motto suggests it allowed the highest tier donators in any given server to dominate the rest of the players whether it was selling ranks that gave access to in-game equipment or commands as leafy referred to them Rich Dubai kids paid unbelievable amounts of money for items or even a plot of land in a populated area on the server so in reality it was not the average player that lined Leaf his wallet but the rare wandering Rich Minecraft player that could expand a couple thousand dollars like the average person buys a candy bar but before that became a larger part of leafy's life he was still growing his YouTube channel which mainly consisted of videos of him playing Minecraft a typical let's play series interchangeable with a sea of channels trying to start their own Minecraft Let's Plays leafy understanding his situation and demotivated at the lack of views on his videos was learning that getting an initial audience to watch these videos was one of the most difficult parts of growing his channel Channel so he formulated a plan that started with a four or so paragraph message that went along the lines of hey big Minecraft YouTuber with a large following I've been watching her videos since day one can I please get some advice on how to grow please check out my videos that of course is a more dramatized example of his message that was sent out possibly using a bot to any Minecraft channel that leafy could somehow get into contact with he eventually saw the fruits of his laborer when a round of late 2011 a Minecraft channel that goes by Static 777 left a like on one of leafy's videos this small gesture had a big impact on leafy's channel as this in a way it promoted his channel by allowing users of static 777 to look at his recent activity and also see that he liked leafy's video which led a small stream of curious viewers to leafy's channel this got leafy his first 50 subscribers which was enough to get him the initial growth he sought after this leafy used his channel to heavily promote his Minecraft server by almost exclusively only making let's plays on it which also as his channel grew meant that his server had around 20 active players at any given point more viewers means more people on a server for spending money with some consistency leafy in 2012 with a slowly growing subscriber base was invited to the YouTube Partner program when he reached around 700 subscribers meaning that he was now able to earn revenue from his videos though it was still a very small Mound considering his channel size and that he uploaded one to three Minecraft videos a week gaining a little under a thousand subscribers a month he'd also try his hand at live streaming but with little success still he started making a bit of a name for himself and his minecraft username leafy is sleepy as it was becoming somewhat recognizable within the player versus player or PVP servers he'd visit sometimes making threats to disrupt someone's internet through a DDOS attack this is where we get into the dark side of the cube back then Minecraft on the surface was an innocent game targeted at children and a way to express your creativity though behind the scenes people were still creative but in much more malicious manners like the aforementioned DDOS attack a practice common within the Minecraft server owner Community as servers started to become more successful and those running them could earn a livable wage those left running these servers went through a trial of fires set by other server owners where the new server owners found that they could survive by using the same malicious tactics that were applied against them these tactics include but are not limited to doxing where you're identifying information was released to harass you be on a computer extreme cases of doxing include anonymous calls where the harassers lied to the police stating that you are putting others in danger in order to get a SWAT team to raid your place residents and possibly kill you DDOS attacks or denial of service attacks that temporarily shut down servers or the host internet connection hit squads server owners would pay several attackers to hunt down active players on a server and continually kill them until they quit out of frustration effectively scamming a server's population it should be noted that banning the rating players was largely ineffective as these people often had over 100 Minecraft accounts each that means they'd switch between accounts as their account in action was banned from a server another vicious tactic was domain nabbing whenever a server owner's domain was back on auction after their pay time with a said URL had expired a competing server owner would immediately purchase it and have it redirect to their own website yon previously was now instead promoting her competition that just nabbed your domain and finally in the most extreme cases lawsuits which will be later mentioned in the video while the largest of servers were usually not messed with it is unknown how much or often leafy engaged in these tactics but what is known is that all these these tactics help scare away the smaller starting server owners leaving those average size server owners to partake in these tactics in a constant competition where they'd attempt to one-up each other's hostilities sometimes they'd formulate alliances where a group of server owners were pit against another group and are fleeing various insults at each other through TeamSpeak servers which was also something leafy took part in starting at around 17 years old you know how much money I [ __ ] make bro zero damn you are I got [ __ ] like this hiring me to take care of [ __ ] like you making this one of the most stressful periods in his life even more stressful than any future drama on YouTube but it paid decently with a server bringing in thousands of dollars a month in 2013 a fair portion of that money went to things like having a server promoted by other YouTubers many times you get a free publicity by