Leafy Was Here | YouTube Geographic

you know being a big youtubers a lot like being the captain of a big ship you're in charge of this massive machine with a ton of different parts that you don't fully understand and thousands of people depend on you to steer that machine in the right direction every sailor knows the tragedy of the Titanic the unsinkable vessel the ship that was too big to fail it's a story that's been told dozens of times and it always ends the same way with the Titanic dooms to a watery grave and just a sailor should beware of the Titanic's fate so too should youtubers beware of leafy's fate did you ever hear about the tragedy of Darth leafy the young when you look at leafies channel today what you see is basically a sinking ship his channel is bleeding subscribers almost every day like a ship taking on water it has become completely unsalvageable there's no way to stop the bleeding the only thing left to do is watch it sink looking at the ruins of leafies channel today it's hard to believe that this was once one of the most powerful empires in YouTube history so what on earth happened what caused leafies expedition to sail so desperately off course why did all of his fans suddenly abandon ship everyone thinks they know the whole story and if you ask any ol youtuber they'll tell you the same old tale that the content cop idubbbz himself heroically slayed the beast that was leafyishere and that was the end of it the content cop may have taken all the glory for the kill but he won't tell you the whole story that's where I come in this is the real story about the rise and fall of leafies Empire [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] leafyishere opened his YouTube channel on October 7 2011 but if you look on his channel today his oldest videos only date back to November 2013 so did leafy just wait 2 years to start uploading content no it turns out that leafy spent 2012 doing what every other person on YouTube was doing making Minecraft videos that's right one of the most notorious youtubers of all time started off as just another minecraft letsplay err it's really strange and ironic looking at leafies channel with less than 4000 subscribers knowing the behemoth that it would eventually become it's easy to look at a giant youtube channel and call them overrated while discrediting all of their success but it's important to remember that every channel has to start from somewhere and most channels have to spend years working their way up from the very bottom including leafy sometimes when waiting for their channels to grow youtubers get impatient you look at your sub count and you start to see it as a score in a virtual game that big number at the top of your channel just looks so impressive that number is power that number is influenced and soon you begin to get desperate trying everything you can to attract a new audience and grow that number because if you want to make it big on YouTube you've got to have a lot of subscribers and you think you can control how much that number grows but if you're not careful that number will begin to control you and unfortunately many youtubers don't realize this until it's too late [Music] trying to produce minecraft content on YouTube will quickly teach you a valuable lesson and that's that you're a long way from the top everyone thinks they can just start up a YouTube channel play some video games and in two years they'll be driving up to their new mansion in a Lamborghini that's the image that YouTube has expertly marketed for itself but unfortunately it couldn't be further from reality you see a guy like captain sparkles get milli of subscribers from only making minecraft videos and you think to yourself this is so easy I'm just gonna do what he does and I'll get famous too because if you want to make it big on YouTube you gotta make Minecraft videos this is everyone's mentality when they start their brand new YouTube endeavour what they never seem to realize however is that about 10,000 other people have the exact same idea let's pretend you're driving down the highway say you want to stop and order a cheeseburger at the next exit you pull off the highway and right down the street are McDonald's and a Burger King now imagine that further down the street are about 10,000 other restaurants that sell burgers that are all pretty much all the same if not worse than McDonald's or Burger King now which restaurants do you think are gonna sell the most burgers that's pretty much how I imagine what it's like to run a Minecraft channel on YouTube the difference being that on YouTube you never see the 10,000 other channels just like you all you see are McDonald's Burger King and all the money they make and that's usually enough to keep people chasing the dream for a couple of years leafy started out as just one of those 10,000 or so channels jockeying to get his own cut of that sweet minecraft viewer base by May 2012 he was up to 3,600 subscribers most of which originated from his flagship series minecraft PvP server let's play who could forget classics such as part 38 extreme rage by November his sub count was over 9000 and by August 2013 he was up to almost 19,000 decent numbers for sure most youtubers never even get this far leafy's channel was almost 2 years old and something was about to change minecraft surpassed its cultural peak in summer 2013 it would never again be as popular leafy had a very critical decision to make he could continue making Minecraft videos and ride that trend into the sunset on his very average YouTube channel and that would be the end of it or he could risk everything and start searching for greener pastures [Music] there comes a time in every youtubers life when they're faced with the prospect of abandoning their tried and true formula and pivoting their content to a new frontier