The Disheartening Downfall of H3H3 Productions

hey what's up it's just me ethan and my wife ela we hit 50 000 subscribers 300 000 subscribers did we hit 1 million we have hit 2 million subscribers our channel is doing much better than it's ever done we just honestly can't thank you guys enough for all the love and support you guys have always shown us and since we started it's been a continuous growth we love our community and we're just so grateful for you guys the point we're trying to make is that it feels wrong to be taking your guys money now welcome we're so happy that you're here and that you're giving us a chance watching our videos and uh you know god bless man a383 has utterly lost his mind no sane person would ever want to have anything to do with you you've lost the plot because you are so bitterly unattractive you're obsessed with other people's masculinity before i talk about how much i dislike ethan now i just want to say he used to be one of my favorite youtube channels back in the day h3h3 has gone out of time i'm a youtuber with a flawless reputation jeez dude where how far are you removed from the youtube community you might say everybody loves me are you just gonna be one of those well i've made it now so forget everybody else people you see some people tell me i've changed and frankly i don't know what they're talking about why do we have a natural inclination to hate the accumulation of wealth why has millionaire or billionaire or any other label relating to an individual's level of wealth become a negative connotation why when a sponsorship comes up in a youtube video do we get that compelling feeling to click onto any other garbage that youtube has spat into the recommended column on the right hand side is it the fact that seeing someone with more wealth makes us feel like we've come up short in some way is it the fact that rich people are an easy target and putting them down seems to be somewhat of a dismissal for where we need to improve personally or is it simply the fact that deep down we know there's no shortcut to having wealth therefore making it one of the only real indicators of an individual's ability to perform better than anyone else government policy public protests and more recently youtube videos all of which following a similar toxic narrative the hatred of those with the ability to accumulate wealth certainly an underlying motive for the content creator we'll look at today h3h3 productions also known as ethan and eeler two long-time content creators who despite once having a reputation as the greatest youtube roasters of all time have since descended their status often labelled by former fans as being on the same level as the people they used to roast what could have caused such a shift in their reputation was it their changing demeanor from a chilled out couple to an angry somewhat bitter pair of creators you are a vile slime of a human that will nobody will ever want you because you're so pathetic maybe you should calm down was it the neglect of the channel that made them so famous in the first place we've pretty much disappeared the past three or four months were they changed by the insane level of income that they were bringing in was it a political problem thinking of geoverse by reverse trump kind of like is going to give him anxiety there are so many different elements worth analyzing in this one so i'd say it'll be an interesting story join me as we cover the downfall of almost everyone's at one point favorite youtube couple h3h3 productions [Music] our story begins in somewhat of an unconventional location compared to our other downfall videos we normally begin in a town or a city or simply an apartment but for this one we actually begin in 2007 at a jewish holocaust museum located in jerusalem israel a place where an unknown ethan klein and hilla hackman would meet for the first time and then i remember that at the museum was the first time we like cut eyes or like ethan having come to jerusalem from the united states went home by himself shortly after meeting healer however they continued to talk on skype up until 2009 at which point ila would come back and stay with ethan in the us also stating that they were like a team from the second she came to stay with ethan and i think we were teamed up from that first minute we were we were like teamed up boy however after living together for one year in the usa eli's visa expired and she had to move back to israel her v6 fired we moved together to israel ethan wanting to continue the relationship decided to move with her to israel and got a desk job in marketing and content management what was your desktop what kind of job i was just a content manager however after five years of slogging through the job ethan felt unsatisfied and wanted to pursue his true passion of comedy so five years working a job that i eventually wasn't satisfied i want to do comedy so let me do something about it now this happened to line up with ela studying video art who at the time was given an assignment to make a video about addiction and she needed someone to be in the video so ethan volunteered and we have to make a video for my art class about addiction i'm like okay let's do it i'll do i'll do it ethan and niela then created their first ever video for ela's video art class in may 2011 titled chocolate attempting to abstractly display the concept of addiction this first video was accompanied by the creation of the h3h3 productions youtube channel on the 30th of april 2011 which was created on the very first day of ela's video art class we made the channel together the first day ila had a video art class the name h3h3 is often translated as he he with rays instead of ease however this isn't entirely accurate the name actually came from the initials of both ethan and ella because ila's name is ila hackman and my middle name is edward so it was ethan edwards so just e e h and we said hey and that was that as of may 2011 there are officially content creators for youtube two oddballs in israel with nothing standing in the way of becoming whoever they wanted to be however there was just one minor issue an issue that almost a hundred percent of content creators face when they first begin their videos sucked i mean our early videos are so off the wall dude like complete like unwatchable so i'm not surprised at all that nobody watched them lack of video context no real subject in most videos incorrect settings what is that why