collaborating with another Channel after all he now had a sizable Minecraft channel of his own sitting at around 18 000 subscribers though not all we're keen to work with him as leafy still had many enemies which is most likely how his channel got suspended for a short period of time most likely due to people reporting the videos promoting his Minecraft server as a scam and having YouTube take them down but leafy eventually got his channel back up and had this to say it got suspended it was just kind of like a mess up I didn't break any rules and I got my channel back the day I found out that my channel was suspended I was seriously like you guys have no idea how how nervous I was while leafy I hardly had control of people flagging his channel those pestering him asking to be paid to stop their DDOS attacks is where a large portion of leaf he's earnings most likely went too along with paying an additional fee to have these online mercenaries backstab the person that contracted them originally leafy estimated that mid-sized server owners paid attackers on average four thousand dollars a month to avoid being targeted before leafy invested in services like voxility he was a large Target for these attacks the stress of it all was notable in leafy's Vlogs that he started uploading around 2014 showing something as simple as a room tour and talking about what's going on in his life the reason that hole in the wall exists is because of Drake not the Drake but rather an anonymous lone wolf that formed no alliances that was also hated throughout the Minecraft server owner Community as for Drake's interactions with him Drake began ddosing leafy server then requested 500 to stop the attack when leafy paid that Drake responded with thanks for the money and continued his attack which is when leafy punched a hole in the wall and began a crusade to find Drake's true identity but in the end was an unsuccessful Venture which leafy spent around ten thousand dollars on though Dre was eventually unmasked by a highly influential server owner that even leafy feared who sued Drake and possibly landed at him in jail interestingly enough leafy zanger towards Drake helped him more than he could ever imagine as it inspired kids who did us a comedic video where leafy discusses ddosing and the effects of it in various games with mostly on related gameplay footage in the background hey what's up guys today we're going to be talking about ddosing this video highlights leafy's new transition and content instead of focusing purely on Minecraft content which was at a downward Trend at this time leafy was branching out to various different games like League of Legends Counter-Strike Global Offensive and various other games he showcased for a video or two with few videos the footage did coincide with the topic of the video like when discussing his history with the game or the way he'd peruse unofficial gambling sites going forward the footage of his gameplay usually added nothing but a colorful placeholder while he discussed what he needed to in his video the most memorable and most used type footage was from the online competitive game Counter-Strike Global Offensive however it was not traditional gameplay he was instead playing on a community made serving Maps where the objective was to Glide down or through a map using the momentum gain from gliding on Rails of angled surfaces while avoiding the hazards throughout the map while telling a story with unrelated attached gameplay footage dates back to even the earliest days of YouTube CS go surfing was simple and easy to follow gameplay that leafy had lay domain over the topics discussed in these surfing videos ranged widely sometimes he talk about a personal story which is something that leafy excelled in because you can direct an extremely well made video with fancy graphics and investigate a chunk of money into using copyrighted music but if the writing is terrible or the delivery is poor then it usually flops which in reality he only needed decent writing and good delivery to make his stories interesting when leafy told the story he'd always blow them up and make them feel larger than they truly were while stuck racking himself and trying to keep things in the realm of reality the same could be said about his content discussing popular internet videos or stereotypes of players that he derogatorily deem as kids not because they were kids but because he called him that to insult their maturity referring back to leafy's timeline on YouTube while he was still experimenting with other forms of content now entering 2015 Minecraft videos still took priority his experimentation and two different styles of videos brought interesting results take note of his Z OMG series while the way back machine did not save the thumbnails the titles themselves clue Us in enough as to what the videos are about as it highlights his Ascension towards click bait Style videos using keywords such as best unbelievable rage most epic if you look at these sets of videos and compare them to his traditional Minecraft content that was posted around the same time it is obvious there is a clear winner it also held that his new style videos were self-contained meaning that they did not follow an obvious episodic format and they were easier to consume people stopping by his channel when all he made were Minecraft videos were less likely to consume his content because of the sheer exhaustion it would take to catch up to episode 86 so these self-contained videos allowed viewers to get an easy Taste of leafy and grow individually through different parts of YouTube being suggested next to whatever popular or relatively unknown thing he was talking about a big part of his new content was the personification of it which was exemplified in his Vlogs it's easy enough to make a YouTube channel and add a text to speech bot in place of a real voice discussing whatever topic you'd like but you never see these channels gain an actual