it's a decision that I myself have made in the past it's pretty much the biggest gamble any youtuber can make you build up an entire channel an entire audience doing one thing and then you just go ahead and do a completely different thing some channels have pivoted away from their original audience and experienced tremendous success others have done the same thing and killed their entire audience some channels never pivot at least not until it's too late remember CaptainSparklez in his heyday he was gaining upwards of a quarter million subs for a month now he's struggling to break 10,000 he stuck to minecraft content until late 2015 and by the time he tried to expand other games it was too late CaptainSparklez had gone from one of the biggest channels on YouTube to completely irrelevant in just a couple of years and if there's one thing I've noticed on this website it's that if you stick to the same formula you will inevitably fade away however if you shake up your style you have a chance just a chance of sticking around and sometimes that chance is enough to convince a youtuber to make the switch leafy showed signs from very early on that he wasn't satisfied with just patiently waiting for popularity he wanted to stand out it was likely during the Minecraft era that leafy conditioned himself to use clickbait titles and flashy thumbnails because if you want to make it big on YouTube you got to make yourself the center of attention over the next 18 months leafy would undergo an evolution he would reboot his vaunted minecraft PvP series he would expand other trendy games rust csgo he began to experiment with new video formats he started a small vlog series but most importantly leafy started to dip his toe into the wild world of YouTube commentary it started with a brief three-minute rant on Google+ in November 2013 what's up everybody today we're gonna be talking about the most loves comment system on the internet which is Google+ actually I lied everybody [ __ ] hates Google+ what a [ __ ] surprise this was the first time anyone got to see a darker side of leafy a much more cynical leafy that would attack a topic with the ruthless derision there was just something about his pungent and nasally tone that made young edgy people want to rally around him the Google+ video was leafies first rant and it certainly wouldn't be his last in 2014 leafy would appear in a few crossover videos with other minecraft youtubers some of which are still online today dude if this works out I will be extremely surprised yeah they're all drinking their pots dude they oughta lard it's weird looking at these videos and seeing leafy axe so amicably and casually at times it sounds like he's genuinely having fun with his pals Leif he may have been portraying a friendly outward appearance but internally Leif he was changing it was during this time when leafy would noticeably alter his style Leif he started to implement his now notorious all-caps video titles his tone would begin to shift from joking fun - biting ridicule by February 2015 leafy was embroiled in the middle of a major transition he had only gained about 5,000 subscribers since the summer of 2013 and at the start of 2015 Leif ease videos were actually getting fewer views than they were two years prior minecraft was diminishing in popularity jeopardizing his flagship series his efforts were now fractured across an assortment of different side projects jack of all trades master of none if you asked any observer at the time they probably would have told you that Leif his channel was dead in the water but no one could have guessed that Leif his channel was about to become more alive than they ever thought was possible all thanks to a small seed he planted just a year before levy entered 2015 teetering between making gameplay videos and making commentary videos then he had a delightfully devilish idea why not do both in the same video he had actually experimented with this format back in 2014 but he truly didn't embrace it until March 2015 you see what leafy would do is talk over gameplay footage with a totally unrelated story or rant I know this seems commonplace on youtube today but back in 2015 it was almost unheard of leafy most likely did not invent this style but he certainly popularized it unbeknownst to everyone at the time this method of placing unrelated commentary over gameplay footage was a formula for massive success in the YouTube algorithm leafy could engage viewers with any topic he wanted while simultaneously keeping his videos in the gaming category this gave leafy a huge advantage over other gaming channels he didn't have to be good at the games he didn't have to be good at commentating the gameplay he could pump out quote-unquote gaming videos while attracting broader audiences with his more general commentary and rack up more watch time than his competition the gaming was and still is one of the most popular genres on YouTube and the algorithm would begin to promote leafies videos far and wide but leafies new style of gameplay content wasn't the only thing drawing in viewers to his channel something far more sinister was also the blade something that leaf he had foreshadowed over his past two years leafy began to dedicate much of his content to making fun of children [Music] in 2015 YouTube was a much more edgy place than it is today this was a time before the ad pocalypse neutered YouTube's more mature content this was the time when channels like filthy Frank were out their cultural peak and getting away with videos that pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable on YouTube this new frontier sparked a new kind of audience on YouTube one that craved more outspoken contrarian and abrasive content leafy quickly became one of the channels to satisfy this new demand starting in March leafy would begin