The Internet's Unknown Predator

does the thought of you or a loved one facing bath time cause anxiety you have to take your clothes off april 11th 2021 a young child's phone lights up with a notification from his tick tock account his heart races as up until this point engagement on his page had been practically non-existent and so excitedly he unlocks his screen before quickly realizing that this reply was something strange as rather than being a comment in response to his video it was instead a challenge a challenge directed at him it read dare you to ask your parents if you can get a bath fully clothed in your shoes and socks and see what they say the child was no more than 12 years old and not wanting to let his new fan down he decided to accept the dare approaching his mother and asking to take a bath in his clothes to which his mother responds with a sharp no as inconsequential as it may seem this one comment is merely our first encounter with one of the more unusual internet mysteries in recent memory as the account behind it has quietly become one of tick tock's strangest by leaving a trail of concerning videos and comments in its wake and just as i began to scratch its surface i quickly realized that this was a rabbit hole far deeper than i'd ever planned on diving down this is the disturbing story of howard the duck four [Music] and he is going to get in the shower before we dive down this rabbit hole i want to first thank today's sponsor current for me banking has always been an overly complicated and stressful thing to deal with but current has come along and basically streamlined everything in a way that has brought banking into the future upon signing up you are mailed your very own visa card to use and from there everything is managed directly through your mobile device which makes it incredibly easy to deposit checks and add funds to your accounts with just a few clicks current also allows you to overdraft up to 100 without receiving any type of fee along with this there are also 40 000 atms across the us which you can use your current card at completely free of charge but my all-time favorite feature and current's claim to fame is the fact that it allows you to get paid up to two days faster with direct deposit so if this is something that you would be interested in trying out then head over to current.com crowley nick to sign up for free today is the new social video app making it some serious ways hello there how are you i hope you're not well and hope you are keeping trying it started back in the summer of 2020 with this video an inconspicuous upload by an older user named howard the duck four his real identity wasn't known for the main reason that no one really cared enough to find out he never had any significance on the site with most of his uploads going by without so much as a second glance or even a first glance for that matter and given the quality of his videos it's not hard to understand why as the man who i'll now be referring to simply as howard just comes across as a clueless grandpa unsure of how tick-tock actually works however as lackluster as this inaugural video seems there is one unusual moment at the end when howard out of the blue mentions i look to do things like swimming fully clothed to a fleeting viewer the mention of him liking to swim fully clothed would likely be seen as some kind of bizarre joke but if you stuck around his page any longer you'd soon notice a pattern to his posting hello everybody if i get 50 likes then i will get a bath fully clothed hell i'm about to get in the bath holy cow across howard's page that features just a select few uploads over and over again we see the mention of swimming bathing and showering in clothing and we even get to see howard actually do it for himself as he's seen here soaking in the tub with a big smile on his face for whatever reason howard appeared to love being in that bathtub with his clothes on and he seemed completely infatuated with the idea of wet clothing which to some might have been interpreted as a joke or a bit but for me and others across the web it stands out as something potentially a bit more perverse a fetish known as wetlook in simple terms wetlook is the sexual fetishization of wet clothing whether it be the feeling of it on you or the look of it on someone else and this is surprisingly a really common thing as a simple search on youtube will yield countless results with viewership often in the tens of thousands with many of these uploads being very reminiscent to the videos you would see across howard's page and just based off of the small sample size we have through howard's channel it seems possible that this could be something he might also partake in as after all why else would he be doing this and discussing it so often while clearly enjoying the actual process of soaking in his clothes with the information provided thus far it's impossible to prove one way or another whether this is actually something sexual for howard but it at least seems like a possibility and even if this was some kind of fetish for him there's nothing inherently wrong with that right well this is where things start to take an odd turn as around the same time that howard had been making these videos an obscure clip would emerge from a similarly unknown creator don't mind me i don't want to do anything but we're going to try something do you want to do an activity sure okay get on shoes socks pants let me know when you're ready why do i keep my shoes on