DarksydePhil | Down the Rabbit Hole

[♪ Down The Rabbit Hole intro with Mutation from Akira ♪] [Subs by someone. Additional changes by KimonoFlareonGX] [Chapter "titles" added] [Chapter 1: How NOT to be a YouTuber, Book 1] Of the Internet's content creators there are few so controversial as Phillip Burnell, better known online as 'DarksydePhil', styled with a 'y'. He sports a respectable number of subscribers (over 180,000), but the more notable figure is his number of uploads, and their frequency.

Since 2008, he has uploaded tens of thousands of videos, usually 10 to 20 minutes long, and he still uploads more than a dozen daily. This is in addition to another channel, where he uploads video logs, or 'vlogs', where he talks about himself, and what he's doing, typically for over an hour at a time. On his Patreon, page he makes over $100,000 every month from nearly 200 different Patrons.

Searching for him on YouTube however, brings up far more than just his own videos. There are numerous clips and compilations of his gameplay constructed to mock and tease him, while others offer commentary on what has gone wrong with his channel, implying that he once had a loyal and enraptured fanbase. He often is cited by other content creators as a negative example, though their reasons for doing so often remain vague.

[TotalBiscuit:] "It's like. . that's the fuckin' DarksydePhil style of doing things: blame everybody that isn't you, and people watch to watch you rage.

" ". . like, do you wanna be the fuckin' court jester?

No, you don't. " [Fred:] So who is he, and how did he gain the ire of so many? [Chapter 2: Not-So-Humble Beginnings] (nice muscle shirt) Phillip Burnell entered the gaming community in the early 2000s as a fighting game competitor.

Though he would commonly compete in local tournaments, he struggled to place, and earned himself the title of 'The King of Hate'. Phillip himself claims that this nickname was earned due to the unpopular opinions he touts, and because he uses the hatred against him as a motivator. But other tournament goers tell a different tale.

They claim that he received this nickname because of his bouts of rage, argumentative disposition, and poor conduct. [Sounds from Street Fighter 4 tournament in video] [Announcer:] "DSP, stop recording. No one gives a shit.

" "Play. You can't hold up a tournament. " [Sounds of game overlapping with background noise] [Phil:] "If he says that again, I'm gonna go punch him in his fuckin' mouth.

" [Announcer, clearly ill-at-ease:] "Okay DSP, if you're gonna record this match, you're disqualified. " [Phil, enraged:] "WHERE AM I PLAYING? !

YOU STILL HAVEN'T TOLD ME! " [woman bursts into laughter] [Phil, still annoyed:] "Jesus Christ, man! " [banter amongst other competitors] [Phil:] "Want me to run your fuckin' tournament for you?

? " (poor Phil) [Fred:] According to himself, he had poured all of his available time and funds during this period into practicing and competing in a game called "Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo", traveling all across the east coast to attend tournaments. In 2005, Phillip decided that he would take out thousands of dollars in credit card loans to attend the Evolution Championship Series, better known as EVO, an event where numerous tournaments for different fighting games would take place.

By far, it is the largest of its kind. There, he would enter the tournament for Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, where he would take fourth place underneath three Japanese players. [Sounds from Street Fighter 2] (poor Chun-Li) [Fred:] Latching onto this accomplishment, he quickly proclaimed himself the best Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo player in America, since no other American players had placed above him.

But other players in the community were unimpressed. This particular tournament used a special version of the game, ported from the arcades onto the PlayStation game console, and this port was widely considered to be far less balanced, and vastly inferior for numerous reasons, including unresponsive controls, and extremely problematic bugs. As such, many top level competitors boycotted the tournament.

One other competitor, Alex Valle, had declared that he was going to enter the tournament not out of a competitive spirit, but to gatekeep other competitors whom he felt didn't deserve the prize money or prestige, but he was forced to cancel at the last minute due to work obligations. Despite the criticism toward the game and the event itself, Philip's pride was inflated by taking fourth place, and he began touting his superiority online and in interviews after Evo. [Phil:] .

. . but to disrespect the people that got top eight at Evolution, to make excuses, 'cuz it's on console?

It's ridiculous, and it's unacceptable. (interviewer tries to hide skepticism) [Fred:] For two more years, he would compete in tournaments, but he never found success like he had at the 2005 Evo event. Most other high-level competitors saw his fourth place victory as a fluke, due to the version of the game being played, and the lack of other high-level competition.

And his tournament results after Evo were seen to reflect his true level of skill. [High-level player:] ". .

looking for. . .

ya got some idiot named DSP? Who's. .

. a total piece of shit, by the way. .

