Leafy Was Here - Resolutions (ft. Tommy C.)

people of YouTube it is I the Duke of the dank the mayor of meme town everyone's favorite youtuber Emperor lemon and today in an unprecedented unscripted commentary we are going to discuss the fallout of the leafyishere YouTube Geographic so first and foremost let me just say that I have been completely blown away by the support for this video this video must have really titillated montes ons fancy because in less than two weeks it got over a million views now I've had a few videos get to a million views in the past but this is the fastest by far it's ever happened and all the comments all the messages I got from this video have been overwhelmingly positive people really really seem to like how I put this video together I mean really in the last seven days I've gained over 50,000 subscribers and I've never really ever had anything like this happened before in eight years of making videos so before I get into anything here I have to first welcome all 50,000 of the new subscribers to the channel please feel free to make yourself at home pour yourself a glass of downward spiral if you subscribe to me for my editing capabilities I regret to inform you that this video will not have any of those just because I don't want to spend another two months working on a 40 plus minute video in honor of leafy this video will feature random gameplay in the background as I commentate over it with unrelated commentary so now without further ado let's get into the discussion so first of all I kind of just want to address the background of this video I want to answer why I made this video why am why is this video 51 minutes me youtuber me no have attention span to watch 51 minute video why video must be 50 one minute well to tell you the truth the video was originally gonna be a lot shorter I actually started writing the script for this video way back in November after the very first episode of YouTube geographic however any fans of the channel at that time will know that that was when I started my little mini crusade against YouTube and I sort of put the script on the back burner but originally this video was probably gonna be like every other generic what happened to leafyishere and in hindsight I'm glad it didn't turn out that way my original inspiration to make the leafy video came from just browsing on YouTube one day and I looked at all the big commentary channels I looked at h3 h3 i dubs keemstar I kind of just looked at all their stats and their subscribers just to see how much they had grown in the past year and then I kind of remembered in the back of my head that leafy was originally right there in the running with these guys and he seemingly completely disappeared off the face of the earth now keep in mind this was during a time before leafy had actually stopped making videos but I never actually heard a peep from him in the past year or so and I was just kind of wondering what happened I originally wanted to just explore the topic of leafies downfall and how he managed to sort of hit rock bottom in terms of growth yeah but then after I put the script on the backburner a lot of interesting things started happening first of all the tower dog leaks came out which provided a whole new insight into why leafy sort of just disappeared from my recommended feed and that leak was of course about YouTube's covert censorship of certain commentary channels and after that I began to look at the stats I began to look at the analytics of leafy's channel a lot more closely and that was when I started to notice a lot of really irregular patterns that could not be explained under normal circumstances and considering the tower dog allegations it began to make a lot sense to me that YouTube was tampering with leafy's numbers and suppressing him from being viewed by most of his audience and about the same time I made a lot of videos I made a series of videos harshly criticizing YouTube and their decision-making and their management and something very interesting happened the following January February and March looking at my own analytics I could tell that something was way off I've been around long enough on this website where I kind of have an expectation of how certain videos will perform and these videos I uploaded during this stretch and you can go back and watch them there's a chance that any of you who've been subscribed over the duration might not have even seen some of them because I got tons of reports from fans saying that my videos weren't showing up and they're recommended and my videos weren't showing up in their subscriptions and everything was getting instantly demonetised even if it did not contain one shred of questionable content they would still get instantly demonetized as I uploaded them I remember making a Logan Paul rant about a week after the whole thing happened and that video started off getting a ton of views and then after about a day got age-restricted and the official reason I got told for that was that their their age restricting anything that depicts an image of the thumbnail which doesn't really make much sense because I recall seeing a ton of other videos that use the image of the thumbnail and they weren't age restricted so I got really paranoid around this time I got paranoid that YouTube was sort of suppressing me and of course now obviously in the light of my recent success with this video that's clearly no longer the case but still though for a period of about three months it just seemed like all the numbers on my channel were lower than they should have been and that made me very concerned and it may be very suspicious of YouTube and when I first saw the tower dog leaks I was a little bit skeptical it just seemed awfully bizarre that YouTube would go after specific channels at the time it didn't really occur to me that they would even care about specific channels but after that stretch of three months or so where I felt like my account was targeted and suppressed by YouTube I started looking into things a lot more and that was about the time when I sort of renewed my interest in making the leafy video because it began to dawn on me that what if the same thing that allegedly happened to me also happened to leafy but a hundred times worse so after the Jimmy Kimmel video I started researching and writing the leafy was here script and during my research I began to unpack all these signs that supported the theory that YouTube suppressed leafy's channel and the more research I did and the more evidence I found at this theory that YouTube suppressed leafy's channel the more I became sure that this was what happened to leafy and as I did more research and as I dug deeper I began to realize with confidence that leafy got screwed the dude got absolutely screwed over and nobody really realizes it except for me and you can go on YouTube right now and look at all the other what happened to leafyishere videos they're all kind of the same they all cover the same sort of scope of events but what I began to realize is that the story of leafy goes so much deeper than kind of what's public knowledge and what's generally presented by the commentary community Levy's disappearance just goes so much deeper than what everyone thinks so with this new burden of knowledge I felt like it was sort of my responsibility to present the whole story and to present what I'm