is it in four by three because i had no idea what export means all factors ultimately leading to no one watching their content on top of this their videos had no real target audience or niche so viewers had no idea what to expect when watching an h3h3 video however here's what h3h3 did right they had no expectation for views or getting famous or anything along those lines really there was nothing at stake there was no delusions of grandeur there was no expectation at all which is excellent as when there's no expectation it's not like you're going to give up straight away considering you never expect it to get anywhere anyway by may 2013 two years after beginning to create content h3h3 had achieved a grand total of 275 subscribers a number that would have made many creators give up but not ethan and eli their lack of expectation as well as their passion for making the videos ensure that their fuel tank was always sitting at full and perhaps this unconditional love for creating videos would finally start to pay off after two years as in may 2013 h3h3 would begin their first series that would go on to provide them with their first piece of proper success on the youtube platform on the 12th of may 2013 h3h3 productions would upload a video titled warm it up exe that's a 10. 10. this video was somewhat similar to many of the other rising meme videos at the time basically making a joke out of a serious video with ridiculous edits and bizarre sound design this video shown in a screenshot from december 2013 got a whopping 238 000 views in the first six months of being uploaded taking h3h3's total subscriber count from 275 to over 1 000 in october 2013 approximately 2.5 years after initially creating the channel it took us like two years to get i think a thousand subscribers in case you didn't notice we broke up 1000 subscribers wow that's a lot of people huh then pretty much like any other content creator in the beginning h3h3 productions just kind of continued to do what worked previously so the h3h3productions channel began to upload a bunch of different exe videos kind of following a similar style to the one that blew up initially this ultimately resulted in subscriber growth for the channel however by may 2014 ethan and ila would have never expected the level to which their channel was about to explode in popularity all beginning with a single video titled how to kiss h3h3 reaction video guys we got a special video on board here today it's a tutorial about how to make out the h3h3 reaction series the series or video type that would absolutely explode them into stardom now while these days it seems like every youtuber and their dog has done a reaction series at some point back in early 2014 reaction videos were a completely unknown genre in the beginning when we were making reaction videos we were i don't know if we were the only ones doing it but it seemed like at the time and it was like open range it was open fields recently it seems as though reaction videos are mainly used as a filler for when content creators have nothing to talk about but the original concept for h3h3's reaction videos was actually birthed out of ethan's genuine outrage for how bad the videos were and everyone was circled jerking about how great this video was and i was like angry i was like this video is so stupid this first kissing video reaction performed so well that it led to another reaction here here today with another reaction video then another reaction here's here's the culprit he's got a bandana so he's a little bit metal you know he's a little bit edge eventually taking over as the main type of content on the channel the audience loved the reaction videos for ethan's over-the-top relentless barrage of genuine anger towards the stupidity in each video that he was reviewing well you know the show's gonna be good when you got a guy when the man behind the curtain's name is dick wolf and who could forget his accomplice co-producer speed weed can we get some enemies for dick wolf at speed weed and the pool of different videos to react to was so ripe at the time soflo antonio prank invasion oktv a time in youtube's history when you didn't really have to be a truthful individual to get views however as fake pranksters and disingenuous gurus rose in popularity so did h3h3 being ready to call them out on their lack of authenticity whenever a video was posted the h3h3 reaction videos caused ethan and ela to go from 5 000 subscribers in may 2014 to 50 000 only 5 months later in october 2014 however this would only be the beginning by october 2015 one year later the couple was at 300 000 subscribers then 1 million only 5 months after that you may have heard that we hit 1 million h3h3 productions had gone from 5 000 subscribers to 1 million in a space of only 22 short months the third year i think by the end of the third year we probably had a million subscribers so between year two and year three am i wrong [Music] however it wasn't all smooth sailing for ethan anila and around october 2016 just after hitting 2.5 million subscribers very early signs began to show up here and there hinting at an impending downfall for h3h3 a lot of people have been complaining recently that our videos suck and that they hate us after two and a half years of making h3h3 reaction videos one thing was for certain there wasn't nearly as much content to dunk on by late 2016. more people started doing it and the pool of stuff just searched running dry there's not that much stuff that you can lampoon the pool was running dry and i think this explanation is completely justified if i'm honest if you guys remember youtube back in 2014 and 15 there was so much content that you could roast but by late 2016 early 2017 the cringe had almost completely disappeared and genuine effortful content began to take center stage on the platform now this was great for the youtube platform but as for the quality of h3h3's videos this was a negative because simply put there was just less content to roast ethan and neela had explained that on some occasions they would work all month to make three reaction videos only to scrap them as they didn't think that they were good enough we made three reaction videos almost to completion and we scraped all of them finally the h3h3 channel had grown to such a size where they had potential to do serious damage to any content creator that was called out since i started our channel started to get bigger it's like the person you