How One "Man" Fooled Us All - The Strange Story Of Samurai Buyer | TRO

[Music] [Music] [Music] hello ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the right pinion the home of a [ __ ] with too much free time and image it's something that I fair few people seem to care about and understandably so in our communities there's nothing wrong with a bit of reputation conservation particularly if that aids your standing amongst others image can be reflected in our demeanor or actions our comments and equally it will be defined by how people interpret that behavior when we encounter human beings and other alike entities we spend a lot of time trying to paint a mental picture in our head for how we envision them now we cannot look into their minds and read their every intention but some judgment is always necessary because we have to make a decision which may involve bestowing responsibility or trust in certain people down the line and that mental picture has to be factored in however this is typically reserved for personal relationships and although we may hold grace for opinions about certain issues who won't typically assign a face to it this is particularly the case with corporations now it's completely valid to have distaste for corporations and their conduct but it's also reasonable to accept that most companies are made up of a lot of interacting tears and this can lead to them being pretty much separated from the idea of consciousness altogether although I wouldn't actually grew that and urge others to keep in mind that a decision will typically have a person behind it it is often hard to conceptually feel any emotional connection to what a company may do hell if we did that we'd probably never stop being upset and we do need to look out for our mental well-being too you know YouTube occupies a weird medium between the world of intimacy and distance because although we may not feel a connection to a lot of creators on a personal level their success partly relies on the direct support that we pledge towards them a lot of celebrities feel a bit beyond our world and YouTube creates communities that people can be involved in however because of that there's a bit more direct accountability and a judgment that does feel a little more personal therefore we tend to apply certain standards for creators we may not give tube large multinational corporations partly because of connection and partly because we actually have the power to hold them accountable over the last few years we witness companies attempt to be quote woke and relate to the human condition yet it never feels particularly real because although amusing you receive the impression it's just another campaign focused towards a demographic you've depressed teenagers who occupy the Twitter held scape on top of this the tweets are never really channeled through the mind of an individual and therefore we never put a face on the company or develop a personal connection however in 2015 a business managed to infiltrate a then budding YouTube community through a character who become almost synonymous with the product that he was offering yes long before the better help scandal would cause many craters to reevaluate how they keep an eye on sponsors they collaborate with there was an even more bewildering controversy surrounding one of the most iconic YouTube sponsors samurai by samurai buyer is an online proxy buyer / delivery service which on first impressions wouldn't have the most applicable market potential in the YouTube environment particularly in unboxing content which was the main genre they were engaged in however this is where we introduce a man named Misaki a now former representative and marketing manager of the brand in question in communication he seemed to be an oblivious Japanese gentleman attempting to sell merchandise to the Western world with your happiness at heart brought to stardom by his appearance on idubbbz his Badham foxing series he became renowned for his unassuming demeanor broken English and habit of appropriating phrases in a rather unflattering yet precious fashion do you have any specific [ __ ] yellow merchandise is that you want to get how about clothes or foods can you hook me up hi homie that would be great and what is your size medium ok homie over the next one and a half years the samurai buy a brand would expand their scope in working with multiple YouTube personalities from across communities capitalizing on this reputation while Misaki obtained a unique status amongst creators and their audiences as a culturally sheltered yet conscientious and enthusiastic gentleman with the interests of his Western friends as his utmost priority in many ways he became the face of the brand involved in a platform that treated him with the more nature but he treated craters it was so so wholesome love Misaki oh gods in there dude is incredible but was it too wholesome in the world where corporate and personal become one the heavens will collide with the earth under the end the spectacled corporations and creators alike realized why they were probably better off in different worlds yesterday my friends is the story of deception exploitation and intimidation with a side of legal fries and with that level of dramatic potential you'd expect there to be a comprehensive backlog of craters covering the situation however due to reasons that we'll discuss later the landscape otherwise seems spots may of these videos having vanished from where they once were until recently I was barely aware of this situation and under the impression that Misaki had Millie honorably faded into obscurity it appears that I was wrong well today we're attempting to fill that gap with as much information as I could find some spicy storytelling and some hot takes for a cold case it's been a while since we stepped in the YouTube time machine and people who weren't there you may not even be aware of the troubled legacy of a man and a business but on principle appeared to encompass some of the purest qualities of YouTube culture however as a wise man once said expectations are for losers does that mean there's a story to tell oh yes it does so I suggest we get right to it I guess the first specific question to answer is what is samurai buyer what sort of service do they offer well it's a delivery service however the business doesn't hold stock themselves what they tend to do is purchase content that can be typically purchased in Japanese domains ship it to their warehouse and then facilitate transportation of these goods which may otherwise be inhibited by international restrictions on those specific sites typically this is related to online shopping however these services also extends to auctions which sounds pretty fun if I'm to be honest because of their setup you will probably be charged at two separate points for the service once for the items cost when you make the purchase and then for the cost of the shipping once is arrived at their warehouse with the weight and size measured it secured a system but I suppose it's one that makes sense Samurai buyers about page doesn't really have much information about their origins in much more focuses on their features and their benefits of using their services this isn't a criticism but given their lack of information elsewhere how samurai buyer came into being may appear to be a bit of an enigma however it would not surprise you to know that its existence preceded its presence in YouTube communities the first archives of the old site samurai by JP appeared towards the end of 2014 in fact this old article announcing the launch of samurai buyer was published on the 14th of November 2014 which can give us a pretty strong grip on when it was established it was launched by the Bushido corporation headed by Yasuhiro Tanaka who was already operating a similar service known as the tower Bao Shinkansen which helped deliver Chinese products to those in Japan the tower bar being a reference to the popular Chinese shopping website and the Shinkansen being reference to the Japanese bullet train symbolizing their speedy service I assume with the success of this venture Bushido clearly sought to reapply the formula on a larger scale this time signalling intent to export Japanese items to China Taiwan Hong Kong and the United States in the first few months this venture was well received with another article being published in March of 2015 proudly proclaiming that