How A Pro Gamer Successfully Faked His Death (For The Dumbest Reason)

on the 5th of july 2011 this account will be registered to the youtube platform going by the name of sketchup the owner of this fresh new channel would go on to become a team fortress 2 professional widely considered to be one of the best players in the game's 15-year history so when he would sadly die unexpectedly only four years later in 2015 his audience and the entire team fortress 2 community were understandably devastated extensive tribute videos were posted to youtube dedicated to sketch x incredible skill level users on reddit would pour their hearts out in threads that discussed how sketchup had influenced their playstyle all while the developers of team fortress 2 would add a weapon attribute to the game in memory of sketch x life it's safe to say no one expected that this whole thing might have been a hoax after it all began in june 2015 when sketchy uploaded a video explaining that he had been going in and out of hospital whilst dealing with an unspecified long-term illness hey i'm the guy that runs this channel most of you probably know me as sketchick um i'm going to try being as straightforward and honest as i can i've been very sick and very busy for the past few months spending every day either bedridden or going in and out of the hospital with no time to play tf2 or make videos or anything like that i don't want to reveal too much information about my illness but the doctors are saying that i probably don't have a lot of time left at best i've got about a year before my condition gets so bad that i'll need constant life support and my chances of recovery are looking low to say the least in light of my newfound understanding of the importance of time i'm quitting video games and leaving youtube prior to uploading this video sketch had racked up 12 000 subscribers on his channel and while this didn't make him the biggest youtuber on the platform as mentioned previously he was extremely well known within the team fortress 2 niche specifically as a professional pyro player with over 8 000 hours of play time across a six-year period in comments he was referenced as a god of all pyros the best pyro in the world and the only pyroman i could respect which is why no one suspected anything in the beginning he was respected his channel was growing and why would he want to quit the game out of the blue if he was one of the best in the world under the assumption that this life-threatening illness was real the video would be shared to reddit receiving over 1 400 upvotes on a post titled that sketche is leaving youtube from what is most probably a terminal illness which was met with a high level of support from the community at large terminal illness is extremely saddening i don't know how people deal with it i mean man i wish sketchup all the best there's really a slim chance but i really hope sketch can somehow recover i think i cried a little this is really sad news i loved how creative he was in the game love you sketch thank you for your videos others went even further by inquiring about a potential charity that they could donate to in order to support him financially always saddening to hear people suffering from terminal illness i wish for the best for him and his family during this time does anyone know of a charity for his illness i'd like to donate if there is it should also be mentioned that the community was extra vulnerable to the announcement as only five months earlier in january 2015. another tf2 youtuber by the name of kitty0706 had also passed away from cancer highlighted in comments such as this one reading first it's kitty now it's this wtf i want to cure cancer so i can keep watching these people's videos however while most were incredibly supportive the more cynical and in retrospect the wiser amongst those in the comments section seemed a little more skeptical about this illness that he was going on about we'd have to know the illness first as the audience was discussing the news with a mixed yet mostly positive response his health continued to deteriorate also he claimed it was a little suspicious that after the initial announcement stating that he didn't have much longer to live he'd continue to upload tf2 videos as if nothing had ever happened however each video was pretty short in length and wouldn't have been super labor intensive to produce so it was certainly possible that he could have continued to make content whilst also being incredibly sick the other thing that was notably bizarre was that shortly after announcing his illness it became possible to support sketch x channel as long as you donated using yen the japanese currency english was clearly his first language spoken in a relatively strong australian accent therefore what was the deal with his support currency being in japanese was he living there or something at this point it was insignificant but later it will become a vital piece of information however equally vital was sketch's next announcement being that he had become so sick he was unable to make videos or even play tf2 at all the announcement would come in a video titled closure uploaded six months after he'd first enlightened his audience about his terminal illness this time discussing how much worse it had become welp this is it folks this is how it ends i'm very ill my health is gradually deteriorating and the clock is ticking so to speak i simply cannot afford to spend any more time than i already have maintaining the channel this is my absolute final video to say goodbye before i stop using this account so feel free to unsubscribe if you haven't already there will be no more videos coming from this channel farewell following this video sketch x social media presence would cease entirely there were no more uploads to his youtube channel no more tweets to his twitter and zero additional hours played on his team fortress account the silence continued for two years with absolutely no news at which point the community will come to the consensus that sketch x deterioration and subsequent silence must have indicated that he had died he released a psa saying he had an almost certainly terminal illness and that even if he survived he would not resume making videos that is to say he almost certainly passed away tribute videos began to pop up on youtube such as this one with over 60 thousand views titled at sketchup wannabe which began by stating in honor of sketchup whilst displaying a tf2 rap gravestone in the thumbnail the degree to which sketch had impacted the community was cemented even further when in memory of skecheck the developers of team fortress 2 would add an attribute called sketch x bequest to one of his signature weapons immortalizing sketchup within the game forever and they added in like a little a little more room to him which i thought was really really nice i really like that at this point sketch might have felt baffled that things had gone this far alternatively maybe he was feeling smug about having it gotten away with the crime so to speak however either way it would be with one reddit comment in may 2017 that the community began to question whether or not skecheck was actually dead if you