you want to get in i guess okay get in get it get it get it [Applause] the video shows a mother excitedly taking part in a challenge where her son enters the bath with all of his clothes on and what transpires next seems to be a goofy video done in good fun but it gets a bit stranger when it's revealed that the one proposing this dare was howard with his comment reading i've got an idea for you to do where your son is concerned if you're willing to take part in an experiment with him before going on to explain that this dare was for the young boy to get into the bath fully clothed it's an odd video and to make it all the more concerning it wasn't the only one so brody was dared to take a shower fully clothed because he has shoes socks shorts underwear hoodie shirt and he is going to get in the shower is it cold oh that feels weird i bet it does fully close that very same day another clip would go live showing a young boy entering the shower with all of his clothes on and again this was done in response to a challenge issued by howard and these videos were just the tip of the iceberg as in the days months and now year following these videos other users across the site would report seeing hundreds and hundreds of howard's comments littered all across tick tock daring people to participate in his new game it was all just so bizarre and it became even more so as time went on as howard's comments began to grow increasingly demanding and manipulative which leads us all the way back to the scenario mentioned at the opening of this video where a young child had received a similar comment from howard this was in fact a real encounter which led to the child recording himself asking his mother to participate before she eventually told him no can i take a bath with with my clothes on with my shoes and my socks no but the most damning part of their interaction came within the comments of this video where howard actually responded by saying love it what did she say the kid then comments back with no lol twice now howard had gotten his answer first from the video and now from this comment straight from the child himself however howard didn't leave it at that as he then pushes back by saying does that mean yes or no again this already answered question went without a reply prompting yet another response by howard where this time he says if she had said yes what would you have done would you have gotten in the bath fully clothed in your shoes and socks the whole exchange comes across as almost desperate on howard's part as he seems incredibly pushy with a child who is no more than 12 years old and his last comment makes it seem as if he's fantasizing about this and the idea of the kid following through with his dare plus even after receiving a firm answer on multiple occasions he never gave it a rest in fact a full month later howard came back to the young boy's page once again and asked him to participate only this time howard asked him to do it without his mother's permission it all felt very manipulative and this was a theme throughout most of the comments he left as he never took no for an answer and he seemed almost obsessed with having people do this challenge of his and that wasn't the only concerning similarity across his many replies if you haven't noticed already howard seemed to have a targeted demographic for his challenge with that being children as out of all the comments he would leave they were exclusively left on accounts run by or featuring miners he never asked a single adult to do it as he always zeroed in on children specifically and children only and to get even more specific he only ever asked little boys which brings us to one burning question why oh he's all wet mr noodle gave his clothes a bed howard's tick tock activity is something truly peculiar as it certainly raises a number of red flags as across his page we see him posting videos that seem to indicate a wet look fetish and now he just so happens to have started this challenge that is basically providing him with wet look content and to make it all stranger he's supposedly trying to start this new challenge this new trend yet he only ever asks underaged boys to take part in this and when he does ask he comes across as desperate to receive these videos going as far as to use means of manipulation piecing it all together it becomes more and more clear that something truly sinister is happening here as it appears as though howard has made up this fake challenge to take advantage of kids and to provide him with erotic content coming from minors all while doing so in a discreet way with the challenge proving to be the perfect cover-up as it makes it so inconspicuous that even the parents of these kids are willingly allowing it to happen and filming it themselves completely unaware that these videos just so happen to line up with howard's likely fetish and the fact that he only ever seeks this content from little boys hints at a clear preference and almost single-handedly discredits the idea that this is really just some innocent challenge as remember there are said to be hundreds and hundreds of these comments out there as he obsessively comments day in and day out and not a single one has been found on an adult's page or even a young girl's page and if you think the idea of predators creating fake challenges to obtain fetish content sounds far-fetched well this would actually be far from the first time something like this has happened back in the older days of youtube there were