over 110,000 users had visited their websites before and after the new year however the article focused on success predominantly within China and if we recall in the previous article we would have noted that they seemed to have their sights set on the United States however there were few key problems that were likely hindering their progress in these markets now we could talk about the lack of prestige or the already existent competition from within but another significant problem was the language barrier samurai buyer had a website this website did have an English language option however it was not the most fluent if you were browsing the web looking to purchase some foreign goods and encountered this website which appears to possess the English skills of a spam email it may not fill you with the most confidence in their ability to deliver here are some of the examples the word of samurai is symbol of Japan that widely well known in the word it is essential that using Japanese when you purchase at Japanese online shop unless shops support for English one hour special staffs will assist you even though you cannot speak Japanese these are my favorites but jokes aside this poor grip with the English language is something that pervaded their website and would probably make any Anglophone think twice about spending their hard-earned cash on such a convenience so over the next few months they worked on the linguistic floors eventually creating a more accessible and trustworthy site however it was still a bit clunky and unconvincing add this to other issues and it was probable that they weren't quite performing up to the level they were aspiring for now at this time there were a lot of craters on YouTube doing these unboxing videos some of which responsive content however unlike a lot of businesses involved in this enterprise samurai buyer weren't actually offering dedicated loot crate's nonetheless someone maybe even Misaki himself had the audacious yet relatively ingenious idea that they could be a part of this and instead of using the boxes to promote a product they could use it to promote their delivery service conceptually it works in fact it works incredibly well because whereas with loot boxes you are constrained to showcase content that will be congruent with what you're offering commercially we samurai by they could practically put anything in the box as long as it was something you could buy yourself on their websites this meant they could cater to the youtubers interests and compel more positive reviews and enthused endorsements it's not exactly clear when they began contacting youtubers with their propositions however idubbbz wasn't actually the first person to work with them I can't say for certain who was but what I do know is that on the 6th of September 2015 just under a fortnight before samurai buyers first appearance on the idubbbz channel a creator by the name of the anime man uploaded a video called where do you buy awesome Japanese goodies have you ever been in a situation where it's like you look at stuff on Amazon you look at stuff on eBay some cool Japanese stuff like whether it be snacks or t-shirts posters figurines you know awesome stuff that you can get in Japan but it's like it doesn't ship to my country well samurai buyer is a website where you can do just that it's a proxy by website pretty much you go on to the samurai bio website as you can see on the screen right now and you pick out your goods that you want and not to worry if it doesn't ship to your country because samurai buyer will actually go and buy the things for you and then with a small fee it will actually send you the stuff through samurai buyer rather than through Amazon and eBay in this video he answers the titular question stating that you can in fact buy awesome Japanese goodies from this website known as samurai buyer as a video it doesn't really stand out from standard sponsored content and there are no details regarding their interaction other than that he seems to be relatively familiar with them on principle it made sense for a company based in Japan to reach out content creators who have audiences more engaged with Japanese culture and would have a great desire to purchase their goods thus finding greater utility within the website the anime man's video was well-received and obtained an adequate number of views this may have satisfied Mizuki and the crew over at samurai buyer who are probably unsure of what to exactly expect from their sponsored content however it's doubtful that they could have foreseen the fortunes that while their next clients would bring them let's talk about that interesting character 2015 I'd UPS a bygone era for sure in fact that whole period feels like a blur and I wouldn't blame anyone for not remembering the items didn't actually have the most prosperous year it definitely picked up at the end but a lot of it was spent obtaining steady yet gradual growth nonetheless he was carving out a firm niche with content that carried a general appeal for defining his brand as an independent crater put a link shield on my forehead Hey ladies do you like geek culture because I'm the biggest leg loc fan in the world I speedrun it and I go best past the cuckoo's by September 2015 I dubs had two main series which were held in relatively high esteem by his audience these were Kickstarter crap and bad and boxing the former is of little relevance the latter is what caught the attention of samurai fire the ban on boxing series have been running since 2014 and consisted of our good friend Ian I dubs unboxing various items testing them often in unorthodox fashion and then delivering his verdict may the Triforce be with you oh my god my brain is starting a hemorrhage a little bit some of his content was just Ian's opening up what he felt like but in the months approaching the samurai by saga he had increased focus on loot crate's and methods of destroying their content nonetheless these videos did receive a consistent number of views and retained a dedicated fanbase now I doves channel wasn't exclusively Japan a philic god what an ugly word but regardless he had exhibited interest in Japanese culture and previously advertised products from the nation whether this factored into samurai bhai's decision to approach mr. e dupes is another question but they clearly saw an opportunity to win over some new buyers of the samurai to a sponsor probably one of the most attractive features of idubbbz his content is that he wasn't a creator defined by the topics he was covering it was carried by his distinct persona which meant that there was a level of security in the traffic that he would receive even if it was the most unappealing topic like some sports and uploads are this is probably why a lot of sponsors worked with idubbbz in spite of his relatively modest size at a time he elevates the content by being able to apply his natural self and provide a promotion even if he wasn't always the most complimentary items I can't believe you burned your subscriber plaque and also put wakka moly on your try force be with you t-shirt and believe it I'm gonna throw in the trash now I'm not gonna wash it I could wash it easily take two [ __ ] seconds be annoying do only throwing the trash one oh why give up now though the English on the samurai bio website was possible what a handsome man by the way their social media posts indicated that they may still lack the necessary proficiency to operate a particularly successful PR campaign however with intrepid slightly misplaced confidence they proceeded to connect with Ian and arranged their first collaboration uploaded on the 16th of September 2015 today we're gonna be unboxing some P of Arc's packages these three are sent to me I think by fans not exactly sure the fourth one here was sent to me by a good friend that I met a couple weeks ago his name is Misaki in this video samurai bye didn't occupy the whole review as the limelight was shared with some other fan bale however I dubs appeared to take an immediate liking to the product shared with him so which appealed to is more destructive even masochistic tendencies you send me good stuff from sake out oh I don't I don't and I know I don't have as many nerve endings on my foot but you know Oh Misaki Misaki Misaki please no hurt me please no Hermes Misaki I did not want this Misaki more like Misaki however this was only half the appeal the other half being the