want a small conspiracy a lot of sketch x items have left his backpack ending up in another backpack owned by someone named will even some minuscule items like refined metal some of the names will has had seem very sketchy and the account is relatively active last online just over a day ago the guy seems to have sketch x nappa's respite in some gift wrap too so maybe this guy was just a friend of sketch x hard to say really while it was certainly bizarre that items were being traded out of sketch x team fortress account it wasn't really a smoking gun that screamed hey this dude isn't really dead a sketch might have simply given his password to a friend before quitting who is now trading the items considering some time had passed since his apparent death however it wasn't only the items on sketch x team fortress account indicating that maybe he wasn't dead further evidence would come to light in a forum post which read sketch x illness video set to private which explained that out of the blue the two videos in which sketch will discuss his sickness were unlisted from his channel entirely previously it wasn't impossible to theorize that someone else was tampering with his tf2 account however when activity was also spotted on his youtube account the pattern suggested that maybe sketchup himself wasn't really buried 6 foot deep which would be supported further in january 2019 when a video would pop up on youtube titled with two words that would shatter every single past assumption about what had happened to the legend sketchup confirmed in this video a player can be seen toward the top of the leaderboard by the name of sketchek with the same profile picture as the original after being killed by sketch the uploader of the video boochie would find himself involved in a message exchange with his friend reading dude it's him bro it's him to which the friend would type okay record he wouldn't dare before boochie would respond once again with i'll try i'm recording in light of this video out of curiosity players began to add sketch x account on steam which is where things took a little bit of a bizarre turn those who added his steam account began to receive this cryptic message which led to a video on sketch x channel titled txt in the tags of this txt video there was a link which led to a now private video with more cryptic japanese text translating to mr frog only knows frog language sketch would then send more gifts to those who added him on steam the next one relating to a twitter account once again named in japanese text translating to the frog with the banana peel as displayed in the original sketches profile picture the twitter account would then post a tweet stating that his audience needed to unfreeze the watermelon then everything will be understood which was accompanied by a jpeg image of a frozen thawing watermelon users then realized that by pasting the jpeg of the watermelon into winrar then it would create a demo file leading to a website with nothing but the signature sketch frog and an empty text box which required a password upon entering the password a pastebin link would appear leading to a string of binary text which when decoded would lead to an unlisted video stating that sketchup was about to return to youtube as the team fortress community began to discuss his return sketch would log back into his original twitter account before making a post reading kept you waiting ha followed by a video on youtube two days later explaining that he was never sick in the first place about three years ago i announced that i had contracted a non-specific terminal illness i want everyone to know that was a lie it's a sick joke it's a ruse i was never ill not even a little bit he'd then go on to explain the motive behind faking his own death i was in japan for an extended period of time when i was in japan i had a really good time and somewhere along the way i came to the conclusion that video games had ruined my life and that was when i decided to shut down the channel but i also wanted to go out with a bang i guess you could say and then i came up with the idea of faking my death because i knew that would draw a lot of attention before coming to the inevitable conclusion three and a bit years later that he wanted to continue making videos on tf2 a couple weeks ago i was playing tf2 thinking about some stuff and i decided i wanted to come back to the channel and reveal the truth to everyone and while this objectively marked sketch x return whether or not it was welcomed with open arms is another question i feel kind of half and half on this situation i love sketch for what he did for me as a pyromane but lying about terminal illness isn't cool happy to see him back but honestly a shitty thing to do videos were also uploaded to youtube addressing this ethical problem of well he's one of the best in the game and he seems genuinely sorry but does this excuse him blatantly faking his death for attention it's a sick joke of course but it's one that he's probably had monetary gain from even if it's just a few hundred dollars you know and still for me that just makes the whole thing feel a bit more awkward and uncomfortable for me in terms of like dismissing it as a big old joke the more forgiving among sketch x audience was simply looking forward to some new content and comments such as hey welcome back and hope you got some sick content ready hope all the negativity in this thread won't sail your return however others went to the effort of writing full-blown paragraphs about why sketch eq was in the wrong one of which referencing the weapon within tf2 which had been named as a tribute to the legendary pyromane sketch x bequest lose all community respect for lying to us all i hope they change the extinguisher soon i'm so disappointed i can't be angry but i'm unbelievably disappointed i'm glad you decided to come clean and you're going to be hated but it takes guts to admit you're wrong still extremely disappointed petitions were also created on the steam forum such as this one and subsequently the sketch x bequest attribute was removed silently in the month that followed in spite of all the hate sketch's viewership was luckily supported by his skill as a pyro player as opposed to what you might call his ethical compass and therefore upon returning his videos would surprisingly receive as many if not more views as when he disappeared almost four years prior while almost all of these fake social media stunts generally damage the career of whichever influencer is in question sketch x somehow managed to do the opposite

Channel: SunnyV2

Views: 9,108,238

Keywords: thegamerfrommars, internet culture, internet mysteries, youtubers, xtremegamez, sketchek, spill, tea, shook, sebastian williams, tea spill, drama, beauty guru, anna oop, spill sesh, tiktok, tiktok dance, tiktoker, fake, faking tourettes, tourettes, tourettes tiktok, fake tourettes tiktoks, tourette syndrome, tiktok tourettes, tiktok mashup, tiktok songs, tiktok cringe, tiktok cringe compilation, fake disorder cringe, fakedisordercringe, tiktok compilation funny, tiktok fake story

Id: oWDFMh6ResU

Length: 11min 47sec (707 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 09 2022