countless cases where predators would do the same thing they would find unknown channels run by kids and proceed to ask them to do sexual things all under the guise of these fake challenges which were often times far more graphic than howard's dares but at the end of the day they all serve the same purpose to create fetish material for those promoting the challenge it's the perfect cover up and the perfect incentivizer to make kids take part in this as you would be hard-pressed to find a child who would recognize this as a fetish or even an adult for that matter and with all this being said i'm left to firmly believe that howard does in fact have malicious intent with these comments and this challenge of his seems to be strictly done for his own gain the red flags are just too glaring [Music] but identifying this man's predatory behavior is only half the battle we still don't have undisputed proof that this is a fetish for him plus we still don't even know who this man even is and to make matters more difficult this is where his trail left behind on tick tock essentially ends as the howard the duck 4 page is practically void of any personal information that could be used to track him down leading us straight to a dead end or so i thought hi everyone faced with a lack of answers coming from tiktok i decided to see what more i could find on this wet clothes fetish here on youtube and although many results were totally fine and happening between consenting adults i was shocked to see that howard wasn't the only one who had his sights set on minors my first search revealed hundreds and even thousands of videos of young kids bathing swimming and showering in their clothes many of which were placed in playlists that were clearly meant to be viewed for sexual pleasure as they had names like hot and um and disturbingly most if not all of these videos seem to have come from challenges and challenges that i had never heard of and that don't seem to actually be real for example the cold shower challenge and the jumping into shower fully clothed challenge the cold shower challenge and essentially every single one of these videos had been created due to dares left within their comments the same way that howard has been doing on tick tock making it clear to me that howard is not the only one with this specific predatory fetish and he's not the only one trying to exploit children across the web into making this content the scope of it all is honestly surreal as some of these videos have tens and thousands of views and they just seem to go on and on for forever with hundreds of thousands of results the majority of which are currently being viewed sexually this whole rabbit hole of fake challenges across youtube is something that i'm going to cover more in depth in an upcoming video but it's important to note that in recent years youtube has removed comments on all videos made by children which thankfully has drastically reduced the spread of these fake challenges on youtube meaning that most of these results are thankfully from many years ago but not all of them as there was one somewhat recent clip that i just so happened to stumble upon that made me stop dead in my tracks [Music] with my clothes on with my shoes and my socks it was the video provoked by howard the very start of this whole rabbit hole only this time rather than being on tick-tock the clip had been re-uploaded to a youtube channel called kid swimming fully clothed and this wasn't the only upload as the channel has several others all of which can easily be traced back to howard as in each of the videos you can see howard's comments plastered at the top proposing his now infamous dare out of these seven uploads to be featured on this channel every single one has been made in response to howard's comments and all of these re-uploads came very soon after the actual videos were posted which given the obscurity of these videos and howard in general he was most likely the only one who would have been monitoring them which leads me to believe that this is in fact his channel and he's using it to store and share his fetish videos or in other words he's essentially created his own fetish page right here on youtube by using content solely produced by minors howard isn't just soliciting these videos for himself these comments and these dares were clearly part of a larger plan to distribute this material across the web for the many others who share his sick obsession and despite the fake challenge problem having been seemingly solved on youtube thanks to the removal of comments howard has actually found a way around it as he's using tick-tock to do his dirty work and youtube to share his prizes which shows us that howard's reach extends far past that of just tick tock but how far past was something that i never could have seen coming armed with the knowledge that howard wasn't solely on one platform i began searching to see where else i could find him across the web and as a shot in the dark i decided to search up things like swimming fully clothed and swimming with clothes on in shoes and socks which eventually led me to a twitter account started all the way back in 2012 that had been discussing this very fetish with the username being howard the duck six there this user would tweet things like i love to go swimming fully clothed especially during summer months dare you to tell your kids to get a bath or shower fully clothed in their shoes and socks tonight see what happens and money-saving idea for