choose to talk about is exactly yeah regardless whatever we said this was the bottom line by late 2016 the circumstances for the video style that had made them so famous in the first place were beginning to change not exactly the greatest scenario for any content creator however things weren't all that bad i stated to be the early sign of the downfall but h3h3's long backlog of videos was still causing fairly tremendous subscriber growth for the channel and as they say sometimes when one door closes another one opens because only two months after making this video explaining why the reaction videos were slowing down ethan and ela would launch a new project for their youtube channel a project that would increase their notoriety dramatically a project providing the audience with the ability to learn extensively from individuals who previously had not shared their stories and of course a project that would go on to create levels of controversy that ethan and ela would have never been able to expect we're of course talking about the h3 podcast in the beginning the podcast was awesome the only other real big podcaster at the time was joe rogan who would never interview youtubers like boogie2988 or joey salads so the h3 podcast was there to fill that gap we finally had that opportunity to get an insight into the mindset of some of youtube's greats in long form format the podcast as well as h3's extensive backlog of legendary reaction videos caused the channel to grow by around 300 000 subscribers per month in late 2016 but while their notoriety was skyrocketing it would ironically be the same time that their reputation began to decline rapidly as the popularity of the podcast increased one thing was noticed by the fans of h3h3 productions that content on the main channel was beginning to be neglected h3h3 productions went from one video per week to around one or two per month with the h3 podcast taking its place by pumping out regular episodes now in a low resolution context this wasn't such a bad thing h3 was still uploading videos just on a different channel however the reality of how the audience felt at the time was something more like we can see that you're neglecting well thought out selfless content on the main channel for high earning low entertainment content on the podcast channel this kind of mind frame caused fans to begin losing respect for ethan and e-law oh god it's like i've seen this comment like a thousand times since we started doing the podcast regularly that i've lost all respect for you ethan claimed to think that people were losing respect for him due to making minor research errors in the podcast some of your research wasn't wasn't um performed at the best it could i've lost all respect for you yeah i'm triggered so what however i think the underlying reality was that people began to lose respect for the fact that he had chosen the podcast a low effort high income video type over his former high effort low income reactionary video type from that point onwards it was obvious that his audience slowly turning against him began to have somewhat of an impact on ethan ethan began to say more angry sensitive and serious somewhat of a depressing fact considering that ethan had always been known as the most carefree dude on the platform this element was then somewhat cemented when h3h3 productions would upload a video in january 2018 titled where have we been this video addressed ethan and ela's lack of content on the main channel it's pretty obvious that we've ghosted out on youtube we've pretty much disappeared the past three or four months we post like occasionally but most importantly the decline of ethan's emotional state as observed by the fans towards the end of last year started to realize like i had become a worse person all of a sudden i was like grouchier more arrogant more cynical ethan and ela then signed off the video by stating that they wanted to get back to the place they were previously by uploading more regularly on h3h3 productions i want to come back to our community that i love and make and have fun and we just want to have fun again and they honored this statement by spending six months uploading somewhat regularly to the channel but included in these somewhat regular uploads was a video that would be somewhat of an indicator about the change in their youtube mind frame so this person wrote h3h3 is transphobic eight times in response to my tweet and it has 300 retweets and a thousand likes in april 2018 four months after apologizing for not uploading h3h3 productions then uploaded a video titled i'm sorry if you were offended in this video ethan addressed a twitter situation involving many people calling him transphobic for making a mind a joke about being ellen underneath i said my name is ellen i'm changing my name from ethan to ellen now while respectably ethan didn't apologize for what he said my intention wasn't to be offensive so can you just accept it on that face value if you're looking for an apology you're not gonna get it it was still somewhat obvious in his body language that people calling him out was having somewhat of an effect on him now this was just kind of depressing for the former fans of his ethan had literally gained notoriety for being able to make a joke out of these kinds of people that's deplorable and should not be allowed anywhere like they should be he literally grew his audience through demolishing people like idiotic social justice warriors and the easily offended transgender community the ethan klein from two years previously would have likely made a video maiming the offended tweeters while the present athen was sitting in front of a camera defending himself for what he said on twitter this was all alongside another twitter incident where ethan was once again justifying himself for tweeting out something to do with someone getting cancelled both being changes that clearly represented the adjustment in ethan's way of thinking and it wasn't only the fans noticing this adjustment in thinking so did other youtubers with diesel patches uploading a video three months after ethan's apology video basically saying what everyone was thinking at the time 2015 was probably his golden age but now ethan is a shadow of his former self this was accompanied by another video at a later date by youtuber christopher tom who highlighted somewhat of a point to do with ethan's priority of money over video quality after three months of not posting to the