interaction with Misaki my name is Misaki from Japan I'm watching your movie on YouTube and want you to introduce my Japanese products on your channel please let me know if you're interested now in many environments this sort of email would have been dismissed as spam but idubbbz chose to entertain it firstly because he's an entertainer and even if nothing had come of it it would have made for an amusing story and secondly someone's offering to send you goods for free the worst thing that can happen is that they don't send you the produce or they send you something rather Pleasant which I does may well have prefer to be honest in his book it was a win-win in exchange that follows Misaki appears to unknowingly win over the affection of idubbbz and his viewers yes I would love to make a video for your product send me the craziest stuff you have samurai swords body pillows whatever you want okay I will and may I know your real name and also phone number which require for shipment so let's break down this defining conversation a person who we assumed to be Misaki reaches out in broken English which although unprofessional on a website can be rather endearing in conversation in this instance one can assume it's because of inexperience but we tend to conflate this with stereotypes of innocence and naivety it's also quite amusing I use those delightful quotes earlier for comedic purposes but combined with the other conditions it can enable some pretty exquisite mean potential however the job was not done for Misaki in rather typical idols fashion Ian employs some offensive language and communicating with Misaki particularly in addressing him now Misaki could rebuff this or break off communication altogether but he absorbs it and then uses it to further self-deprecating self in these positions it brings a lot of personality to the conversation is this guy trying to hold a discussion on the level with idubbbz but not quite getting there it's funny and it's cutesy my bad yo man I got the patch yeah I can't open it equally however it establishes a firm bond between the sponsor and the client you'll see they turned Misaki and samurai buyer often used interchangeably now technically speaking they are very different entities Misaki is merely be representative of a much larger business because the job of sponsored videos is to focus on the product misaki's personality became an asset to the product itself misaki's personality put a face on the company and that's not often done for many reasons many of which will be revealed in due time however for the moment Misaki was like that out of touch granddad trying to be cool but in a way the failure was just as captivating and this form in his appearance outlined the start of a beautiful and fortuitous relationship one that seemed to only blossom over the coming years after these success of samurai buyers first parents on the idubbbz channel both party seemed too eager to work together again and just over two weeks later idubbbz uploaded another bad unboxing this time committing his undivided attention to the contents of misaki's care package hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of bad unboxing samurai buyer edition on the last episode of samurai buyer in boxing we took a look at a lot of products that Misaki sent us and some products that Misaki didn't send us from now on anything sent by Misaki or samurai buyer as a whole we're gonna unbox on its own we're also gonna take a look at what misaki's feedback was on the previous video idubbbz also discloses their dialogue following the initial upload which appears to have devolved since their previous conversation now it's Point Blank offensive humor without too much depth to it however one thing that you could observe is the building of a rapport between idubbbz and Misaki Misaki appears to mold himself around the conversation he reached out originally with a rather ordinary email the only detail one could observe was the linguistic deficit and azide of the plight is rather signature style of humour Misaki seemed to adapt by the end of their second email our samurai representative appeared to be innovating with this humor often once again two rather painful outcomes in my opinion including referring to Japan as the yellow island now with jokes like this which would be considered somewhat distasteful by many you might receive the impression that he doesn't entirely know what he actually means and his lack of awareness is what many would find amusing but remember that Misaki was the person to refer to this in the first place which means he's likely making some active effort to appeal to idubbbz his humor including making some statements which may arouse one suspicion hell yeah this is gonna be sick as hell I'm going to crank that Soulja Boy all up and down a mofo I don't get the meaning sorry I English no good if someone says I in lished no good you may have reasonable cause to suspect that their English is better than they let on now misaki's English may not have been immaculate but I do you think he had a grip on the effect of such a comment in fact even I does mildly suspicious as to the identity behind this character I don't know who Misaki is I don't know if he's one of my subscribers and he's just pulling the biggest meme on me in the world but he's the [ __ ] animal however it was another successful video with idubbbz reacting to the items with a degree of elation and dare I said emotion she says I want to do a giveaway campaign for your subscribers because they are nice I'm like commentary enough I want to do a giveaway campaign for your subscribers because they're enough over the next few months they would cultivate a strong working relationship with unique assortment of items company by a presentation which would raise a few eyebrows elsewhere but not on the 2015 idubbbz channel no they were right at home here as I mentioned earlier towards the end of 2015 I doves began to experience substantial growth and as we also mentioned Ian's content often had a peel which was transcended of the topics the other facet that became incredibly beneficial for him was his strong production value and consistent brand it gave his older content a lot of rewatch value for new audiences and this led to cumulative views on previous uploads which in turn yielded their promotion on the YouTube algorithm at this point samurai buyer had become a bit of a running meme on idubbbz his channel we spoke about the image he garnered earlier but it was like this hilarious naivety Misaki demonstrated a very surface level grip on language and personality which allowed idubbbz too often control the conversation with a level of irony and exploit misaki's inexperience in a rather underhanded fashion now this could be seen as quite mean-spirited but because idubbbz didn't do it in a way which directly put Misaki down or even portray the language bad as this inherent disadvantage and more as grounds for comedic potential people enjoyed it Ian's happy Misaki is happy who would break up such a happy home well although idubbbz and Misaki had become their own power couple samurai buyer was still focused on acquiring publicity from across the YouTube spectrum their collaboration with idols was a blessing for sure but it was a mixed blessing because although their appearance on IANS channel would almost certainly increase their chances of landing future collaborations with similar craters it also placed them in a rather awkward dilemma regard reputation now normally linguistic proficiency is something that you would want to be improved on upon experience and budgets something that had come being like samurai buyer would definitely had the resources to accomplish but in this instance misaki's poor English became so associated with the brand the people Harbor this expectation they would receive the same treatment even if it was distinctly unprofessional it was more entertaining and it set them apart from other businesses it was this enshrined meme status and they were going to make the most of it I knew that from idubbbz video that he messed around with Misaki a little bit but I think I took it to the next level and made him fall in love with me I'll open the box in a second Misaki you just I want to show everyone the emails cuz they're funny throughout 2016 a large majority of samurai buyer videos were replicated in idubbbz this format with the content sometimes being delegated