following a voice provides a unique aspect to a person that can harm hardly be replicated so a vlog in your room thanking your viewers for getting you to 23 000 subscribers makes you less Anonymous and more of a person and makes you more memorable and does add much to set you apart from the channels with no tangible human touch to sum it up the more unique and tangible you make yourself online the faster of a following you'll get which was being reflected through leafy sub count as for his Minecraft server he was still developing it and adding new aspects and servers that serve different purposes trailers and other people interacting with him and his server still exists on YouTube today but this era of leafy is mostly forgotten as the waves of influence that began striking YouTube overpowered much of his history starting with videos like kids at DDOS along with rants like I hate Google Plus which was the popular opinion at the time but kids at DDOS sudden jump from thousands of views to nearly a million sit a clear path to Leafy success so if there was any point in time that pinpointed to leave his rise it was during April of 2015. due to his nearly daily uploads and new style of content in that month alone he doubled in views and may another jump of 80 000 plus views then in June he went from getting around 200 000 views a month to eight hundred thousand views which doubled again in July quadrupled in August and so on it should be noted that leafy's content at this time was focused on stereotypes and gaming And discussing the various annoying types of people he met through his time online though these followed an episodic theme they were largely detached from one another there was really no one Target in these videos just a broad range of personalities that he and his growing fear base found annoying often a company with commentary from his friend that went by quirky an interesting side note is that these videos were uploaded through the Wi-Fi of a local coffee shop because his internet back home was so poor as for his channel naturally with a large amount of views he was getting he was also receiving a big jump in subscribers hitting 100 000 in August of 2015 and rewarded his fans with a face reveal hey what's up guys it's leafy is Beefy with his face cam on mom's face did apply more personality to leafy's Brand there was something more influential developing in August of 2015. the origins of this development can be traced back to a small joke made in leafy's video kids at YouTube too from this video The Reptilian Brotherhood was birthed with fans making art of leafy as a reptilian which leafy responded to about a week and a half later with a video titled reptilians and the description he uttered their most famous phrase hiss going forward many alipi's videos were spanned with his phrase as for leafy himself following his increasing success on YouTube has started traveling first to PAX Prime in 2015 which he received free tickets for then to Amsterdam London and various other places across Europe and September of 2015. his content now delving into stories about his use of various substances many of which are illegal for consumption inside the United States and while leafy was touring Europe his audience set it upon themselves to spread his likeness around the globe as well starting when leafy mentioned a CS go content creator anomaly in one of his videos this mere mentioned prompted leafy's grin fan base to spam his chat with hisses and when anomaly turned sub mode on so only anomaly subscribers could chat in his live stream they hissed as well when asked about the origins of the hissing viewers pointed out it came from leafy's Channel this soon spread to other csgo YouTubers that were having their comments sections spanned with hisses on October 11th at the end of a video discussing teachers that take their job too seriously leafy discussed the anomaly his raid saying that he found it funny which in no doubt encouraged his viewers to replicate this Behavior towards other content creators and so they did there were a few bastions that leave his hands did penetrate The Reptilian armies copy pastas could be found in the most innocent cooking videos to a random watch Mojo Countdown the situation was brought to life by leafy yet again two days later which only intensified the amount of hissing shortly after this video was posted the situation was covered on drama alert through this massive campaign many large and small content creators now became aware of leafy which opened many paths to Friendship like eventually befriending other commentary channels like h3h3 Productions pyrocynical and even entertainment news channels like dramaalert many of their viewers also became aware of leafy and joined in on the hissing feeding his channel more subscribers it's safe to say that many content creators jumped on the bandwagon but in large part due to the Relentless spamming leafy started to make few enemies while also developing the obvious Ray tactic towards anyone he'd mentioned in his videos even those that leafy slightly eluded towards were not safe from his rampant fans as at this point in time leafy when talking about YouTubers or mannerisms that annoyed him kept the YouTubers he was talking about Anonymous describing their actions instead to paint a picture of who he was talking about with that of course reveal killing their identity sometimes he was too descriptive and talked about a rather hard to watch video of a high school student screaming do the Harlem Shake in a high school cafeteria two days later this video Was Then followed by another video where leafy discussed how his viewers Brigade the video leafy mentioned prompting a response from the person in the video that leafy mentioned this was one of if not the first instance where leafy addressed someone else directly instead of only talking about their actions after all this person did make a response video towards leafy beyond that for the month of