fairly certain is the truth of what actually happened to leafy so that's kind of why the video is 51 minutes long it's because with the issue of leafyishere there's simply so much information to unpack and I felt like I really needed to present that information adequately there's simply too much of a story to tell to make the video any shorter and thankfully people really appreciated that effort of course there are a few people commenting like 51 minutes I'm not watching that but I actually kind of turned it around on a lot of people I saw some people commenting 51 minutes that's too long and then 51 minutes later they leave a second comment saying wow that was actually pretty good so for those of you guys who are patient just like to stick around watch the whole thing I really appreciate it and since this video got so much traction and created so much of a discussion I felt like I was sort of obligated to follow up on it and respond to some unanswered questions that people might have had so I took the Twitter and I asked my followers to post any questions they had about the leafy video and I got a ton of responses I tried to narrow down what I'm covering to sort of a few general questions that a bunch of people were asking so let's get into that this person wonders what other types of youtubers I think that the YouTube algorithm has tried to shut down and this is a very interesting notion that I'm sure a lot of people inferred after I presented my theory about how YouTube censored leafy's channel if YouTube would go so far as to completely suppress leafies videos what other type of censorship could they be doing from what I've seen on YouTube definitely a lot of political channels they don't get very many views recently gun channels that was something that was actually reported on in the news where YouTube is kind of suppressing gun content now in the wake of the recent school shooting spree in America when answering this question it's kind of hard to tell for sure but there's certainly patterns that you can observe basically anything YouTube lists in it's D monetization guidelines any channel related to those guidelines have typically been shown to [Music] less well I believe the YouTube censorship machine extends far and wide but it covers a different extent depending on what kind of video it is it's very interesting what you can observe out there if you keep your eyes open lots of people ask for my thoughts on what leafy could have done to sort of redeem himself in the eyes of the general public well personally I think leafy's downfall boils down to two very critical moments the first one was the Tommy NC rant and subsequent backlash I think that was the first real moment where a substantial number of people turned against leafy before that it was basically just smooth sailing for him but that was sort of the first crack in his empire I think if after the Tommy NC video leafy had just sort of stopped roasting individual people he might very well still be around today a lot of people commented on my leafy video saying that they used to be subscribed to leafy and they enjoyed his rants and his story time videos but they kind of lost interest once he's just started becoming primarily a roast channel and honestly I think if he had just gone back to that style of giving personal stories personal anecdotes he would have been fine and he would still be quite popular today but anyway after the Tommy NC video I think him deciding not to change up his style and just to continue with roasting random people on the internet I think that was the point of no return for him because after that point YouTube got involved and once YouTube kind of sort of put the clamp on his channel he could not really recover now the second critical point for leafy was the content cop response so if the Tommy NC incident is sort of what caused leafies numbers to go down across the board the content cop response is what caused him to sort of lose the respect of the majority of the commentary community I think Headley fee just sort of owned up to the criticism instead of just responding to it negatively like you just sort of did with any old youtuber I think if he had shown some humility some empathy in that situation I think it's fair to say that he wouldn't have been hated nearly to the extent that he was but unfortunately for him he kind of handled the response to content cop poorly and as a result he got hated and an unfortunate side effect of that was that once leafies videos started disappearing from everyone's recommended no one really cared and no one sought to investigate that further just because of the extent that he was hated several people asked me about the research process of my videos well the first thing I do when I get an idea I often casually research the topic months in advance months before even starting a script it's not as difficult as it probably sounds it's usually just something I'm curious about and I gradually look deeper and deeper into it slowly gathering facts and what I do is instead of just presenting a bunch of random facts about an incident or a topic I really strive to piece together sort of a narrative of what happened and then I try to find evidence and screenshots and videos that support that narrative for the research process I spend a ton of time on the Wayback Machine the web archive that's how I got most of the footage and screenshots on the leafy video the web archive is just a tremendous resource for finding information about stuff that happened in the past you'd be surprised the amount of information you can find on that website and it's very helpful because over time on the internet a lot of information and truth sort of just gets buried very quickly like for example going into this video I had no idea leafy even made minecraft videos yet that was a core part of his channel for three years and it's actually somewhat insightful for explaining why if you did some of the things he did it was because he learned a lot of these traits during the Minecraft era but until my video no one really talked about that it was something I had to learn myself going through all the old past screen shots of his channel lots of people ask me about what my thoughts were on gray day under a I referenced gray day in the video but there was never really a point where I discussed anything about him for those of you don't know gray day under a was another commentary channel that got popular around the same time as leafy and they were actually friends behind the scenes and kind of like leafy gray day had this very endearing style where he would just sort of openly rant about a bunch of topics and his production quality was really poor but people didn't care just because the way he spoke was so charismatic and captivating people just kind of wanted to get behind him so what happened to grade was that after 2016 he kind of just stopped making videos about a year before Leif he stopped actually and kind of just like leafy you don't really hear about anything from him anymore I did have a look at his analytics and interestingly they show a similar pattern to leafies analytics where they suddenly fall off and they just never recover and the reason that's so interesting is because gray day was also one of the channels listed in the tower dog League in the YouTube memo it was one of the named channels that YouTube sort