to an even more secondary position than the email interactions in Jade animations video she spends just under 10 minutes talking about their interaction before reviewing the products it makes sense in her format but it is a testament to how much of a force of personality mr. Misaki was considered to be with him leaving a lasting positive impression on many of the craters he collaborated with I can conclude that I love this man he's the most innocent cinnamon roll of a Japanese man who just doesn't know English very well and I can't express how much he has won my heart this was the consensus it was a sense of innocence that seemed to pervade his attitude even if people did solicit humour from the interactions they shared with him in many ways his attempt to understand another culture beyond him appealed to people's innate senses of sympathy and warmth how could you not help this modest Japanese man looking for a little promotion for his service from the big youtuber senpai all he wants to do is help all you weeaboos out there whatever and then he's like oh you like Pokemon right I was like yeah I like Pokemon and he's like do you like plush and I was like yeah I like plush and then he sent all the Pokemon in all the plush all these craters played along like it was some funny little injo but in less than two years samurai had unleashed its market potential not just in the you Titus states but all across the Western Hemisphere bolstered by the image of its eccentric representative who'd won over the hearts of his clients however when success hinges on one person's image does failure not as well well let's talk about it [Music] towards the end of 2016 samurai buyer maintained their vigorous promotional campaign and you honestly wouldn't notice too much wrong I did note one negative review on reddit around September time but otherwise you'd be hard-pressed to find any controversy however Misaki himself did seem to be quite persistent two points I just went on hiatus from Misaki for so long he's really just been hitting me up over and over and over for months now so here you guys go samurai bar is back and Misaki dearest this shipping literally idubbbz who had not uploaded a samurai related video since March of 2016 uploaded one November we seem to be slightly more cynical in its tone but misaki's really been really getting on my [ __ ] nerves this past year you know always chatting my ear off about dumb [ __ ] wanting me to do things for him and to prove that I've stolen his gay logo and I put it on a sweatshirt and any proceeds from Sony's sweatshirts or shirts will go directly to me and not Misaki so [ __ ] Misaki this lets us question where the items actually had any vitriol towards Misaki as the relationship was appearing to manifest into a more cruel affair now although there were some comments which did appear to be quite cutting in their nature alongside one that I do intend to return to later if he and was possessing any ill-will I doubt he would have given samurai buyer any attention at all including promotion for a new vacancy which is where our story takes us next if you paid attention at a trainwreck of conversation you may have noticed there was some talk about Google form that's just some [ __ ] Misaki wants me to promote for samurai buyer I'll put it in the description click it or don't send your sperm to him I don't care in his scammer I'd buy a video alongside a rather cringe conversation where Misaki mistakes spammed for sperm in such glorious hijinks Misaki informs idubbbz he is hiring for a position a person who is interested in anime content and has competence in social media marketing this was announced by idubbbz and accompanied by an application form however because the idols fandom are predominately ship posters and there had already been a hilarious joke most people just filled out the application under the denomination of sperm big funny however there was one successful applicants and this person was an individual by the name of Merryweather Merryweather is a crater slash producer who hails from Scandinavia nowadays he's known for his work on anime girls but back then he was a community freshman looking for a way into the industry I prevail I bumped into the guy when working on another project which didn't quite come to fruition but my personal impression has always been positive and we are on good terms though I note it may influence my interpretation of the situation I will do my best to present these differing perspectives Merryweather was a fan of idubbbz but unlike the rest of the Google Form respondents decide to take it seriously applying for the job being offered by the folks over at samurai by his application was successful and he took up his job in this foreign land in January he tweeted out that he was working with samurai buyer on the social media front covering their communications and social media now unfortunately last year the original samurai by a Twitter account was heated so there's not too much that can be said regarding its interactions but as we know there appear to be no apparent conflicts or anything that would prime people's expectations for what was about to transpire in fact it seems that Merryweather Rowney Twitter account very successfully and increased their follower count over tenfold for a few months always serene but come April there was drama referred drama that would change the way people perceive samurai buyer and Misaki it was April the 22nd a fine day for a twit longer and boy oh boy did we receive one one delivered by the now former samurai buyer employee Merryweather in it detailing his rather unpleasant experience with the assumedly homeless Misaki and some very shocking revelations about the company and their marketing campaign mary said that he had moved out to tokyo after quitting his job to pursue a position at samurai by now after a successful stint managing their Twitter and encouragement from Misaki to extend his stay Mary designed to move from Tokyo to their offices of Fukuoka however all was not as imagine for Mary as the work environment didn't fulfil his expectations due to the rather unnerving atmosphere in part countable to misaki's cold and distant behavior which played into his paranoia in spite of this marriage states he worked on numerous successful projects including an actual loot box about time and achieved the company target set for him far ahead of schedule however following the completion of these tasks Mary decides to move back to Tokyo so to feel more comfortable at which point massage revoked all of Mary's social media account permissions had access to company related communications citing self-promotion as the reason he was fired something which Mary immediately disputed showing the contradictory narrative by a Skype user we assumed to be Misaki samurai buyer would regularly change the reasons why he was fired giving some the impression it was more personal Mayweather also shows DMS of this user behaving rather mockingly towards him including changing his profile picture to all these Scandinavian flags bar Denmark because Mayweather is from Denmark and even threatening to call a lawyer at one point when another crater ceases their collaboration with him due to the dismissal because you know people in this community care about others however it doesn't end there Merriweather notes the lexicon and responds to those who might excuse it due to misaki's inexperience with the language stating that Misaki is in fact highly westernized even having resided in Australia for years what yes will return to take a look at the verifiability of this story in due time but Mayweather's account states that misaki's persona was actually the result of him instructing an african employee to spam youtubers only realizing the potential when idols fount of amusement in the broken English once he has contact he then proceeds to badger the creators for free promotions so he can maintain his position at the company and take a paid vacation to America interesting detail but whatever floats your boat I guess mary stated that he believed that misaki's decision was based on how Misaki no longer saw use for Mary at B company and although understanding of that reasoning still felt the misaki's treatment of him was unjustified given that Misaki was the person who encouraged Mary to extend his stay in Japan it seemed irresponsible at best and downright malicious at worst which is