to go all-in on appealing to the edgy part of YouTube he started three new series kids that DDoS kids that are toxic kids that YouTube mixed in with other general purpose rants as well as more cs:go related content this new brand of leafy began to pay off fast by July leafy had doubled his subscriber count he surpassed 100k in August 200k in September and 300,000 in October this was presumably also the time when leafy scrubbed his channel of all minecraft related content all except for this one video which for some reason you can still view on his channel today minecraft had quickly developed a reputation as a game for little kids the very same group leafy was attacking in his new videos for three years minecraft had brought leafy his only taste of success on YouTube needless to say it had served its purpose leafy had moved on to big-boy games because if you want to make it big on YouTube you gotta act like a big boy otherwise people might make fun of you leafy disposed of his minecraft her past so swiftly that it was almost reptilian oh yeah I should probably mention the reptilians back in my video about Trump's rise to power I talked about how he used memes to greatly expand his influence well it turns out that Leif he kinda did the same thing enter the reptilians it started off as a small joke in an August 2015 video now but these dudes legit believe that the [ __ ] Illuminati is real some of them believe that 9/11 was an inside job either Brotherhood if I can't save reptilian with the straight face man after which leafies fervent and rapidly growing audience began to adopt the joke as a meme about a week later leafy made another video expressing his approval of the meme and he unknowingly enabled one of the most cancerous YouTube epidemics in recent memory [Music] [Music] leafy unleash the reptilian army to terrorize comment sections across the internet over the next several months leafies fans would raid the comments of big youtubers and spew reptilian propaganda the hissing and spam and kya s comments became so widespread that had prompted an episode of Kim stars drama alert another channel that had been steadily growing over the same time period the man responsible for all the hissing on YouTube right now is leafy is here this new source of attention would cause leafies channel to grow even faster and it certainly wouldn't be the last interaction between leafy and keemstar for the immediate future leafy and keemstar would enter a cooperative relationship with leafy utilizing drama alert as a platform to extend his reach to a bigger audience a few months later leafy would appear on drama alert to engage in a friendly insult battle with pyrocynical another commentary channel I had a similar style of ranting over unrelated gameplay footage from what I can tell they were all on good terms things were only looking up for leafy he had crafted his channel into one of the hottest properties on all of YouTube around Christmas 2015 leafy would pass 500,000 subscribers just 45 days later he would pass a million it's ugly looking shoe it's a damn shame just remember old the man [Music] [Applause] leafy had done it he had made it big on YouTube just 12 months earlier all he had was a floundering channel that was milking the last drops of popularity from a declining minecraft game in just a year leafy had concocted one of the fastest growing channels on all of YouTube equipped with a loyal and ravenous fanbase he started with basically nothing and created a bonafide Empire and he did it in a way that had never been done before normally to become as popular as Leif he was you have to be some high energy gamer who screams a lot a legit celebrity or a flawlessly attractive vlogger plucked straight from Hollywood Hills I guess nowadays you could achieve the same growth by selling your soul to five-year-olds and playing with toys for a living but this was before all of that became a thing before 2016 there was never another channel like leafies he was barely promoted he wasn't smiling and laughing all the time he didn't have a doofy looking haircut he didn't have professional looking production value he was just some shady kid making rants in his bedroom and he reached the highest echelon of YouTube almost all by himself channels like leafies weren't supposed to get popular yet somehow through a mostly guerrilla campaign he made it there and not only that but he was leading a booming genre of content almost completely unopposed there was no reason to believe that leafies channel would stop growing anytime soon leafy had become the McDonald's of his domain he had achieved every youtubers dream [Music] but this dream was about to turn into a nightmare even at this time even when almost everyone liked him even when his channel seemed unstoppable there were cracks for me in the foundation let's just say that maybe there was a reason why there was never another channel like leafies and now I'm here to inform you a very simple fact this is Sunday at backlash I put you down with spiraling career to sleep YouTube's Geographic is brought to you by patreon and by viewers like you but most importantly by viewers like Balto lone wolf etn senpai Aaron 9 and LGBTQIA thank you do you want to see more videos like this one but don't have patreon if so please consider supporting the series by picking up the new YouTube Geographic t-shirt YouTube Geographic that sounds like a pretty dead meme to me everyone knows the real reason people watch this channel is for complaining and memes so how about supporting the real top series on this channel by buying a minute memes t-shirt Star Wars The Phantom Menace was the most disappointing thing since my son here it's up guys it's me Glock Tron with leafy hey what's up so let's talk about something we haven't for a while leafy's videos when we last left off