the washing if you have kids once a week get them to have a bath fully clothed it washes them and their clothes the tweets go on from there in a similar vein which given the username and the obvious interest in kids swimming with their clothes on it's apparent that this page is also run by howard but this was nowhere near the end of his trail as i soon started discovering more and more accounts run by howard from every single direction i looked many of which going by similar usernames and all of which discussing wet clothes on children eight years ago on answers.com an account belonging to howard asked would you ever teach your kids to swim fully clothed with their shoes and socks on or have you ever learned your kids to swim fully clothed with their shoes and socks on in another instance he turned up on a website called swimmingforum.com again asking if anyone would let their kids swim fully clothed and it went on from there as he had posted about the topic on keora as well as made numerous polls on mr pole.com where he posed questions relating to young kids and of course swimming with their clothes on i even found numerous of howard's band accounts on a few separate sites like hub pages for example where he had been permanently banned for incessantly posting about swimming children the magnitude of his online footprint is unlike anything i have ever seen as his postings date back well before 2010 and reach all the way up until present day and he's on virtually every single website i could ever think to check and on others that i have never even heard of before and through all of his years of posting online and through all of his different accounts he only ever posted about kids swimming in their clothes it's almost as if the thought of it consumes his life and every spare moment he has is spent fantasizing about it he's even started multiple facebook groups to share his interest in the topic with one being called people who bathe fully clothed weekly meeting and kids who would like to or who can swim fully clothed howard is quite literally in every corner of the internet talking about this and seeking this content out as it seems that as time has gone on he's grown smarter and smarter about how to solicit these videos for himself as what once started as random posting across the web has now turned into the targeted exploitation of children in a practically foolproof way but luckily for us with an online trail this massive howard was bound to slip up at one point i dare you to get a bath full of clothes as it turns out it seems that howard wasn't even trying that hard to keep his identity a secret as on his twitter page discussed previously he links to a gofundme site where he was trying to raise money for a cause that he so dearly believed in the page read i am doing a swim fully clothed for martin house hospice for children and young people because to help in the running of the hospice please do give as much as you can every penny really does help thank you what this event was supposed to be and how this money would actually help in any way was never specified though it seemed pretty obvious that this was a failed attempt by howard to try and witness his fetish up close and personal by holding an event encouraging kids to come and swim fully clothed but within this listing lie's one key mistake is howard had used his real name likely something that would have been required if he wanted to receive any of the funds and surprisingly his name actually did turn out to be howard howard newton to be exact and after a few quick searches and matching his photos and videos it's clear that howard the duck 4 is in fact howard newton a middle-aged man living in west yorkshire england and the discovery of howard's true identity managed to prove even more important than i ever could have imagined as throughout this video though it seemed obvious that howard did in fact have a wet look fetish i couldn't find any undeniable proof of it until i found his personal facebook page there i discovered that he was following accounts like wetlook vicky's mud paradise and zenny's wet look among many others which if you haven't guessed are all clear-cut wet-look fetish pages all of which were heavily sexualized and followed closely by howard which confirms without a shadow of a doubt that this was always something sexual for howard along with this discovering howard's identity also showed me that the howard the duck 4 account wasn't even his only page on tick tock as he has actively been posting as well as continuing his spree of comments on another account called newton howard one please do follow me on this account this is the backup account in case videos get banned on my own on this page howard explains that he is using it as a backup account should his main channel get banned which that alone shows us that howard is aware that his predatory behavior at the very least goes against terms of service and it heavily implies that he is well aware what he's doing is wrong and though his behavior under howard the duck 4 seemed somewhat calculated and clearly thought through in this other page he is far more unhinged as he has ramped up his obsessive commenting even more and he's now started making videos in response to those in his replies where he verbally asks these young boys to participate in his challenges they need to get back from the clothes and do a couple wee wet class on i tell you to get a bath fully clothed and then do a shuffle in your wet clothes and