of wanted gone from the platform and so I find it very interesting how he sort of disappeared as well you could kind of attribute a lot of that to him just not making videos for almost two years now but still though it's it's something to consider how he was also one of the targeted channels in YouTube's alleged suppression effort and how he just like leafy is not around anymore I probably won't do a YouTube Geographic on grey day kind of just because much of the content of that hypothetical video would pretty much already have been covered in the leafy video but it's still an interesting topic nonetheless and I suggest other people look into that Phoenix Hagrid asks if the project was fun well I don't know if fun is the right word but I did enjoy making the project I really enjoyed the aspects of sort of piecing together a story that one really knows yet and just having the dramatic irony knowing that once I upload this video it's kind of gonna change the way people think about this certain issue so that was very important in motivating me to finish this the whole effort of the video from writing to editing probably took me over 40 days of work and the video did end up running very long there are certain points during editing where it does get very tedious and they kind of just wanted to be over but like I said the idea of sort of changing people's minds about an issue is highly motivating and it made me very excited to finish this video and put it up online for everyone to see a few people wanted to know if I think leafy will ever come back to YouTube and personally I think it'll be back partially for reasons that I'll get into later but mostly because YouTube is just such a magnet of attention right now it's pretty difficult to go anywhere on the internet and escape YouTube's poll I'm pretty sure that leafy wherever he is still uses the Internet he most likely does not live like an Amish person and I think it's fair to say that he probably anonymously watches YouTube every now and then I honestly just think he got burnt out from all the hate and he's taking a break and I'm fairly confident that one day he will return this person asked me sort of what I've learned from the whole experience of researching and producing this video and if leafy had learned anything well first of all for me I definitely fear YouTube a lot more now because I'm fairly certain that they blackballed leafy out of existence on the platform and if they can do that they can do the same to me or you so I had always suspected that YouTube was corrupt to an extent but researching this video really put that whole notion in a whole new light where this is an actual tangible event that YouTube has done to a person also while making this video I learned that sort of the YouTube process the YouTube game it can really have some negative effects on people a lot of people think that being a youtuber is just the easiest thing in the world and you just upload gaming videos and you basically print money but this whole leafy thing made me realize a very dark side of YouTube where the whole YouTube process all the fame all the fans it can really mess with someone's psychology and mental health and leafy is a tragic case of that and this was one of the themes I tried to portray in the video with the whole shining motif YouTube began to control leafy not the other way around leafy just became so obsessed with getting views and subscribers that he sort of lost sight of a lot of stuff that made him human and that's very dark to say but if you look at the whole story of leaf he started out as just a kid playing Minecraft and having fun with friends and slowly but surely YouTube Fame kind of poisoned him and poisoned his mind and and turned him into sort of this mini tyrannical dictator and it's very sad how YouTube and fame can do that to otherwise decent people now do I think leafy learned something probably I think the fact that he quit at all and just to stop making videos may be a sign that he finally realized his wrongdoings he finally realized the extent to which he was hated and the damage that he had done and if leafy returns he might see a completely changed man and hopefully he will learn from his mistakes [Music] so here's the big popular youtuber collusion bonus round monkey Jones asks when will you make a monkey documentary well monkey if you're talking about the crossover video we did the answer to that is a few days ago so if you guys want to watch me narrate a monkey Jones documentary check out the video on monkeys channel link in the description if you're asking about the monkey Jones YouTube Geographic I'm afraid I can't do one on you yet because you haven't gone on the downward spiral you see YouTube empires are interesting but YouTube empires that go on a downward spiral that's YouTube Geographic worthy I don't know monkey all I see when I look at your channel is a your numbers are going up you're you're raking in the fans you're just too successful right now and I'm afraid I can't produce a leafy style documentary on you yet internet historian asks what was the file size of the video and the answer to that is four point five six gigabytes yeah the 51 minute 1080p videos will do that to you Turkey Tom brings up an interesting hypothetical if I would rather have a situation where a leafy never lost popularity and it's kind of a difficult question to answer because it's really hard to tell what would have happened if leafy had never fallen off his throne on the commentary community I definitely think that if leafy had not lost popularity he would probably be somewhere around the eight to ten million subscriber range by now and it would be very interesting to see him go toe to toe with channels like Logan Paul and Rice gum but at the same time what kind of effect would that have on on sort of the toxicity of his community if you took the height of leafies Empire and doubled that how much of a problem would that make for sort of the YouTube community as a whole would leafy even be able to achieve those numbers continuing to roast people or was his decline kind of inevitable because YouTube viewed him as such a threat to the well-being of the website you have to kind of consider all those factors when considering the hypothetical of Leif he's still being popular today as for the current status quo in sort of the commentary sphere of YouTube it's pretty stagnant as far as I can tell where leaf he died he kind of gave rise to about half a dozen leafy clones I'm not gonna name any names but you guys probably know who I'm talking about all of them are kind of the same very little distinction between any of those channels they all have around the same subscribers they make videos on the same topics and as a result they kind of took leafy's old audience and split them several ways so none of them really stand out that much and the relevancy of all these commentary channels have sort of been dwarfed by the kind of status quo prototypical YouTube vlog channels it's hard to say that any of them really have hardly as much clout as what leafy once possessed in throwing his weight around on YouTube so I guess in summary to answer this question I would sort of lean towards preferring how things are now just because I felt that leaf ease decline was kind of inevitable anyway and the decline of leaf he kind of ushered in an entirely new era of