November he continued his standard content of Storytelling and a few gameplay based videos but it was clear that this was not the optimal way to grow his channel as he was going through a few dips and Views this all changed November 28th as his Day defined what many remember to be leafy's definitive form of content and that is disgusting and ridiculing other content creators for a single video or their actions spread across several videos but because who he was targeting at this point in time he was still getting a lot of support as the video uploaded on November 28 2015 was discussing a YouTuber that goes by lispy Jimmy a relatively disliked member of the YouTube Community the following day he talked about bertgason another Infamous figure that was specifically known for creating mature or rather extremely inappropriate content for anyone under the theme of Minecraft videos made for children these are his top videos [ __ ] this dude who does this Reaper Escape what the [ __ ] the next day he did a video on Sam Pepper and so on in December he mixed in a few of these videos along with his usual stories but the success of these videos was clear 4 out of 5 of these videos are directly discussing another content creator and they're growing faster than any other form of his content this video that he uploaded in December is already nearly doing better than one of his most popular videos that has been on his channel since late 2014. the clear path of success is to make more of the these which is exactly what he started to do in January of 2016. a bit of analysis as to why these videos were so popular is that they usually hit controversial figures that were currently being discussed around YouTube meaning that YouTube recommended it to more people discussing the same topic and building on top of that is that leafy with his comments and opinions sometimes made his own drama that was regularly featured on other channels like dramaalert giving him more publicity and growing his channel faster than he'd ever seen as just for months ago he was at 100 000 subscribers now he was almost at a million but not everyone he talked about had a massive following as he was branching out to all sorts of strange or controversial figures that inhabited YouTube some of these figures had less than 100 subscribers that whether satirical or not actions were being showcased to nearly a million of leafy's followers from furries to children in Minecraft leafy covered it all and on the topic of Minecraft it seems that he detached himself from the server that he was running possibly because of the stress him making significantly more money on YouTube or the fact that Mojang was cracking down on Pay to Win servers like leafies this all meant that he had no intention of owning a server as for what happened to para PVP it seems to have closed down late 2016 due to lack of donations but back to the topic at hand leafy was on a roll making videos about the strange people of YouTube videos meaning not only just describing the variety of people we'd cover but also the amount of times he'd cover any one figure take for example Mr black darkness 666 a unconventional content creator that made a video describing and showing how he lives in a small town and how children at his local park are bullying him leafy alongside making comedic remarks about the fact that literal children are bullying him and that Mr black darkness told the children to go [ __ ] themselves give a few words of advice knowing that there was an odd chance that Mr black darkness was going to watch this video and oh he did in reaction to leafy's video on him Mr black darkness in response almost immediately made a video on leafy titled leafy is here go [ __ ] yourself I'm gonna make sure you burn you little [ __ ] showing an unhinged Mr black darkness with running mascara consuming alcohol responding to leafy's video saying he'll get what's coming to him this led to a short series of response videos where Mr black darkness performs a curse on leafy seemingly in a speedo because according to him you have to be as naked as possible to allow the dark spirits to flow through you leafy then responded to the curse placed on him and placed one on Mr black darkness through Microsoft Paint oh God Lucifer hear my plane oh God Lucifer hear my plead holy [ __ ] he's [ __ ] bleeding from this dude this is like actually a proper [ __ ] Satanic ritual you just [ __ ] ate me dude what the [ __ ] well there were a few follow-up videos made on both sides the situation eventually came to a close on dramaalert on January 30th 2016. where a discussion was done with keemstar as the mediator that's scary you just make another video I'm telling them to [ __ ] calm down and that's exactly what I was talking about with me and Pyro we were thinking about making a video talking about satire content and how we make videos about people but again it's just parody it seems that Mr black darkness did eventually lift a curse remaining on topic of the discussion it was later revealed by leafy himself that he lied about making follow-up videos with his fellow content creator friend pyrocynical telling his audience not to harass the topics of his videos the most visible thing leafy had done to deter harassment that was not even implemented until a couple months later is add this section to his video description discouraging his fans to not go on witch hunts but even then it was hardly a deterrence in fact the lack of a deterrence is what caused his first large-scale controversy and potentially started his downfall you see leafy used to get much of his content from the r slash cringe subreddit where he'd find all sorts of difficult to watch but easy to dissect videos that's when he came across this video about a man in a fedora who noticed that a woman had left her container a freshly purchased eggs on top of her car and was about to drive out of the grocery store parking lot she was pulling out and I handed her eggs isn't