not what you really want to hear additional claims were also made in the TWiT longer about the service including the assertions they charge quote mystery fees for shipping putting you in a position where you may end up paying extortionate delivery fees for modestly priced items and although you can receive a refund for the shipping fee because you've purchased it you can't obtain a refund for the item which would then be placed into their mystery boxes basically the allegation here is that samurai by structure corners the consumer into pay much more than they may initially assume which allowed samurai buyer to rip off their clients there's also further testimony about the way that Misaki behaved the legality of the dismissal and further adjuncts which served as supplementary responses to claims made by other parties involved but the core message was clear Misaki was not who you or nearly anybody thought he was and it didn't end there this twit longer did reads me well at the time it received a fair few likes and retweets and although it never really went viral it caught the attention of relevant parties such as idubbbz and fellow craters who may be considering a collaboration with samurai in the future loads of negative reviews were posted about their products and people's experiences with the website my favorite one being a brother disgruntled user who claimed that upon ordering a samurai by a mystery box received a decapitated toy gorilla now I cannot possibly comment on the actuality of such an anecdote but it should show where people stood in the moment Misaki may not be the business but he was the face and when the face was smited so was the business I'd also add that there was a whole other drama that this form which continued the rest the year that includes another rabbit hole going to much darker places where misaki's involvement was baked maybe that'll be for another time for now we'll focus on where people's attention was regarding this situation some craters who had previously collaborated with samurai buyer also made their own statements of solidarity with meri there was an additional drama related statements that Misaki had allegedly made on call regarding one of their first collaborators the anime man which is a statement that will turn to later in response to this the anime man stated that he had ceased working with them due to the fact that he found elements of the operation fairly sketchy not the most glamorous endorsement Sam even asked whether Mary had grounds to sue for unlawful dismissal and whether the legal argument was in his favor which I'm not sure it was given the fact that he wasn't full time nonetheless he was in a foreign country with little money and limited time it was not practical which is probably why they sacked him because what was he gonna do well this on top of this other courageous began to post videos onto YouTube people began to spread the word and suddenly it seemed like the whole world would know about the injustice of samurai buyer however as quickly as it was picking up it was shut down one evening Merriweather Pitt tweets out legal threats which had been made by Misaki and the next day this was followed by Moreau in her first tweeting in a frenzied manner at idubbbz begging for help followed by a rather unconvincing tweet stating that everything he said was a lie this was briefly followed by him pulling down all his tweets and statements and commenting that he didn't want to deal with any lawsuits and just wanted to leave it behind immediately at around this point samurai buyer have made the statement that they would be conducting further investigations before releasing another more official statement this response then followed an alleged discussion yielding from a threat posted on Twitter this twit longer victoriously stated that Mary had now admitted to twisting the statements as well as an invasion of privacy against the corporation however for merriweather's own sake for his own privacy might be magnanimous genteel sir that he was Misaki decided not to go into details regarding this because you can trust him the thing is when you don't give examples then then people don't have anything a look at which which pretty much implies that you're lying through your teeth in the TWiT longer they mostly honed in on the claims that samurai buyer was a scam a point which had now been adopted by some of the company's most staunchest critics and even some former fans they reiterate that they do ask for payments but that is inevitable as they cannot be certain of their own transportation fees due to the destination the weight of the content and the size of the items varying on a case-by-case basis however they pledged to make this detail clearer to avoid any confusion down the line and apologize for any concern that was raised on top of this they state that they're intending to extend their service promotion code we're booth which will have any service fee and every detail to fulfill all your we're blue wishes hooray they conclude by requesting people to continue supporting samurai buyer so that they can continue to improve their customer service which I'm not sure is the best justification but we'll let that slide for now as there are more pressing matters at hand maybe Misaki was hoping that this response would go viral unfortunately it did not in fact given the deletion of all the tweets it seems people's investment in these situations rocked off very sharply maybe this was for the best as the people who did read it didn't find it the most persuasive partly because releasing DM is where someone admits they're wrong wouldn't be a violation of their privacy especially after you've sacked them Misaki trying to use it to morally grandstand seem transparent and people cottoned onto the path of these DMS may have been more telling about misaki's behavior than anyone elses untold this when he said someone statements will quote twisted well it was unbelievably vague and certainly not a clarification of what was true and what wasn't further to this stating that someone invaded your privacy when all they did was accuse you of doing shady stuff and showing the MS of someone who is allegedly you being a prick just sounds like you're admitting to the shady stuff and a map that someone called you out for it it's basically attacking someone for being a whistleblower combine this with misaki's legal threats that users had observed the night before and to them it seemed that he had threatened a distressed person who was in a foreign country with little experience into a position of silence not a good look on top of this the TWiT longer just didn't we talk about much sure the scamming point was pretty important but equally the assertion of treatment and that Misaki wasn't who he presented himself as was pretty relevant to now no comment doesn't mean an admission of guilt but it was going to be hard for creators to reinvest their trust in him or his brand I assume some of these craters discussed it privately before placing disclaimers in their description clarifying their position on the matter and mostly not complimentary once the Gorner had been laid down and although Mehra's tweets may have been removed a lot of people's content and narratives were still prevalent in this discourse which didn't make me samurai by a team very happy a number of months later I received some weird emails important legal action notice while those creators talking about the matter was a young Ben small youtuber by the name of slaw sir slaw so had previously worked with samurai by himself but if on finding out about this situation had made the decision to terminate their relationship and upload a video calling them out for their shady business practices now because of this new information coming out I have privatized my video I made with samurai via which is annoying because I like that video but I just can't stand by and endorse the actions of Misaki now samurai buyer is a company that doesn't care about its product it only cares about the bottom line if they want to find the easiest way to make money even if it means ripping people off well now we know that money is number one priority over ethics over customer service over everything and so it's very safe to say that the reason he fired meri was because meri had fulfilled his purpose he had increased their social medias following by by many times and you mascot a new subscription