leafy was only ranting about children however once he figured out that these rants were his ticket to success he doubled down on edgy content he expanded to scope to boobie streamers then women and sex in general at first he would only talk about broad subjects but soon he would begin to target specific individuals he would ramp up the clickbait more racy thumbnails more shocking hyperbolic titles he would begin to indulge himself in something known as cringe culture a trend that started gaining popularity in 2015 which involved roasting people on the internet for being weird this foul cocktail of ingredients led to some of the most toxic content that YouTube has ever seen and with toxic content comes a toxic fanbase leafy was seemingly oblivious to this but whenever he would feature a person in one of his rants his fanbase would often stalk and harass that individual an early warning sign came in January 2016 when Leif he attacked a small occult youtuber by the name of mr. black darkness 666 leafy's fans immediately went after mr. darkness and he responded in a video where he attempted to place a curse on leafy the two confronted each other on dramaalert where they kind of reconciled their differences I'm sorry mr. black darkness 666 so mister darkness he still wanted to die no I guess lon okay it is worth noting that mr. darkness never actually lifted the curse from leafy just an interesting bit of trivia I still have to like to do the if I'd wanted the spelt and I have to do the account but anyway pretty much everyone sided with leafy on this issue mostly because mr. darkness was such a melodramatic weirdo however the important outcome of this altercation was that leafy denied responsibility for the actions of his fans he claimed that all of his videos existed under a blanket state of satire which supposedly excused him from the wrongdoings of his fans and I made a video about it and it was one of those things that a lot of reaction channels do it's one of those things it's like fifty it's like 50% like parody and like for comedy it's basically satire and then 50% like an actual message all right all right all right I mean a little bit is on you but you can't [ __ ] take responsibility for every single person that watches your videos that's ridiculous you know so that's [ __ ] why can't you just make another video telling them to [ __ ] calm down and see that that's that's exactly what I was talking about with me and prob we were thinking about making this video talking about satire content and how we make videos about people but again it's just parody and it's just for more comedic values it's not we're not we're not legitimately hitting these people that would all change after one video we're leafy and his fans took things too far [Music] leafy would upload a video making fun of a youtuber by the name of Tommy NC 2010 later that day Tommy posted an emotionally distressed response claiming that leafies fans had arrest him and given him death threats on March 20th h3h3 productions made a video calling out leafy and the rest of the commentary community accusing them of enabling a culture of bullying I've been putting off talking about this because it's just I'm actually friends with you guys so it's awkward it's uncomfortable but if for some reason we as a community have been giving these guys a pass now I'm sure all of you know who h3h3 is today but back in 2016 he was producing a fairly different type of content much like leafy h3h3 was producing semi satirical rants and commentaries about people on the internet although h3h3 content was conceptually similar to leafies there were a few key differences that sent him apart for one h3h3 had a far less abrasive tone than leafy he had a much more mellow and joking approach to his subjects attracting a much less toxic audience in a nutshell h3h3 videos made you laugh while leafy's made you mad additionally h3h3 often targeted figures more famous than he otherwise known as punching up you would go after TV shows celebrities and giant YouTube prank channels leafy on the other hand had a reputation of punching down he frequently targeted channels much smaller than his own leading a much more harm to the victim from leafies overwhelming fanbase heading into 2016 leafy and h3h3 represented two diverging ends of the commentary community and it wasn't long before they were no longer compatible due to the unprecedented amount of backlash leafy worse receiving from h3h3 video he quickly took down the Tommy NC rant and issued an apology but he wasn't taking all that flak sitting down h3h3 s leafy rant marks a landmark moment in YouTube history as it sparked a chain of events that would make 2016 the most influential year in the history of YouTube drama drama that intensified on March 23rd when leafy retaliated with the h3h3 productions rant in it leafy revealed a series dm's between he and ethan uncovering a rather duplicitous side of Ethan in which he befriends leafy just months before attacking him while also conspiring against pyrocynical because a lot of people don't understand that me and h3h3 productions used to be friends the commentary community was now split in two and for the first time since becoming popular we feel it's somewhat vulnerable he had never before dealt with a confrontation where a huge number of people were against him the h3 leafy drama sent shockwaves across the YouTube community and leaf he quickly became one of YouTube's most notorious figures he got everyone talking even a guy like video game dunkey someone who never commentates on anything drama related made a video mocking leafy you may remember me from my [ __ ] videos where I make fun of [ __ ] people a few months later Ethan would actually unlist the leafy rant he uploaded a video apologizing for his overly personal attack on leafy claiming that