YouTube I think the idea of leaf he's sticking around and staying popular would have only delayed the inevitable this guy kind of wants to know my thoughts on YouTube sort of abuse of power and how they can sort of wave a magic wand pull some strings behind the scenes and decide if a channel lives or dies I certainly think it's concerning to say the least I remember a time when YouTube was pretty impartial with these kinds of things but you keep hearing reports time and time again that they seem to really want to limit and kind of throttle content that doesn't really fit the prototypical YouTube mold in the past few years at least there's been a very heavy emphasis on preserving family-friendly content and pretty much anything that deals with mature subject matter gets kind of throttled and blocked and I guess my biggest concern over how YouTube sort of operates their business model and is that the entire website of YouTube we'll get stuck with this reputation of being just a kiddy kid website were the only stuff on their stuff for children and you'll start to see a mass exodus of adult content consumers on YouTube it's never really a good look and it's never really sustainable for anything to kind of become labeled as a kid's thing another consequence I want to point out is sort of how in systematically eliminating the more bizarre the more obscure the more edgy content creators on YouTube YouTube is forming a situation where the vast vast vast majority of content is incredibly saturated and incredibly similar I feel like in the last several years on YouTube there's been a very big sort of D emphasis on actually putting effort and substance into your content it's all about just hitting that ten-minute threshold and putting enough little bells and whistles in your videos just to keep your viewers attention for long enough and just giving them something to play in a tab while they're doing something else rather than actually making interesting dynamic complex content that demands your viewers attention so yeah those are the main consequences that could seriously jeopardize the future of YouTube based on how they're running the website today Trent brings up a very interesting point where based on my theory if YouTube thought leafy was such a big problem and set such a bad example for YouTube why don't they go after the entire sphere of douche youtubers who's ridiculous antics set really bad examples for the impressionable youth watching their videos and that's a very good question it's a question I asked myself a lot if I could give any theory as to why this is the case I would probably relate it back to the little motif in my leafy video where I talk about the really rich successful youtuber with a Lamborghini in its mansion you see you have to ask yourself how YouTube as a business can continue to entice new people to produce content for them and I think what they do is they promote rich successful looking people from Hollywood to the top of the website and so every new viewer who watches YouTube most of the content they watch will be from a really wealthy attractive vlogger type person who lives in a mansion and has an expensive exotic car and sleeps with a supermodel every night and through enough repetition of this new viewers will begin to associate youtubers with an opulent wealthy celebrity lifestyle and they'll use that image as motivation to produce content you see the way I look at YouTube is that you have to understand that everything they do has an official meaning and then it has an actual meaning like for example watch time YouTube has placed so much emphasis on watch time over the past five years the official explanation for the incredible emphasis on watch time is well we want youtubers to make higher quality content and if people are watching the videos for longer that must mean the content is higher quality that's what they tell you but in reality we can clearly observe that that's not the case on average content on YouTube has become a lot more watered down a lot more bland a lot more boring and much less likely to keep your attention than it was back when they had a 10 minute maximum on videos you see the truth of why YouTube mandates that you increase watch time is one advertisers pay a higher rate for longer videos and that makes them more money and to the longer you make people watch YouTube videos the less time they spend on a competitor site like Facebook or Amazon so YouTube has sort of a double meaning for every action they do and you can kind of apply that theory to take him down leafy of course they never admit to it but it's pretty clear from what I've researched that they did it and I'm sure if they ever came out and talked about it the official explanation will be something along the lines of oh he violated the guidelines here he incited cyber bullying he harassed children they come up with a long official laundry list like that but realistically if you want to put a tinfoil hat on your tinfoil hat I think that they might have gotten rid of him because he didn't fit the YouTuber brand he didn't look like one of those attractive blonde Hollywood vloggers and he was actually quite outspoken about several issues rather than being really vapid and innocuous and they kind of viewed his whole image and sort of his whole incitement of rebellion as really unstable for the whole YouTube image that's the best I can do to explain why YouTube systematically got rid of leafy while they let really douchey vloggers who are really guilty of many of the same things that leave he was guilty of they let them just run completely roughshod and connect to however many young impressionable fans they want so that's an interesting little game you can play whenever YouTube says they're doing something try to find the ulterior motive that's different from the official explanation this guy brings up an interesting dilemma where the act of roasting popular youtubers actually feeds into the popularity even more and I kind of agree with that sentiment an example I bring up is the Logan Paul ksi boxing match Logan or Jake Paul I forget whichever ones fighting him but there's a boxing match that's happening and if you seriously think that they're doing this genuinely to settle beef then you're probably a child who watches one of them because it's very clear that this is just a massive marketing opportunity to stimulate interest for both parties it's just sort of a corporate artificial feud that kind of preys on people's hunger for drama and exploits people for attention it's part of the reason why I kind of miss 2016 because a lot of that beef in 2016 was actually legitimate and not staged but to go back to the general question yeah by and large most conflict and drama on YouTube literally only serves to help both channels that are involved like the worst case scenario in a situation like this is that you get a ton of haters but they still watch your videos anyway and they still give you revenue just because they want to see you respond to the drama and it's not just YouTube you see stuff like this show up all over the place in entertainment we're by and large it's better to be hated than to be irrelevant and this guy brings up another interesting point where he talks about how in sort of a continuation of the D monetization system YouTube sort of made PewDiePie out to be the scapegoat for the whole