service he'd made them a lot he had laid out a clear plan for them that they could easily follow and he was no longer required his video tended to mirror the claims made by Mara that in the TWiT longer making the video rather straightforward however as an upload on the situation it garnered significant traction obtaining over 400,000 views that's becoming one of the predominant narratives for those wondering what happened he also uploaded a follow-up video on the matter which acquired a further 100,000 views however these are not videos that I want to focus on no another video uploaded a few months after his original videos covering the situation he details a serious legal threat made by the samurai by a team but one that appeared to be quite empty plaza the videos that you have uploaded pertaining to speculation about our company has resulted in great damages for our image and business while derived in part from fact it is surrounded by falsehood and missing context which has led viewers to believe we are therefore a bad company that should be avoided as this video continues to be maintained and accessible to the public the damages inflicted to us also continue to worsen and we can no longer ignore the issue consequently we formally request that the 2 videos concerning samurai buyer and the scandal occurring after a member of our staff was terminated to be removed within seven days of this mail received if 7 days passes without compliance or negotiation we will be forced to consider legal action to arrange videos removed and damages um that was two months ago I responded asking what parts of the video in question they considered false and they just responded with everything bad I said about them just in quotes and that's it I responded asking how exactly my claims were wrong and what the evidence was and they just respond a half month later just asking me to take the video down and now let me clarify if there was actually something I said that was wrong or misconstrued in that video and they told me just straight-up told me why it was wrong then I would do everything in my power to sure people know that that was wrong I would pin a comment on both of those videos I would say it in this video uh I would make it known but instead they hit me with this legal action notice this if he responded in a week we will take legal action for damages no you're not no you're not and that is just the worst way to go about this all the results in is a worse image for your business something that you don't want and I don't want to deal with however the professional legal team over at samurai buyer persisted with the notices and these videos were eventually removed as longside other factors that we'll discuss soon Stassi felt they had served their purpose another crater who uploaded a video on the situation alluded to a similar experience with samurai buyer as recently as ten months ago over two years after this conflict on a video with seventeen thousand views now a majority of what I've spoken about today has been removed since some which could be partly credited two samurai buyers resolute approach towards those who have spoken about it and the fact that no large crater was particularly outspoken perhaps due to the fact that many of them had worked with samurai by themselves and felt rather embarrassed or awkward about its samurai buyer has mostly succeeded in suppressing the situation and with these sorts of sentiments conveyed in their emails you think they'd have reason to you would receive the impression the samurai buyers business was mortally wounded by this coverage but I can't say I completely agree in fact I think the damage was already done the moment that craters and audiences thought they were being deceived if they were is another question let's talk about that [Music] as I mentioned earlier Misaki and samurai buyer had a close association had even closer one assumed by many audiences misaki's placed in these sponsorships was as much a selling point as the products or the services themselves hello awesome I send you cool things may I know your name and phone number it needs four shipments then he asked if he could Skype me and I said it's 3 a.m. babe I'm gonna have a Kip if that's ok when she apologized profusely because he's a lovely polite Japanese man so when it was supposedly revealed that Misaki was not the man who people believed him to be and was in fact the result of an accident which was exploited by a rather calculated individual who is not actually the representation of innocence people probably felt rather deceived especially youtubers some of whom would probably at an embarrassed bantering with this guy who was just so unassuming about your little English jokes and you exploits the shortfalls for a little banter instead the youtuber was in fact the one being exploited because a lot of these creators probably wouldn't have made videos if they were approached by a smart well-spoken businessman some people like Jaden animations who appeared to have such affection for Misaki didn't know what to believe because of the person who she thought she had come to know so what should we believe while looking retrospectively at some of the conversations it's hard to feel a slightly contrived nature in certain comments in a way this was expected because the way Misaki marketed himself tended to adapt to the person he was talking to he be more offensive around the edgy commentators and more wholesome around the more family-friendly craters but at the same time this doesn't really alter comments such as I in lished no good or the confusing spam with sperm conversation in hindsight it seems glaringly obvious but if you don't consider it you probably wouldn't have noticed I think although at the time idols probably wasn't overly suspicious he may well have been entertaining the possibility that he was being hoodwinked for the sake of clowns misaki's really been really getting on my [ __ ] nerves this past year you know always chant my ear off about dumb [ __ ] want me to do things for him and it's like dude you know I really like it that you know you're so non-pc and I really really appreciate that you know there's a lot of non-pc asians out there okay you're not unique myself you don't have a stranglehold over me is this comment I found particularly interesting because you receive the impression that samurai buyer was drilling in this persona to the point where even idubbbz was moderately irritated by it and if you make AI does pissed off at edgy humor then you're probably doing something wrong Ian went on to make this future comment about samurai buyer which although hard to read into because it's Ian seems to imply that he may have been quite happy that he finally had an excuse to end his relationship with Misaki and samurai buyer it's hard to read into a lot of edgy craters in their opinions on the business because it's often bailed in thick ironing but just over a month before the drama transpired another crater and friend of idubbbz by the name of Max mofo made a video where he didn't seem particularly thrilled by the content sent to him either nor these circumstances in the industry where you can [ __ ] for free most youtubers I feel to do sponsored videos or anything by a product usually this a little bit of you know back and forth involved but I Dobbs pretty much made Misaki famous and now he thinks he could trade his ship or wherever and we'll just open it for him how do you send me Jackson I don't think he thinks much of me there's not much to work with here I think the joke may have been wearing thin and perhaps people would have found out by their own accord eventually but it was a tad too premature of people's liking which led to the rather abrupt response on top of this although I note at the start of their social media presence as English wasn't very good Brown most of 2015 I'd also note that it had significantly improved in the run-up to the idubbbz collaboration with only occasional English mistakes and certainly not ones that were exhibited in future conversations I think there were definitely elements of misaki's personality that were played up yet effect who was the extent of the deceit really as far as implied was Misaki a fluent English speaker who had spent time in Australia well let's reintroduce the anime man the anime man was the guy who worked with samurai buyer before idubbbz he was also an Australian living in