even when he's getting called out by some of these kids he just continues to ask shamelessly but by far the most troubling discovery to come from his new tick tock account takes us yet again to the opening of this video and that same child who howard had approached all the way back in april of 2021 it was noted earlier that howard had returned to the young boy's page a whole month later after his initial offer was declined but as it turns out he didn't even stop there as he actually returned to the young boy's page yet again this time a whole six months later where he continued begging for this kid's participation this time doing so under the more recent newton howard account which just further showcases his disturbing persistence and how deep his predatory obsession truly is and by this point i had thought i'd seen it all or at least the worst that this rabbit hole had to offer but just as i had finished this video up i made yet another disturbing discovery and one that brings this whole case full circle while scrolling through howard's facebook page one final time i realized that he had been following another suspicious group and upon sifting through its contents i found that howard was the only one to have posted on it and was its original creator with the group's name being dare to do for youtube video there howard would follow a similar formula to his tick tock page by daring users to do his challenge with the only difference being that he would ask them to upload the footage directly to youtube and when they would do so he would link the videos back within the group as a way of archiving them and encouraging others to participate with these postings going all the way back to 2014 and it didn't stop there as i found another page that was also run by howard called bath challenge facebook group where he did the same exact thing only there he was and is far more active as the group has hundreds of posts all showing kids participating in these dares with the most recent posts being the tiktok videos that he had obtained earlier this year between these two groups were countless proposed dares and even more videos with the most concerning part being that howard seems to have taken credit for them and though i haven't found a way to prove it yet for sure it seems likely that many if not all of these hundreds of youtube videos were solicited by howard himself this didn't start for him on tick tock he was one of the ones running these fake challenge operations on youtube way back in the early days and when the comment sections got disabled and it became much harder to solicit these videos through youtube howard simply switched platforms to continue his predatory ways it's just such a disturbing revelation as it's very likely that many of the videos i had scrolled through when exploring the youtube side of this simply to understand the history of fake internet challenges may have actually been solicited by the very predator i was hunting this is truly one of the most bizarre cases that i've ever worked on and it all leads us to a rather uncertain ending as it's unclear what will happen to howard from this point on taking everything we know about him into consideration i have suspicions that there is some sort of mental illness involved here however given how calculated his approach was on tick-tock facebook and youtube and the fact that he's used this content to start a fetish page on youtube leads me to believe that he is aware enough to understand what he's doing plus not to mention his clear understanding that what he's doing is wrong and would likely lead to him getting banned and because of this i forwarded all of this information and more to law enforcement in his area though i honestly have my doubts that they will actually do anything i mean this whole thing is just so obscure and though howard is clearly a predator he's being predatory in an unconventional way and given the way the laws are written i'm not sure if he's actually done anything illegal so i'd imagine that this would be a hard case for law enforcement to pursue which is a huge problem as this is the case with practically all of these fake challenges across the web given the fact that they are typically centered around an obscure fetish plus the lack of any real laws being broken it's basically made this style of solicitation practically risk-free for the predators out there as these people never wind up facing any sort of repercussions so i think it's important that we bring these cases to light every so often so that these predators know that there are consequences to their actions because as of now there is practically no one holding them accountable which has made these predators like howard run rampant across the web i just want to briefly mention that i have some new merch for those who are interested and i also want to shout out my god tier patrons barry winstanley bazoo 42 bisnacker bray karen s donovan aaron emmanuel kadena gamegamer j money just dally catherine ross lacy mark ph nathan backus quinn kiwi robert rubito sam lutfey skelly subtomicro the deck of cards unblended corchnois zinsu sensai and trucky doggo

Channel: Nick Crowley

Views: 2,222,917

Keywords: The Internet's Unknown Predator, Unknown Predator, Internet Predator, Howard the duck 4, howardtheduck4, Internet's unknown predator, internet predator, TikTok predator, youtube predator, nick crowley

Id: STCeATYeRus

Length: 32min 11sec (1931 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 02 2021