thing and I think on youtubes end it they definitely succeeded if you ask most people online that you would tell you that D monetization began after the whole PewDiePie racism controversy and that's what most of the news articles about a report but it's not actually true YouTube's D monetization began back in August 2016 coincidentally a few months after YouTube's alleged secret meeting where they wanted to get rid of certain creators so yeah D monetization actually began six months before most people think it did and I definitely think there was some scapegoating on YouTube's end at PewDiePie's expense come to think of it PewDiePie has kind of become the go-to scapegoat for YouTube controversy lately and it's kind of a shame I don't think he deserves most of the criticism he gets from the media the notion that PewDiePie started the D monetization system is certainly a prevailing misconception in mainstream society and it's a shame because if people really looked into the issue they see it extends far further than just a small racism controversy and the final sort of question I want to discuss in this video is lots of people asked me where do I think leafy is now and it'd be perfectly honest I have no idea where leafy is now and I'm pretty sure no one really does outside of his close circle of real life friends I was not able to get in contact with leafy however I was able to get in contact with YouTube's favorite clown colossal is crazy colossal actually reached out to me after viewing my video and for those of you who aren't aware colossal is crazy was one of leafies few true friends in the commentary community from back in the day he sent me some messages that offer a lot of insight regarding leafy's mindset and attitude with regards to YouTube and with his permission I'm gonna share some of those messages with you right now I haven't spoken to him in over six months but we used to speak every day he's totally disappeared from the internet can't even get ahold of him on skype he even forgot the password to the email that accessed his Twitter it's kind of sad because we used to get on really well and speak all the time don't blame him though YouTube [ __ ] him over and after that all he was left with was a bunch of mindless sheep hating him and having videos made on him by many commentators who are guilty of everything he was doing the commentary community is riddled with hypocrites honestly he was definitely a bit of a sociopath not like full-blown but a bit he was borderline obsessed with YouTube it became a real ego thing for him it was pretty much all he had this dude was a multi-millionaire but he spent less than someone on minimum wage would spend in a year that's how deep he was into YouTube pretty much never left his room and ate cheap packet noodles he actually hated making videos had no passion for the creative process whatsoever he didn't like his own fans or interacting with them he hated all other youtubers and quite rightly didn't trust them after a while he didn't even care about the money it was literally just a number to him at that point and he didn't even know what to spend it on just seeing millions of views and the subscriber gains that's the kind of stuff he got off on I personally never understood it but I guess everyone has different drives and motivations so when YouTube [ __ ] him he had literally no reason to continue he knew that no matter what he did he was [ __ ] forever even if he changed up his content he was [ __ ] maybe if he was encouraged more to continue he'd still be around but of course the leafy hate train was in full steam if he came back to YouTube today he'd probably be a very different person that said he did some altogether pretty [ __ ] up things in the time I knew him even as his friend sometimes it was hard to feel sorry for him when things backfired he never deserved what happened though he's actually really intelligent believe it or not he just had no life experience not even because of his age but because everything he understood came from the internet when I first met him he was still living with his mother he didn't know how to deal with basic problems and despite the fact that he'd always asked for advice he'd rarely ever take it I see a ton of commentators now saying bring back leafy or I miss leafy nine times out of ten they are saying that because they finally realized that actually them and their mates are doing the same thing he was doing in all my time on YouTube I've never seen such an insane case of bandwagoning even with keemstar it wasn't as bad and that was [ __ ] bad I have no respect for the majority of the viewers in this community they are led by the nose wherever they go for the majority of viewers in the drama / commentary community they don't actually have the first clue of what good content is they physically need someone to tell them what is and what isn't good content and who is and who isn't someone worth watching based on that at who they are I defended him a fair bit on the baited podcast maybe six to seven episodes I can't remember it 100% your typical commentator didn't want to defend leafy at all for the reasons you mentioned for me I never considered making a video or anything I don't think I'd ever really make a video like that I definitely got a lot of hate for even associating with leafy nowhere near as much for associating with kiemce to be sure but that's honestly never really put me off obviously kiemce had his own beef with leafy grade supported leafy behind the scenes and pyrocynical wasn't really that good friends with leafy leafy was only friends with three people keemstar grade and myself everyone either disliked him were fairly neutral with him so yeah definitely the main reason people didn't defend him was because of the bandwagon it was the unpopular opinion there were some things he did that were completely indefensible of course but much of the hate coming from other youtubers was hypocritical to say the least I definitely was leaf he's biggest defend her way back when did I do enough as a friend that's a good question I suppose but I'd say yes otherwise I'd have done more when it comes down to it in my eyes leafy was guilty and deserved criticism for the following low-quality content making videos on children his videos on keemstar what he did to Nick cash a few other minor things maybe but that's pretty much it as far as the clickbait goes who cares ninety-nine percent of youtubers seem to be doing that the video stretching again so many of his peers seem to be doing that the social ineptitude welcome to YouTube what else was there really far and beyond his biggest fuck-ups from my perspective where everything he was doing to children that was just completely indefensible everything paled in comparison to that but it's often been far from his biggest criticism when you measure what he's done to what others do today the hate was never warranted I see what others are doing some of which are also friends of mine and it's either the same thing or worse people have this idea in their head that leafy is this [ __ ] evil bastard that's just not the case and these exact same people seem to have no problem with another youtuber when he does the exact same thing it's a mob mentality that's absolutely stereotypical with the average content consumer in this particular genre unquote so it would seem that collosal