. " (laughter in audience) "I'd like to, I like to get that on YouTube. .

(applause) "but. . .

" (enthusiastic commotion) ". . .

But this guy thought he was hot shit 'cuz he beat me and Troy in a game that was like. . " ".

. 's like, fuckin', Neo Geo conversion of Street Fighter or some crap? " (audience guffawing) "And he-and he was so proud that he put under his signature, he's the.

. . (sarcastic) " 'number-one US ranked Super Turbo player that year.

' " "But I mean. . .

look at him now. " [Comment cut off from further foreshadowing] [Fred:] With this controversy fading, he, too, faded from the competitive scene. [Chapter 3: The Advent of YouTube] 2005 also had marked the year of YouTube's creation.

And in 2007, just two years later, people began uploading videos of themselves playing video games, while often adding their own commentary over their gameplay, a practice borrowed from internet forums. They also borrowed the name -- "let's plays". Discovering this medium, Phillip began posting his own videos onto Youtube by pointing a video camera at his television screen, then uploading the files onto YouTube on a channel under his typical pseudonym, "DarksydePhil" , in all undercase.

[DSP]: All right. Obviously, he's a pretty bad driver, but uh, apparently, they're all drunk. [Sounds of gunfire from Saints Row 2] [Fred:] Sidenote: during this time there were two acceptable practices for recording gameplay footage for a Let's Play.

The first was to use what's called a capture card, a device that allows video and audio to be recorded directly onto a computer from a video game console. A similar process could be done with a camcorder. The second was to simply point a camera at the screen and use the built-in microphone to capture voice and gameplay.

Of these options, the former was far preferable, but viewing choices at the time were limited. And so, some let's players used the latter method and found some success. Phillip originally began creating videos for fun, but he found inordinate popularity.

Though he was admittedly terrible at many of the games he played, he often would play this off in a way that his viewers enjoyed, with off-color humor and a cocky personality. These viewers would often cite his authentic reactions as a reason for enjoying his content. Many others, however, considered his laugh grating, and his humor obscene and dull among other things.

[DSP:] . . .

do? Oh, come on. [laughter] .

. . I died so fuckin' quickly.

[Fred:] Despite this, some of his videos would receive tens of thousands of views. A very high number, especially during that time, and he would regularly appear on the front page of YouTube with footage of new games. On September 9th, 2009 he also created a blog channel, which he called 'THEKINGOFHATEHD' in all capital letters.

This channel also began collecting considerable views on a small number of his frequent videos. Phillip's pattern for video production was mostly consistent. He would play games in blocks of several hours recording his playing session by placing a camera on a coffee table near the screen.

Once he was finished playing, he would chop up the videos into approximately 10 minute segments, and upload each of those segments onto his gaming channel individually. In April of 2010, Phillip began to experience the first signs of trouble. Apparently, Ubisoft had seen some of Phillip's gameplay footage of 'Splinter Cell: Conviction', and complained to the YouTube administrators, who promptly shut down his channel out of fear of litigation.

YouTube then contacted Ubisoft to verify the concern, but Ubisoft stated that they had made no such claim. In fact, it had been an anonymous internet user who had created a false account in an attempt to shut down Phillip's YouTube channel, at least for a time. Why they wanted this is uncertain, but the channel was reinstated shortly after.

As time went on, Phillip uploaded more and more videos until he was reliably uploading over a dozen videos a day Near the end of that year, he was laid off from his job, and so he established a Google AdSense account to start monetizing his videos. AdSense is the system that Google uses to distribute advertisements and pay content creators for their views, and the number of times someone interacts with an ad or the video itself. Along with this, he started a new series on his blog channel in October of that year called 'DSPtriesit', where he would review food items and occasionally video game peripherals.

These videos would also be monetized under his AdSense account. (Geez, I don't feel like I can stomach hearing DSP eating. .

. ) [Chapter 4: Rage Against the Masses] But Phillip would not have this revenue stream for long. Once his AdSense account was approved, he began requesting that his viewers interact with his videos more, strongly implying that viewers should click on ads in an effort to increase his revenue.

What he wasn't aware of was that asking viewers to click on ads was disallowed in the contract for AdSense. And so, his account was banned, meaning that he could no longer make money directly off of advertisements for any of his videos on any of his channels. Creating multiple AdSense accounts is disallowed by the service, meaning that Phillip could not monetize his videos.

Unemployed and without income from YouTube, Phillip began uploading his videos to blip. tv, a competing video hosting service, and received a lucrative partnership offer. Only a few months after he began using blip, however, he was banned from the site for making numerous anti-semitic jokes.