that right ma'am it is on top of the car I appreciate that very much Tommy NC 2010 this guy flattered down and prevented the eggs from falling off it was a good deed that made him want to start recording and encourage others to do the same thing so he asked the woman if he could make a video with her and she agreed which is how this video was made there is an obvious tension of awkwardness in the video between Tommy and the people he helped because his speech of doing good things is so drawn out but that may have not been apparent to Tommy because as we know now he is autistic and social situations may be different for him as it stands his motives were good and he did help someone regardless he gained a bit of notoriety through this video appearing on television through Tosh.0 where the host also made comedic remarks at Tommy's video while inviting him to be on the show to take part in some skits leafy most likely knowing a good amount of this information set out to make a video ridiculing Tommy a bit worse than Tosh did the major difference is Tasha's audience mostly consumed television and are largely uninteractive but leafy's audience is on the same platform as Tommy's and are well known for brigading videos that leafy discusses at this point it was already established that leafy had a way more active audience for better off for worse than the average YouTuber so after leafy made this video tommy's video was bombarded with dislikes and coma section was littered with the typical comments of his and [ __ ] meaning kill yourself leading Tommy to almost immediately post this video as a response running my family and all I wanted to do was inspire people this enraged many people enough so that it blew up on our slash videos and started what was known as meme gate one of the people I know it at leafy was h3h3 a friend or now X random leafy when he uploaded his soon to be deleted video titled the leafy rant I believe he made a video about a guy like he usually does calling a [ __ ] [ __ ] cringy weirdo you know whatever it turns out that this guy is actually autistic mother is some truth to h3h3's claims like how leafy aggressively clickbaits his videos and how his content slowly transitioned from going after those deserving of criticism to those more vulnerable to criticism like children here's a making fun of a kid here's making fun of a kid here is making fun of a kid kid as h3h3 States himself there is some hypocrisy and him calling out leafy as in the past h3h3 has made similar videos which is something leafy discussed further and is h3hc Rand posted after an apology video about Tommy and Sia so first off before I say anything I just want to say guys I [ __ ] up but regardless I would like to say sorry to everybody I offended all my fans I disappointed and of course Tommy leafy's h3h3 rant show the more toxic and hypocritical site of h3h3 all he does is make fun of kids uh okay Ethan you sure you want to make this plane clink cut I wouldn't exactly call it clean cut he's got the hair of a [ __ ] six-year-old dude with a goddamn shitty toupee this budding of heads in a way split the portion of the audience that they shared because through and through they were both in the commentary Community talking about strange figures or videos on the internet as for how leafy's channel was affected it wasn't he still kept making the same videos that the YouTube algorithm shot out and viewers scooped up this was help when an h3h3 later admitted that he messed up when he called out leafy and said that he regretted making that video altogether which helped men their friendship but before that happened another leafy's targets namely wet movie one called out leafy for cyber bullying this guy looks like he just went through five different strokes in the past [ __ ] hour as wet movie one claims he was placed in special education classes in high school and was considered overweight leading to much bullying and now even after he lost all that weight he was now getting cyberbull employed by Olivia just you know making fun of me and [ __ ] from the for the way I look and things this video along with foreshadowing leafy's future gained much sympathy from those that detested leafy as he pointed out how leafy focuses largely on criticizing someone's physical tributes rather than their actions which is overall for anyone considered extremely low brow which brings up an interesting aspect of leafy's success on YouTube initially when he started criticizing channels he went after their actions and focused almost purely in the controversies that surrounded them but as time went on Annie started to milk this format by uploading nearly every day he was potentially running out of targets and had to find easy targets without any controversy initially surrounding them sometimes leafique created this controversy so with these relatively unknown figures that did not have a large following leafy chose the easiest route which was personal attacks this is also when his channel saw the most growth with each upload of getting millions of views along with getting half a million subscribers monthly but there was still a bit of a rocky path to walk when leafy had to deal with complicated locations like getting his channel hacked by poodlecorp which almost seems that its entire purpose was to promote a Twitter account that is now largely inactive though leafy got his channel back from the hackers everyone to leave his videos was still changed to the same title directing viewers to go follow the hackers on Twitter so he had to manually change every single one of his titles back to their original state but the problem was that leafy's titles were so ambiguous and clickbait that he couldn't remember the names for many of his videos so after the hack many of his videos went under different titles even a hack couldn't stop leafy's toxicity and his content which he was very open about his acceptance of this allowed him to carry knives of encourageable