he was no longer proud of the original rant interestingly Ethan would quickly unless this video - and you can make of that what you will regardless of Ethan's true intentions the damage was already done to leafies credibility the h3h3 rant was the first shot across the bow in the Internet's gradual turn against leafy and a sign of much more grave things to come but once all the flames died down leafy would remain relatively unscathed for the next couple of months as YouTube's scorn was instead drawn to a very familiar figure keep your hand on your gun don't you trust anyone after h3h3 turned on his former ally everyone in the commentary community had to watch their backs the leafy rant would go on to attract a ton of viewers and everyone discovered that there was now a huge audience for YouTube drama and therefore a huge incentive to expose unscrupulous youtubers that opportunity was seized by a new challenger that you all know as idubbbz on may 5th 2016 i dubs uploaded the bombshell known as the keemstar content cop a 22 minute expose that ripped into keemstar with such surgical precision that it instantly shot him up to public enemy number one keemstar who thrived on YouTube drama was ironically going to become its next target leaf he should have been thankful team started taking all the heat off of him but leafy the eager opportunists thought he was saw keemstar stumble as an opportunity to redeem himself after the h3h3 dispute just a few months earlier leafy used keemstar as a friendly platform to grow his audience leafy will once again use Q star to grow his audience this time as an enemy On June 13th leafy would launch the first strike in a series of attacks that span two months and four rants culminating in a video relief he claimed he was suing keemstar for defamation the keemstar rants were almost universally liked and they became some of the most popular videos on his channel leafy wrote the wave of keemstar hate along with his usual content to the highest level of popularity that he ever achieved this was the peak of leafies Empire it was all downhill from here [Music] during the summer of 2016 leafy still towered above all of his contemporaries in the commentary community on July 4th leafies channel was hacked by a rogue group by the name of poodle Corp his channel was quickly restored back to normal and the poodle Corp incident soon faded from recent memory this brief little incident did reveal one important consequence leafy wasn't just a big channel it was also a big target the Internet's collective rage against keemstar lasted throughout the summer and began to burn out towards the end of August during that time leaf he had feasted on the decaying remains of King Starr's reputation however unlike old times leafy was the scavenger not the killer for the first time in a youtube confrontation leafy was not the apex predator that distinction now belong to I dubs a title that he would ferociously retain in the next edition of content cop you're hiding your future mouth won't chin if you look at anyone with a weak chin not only is his chin open to the public okay at all very weak chant lost chinny chin chin implants chin chin chin chin chin behind the chin it wasn't the most meticulously researched content top it wasn't the most groundbreaking it didn't have the most profound message but it didn't need to the simple purpose of this content cup was to beat leafy at his own game to stoop to leafy's level and give him a taste of his own medicine this wasn't a shocking expose on Lee P's character everybody already knew why leafy was problematic the purpose of this content cup was to serve as a sheer display of dominance dismantling leafies content by using his own methods against him any logical defense leafy could have made didn't matter because he had a weird chin another victory for weaponized means for the first time ever leafy was shoved off his high perch and cast into the depths of mass ridicule and personal insults the very same hell he had subjected to his dozens of victims content cop had effectively swayed public opinion against sleepy you almost couldn't take him seriously afterwards all of leafies credibility as a ruthless cynic had been demolished and in the eyes of most casual viewers leafies legacy was set in stone as a cowardly insecure troll who bullies people for attention but more importantly as a guy with no chin after the content cop leafy would never really recover his sub count pretty much froze at 4.8 million then began to take a nosedive his new uploads were bombarded with tens of thousands of dislikes from persistent haters his videos dwindled in viewership from several million views each to just a few hundred thousand many other youtubers followed up on content cop Mike coming out of the woodwork with their own personal accounts of how leafy took advantage of them accusing him of greedy and manipulative behavior as time went on leafy would only become more and more and no one really came to his defense no one that mattered at least all of leafies influential friends from the past had abandoned him he had made too many enemies and fascinatingly through all of this leaf he never changed he kept up the bombastic titles he kept up the sexualized thumbnails he kept up his edgy reptilian persona he just kept charging forward full steam ahead It was as if he was refusing his own fate in complete denial of his doomed channel he just kept going filled perhaps by a burning desire to reclaim his glory the fleeting Fame and admiration that now eluded him or maybe he kept up the roasts and rants because he had forgotten how to do anything else YouTube fame had consumed him for the better part of two years maybe the constant praise and ban warship had conditioned leafy to accept toxic rants as part of his identity it was the only formula he knew