main channel they came back with an ad for a freemium game that had micro transactions after three months of not uploading h3h3 released a two minute video which was nothing besides an advertisement for their new mobile app now while the audience didn't mind the fact that they made a mobile game the classic h3 audience had waited three months for a new upload only to have an advertisement thrown in their face somewhat of an abstract display that ethan and ela saw no reason for the h3h3 channel besides for advertising these various actions caused the subscriber count on h3h3 productions to stagnate by december 2019 an interesting discovery considering they were still getting 10 million views per month without gaining any subscribers which leads us into the madness of 2020 somewhat of an extraordinarily controversial year for ethan and ela in april 2020 h3h3 was called out by some ordinary gamers basically for the fact that ethan apparently said it was selfish for jeff bezos to only donate 100 million dollars to the pandemic despite the fact that ethan was extremely rich himself and had not donated anything this is an individual that shits on other peoples for how little they donate while also doing the exact same themselves ethan later debunked the claim showing that mudahar from some ordinary gamers was incorrect and i said yo this these happened 15 days before jeff bezos ever donated so obviously it would be temporarily impossible for me to have donation shamed him however possibly one of the biggest mistakes ethan made in this video was displaying his level of wealth to the youtube audience you may have noticed our beautiful la mansion and no it's not a set it's really where we live now while the intro was clearly somewhat of a meme it was still an honest representation of how much money he had and while the money itself was somewhat enviable the bigger question was why does every h3h3 reaction video now have to have sponsors and ads in it if they have so much money now this is somewhat of a stupid assumption honestly everyone knows that deep down no matter how much money you have you'll always want more but it was like why not just leave the podcast which was clearly making insane amounts of money as the main cash cow while leaving h3h3 productions as an unsponsored channel for the sake of the art regardless publicly displaying their level of wealth seemed to be somewhat of a long-term negative for the goodwill of ethan and eli then following this whole fiasco the notorious beef between h3h3 and keemstar would begin initially on twitter then transitioning over to youtube after h3 productions would upload the video titled content new keemstar basically highlighting all the awful things done by keemstar throughout his career somewhat of a sequel to idubbbz keemstar content cop posted four years previously keemstar then returned the video doing a similar thing and the rest played out like pretty much any other youtube beef the most interesting part about this whole thing now that it's over is the subscriber count of each individual as soon as the video was released by h3h3 keemstar lost 110 000 subscribers but since has called back to having more subscribers than he had before it was released which is barely any surprise really he's literally the unmutable youtube cockroach meanwhile if we look at h3h3's graph almost the opposite happened h3h3 gained 30 000 subscribers off the bat but has since lost a hundred thousand since posting the video possibly signaling at the current state of the h3 reputation [Music] so like all of these downfall videos we'll end by asking the golden question what caused the downfall of h3h3 productions well i think we could probably all agree the real reason that h3h3's reputation has had such a tremendous downfall has basically been ethan's transition from a carefree no apologies type guy whose sole goal was to expose and roast the idiots that we all hate like sjws and fake pranksters to a guy who clearly has a deep concern for his own reputation now somewhat controlled by the very individuals he used to roast by having to apologize for any minor incorrect behavior at the end of the day who cares about the money who cares how rich he is who cares how many sponsorships he puts in his videos if you dislike him for that i think that's kind of pathetic and shallow but what i do think is justified is not liking him for how much he cares about his own reputation what happened to the ethan that literally could not care less about what anybody had to say about it what happened to the ethan that would just laugh it off when anyone called him a transphobe what happened to the ethan who was just on youtube to have a good time the whole aspect of h3h3's financial status is not a negative thing in itself but having to show it on his channel somewhat highlights the insecure person that he's transitioned into and that's what people have come to hate the insecurity not the financial stability but at the same time it's so hard to sit here and say that it's all negative how much good information and life advice from creators has been provided through the h3 podcast how much free entertainment has been uploaded by ethan and ela over their nine years on youtube i would genuinely credit h3h3 would transform youtube into much more of a genuine place if you did fake pranks back in the day or were untruthful in any way there was always that chance of being called out by h3h3 productions maybe h3h3 and keemstar are more like each other than they realize both being somewhat of an abstract mediator for scumbag behaviour on the platform and i'd argue that over the long run ethan and ela have provided infinitely more positive than they have negative but as highlighted in this video there's certainly still room for improvement [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: SunnyV2

Views: 3,917,140

Keywords: ethan klein, hila klein, h3 podcast, h3h3 productions, ethan and hila, h3 podcast highlights, h3h3 rise and fall, h3h3 podcast, h3h3 exposed, h3h3 fall, h3h3 keemstar, where are they now?, a brief history, documentary, youtube documentary, where is, Biography, narration, video essay, twitch, youtube, entertainment, education, joon the king, fredrik knudsen, down the rabbit hole, no swearing, family friendly, sunnyv2, sunnyv2 downfall, downfall, demise, rise and fall, ethan & hila

Id: -86BFWhKupM

Length: 24min 0sec (1440 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 05 2020