opinions that though other channels wielded them leafy did it more openly and obviously to the most vulnerable it was a growing black hole of drama that reached far across YouTube and worked in his favor and sometimes well most of the time leafy's attacks against controversial Figures were supported few receiving as much support as is ran towards his ex-friend keemstar who was now under a lot of fire due to idubbbz releasing a Content cop video on him where I dubbed dissects the many deplorable things keemstar has done this situation for keemstar was not unlike the controversy's leaf he had experienced except in one regard it was much worse the thing about idubbbz's videos is they gained almost Universal support and there was no splitting of a commentary Community like what happened with leafy and h3h3 it was the people against keemstar in a massive campaign trying to get keemstar's competition scares to grow in size leafy claims that he was frustrated at keemstar because he allegedly insulted him be on his back and treated him poorly as a friend but what many people believe is it was a business decision to distance himself from keemstar and make himself look better in the process so a leaf he released the first of five videos ranting on about keemstar with leafy progressively getting angrier through his rants like items's videos and the many other videos attacking keemstar leafy's videos still received massive support the enemy of my enemy is my friend sometimes you can just take the middleman out and have your friend as your enemy which is the case with leafy and YouTube the platform that gave him his success was now tearing him down in his prime with many people supporting him as seen on socialblade he was losing massive amounts of views during August of 2016 which was a month after he made the first keemstar rant and almost the month after YouTube updated their terms of service where they pledged to crack down on bullying and harassment these new policies allow them to take a more Firm Stance on content like leafies but to be clear let me explain my earlier statement leafy was losing views no it was not that leafy was losing the potential of gaining more views by being recommended last he was in a literal sense losing his total accumulated views because YouTube was striking and removing his videos putting him in countless times close to getting banned because on YouTube after you get your first Community guidelines strike three more means Channel termination so in reality leafy was still getting the same amount of views it was just that YouTube was removing his videos at such a high rate that it gave him negative views making it seem like he was losing popularity that was until a month later that idubbbz the same content creator that made the content cop on keemstar released the content cop on leafy hey everybody welcome back to another episode of content cop as you can probably tell I can hardly contain myself right now because today is the day we get to bully leafy this was a video going through in a very detailed fashion how many of leafy's arguments in his videos are flawed and how often he uses the word literally and always seems to pronounce it like this literally literally literally literally beyond that there were two crucial parts of this video that made leapis Fall From Grace nearly unrecoverable first was a large section devoted to trying to find leafy's chin because just as leafy makes fun of others inherent attributes idubbbz was doing the same thing to show leafy that he's just as vulnerable as the people he criticizes seemed like a lot of people were eager to hide that disgusting chin second was because of these five seconds of footage if you didn't catch that for those few seconds in idubbz's video that was a cameo from h3h3 Productions these same content creator that uploaded the first big leafy rant but made up with him and was supposed to be on friendly terms with leafy his sudden collaboration with idubbbz even if it was for mere seconds the old leafy's rage and one of the worst things you can do when making a response video is not keeping a level head so three days later leafy released the idubbbz content cop response a nearly 22 minute long video addressing a few of ideps's points well today I got exposed but what overshadowed his points were these skits that were akin to the videos of people he'd make fun of he stole it leafy's response showed that he played right into idubbz's Hand by even mentioning that ideps talked about his chin leaving leafy to play into an emotional rather than logical response idubbbz then made another video responding to Leafy making fun of his chin yet again video and it seems like you're still quite a bit bent out of shape about the whole no Chin sangu Chin this look right here I'm calling goats winter where's the cyber bullying where's the cyber bullying don't pretend like you didn't watch there was 20 minutes of it just as leafy had done to as many subjects idubbbz was doing to him as some would say leafy's response towards idubbbz was weak like his chin that one there was a violation and just as many did the keemstar when a Content cop was made on him including leafy there were an extreme amount of videos discussing or exposing leafy for things as small as not crediting one of his editors to having channels within the millions of subscriber range tear leafy apart at this point in time it was cool to a leafy so now many people were doing it even keemstar was in on the action but no matter how much hate Leaf he got he kept throwing out the exact same videos for a simple reason they worked and they still got views even if the dislikes outnumbered the likes and all that was visible were negative comments the truth is leafy was still making a hefty profit that was until February 2017 the beginning of the adpocalypse and this horrid symbol essentially if you had this attached to your video it meant that you couldn't make money from it and leafy like any