had a lot to say on leafies behalf it's clear that he certainly resented the commentary community a lot for what they did to leafy following the content cob I find it very interesting that he sort of reaffirmed many of the theories I brought up in my leafy video most importantly according to colossal he and leafy both had a strong belief that YouTube was deliberately suppressing leafies content I also found it very interesting what colossal said about the psychology behind leafy you know in my video about leafy I included the motif of The Shining as sort of a metaphorical device however according to what colossal said it might have turned out to be not too far from reality where apparently leafy became legitimately obsessed with the idea of YouTube Fame and just like I said in my video his subscriber count' quite literally began to control him so ultimately although colossal z' testimony was very insightful it doesn't really answer the question as to what leafy is up to now and originally this was going to be the end of the video just a very unsatisfying mostly unresolved ending however as I was editing this project another member of the original baited podcast Tommy see messaged me and came forward with his own information about leafy he actually informed me that leafy contacted him very recently after a period of not hearing from him for over six months so based on that I decided to ask Tommy a series of questions related to leafy and this is what he had to say when was the last time that you had contact with leafy well up into the other day I had I hadn't had contact with leafy since early 2018 and that conversation consisted of let Billy the fridge and clown know you're okay it was kind of a shock to hear from him because I had been convinced that he was probably gone for good at that point you know it's funny with me and leafy or leafy and I should say I didn't know exactly how he felt about me and when he had the subs personal photos leaked he switched a lot of his Skype around and he made sure that uh you know that the changes that he made that I was aware of all of them so I could continue to contact them so I'm pretty sure that while we're not the closest of friends by any stretch that we generally enjoy our conversations how would you describe your relationship with leafy would you consider yourself friends well to put it if leave he asked me to help him out with something I certainly would do it again we're not the closest of friends I I would consider us internet friends we've had several well over an hour conversations I find him to be fascinating on his take of the world and he's exceptionally bright very quick and and hungry for knowledge and I don't say that to sort of pomp sunshine up his ass that's generally who he is he generally enjoys in engaging conversations but sum it up yeah I think me and leafy are internet friends I don't know if it goes much farther than that I would imagine him in grade and billion and colosso was crazy I think they would consider themselves friends I'm more of a guy that he likes to chat with once in a while to be fair summarize what leafy told you with regard to his decline I can't say we had too many conversations about this because it would have been an uncomfortable topic it's not something I would have brought up I mean I know what it's like to decline I know what it's like to be - is on socialblade it's not something we would talk about we'd probably more talk about eSports or we got a big conversation about quake Cohen time which we're both fans of but he did seem to suggest something that you put in your video that he was somewhat suspicious about YouTube hiding his channel doing something to his channel to make it less available based on some of the statistics that he saw but he was honest with the fact that he wasn't quite sure how they were doing it and then amusingly he said although I do think he was being very literal amusingly he said that if I were them I would block me or I would hide I'd get rid what he actually said was if I were them I would I would get rid of me too which I thought was really amusing but I think he meant it quite quite literally from a business perspective in other words if he owned YouTube he would not have somebody like him on the platform after personally speaking with leafy what are your impressions and overall attitude mental state was there more to him than what showed on YouTube absolutely well I could say without a shadow of a doubt I know a lot of people are worried about leafy and and obviously it would be the way he just kind of ghosts it he goes to a lot of his friends and really didn't let them know what was going on but I can say without any reservation whatsoever that leafy is more than mentally healthy happy he is irritated about what YouTube has become but he kind of hinted that there's been other endeavors outside of YouTube he told me I mean he said I could be a hundred percent honest that he was quite wealthy prior to his his explosion on YouTube I don't think that his mental state is anything to be concerned about I think Leif he's quite happy with his girlfriend and quite happy with with his life his attitude overall again he's upset about the changes in YouTube like most of us are but I think it sickens him more than it does me he was there in the Golden Age any expect frustrations like I don't know how you do it anymore because in fact he expressed embarrassment about the criticisms that he made of YouTube in 2015 and 16 and looking at YouTube now and it almost seems like there were ridiculous criticisms because it's it's so much more difficult to make a living and he does he is really aware that there would be no leafy in 2018 or 17 for that matter he's irritated about the state of YouTube it's not what it was he had problems with YouTube back in the day but he's kind of looked back at that and seen like wow it was a much better place back then and I think I think we all carry on that do I personally agree with the theory that YouTube intentionally sabotage a leafy's channel look when it first suggested to me and I and I actually can remember the date it was an early it was about February 2017 when it was first suggested to me but it like I said before it was kind of in a casual way but I do think Leif he was being literal about it after watching your video I'm getting there but I'm not a hundred percent sure yeah but I'm getting there and I do believe Leif he believes that but would I be shocked if your video and leafy's theory was a hundred percent on no not at all especially with what I've seen with my own videos and own podcasts and now that everything's being I don't I don't even think there's an algorithm anymore I think this is automatic D monetization I'm getting there there's certainly something to it how did I react to the leafy content cop did you ever consider defending him no not at all although I changed dramatically in my views of YouTube and the way I conduct myself when I was invited on the baited podcast from Keene Keene was my guy I was gonna get this horrible person that I never met I'm gonna get him back I'm gonna get him off the platform I'm gonna embarrass him I'm gonna [ __ ] him up with my own podcast some of my biggest podcasts had leafy in the title where I was heavily critical of them when the content cop came out I laughed ridiculously I still think it's