Japan and his subsequent withdrawal from doing business with samurai buyer would certainly make an observant individual take a second glance but he'll maybe he was just jealous about that other craters didn't have to pay for their promotion as Misaki claims wait Misaki claimed that in a clip briefly leaked a behind the drama an individual who appears to be Misaki seems to be talking about the anime man in quite effortless fashion perhaps with the slightest tinge of an Australian accents Joey yeah you know him no i don't i just seen you've worked with them yeah he's actually saying he was seeing australia oh yeah I heard he moved to Japan yes now in all fairness Misaki he doesn't really say anything particularly inflammatory he seems to be theorizing in quite a free-form manner legally that freeform manner doesn't really match the forced English mistakes in conversations that were often portrayed in people's uploads is this the only possible explanation no but it's not something that's ever been dispelled there was a brief comment from Misaki on Twitter during the situation claiming that he needed staff to help translate a response to someone whose are not sure but it was attempting to maintain that character but people were not convinced I think the whole ordeal just ruined the image of Misaki so much that people didn't really know who he even was even if he couldn't speak perfect English his whole demeanor was still pulled into question his conduct was a far cry from what had been expected of him because he was seen as this community figure and because he was seen as this community figure he was going to be held to community standards especially given that his stick was this innocent wholesome man very few youtubers who'd previously were in Misaki given him their time and entertained their quirky conversations were likely going to be interested in wreaking that relationship because they undermined the person who they had come to know it also ended the potential for future relationships on this basis because it undermined the punch lines jokes like these as unamusing as they were to me were based on the sincere naivety of misaki's character if you have an interaction with knowledge that it's all just an act it doesn't make the misunderstandings funny because it doesn't take a comedy genius to change spam to sperm it's only really funny when the person isn't aware with this in mind samurai by were basically relegated to another company with no real outstanding qualities but it wasn't even that because of the persisting stigma left by the controversy they can't really bring back the character and any other promotional campaign conducted on YouTube to people who were familiar would seem out of character their relationships with youtubers was mostly as an end I have to admit however I don't really feel overly bad for any youtubers who merely collaborate with samurai buyer under the pretense that they were talking with this friendly Japanese man because it was a pretty naive assumption to make on their behalf in the first place such an innocent image is something that would have been hard to maintain naturally for over a year because surely at some point it's gonna clock that they should improve their linguistic skills and the experience of talking to other people with English as their first language would have helped them improve anyway this persona would have been pretty difficult to maintain naturally given its fame the perception people always had when they imagined Misaki was almost like this one-man show as samurai buyer because it's the only real way that such a business would have been able to work misaki's whole existence became inherently counterintuitive and people entertained it because it was fun I think creators just saw it through a very narrow optimistic lens based on stereotypes they're formulated in their head and they probably jumped to the comedic potential rather than considering the likelihood of this persona do I blame them for that no I could see myself easily doing the same thing but I don't think it's some huge deception on that front it's just a bit of a letdown but that letdown ultimately harmed samurai buyer more than any youtuber so is it not them we should feel sorry for well not really [Music] in a spongebob squarepants movie there's a scene where our protagonist tried to purchase ice cream from a sweet old vendor lady yet something isn't quite right the sea may not intend to be but it's a good representation of how one's focus on the ideal can sometimes distract us from the reality credit where credit's due samurai buyer employed a bold marketing strategy which paid its juice for a substantial amount of time but ultimately when said marketing strategy is based on a level of deception you always risk a loss of trust when it is revealed even if it is something that perhaps people should have worked out anyway in a way his samurai buyer had revealed it themselves we may have all been able to have a laugh about to move on but these circumstances under which this information was released couldn't be more ironic if it tried to be Misaki and perhaps some of the members at samurai buyer maintained a character that was given support and attention due to his perceived innocence and blind kindness a reliant on people's sympathy and acceptance even if it was from a somewhat condescending position on the youtubers behalf with that in mind when they encountered someone in a similar position they should have at least understood the fundamental conditions that drive us to do the right things in those situations with those people because they were taking advantage of those exact sentiments from youtubers and yet when their new employee who is in a country that he didn't know with a language that he didn't speak perhaps slightly naively when they should have shown a bit of sympathy they neglected that mantra it's hard to know exactly what occurred but to me it seems that after leading someone on they sacked him for reasons they've continuously changed and then proceeded to taunt him while he was in distress just the thought of that couldn't be more antithetical to the persona that Miss safty had constructed this doesn't mean that the narratives were perfect I think the TWiT Lanka was flawed it was overdramatic and it appears that Mary was heading out to Japan regardless though I assume the extension wasn't planned nonetheless it seems somewhat miss framed in the TWiT longer and he was criticized for it however he also ended up being subject to some pretty broader narratives which were completely unsubstantiated including claims he had acted out in the office which were attracted when the guy making them admitted he had barely worked to the company there's a good reddit interaction that occurred where you can see these two arguments unfortunately even if you saw the flaws in the claimants statement it didn't alter the experiences they appeared to be rooted in and the fact that samurai fire had altered their explanation multiple times made it look like they were struggling to justify an ill-founded dismissal and subsequent vicious malicious derision whilst news broke and they finally realized this was impacting their reputation they changed their tune but not by bringing back the old friendly face of Misaki no that was already in the past they went into whole corporate mode threatening legal action against Merriweather and anyone who spoke ill of them they persisted this campaign against creators who uploaded videos on the matter even uploads which didn't receive the most traffic ones that were basically bare-bones reaction videos I honestly think that most of these threats didn't carry much weight but it also seems a fair few craters were aware that their narratives were slightly misguided particularly the one regarding the fraudulent nature of their site as I said right at the start how they format payments is a tad novel and I can see how it could have been misleading however I do not think their site is structured to intentionally scan people although certain stories such as these leftover returns being placed in loot boxes may well be true when you're accusing a company of scamming I can see how that would place you on shaky ground if you didn't have the evidence to back up those claims so I also think that self doubt on the behalf of craters probably played into the outcome of this being mostly removed from the internet