YouTuber likes money but with his style of videos even the ones he was trying to experiment ever so slightly with were massively getting this symbol or to be properly descriptive getting demonetized a few other downers of 2017 were that his nudes were leaked because someone hacked his Snapchat and now he was finally seeing a sizable decline in views no longer reaching over a million with each uploader but now hitting the hundreds of thousands per video instead which is still quite decent considering the quality and the repetitiveness of leafy's content as for his upload schedule leafy now uploaded only a few times per week if at all following this downward Trend he made it all the way to December of 2017. over a year after the content cop on him was released and then nothing all there was was radio silence leafy did show up a few times in places like dramaalert as he mended his friendship with keemstar all this stuff is not real you put that in your video to make me look as bad as possible you [ __ ] lied about me I didn't [ __ ] lie about people yes besides those few chickens it was largely accepted that leafy left the internet after being exhausted with YouTube constantly adding new rules that affected either their monetization or his ability to upload this seemed to be the end of leafy with many remembering his presence online as a relic of the older wild west of YouTube where many forms of controversial content existed and was seemingly promoted by YouTuber months and months went by with dwindling hope that he would ever return especially in such an unwelcoming landscape that was until hello everyone my girlfriend started an only fans account I think all of it is cool yeah I know idubbbz is a simp I suggest you go idolize someone else someone who isn't a simp or a cup over two years later in March of 2020 the internet called upon him once more leafy answering the call by making a statement of his return with this 30 second long video Simply titled idubbbz for those of you who are unaware of the drama I recently brought upon myself I'll fill you in my girlfriend started an only fans account yeah I know I dude you're a [ __ ] cuck those few words in a way undid the pressure idubbbz's content cop left on his channel it took a little over two years but leafy made a short and effective response against idubbbz that his and a portion of idubbb's audience overwhelmingly supported enough to blow this video past a million views in a matter of days and get him trending on Twitter this video was followed by another longer video that included more interactions between idubbbz and his girlfriend it also had Twitter posts that showed his girlfriend flirting with other content creators presumably before she met idubbbz this situation all happening because idubbs's girlfriend decided to start and only fans which had split reactions many shunned idubbbz and called him a [ __ ] but there were still content creators on idubbbz's side of the Ring the most important of them all or at least the one that leafy hated the most was still h3h3 the first large content creator who called him out that was leafy's next Target as he uploaded a video of h3h3 discussing him people saying oh leafy combat I would love to see leafy come back and try to exist in the landscape today you can't even curse bro you're a fat [ __ ] disgusting piece of [ __ ] this is the biggest takeaway from that video as it propelled leafy to continue making more videos every day that leafy remained and grew on the platform was a victory for leafy and a loss for h3h3 with each upload of leafy's new content he was spitting in Ethan's face as for his new content it consisted a lot more of the footage of the video He was discussing with few comments he was also more tonally calm and rational as he was playing less of a character along with this he was not uploading daily but instead whenever he felt like it which means he wouldn't go back into the cycle of running out of things to talk about and Target smaller drama or creators because his wall of topics would run dry it seemingly reverted to a late 2015 version of his channel where he talked about the many popular current events on YouTube and mostly discussed channels that were of similar or larger size in his things were looking pretty good for leafy as month after month he uploaded 1-5 videos a week and saw decent growth to his platform at this point it was apparent that his two years on Hiatus only improved his content with people loving his sometimes unpopular but unique takes on popular subjects it's safe to say that leafy was back and he came back strong exploring Beyond his traditional targets and finding new ones but none were as frequently discussed on his channel as Pokeman a popular female twitch streamer that like many content creators had a few controversial aspects of her background some of those few controversies included her takedown of videos that many say she took down in an unfair fashion though some videos that she took down were not in fair use as people were uploading her popular stream clips of the month without adding anything transformative to them people have made videos about her and she's copyright strike them the list goes on and on if you make a video that is negative about her she's gonna try to gun you and I had spoken to my MCN and I was like is this something that I can take down because like but the biggest part that leafy harped on is her rumored her boyfriend you tier three Subs she has a boyfriend let me say that one more time dude she has a boyfriend and you're [ __ ] pathetic the reason this and his and many others eyes is that pokemane has a large male following and a smaller section of those people have skewed World Views where they believe that donating large sums of money or becoming a higher tier subscriber which caused a fair amount of money a month that they will eventually have a pathway to contact her and may end up dating her in the process not that many people