that gave him the fame he desperately desired he no longer knew any other way of making content leaf he convinced himself that he would ride his downward spiral to the bitter end his last taste of Fame came in July 2017 when leafy got exposed literally after a snapchat got hacked and his bare naked body was released online for everyone to see ironically leafies legacy ended with everyone roasting him for being weird after this incident leafy wouldn't last much longer maybe reality finally caught up with him maybe he could only take the hate for so long maybe he finally accepted his demise after ranting about Jake Paul couldn't even save his channel leave he had already abandoned his Twitter page in May 2017 and after uploading a final rant in December leaf he called it quits he didn't even say goodbye so that's it then content cop killed leafy B ed but that's not the whole story something else was already killing leafy long before content cop got to him something bigger than anyone could possibly imagine it's easy to sit there and believe that content cop was totally responsible for leafies demise and while it is true that following content cop leafy's subscriber count' started a permanent decline if you take a closer look at the numbers the data the analytics something just doesn't add up this episode of content cop propelled idubbbz and the series to legendary popularity people point to this video and what subsequently happened to leafy as proof that idubbbz is a bonafide YouTube killer but is that actually true to date items has produced 11 episodes of content cop in seven of them he has talked about a specific YouTube channel so out of those seven how many do you think were directly killed by content cop jinks is a pretty dead Channel today but his decline didn't start until several weeks after content cop the finebros lost sub for a brief period but that was due to attacks from multiple youtubers not just idubbbz and even with that the finebros are still doing better today than they ever have been [Music] keemstar experienced a significant decline after content cup but after about a year his numbers returned back to normal so you can't really argue that he's still a dead Channel [Music] Tanna mangu you could argue was directly affected by content cup for several months but now that a year has passed her channel has rebounded and is currently thriving certainly not dead the rice gum content cup which you think would be the most influential since it's currently the most viewed in the series barely put a dent in his numbers [Music] the only channel besides leafy that you could argue got killed by content cop is how to prank it up which is pretty dead today and started declining right after the items video so I'll give him that one if you've been keeping score that's two out of seven content cops you can even argue directly killed the channel they were targeting based on the data he seems like content cop is actually far more likely to have minimal than no effect on its target Channel which made me pretty skeptical of it being the true cause of leafy's downfall and unlike how to prank it up which was one of dozens of interchangeable and forgettable youtube prank channels leafy was a distinct entity who was leaving his genre with a highly loyal fanbase could one single video really stop all of that progress in its tracks I don't think so and if you dive deeper into the analytics leafy's true killer begins to appear first of all leafy stats show a sharp decline beginning in July 2016 keep in mind content cop came out September 12th and even before the content cop leafy subscriber rate had already dropped by eighty percent over the past two months over that same period his average views dropped by about forty percent even during the month of September when you think leafy would at least gain a temporary boost in views from the drama surrounding content cop he had his biggest decline in viewership yet perhaps you could argue that leafies content had grown stale and that his audience had grown tired of it but does that really explain an 80% reduction in subscriber growth in just two months let's compare that to our old friend captain sparkles who took 14 months to achieve the same decline it just doesn't make sense but leafy would all of a sudden fade so quickly especially considering how loyal his audience was another intriguing detail is that once leafies numbers hit rock bottom he could never recover by spring 2017 leafy viewcount had flatlined - about 10% of what it was at its peak and it slowly continued to decline beyond that now this isn't too out of the ordinary for a typical youtuber a lot of channels peak in popularity only to slowly fade away and never return however leafy was not a typical youtuber so you have to compare him to a more similar channel like keemstar leafy and keemstar had very similar experiences in 2016 both were subjects of content Cup both went through a period where they lost many subscribers and I think it's fair to say that both had a pretty similar audience and when you compare their stats they both flatlined in a similar way except for one thing keemstar eventually bounced back not slowly either over just two months in mid 2017 he inexplicably spiked back up into popularity and by the time his numbers stabilized his subscriber rate had more than quadrupled from where they were in early 2017 It was as if a giant weight had been lifted from his channel allowing it to suddenly grow freely it just doesn't seem natural and this is where my theory comes in content cuff didn't kill leafy YouTube did and I'm not talking about the YouTube community or the YouTube algorithm put on those tinfoil hats everyone because I am proposing that YouTube's executives conspired against leafy to sabotage the visibility of his channel and this isn't just