the best one as far as an entertainment perspective that's just my personal opinion but I was very different youtuber for lack of a better word back then and I was consumed an environment of revenge revenge it wasn't even mine to take but I viewed keemstar as a victim and in some ways he was and some somebody that gave me a little glimpse of internet fame and I was gonna do absolutely everything in my power to damage leafy I don't feel that way anymore I've since learned that you have to produce content other than revenge content or drama content you know people leave you if that's all you have the offer of the world and it's just like you just an angry dude and I think I've CC doing that and then I've turned things around a lot but it was sort of a hard list learn and I remember I was just like I was talking leafy and he was talking about somebody who'd made a criticism of him I usually call this the teenage girl defense you don't even know me it does irritate him and he's right about this that you can sort of psychoanalyze somebody on the on YouTube never front of never talked to them and never really do any other research than what's already available on the Internet and come with these sort of scathing character summaries sort of analyze a person in a way where you sort of her projecting that you know who they are and and I think that's right I it meeting leafy for the first time it was a strange thing because I was so bred to hate his guts and he first approached me prior to the baited podcast breaking up I was very charmed by him I found him interesting intelligent and not to mention the fact that he was one of the more powerful youtubers at that time it was sort of just after the Nick Cash thing and it wasn't quite assured that this was his downfall at this point you know this is the guy that was in some days out averaging pootie pie on subs yeah I was it was it was overwhelming and and even after he started a dip I I still saw him as a fascinating character and a fascinating personality I still do he is extremely charming extremely intelligent and extremely interesting going back to what you said before that I don't think I properly answered is he different than what he shows on YouTube absolutely I think he's a person with a hell of a lot of depth despite the fact that he never went to college and grew up rather poor do you think that leafy deserved all the hate and punishment he received no looking back but I wouldn't have said that back then I do believe and by the way leafy agrees with this wealth that he put himself in a position to receive this kind of hate we both agree on that the videos he made on kids I I could never ever ever support them in any matter I still find him disgusting to this day that he would pick random children and just kind of like goof on them I mean of course we all make community videos when our kids now there's this whole social media outlet you know you just don't do it on your camcorder anymore like you did when I was a kid it's for the whole world to say but that being said it was just so funny after the content and then I I don't even think the nut content complex is damaging is the Nikesh reveal I think that was the final nail in the coffin not the content copy the content cop gave permission for everybody to sort of come out and and say how leafy had treated in the past and then if you also remember after Nick cash came out there was a whole slew of other stuff once the seal is broken or the floodgates were open the flood came in um no I don't even think all criticism were we're right on and the thing is like you like leafy so much you were willing to work with leafy you were willing to do this all this stuff and willing to look the other way when he did make questionable things and now all the sudden he's the worst guy in the world and keemstar is a good guy no I think it's like most situations on YouTube everybody snaked each other and I don't know if anybody's any worse than any any character and you could throw me in this pile as well I've had to kind of soul search a bit for my role in this I think we were all a bunch of rats and snakes thinking of ourselves thinking about doing each other only thinking of Fame and and and we're more internet fame and and and boosting our profiles and I'm when I'm glad that I kind of got out of that way thinking for my own sanity but now I think nobody deserves all the hate they get leave he's human being he deserved what he got but there's no way you can always just point to a few examples where there's just way over the top what do you think that belief he's doing now do you think he will return to YouTube and if so do you think he will ever overcome the hate what do you think the leaf he's doing now well he did give me permission to speak frankly I tell you that he's working not and not in a not in a fast-food way he's still very much the entrepreneur that I met in 2016 will he return to YouTube well I can tell you that he has floated the idea of making content again and in more intensity try it but he is very irritated by the state of YouTube it's just simply not fun for him anymore you gotta understand with leafy and I think that's why he put himself in a bad situation he he's a gamer hardcore game can you say that anymore does that make me sound old no he loves game loves eSports he really is passionate about eSports so that passion that he had for YouTube which is probably the same for eSports as far as producing content but I don't think it's the same passion than me and you have making the perfect video I mean if you ever played pac-man the only worry to determine the better players who has the most points and for him hits were the most points and I don't think that he finds that very interesting anymore not because I don't necessarily think because it's great and a lot of I think a lot of his close friends would disagree with this I think it's because he enjoys the game so much I mean he certainly he doesn't need any more money we're talking about a 20 year old millionaire and now he's 22 and I don't think much of I'm sure it's all in good places leave he's not the type of guy to go out and just blow all his money or do something insanely insane and from what I understand he lives I wouldn't need to say relatively humble small sweet yes he said that he thought about it but he's just simply not passionate you may see one more video about leafy it wouldn't shock me is he if he acted like he was never away like hey guys sorry I've been away for a while but check out this kid right here I could totally see that happening you know I totally could but he's not passionate about it because it's not the same if I can make a gaming comparison quake 3 was a staple of eSports in its day and then Creek 4 came out and nobody liked it and it wasn't really a staple of eSports I think that's the difference between 2016 and 2017 that's way she's not fun he's well off I don't think it's about money that's that's just the bonus I think it's about the high score and I think the way he sees that he was champ you won this game and yeah he could get back in it but it would never be that it's it's not the same game that he was playing before so he's not that interesting I remember saying through that you know nerd city thinks that daily content is actually being rejected by the algorithm so he said something he said something even