sympathize with this part of her audience as their views are extremely unrealistic and difficult to support but on the other hand if Pokeman did have a secret boyfriend she was knownly profiting off her perceived availability which is the exact same reason many K-Pop Stars can date or at least don't date publicly there is a very profitable business and selling the idea that you might one day date a superstar so just as idubbbz once did to Leafy leafy made a series of content nuke videos criticizing Pokemon for the aforementioned reasons the content nuke spanning around four videos the first video according to leafy's recollection made it to number eight on YouTube trending under the category of gaming that was before it was age restricted then taken off trending which he appealed for then it was brought back up on training again then it was age restricted again which means it was taken off of trending once more the reason for this back and forth was a large amount of pushback mostly from the twitch community that knew and defended Pokemon making decent points of their own in which Leafly included in his later content nukes on Pokemon that yeah like leafy literally already got bullied off the internet once this drama brought back a taste of 2016 leafy as the more drama he caused brought more people back to his channel causing enough drama for his line of merchandise to almost immediately sell out and everything is just going so good right now this is what being lucky is dude and as the series progressed each Edition was considerably less serious not only because leafy was training on Twitter again under the guise of being pokemane's secret boyfriend Pokeman boyfriend started trending worldwide which is pretty sick but also because people were speedrunning getting banned on pokeman's Discord server for being affiliated with leafy in any way [ __ ] foreign this by launching a 500 contest to see who could get banned the fastest the peak of the situation and no doubt was Pokeman announcing her month-long break from streaming starting early August of 2020 which many people perceived to be influenced by leafy though Pokemon claims that it was because the pandemic was affecting her mental health then 13 days later she apologized for many things mentioned in leafy's videos and while she did address leafy in her video it was largely covering all of her controversies and it was not meant to purely address leafy but the most important part of this video that leafy later discussed was pokemane states that she is not transparent about her relationship status because it's something that belongs in her private life so even something as small as the potential of her having a boyfriend strengthen leafy's claims about her it shouldn't be mentioned that leafy made 10 plus Pokemon videos Almost one after another well at least that's how it seems on the surface but in reality the non-content nuke Pokemon videos had almost nothing to do with her at all they were just clickbait used to talk about other things including the stock market gambling the reason he hates politics how to bargain with an editor and which content creators he was interacting with but with him causing pokemane to constantly trend on Twitter and what seemed to be a Relentless campaign that caused the twitch streamer to quit momentarily meant bad public relations for his worst enemy that has been gunning to take his channel down for a very long time in the morning of August 20th 2020 those wanting to revisit leafy's videos could only watch them through re-uploads as his channel was banned from YouTube Pokemon immediately stated that she had nothing to do with it and some content creators rejoicing that action was taken on leaky's channel but this unveiled a unfun president of YouTube and that is how YouTube overnight deleted leafy's Channel without warning for potentially breaking the rules against harassment and bullying typically when you are making content that you shouldn't YouTube will take down a video and give you a community guideline strike so you understand not to make that content again if you get three strikes like in baseball then you're out but in leafy's case all three balls were thrown to the pitcher's plate while he was sleeping and gave him no chance to redeem himself which is something many content creators saw wrong in not to mention that many of leafy's Pokemon videos had very little deal with her following this ban he was also banned on Twitch and Twitter his strongest presence on social media is Instagram as any attempt to come back to YouTube even his covert accounts and he only uses to keep track of his subscriptions get banned almost immediately the story of leafy's downfall was a strange one because it was not due to lack of interest and viewers slowly dropping off it was due to too much interest he was just too good at his job and while the narrative remains that he did much harm to the YouTube channels he covered in the past many benefited from his videos and milked their attachment to Leafy there's still a strange irony about how these sensationalism that brought him up was the thing that inspired his downfall leafy is now a fossil that has no hope of returning through YouTube there is no hope for a comeback a return or another rise just the terrifying reminder that YouTube can strike down any channel and leave nothing but archive videos hinting at something larger a fate that through leafy can now happen to anyone leafy like a leaf and Autumn has fallen and Gone with the Wind [Music] talk [Music] [Applause] foreign [Music]

Channel: Joon The King

Views: 839,839

Keywords: Leafyishere, Leafy is here, H3H3, Drama alert, narration, 2021, Rise and Fall, Documentary, Biography, Timeline, what happened to Leafyishere, YouTube, Profile Piece, Where is, Joon The King, Entertainment, analysis, education, drama, video essay, idubbbz

Id: ItN4-FGdiP8

Length: 53min 55sec (3235 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 01 2021