and to be fair that's a reasonable justification it does seem that some narratives with less substantiation will court amongst these stronger ones nonetheless given their legal team were about as competent as the mr. Misaki sales persona it just looked like a desperate attempt to eradicate the existence of the instance so I'll take a moment to set the record straight I don't think samurai buyer is a scam website I don't think they're gonna run off with your money into the sunset and you will not receive your product if you want to order from them go for it this obviously does not invalidate any legitimate complaints that people have and there were issues with how they presented certain information however I think this problem has been mostly resolved and they currently offer ways to approximate shipping fees on the basis of predictive package specification on top of this much of that behavior could be chalked up to basic corporation standards I'm sure that it's not unheard of for a company to layoff a foreign employee who they feel like they've used up and can probably get away with dismissing I'm sure that youtubers have collaborated with corporations who've done far worse things than samurai buyer I want to make that clip however they can get away with it because they don't attach a personality to their brand nor do they ingratiate themselves into the community as this benevolent friend to all with samurai bi did that with Misaki they lost the privilege of distance especially for Misaki himself whose childish antics in the situation without which not even a corporation would typically stoop to due to the sheer insensitivity and terrible optics this was what jeopardized relationships especially that with idubbbz while their biggest cheerleaders who samurai literally used to promote this job opening I wouldn't be surprised if Ian genuinely felt bad for promoting it in the first place and he'll there was certainly no way that he was ever working with them again it was awkward for anyone who had promoted the narrative about this sweet naive Japanese man after the situation now that someone from the community was actually screwed over but I said I didn't blame them it was easy to miss the super thing is if samurai by hand intimidated Meriweather and others they probably could have found a middle ground resolution which the public recognized and both sides endorsed where some of the inaccuracies will roll back on it said by threatening legal action and causing an immediate removal from someone who seemed frenzied and panicked to online on lookers no one actually believed the retraction was sincere and it just made them look like corporate bullies people aren't idiots and they are sensitive to these circumstances samurai buyer wasn't and that was what undermined any humanity people thought they had since the situation samurai have maintained their narrative and although I can understand their annoyance as certain claims I still feel like they're missing perspective may have their tweets from their old account have fallen into the suspension of bits however they still receive questions about the situation on their new one from time to time and they have continued to attack meri including calling him bitter but hurt and even racist which is pretty ludicrous given these standard set by Misaki oh yeah your wife I am yellow nipped wag white always sees what recently tried to contact me a lot saying how he wants to do a couple of voice calls with me unfortunately I never responded and I I'm actually too much of a [ __ ] talking voice chat with Misaki this isn't to say that I necessarily think this is the most egregious content though the black face is pretty unpalatable but they set the standard for edgy humor in your marketing and unless someone was actively tweeting out hate content for which they probably would have been immediately reprimanded for that I don't believe that such a claim is remotely fair you think that after seeming so upset about being called scammers they'd understand not to throw out such flagrant terminology but oh well an eye for an eye I guess Misaki is since supposedly left the company and moved on to greener pastures so any comments aren't likely to be coming from Misaki himself now but if they're gonna maintain that point of view I don't think they should do that without a bit of challenge how have that sparked from the main intent behind this video which is more a cautionary one the Misaki character had limited gimmicks and yet he basically found a cheat code to bypass a little complex judgments we would typically make when considering collaborations even if it was accidental allowing to basically be a social chameleon moving between youtuber conversations and adapting to their style sometimes too uncomfortable degrees if anyone else had done this it would have seemed quite disingenuous and yet people gave it a pass because we assumed with some sweet forum man trying to fit in with our little YouTube project samurai by then often sent over items that cater to the individual crater whether that was Pokemon plushies for Jaden or stuff female legs for filthy friend it made them think that mr. Mizuki in all of his naivety is still cared about their interests how sweet but they were just part of the plan eventually that more cutthroat corporate side showed and everyone was shocked but like the spongebob squarepants scene sometimes you've got to look out for the bigger fish the message I'll conclude on is that it's worth being careful about the assumptions you make based on a person's lack of technical skills it doesn't necessarily reflect their character especially if the person's an adult with decent social ability elsewhere your sympathy can easily be exploited and eventually you or someone else finds out the hard way the moment you think someone can do no wrong is the moment you probably underestimate them that's not to be paranoid just cautious samurai buyer was the business had got to have a human face for a bit and as a fun little novelty I suppose it can tell us a little and makes her at least an interesting tale but as a trend in a world where we already have more than enough brands trying to infiltrate the human mind I think I like this Pinocchio better off hallo so yes that was the video I hope you enjoyed I am an absolute mess right now and I probably gonna go take shower have a rest because that was a bit more taxing than I expected it to be quite a dense video with a lot of words in sentences I want to give a big thanks to my editors once again I'm sure they've done a fantastic job please go and check them out I will leave them in the pinned comments I also want to give a big shout out to my patreon once again in $10 patreon is being shown on screen right now and also want to give a big thanks to my $50 patreon hypercube some hullabaloo Amanda and Caroline as well as my hundred dollar patreon yesenia Ramirez Brandon and junk and Christopher caress thank you again for your support it means the world and it keeps my head up in these times and these crazy times so much appreciated I don't have too much else to add if you want to find me my social medias will be in the pinned comment too though I have been on a bit of a break from them but you know if you want to try there they are and I don't know what else to say just thanks again for your support guys take care I'll see you in the next one [Music] [Music]

Channel: The Right Opinion

Views: 2,646,750

Rating: 4.9148374 out of 5

Keywords: Samurai Buyer, What happened to samurai buyer, Misaki, Samruai Buyer Misaki, jaidenanimations, animations, jaiden, idubbbz, idubbbz Samurai Buyer, My Insane Experience with Misaki/Samurai Buyer (read description), idubbbz samurai buyer, idubbbz misaki, misaki chronicles, samurai buyer unboxing, bad unboxing, idubbbz bad unboxing, i hate everything, i hate everything samurai buyer, samurai buyer opinion, the truth about samurai buyer, slazo, slazo samurai buyer

Id: 91yro7IPSb4

Length: 63min 3sec (3783 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 17 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Hepezzo]

TRO makes quality videos. Anyone who comes across this post should watch some more of his videos and consider subscribing if they liked watching this video.

[u/VakiReddit]

i still cannot find the old samurai buyer videos slazo has uploaded

[u/Nolcfj]

Im dying, he looks so cute. I genuinely crush over slazo