infected but like I could never do the daily grind again and I said that's great because the daily grind actually might hurt you in the algorithm I told Tolman nerd city had told me and he's like really and I started to realize it he's really been out of it as far as being engaged in YouTube like you know content creators like you and me are that seems so foreign to him that you didn't have to do the daily grind and it turned him off and in he even said that he may have made him angry because that's what I think he liked doing you like hustling and like getting high score and now the rules have changed as such where it doesn't favor his strategy and I don't think that's an insult I think that's fact I think actually would agree with me and how can I say it's all not about money now I think it's the number some of us get off by getting a high score whether we get rewarded by money or not everybody likes money but I do think that it's an extremely competitive nature leave he's the type of guy to play Monopoly and make sure he has everything locked up every house and wins every deal and I think that's the key to his success do I ever think he will overcome the hate I think everybody has a chance to overcome hey it just depends on how you present yourself do I know how or what the key to that is my suggestion to him was a while ago I don't know if he heard me a lot it's over a year ago come out as Calvin not leave he's here I think Calvin's like way more interesting leafy he's insight on the world I mean he mentioned to me about writing a book about young people very young people receiving large sums of money for their work and how it affects them that would be interesting to me that would make excellent videos I don't know if his fan base is ready for that but it might bring on a new one you know we saw pewds kind of grow from a child entertainer to something more interesting I think leaf he's capable of that himself I don't know if he knows it Skype leafy depending on the presentation I don't know exactly how he should do it would be for me a lot more interesting will it ever garner the hits that he once had it would whatever garner the growth that he once had probably not but it would definitely I think it would definitely bring him a different audience and he definitely could be relevant again and by that yeah then he could overcome the hey because he has a completely new crowd and enough times went by as leafy changed its he left YouTube no I don't think so I don't think so he seems like same guy to me he's a complicated dude Adam fully understand him he's very private whenever we've gotten into personal conversations he kind of skirts them he talks about gaming talks like YouTube talks about business leave he talks about you know what he's interested in he's passionate about it really passionate about it I don't remember I keep on bringing up quake I mean I remember 80s you played quake back in the day and I was like yeah I did that area of like like 1995 to 1999 it was like a golden esports age town you know that he wasn't around for it because he's younger I don't know if he's that bad to begin with but his content change maybe probably not I don't know we're only talking by two years of time here you know he's 20 in now he's 22 so no I don't think he's changed much at all does he regret his YouTube career absolutely not I think he feels he won he was world champ who's defeated well he won the game and they lost the game he was Mike Tyson for a while and then he lost no big deal he's a gamer pick up a new game and I think that's what he did no I don't think he's any regrets whatsoever I don't think leave he has too many regrets in life there's a lot of unseemly things about him and there's a lot of unseemly things that he's done on YouTube and I've mentioned them in the past but I I think that really it boils down to the gamer that he is the people that are on my news team and help my channel and work for me I see them as friends even though I might not have stood in front of all of them at some time at and I think the class was crazy feels this way as well you're not friends until you shake hands go out have a couple beers and know each other so I think sometimes all this is not excusing his behavior I think he sees Nick cash Elva see a lien and and it does sound cold me keemstar great a under a or maybe not great great great great he's close with as know they're gamers and and he's there to beat him and I think that sometimes he doesn't recognize that there's people behind that avatar and if I could defend him on that and I think that has a lot to do with his age I think I was a lot to do the fact that he never had kids I think it has a lot to do with that leafy had a difficult upbringing that was the one of the biggest embarrassments that I had when I was attacking him I actually and and considering racing events is kind of funny I I tacked him with information that I got from Michael Mageau which is all wrong of course and I remember I said something to them and this embarrassing moment this attack that I use and I asked him if it was true and he says where did you hear that from and it didn't really make me realize it he's a human being and it also made me realize that I was getting way too caught up in this [ __ ] you know how people say they don't give a [ __ ] and you know when they're repeating it over and over again that they do leafy really doesn't give a [ __ ] I mean how about all the horrible things that I said about him and his family the horrible things that I was willing to do to lower myself to get even with him to help my hero keemstar it's embarrassing Lee he's just a guy he's just like you and me he's flawed he's a little cold but he's fascinating and he's successful and he'll always be a YouTube legend and that's least he's here and I hope he does come back to be interested to see what he would do well everyone that's probably the best testimony we're gonna get from someone who was close to leafy and has spoken to leafy very recently so once again a big shout out to Tommy see you can check out his channel below link in the description and that's about it for now I hope that this video has given some of you guys some closure about leafyishere some of you might say that I'm milking the subject but that's never really been my intention for me the truth is that this is just a very interesting topic my goal for making this video as well as the original leafy video is to tackle some of these unanswered questions it boils down to the simple fact that leafy had a huge following and he just disappeared and I feel like people have a right to know at least some of what happened so for those of you who are still watching at this point thanks for tuning in I'll catch you in the next one

Channel: EmpLemon

Views: 272,614

Keywords: EmpLemon, Satire, LeafyIsHere, Leafy, YouTube Geographic, Tommy C, ColossalIsCrazy, Content Cop

Id: iSYhBL14gOA

Length: 60min 30sec (3630 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 19 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/CrusadeForMeNow]

Every day Emp and Mumkey Jones get more and more similar. Both made large reviews of fallen channels and then make another large follow up

[u/LicenceNo42069]

Calvin is becoming a genuinely interesting personality at this point. I'd sacrifice my firstborn to see Emp get an interview with him.