something I'm pulling out of my ass to explain away leafies decline there's a ton of evidence I found supporting this theory in December 2017 an anonymous user under the alias tower dog leaked some classified information about YouTube's internal activities he alleged that in mid-2016 YouTube held a private meeting with a few select creators this meeting had one objective to decide what to do with what YouTube referred to as unwanted channels earlier in this video I mentioned how becoming a big channel also makes you a big target and back when leafy was rising up the ranks he attracted attention from more than just edgy teenagers apparently YouTube had become well aware of leafies or cries and they wanted none of it they most likely felt that leafies method of borderline cyberbullying people for fame would set a dangerous precedent for YouTube as a whole youtube's higher-ups supposedly threw around ideas of channel deletion and direct censorship but they ultimately decided against both of those and settled on a much more discreet option of getting rid of Leafeon channels like him three months later YouTube would quietly release the system we now know as D monetization it took over a year after that before youtubers started to realize that D monetization affected much more than ad revenue we began to notice that D monetized videos would directly correlate with poorer video performance uncovering a massive system of indirect censorship where affected videos would show up far less in viewers recommendations after further research youtubers discovered an entire underground rating system that affects the monetization status of entire channels so based on what we now know today is it not reasonable to infer that YouTube may have covertly injected an early version of this system into leafy's Channel in other words did leafy become the first secret victim of YouTube's D monetization system I think it's highly likely what else could be responsible for all of the strange patterns and leafies data it's just too much of an anomaly to happen under natural circumstances something had to be pulling the strings behind the scenes and I think that thing was YouTube's tweaking the visibility of leafies videos it makes perfect sense on youtubes end they were worried about leafy gaining too much influence and turning YouTube's culture toxic they wanted to stop him but they didn't want anyone to know they were deliberately interfering with the growth of a YouTube channel now consider this leaf he can't gain any more influence if the algorithm doesn't spread his videos to new people and people won't notice which videos YouTube isn't recommending the and if you pay attention you can see the extent to which YouTube has hidden leafies videos let's look at YouTube search if you search up any channel you can imagine right now on YouTube you're pretty much guaranteed to find videos from that channel in the first few results of the search however if you search for leafies Channel on YouTube the first results you see aren't leafies videos but other people's videos about leafy here's another example leafies channel once peaked at nearly 5 million subscribers so based on that stat how many views do you think his most viewed video has for comparison I have around 270 thousand subscribers and my most viewed video has over 5 million views it's very common for YouTube channels to have their most popular video with a view count several factors above their subscriber count so considering leafy sub count was nearly 5 million at one point you'd expect his most viewed video to have around 15 20 or 30 million views leafies most viewed video has just over 8 million views not even double his subscriber count it's bizarre and it's probably weigh less than you expected it's almost as if leafies videos have never been spread beyond his core audience there's one more little wrinkle to this theory that I discovered out of all the episodes of content cop the leafy content cup was the only one that YouTube put at the top of trending for more than 24 hours and I found this fact the most interesting of all if this theory were true content cup would be the perfect cover-up for leafy's downfall you may not believe it you may think that leafy sudden and indefinite decline happened organically you may think that tower dog just made up his allegations of YouTube secret meeting you may think that all the research and evidence related to YouTube's indirect censorship is bogus and even if you are the most skeptical person on the web about this theory let me just ask you one thing have you ever seen a leafy video and your recommendations after 2016 or maybe everything I just said is wrong and leafies downfall was actually bye mr. darkness curse ladies and gentlemen the death spell has been turned on drop boom I still have to like do the right one spelt and I have to do the counter [Music] and that ladies and gentlemen was the rise and fall of leafyishere from beginning to end so what did we learn well I think the story of leafyishere is a cautionary tale of what happens when a youtuber becomes too popular too quickly a lot of people will tell you that leafy deserved all the punishment he got given the twelve or so months of unleashing his toxic fanbase on unsuspecting victims across YouTube leafies ultimate fate of mass public humiliation and ridicule seems like a fitting end to one of the most notorious figures on this website but if you look past the hate if you look past the drama past the fame the fortune and the fans you may realize that leafy was only twenty years old at the peak of his fame that's the same age I am now and oddly enough looking back at leafies YouTube career I noticed a lot of parallels between him and me we both started making videos many years ago built up a moderate audience from making a consistent type of