Madison Dudley is a first-year from Scottsdale, Arizona.
In Jason Veeoneeye’s unlisted YouTube video, where he admits to getting a 15-year-old girl drunk and chorusing her to have sex with him three years ago, the comments “I feel so bad for you” and “I will support you till the end!” are endless.
New allegations from victims began to surface from former fans, many of whom were underage when the interactions took place, that Veeoneeye had solicited sex and nude photos from them. Many users in the YouTube community were outraged and disheartened, but some went to Veeoneeye’s side, particularly his fans. That is not right.
This isn’t the first sexual assault case involving a YouTuber, and if you count number of known victims, it is not the worst either.
Sam Pepper, former Big Brother contestant now YouTuber with over two million subscribers—mainly girls between the ages of 13-18—posted a video on his channel titled “Fake Hand Ass-Pinch Prank." In this video Pepper pinches women’s bottoms on the street when asking for directions. Many of them were noticeably uncomfortable; one woman even said, “I don’t like that” as Pepper laughed.
This isn’t Peppers first "prank" video, if you can call it that. In some of his previous videos, Pepper has done various sexual harassment stunts such as handcuffing himself to women and saying he won’t free them until they make out with him to literally lassoing women walking by him on the street claiming they are “his.”
Due to his latest video, he has received severe backlash. Following this Pepper came out with a video of women sexually assaulting men on the street, followed by another video stating that this whole ordeal was actually a “social experiment” to bring light to sexual assault against men. Which, in my opinion, is only a smokescreen for his real intentions.
This was when the allegations started rolling in. Girls as young as 13 have come forward claiming Pepper sexually harassed them at YouTube meet-ups, gatherings and other social areas. Things ranging from inappropriate touching, following, requesting nude photos and escalating all the way to rape.
Two known reports have been made against Pepper through the LAPD, with the most recent incident claiming to have occurred early last month. Pepper has said that this is all “gossip” and refuses to respond directly to these accusations and continues to upload videos to his YouTube channel, which still has well over 2 million followers.
One of the most disturbing things to come out of these scandals is that the people who have committed these crimes are being supported and the victims coming forward are being blamed and shamed. Scrolling down Veeoneeye’s apology video or videos by the victims discussing the harm done to them, you see disgusting comments like “Do you even know how much pain he goes through right now? He regrets everything! If you're a true fan you could see the pain in his eyes! He made an apology video; he changed his whole life because of that mistake! People make mistakes all the time!” This is not acceptable. YouTube culture has escalated over the past few years to the point that being “YouTube famous” is now a career goal. These people have a lot of power. They can easily manipulate their fans in the same way that boy bands can. They have a similar level of power over their audiences. It is crazy to think that these YouTubers procured such adoring fans by posting four minute videos of them stuffing raw cinnamon in their mouths.
As the gap between YouTubers and their fans increase it is obvious that this will not be the last time a story like this appears. People will continue to take advantage of this platform and the power that comes with being successful on it.
Is there a way to prevent this? I don’t know. But I do know that something needs to be done. YouTube isn’t the same as it was two years ago, and if it continues down this spiral I don’t know if I will stick around to see if it changes.