video for many years only to suddenly pivot to making more outspoken commentary videos maybe it's all just a coincidence but to be honest I think there's a little bit of leafy in all of us what person doesn't want to become a famous and successful youtuber why do you think people spend so much time and effort putting themselves into this virtual box that in all likelihood everyone will ignore it's because everyone is chasing that same dream that image of a guy with a mansion and a Lamborghini who got rich from playing video games all day we fixate ourselves on the idea of making it big on YouTube but very few of us actually think about what we'll do once we get there leafy without a doubt started off just like the rest of us except he actually got to experience that dream as a reality and once he got there he didn't know how to handle it he wasn't mature enough he abused his power he led his rabid fan base run roughshod he took advantage of his friends he surrounded himself with a cult of personality and he didn't realize he was doing anything wrong until it was too late leafy had become consumed by YouTube fame and it blinded him from his flawed reality he was thrust into the spotlight before he was ready and much like the fable of Icarus leaf he rose too quickly and flew too close to the Sun which immediately sent him crashing back down to earth but was that really leafy's fault his only real crime was making the same toxic videos that YouTube's algorithm validated in the first place he did what any other youtuber would have done he found a formula that got views and stuck to it is it really fair to judge leafy for not anticipating that the same videos that brought him everything he ever wanted would also lead to his downfall he really makes you wonder if leafy had risen to popularity much more gradually would he have made those same mistakes and as much as you may dislike leafies content you have to admit that he did have a few redeeming qualities there's no denying that leaf he was a captivating and charismatic speaker let's just say there's a reason leaf he convinced almost 5 million people to subscribe to him in just a year additionally leafy provided a very alternative style and tone to everything else that was popular on YouTube at the time call me a contrarian but for a while it was somewhat refreshing to see a popular youtuber who wasn't cut from the same cookie cutter template as the rest of them leafy was just some unattractive guy making videos in his dimly lit bedroom and that was all he needed to appeal to people and finally you have to admit that back when leafy was this huge supervillain of the internet YouTube was a lot more interesting for everybody do you ever think that maybe if at any point during his rise to fame leaf he had stopped for a second and exercised just a little bit of humility and empathy for his victims would he have changed his ways and if so would he still be as hated would leafy still be around today and that's what makes the tragedy of leafyishere so frustrating he had the potential to be one of the greatest youtubers of all time he could have changed the way we look at popular youtubers he could have opened the door for so many others who didn't fit the mold of the attractive vlogger with a Lamborghini in his mansion but he didn't do any of that all because he wouldn't stop roasting people for being cringy two years later and it was as if leafy was never here at all when I first started researching this topic I expected to find myself hating leafy like everybody else what I found however was a whole lot sadder when you look back at all the popular youtubers who battled leafy back in 2016 h3h3 came star idubbbz all of them went on to have very successful and lucrative YouTube careers and when you remember that at one time leafy was more popular than all of those channels it makes his demise seem like that much more of a missed opportunity and in a cruel twist of fate the death of leafies Channel breathed life into so many others that are currently thriving it seems like anybody involved with leafy eventually came out on top at the expense of leafy himself maybe leafy wasn't meant to get popular like I said earlier there was never a channel like leafy before and there probably will never be another one like him in the future when leafy abandoned minecraft to start roasting people he didn't realize that he wasn't playing a game anymore his subscriber count' wasn't just a high score it represented real people who would cause chaos on his behalf the feuds he started weren't just virtual PvP battles he didn't realize he was threatening real egos and real livelihoods Leif he treated everyone like just another enemy in Minecraft little did he know everyone began to see him as the enemy he made enemies with people who were more powerful than he could possibly imagine and after YouTube checked leafy into the blackball hotel he never checked out game over [Music] you

Channel: EmpLemon

Views: 3,599,039

Rating: 4.9038448 out of 5

Keywords: EmpLemon, YouTube Geographic, Satire, Leafy, LeafyIsHere, Content Cop, iDubbbz, iDubbbzTV, Keemstar, DramaAlert, h3h3, h3h3productions

Id: oDKDavhYRAk

Length: 51min 52sec (3112 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 20 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Torobasa]

H3H3 was being a little hypocritical with that video. He was basically doing the same shit as Leafy back then

[u/JaRetroYT]

This was another great EmporerLemon video. The pacing is just right. I really enjoy Emp's longer videos. Never expected a behemoth like this to grace YT Geo. I love how he tries to see both sides of the coin. Good stuff.

[u/The-3L3CTR1FY1NG-0ne]

Another truth seeker in our mists within the reality of what we seek...

[u/Djrippa0279]

Glorious

[u/TheRealLegitCuck]

Smlley butt fart