(footage from Dead Space) [DSP:] (in a bad German accent) "This is what happens when you let the Jews do whatever they want! " (malicious cackling) "You let the Jews over on space, and now look at this! " "Hello, Jew!

" "Give me your money! " "You wanted it for far too long! " "Why are you carrying your balls next to you?

" "You stupid moron! " "You big nose freak! " (more laughter) [Fred:] Rejected from blip and AdSense and with limited employment opportunities, Phillip was suddenly in deep financial trouble, going into 2011.

In March, however, Phillip was approached by Machinima, Inc. , a company that contracts content creators chiefly for gaming videos to become a managed partner. By allowing Machinima to place advertisements on his videos under their AdSense account rather than his, he could continue making money through videos on YouTube as a full-time career.

[DSP:] ". . .

so I created two new channels on YouTube. " "The first channel is called 'DSPgaming'. " "This is my active channel for video game playthroughs.

" "On the other side, if you're a really big fan of fighting games and competitively playing these games," "you're gonna wanna head on over to my other channel 'DSPStreetFighter'. " "It's actually looking like this is gonna work out, and this is gonna be something I'm gonna be able to do as a full-time occupation, at least for the short term. " "And as long as this works out over the next course of this year, it makes something I've been doing the long term, which is excellent.

So. . .

" [Fred:] Despite Phillip's optimism, things would not stay so simple for long. Over the course of 2011, Phillip would find more and more viewers, but many of his older fans would begin to sour towards him. By this point, many other let's players had joined the scene uploading their own gameplay with capture cards and screen capture applications.

Compared to Phillip's camera method, these other recording styles provided far higher quality of both video and audio. But even the hardcore fans who were used to his camera recording method were finding frustration with his attitude. Though it's difficult to gauge a precise widespread response, many commenters would complain about his inflated ego, and his habit of blaming the game rather than himself an inordinate amount.

When competing with others in online games, he would always degrade his opponent. If he won, he would profess his opponent's lack of skill, and if he lost he would accuse the opponent of illegitimate tactics, or he would complain of faulty controls. [DSP:] "That's called cheating, and that's what everyone does online, which is why you shouldn't fucking play online.

" "Yet you keep asking for me to do it. " "So I gotta do what my fans want, so hope you enjoyed this real shitfest session I had tonight. " [Fred:] This last complaint may have merit, as his temper would often manifest as abuse of his equipment.

(footage from Heavy Rain) [DSP:] "This is fuckin' bullshit! " (clapping in frustration) "Move, asshole! " [Fred:] Phillip would also become belligerent on his social media.

For example, when game reviewer Mitch Dyer posted a review for IGN with which he disagreed, he attacked Dyer for not providing an Objective review. And after the argument, Phillip posted a vlog on to his 'THEKINGOFHATEHD' YouTube channel, attacking him further. [DSP:] "And he just got all offended that, like, I told him that I work full-time on YouTube like.

. . " "Okay, 'jealous much?

'. That's what I should say, 'jealous much? '.

But anyway. . .

" [Fred:] He also would attack other YouTubers, notably PewDiePie, iJustine, MTobuscus. Each for different reasons. While his former fans claimed that this was a change in character, Phillip's detractors would point to these things as already existing issues becoming more evident.

In light of these problems, Phillip's viewership, and therefore his livelihood began slipping. Between November of 2011 and April of 2012, he would drop from nearly 13. 5 million monthly views to 5.

3 million, a drop of over 60 percent after which his viewership continued to slip in a downward trend for the rest of the year. Things got even worse for him after Machinima renegotiated his contract later in the year, reducing his pay. Why this occurred is uncertain, but there is speculation that it was because of his diminishing viewership and the belief that it would continue to decrease.

Phillip, in large part, believed his viewership issues to be not because of his content, but rather because of changes that were occurring in the back end of YouTube. He argued that YouTube was changing to accommodate viral content while simultaneously hurting who he called the 'little guys', whose content was being deprioritized. And it was this deprioritization that was to blame for his decreasing viewership.

Many of his fans and all of his detractors, however, were unconvinced that this was the only problem, if it even was one. Many indicted him for his inflexibility, an argument bolstered by his adamant refusal to alter his content production, or release methods. Sometime over the course of 2011, Phillip had started dating a woman named Leanna (Hongin?

) known better by the pseudonym "PandaLee". While Phillip's fanbase seems generally happy that he was now in a relationship, there was a subset who weren't so enthused. Many were shocked to learn that Leanna was 11 years Phillip's junior, and that they had started dating just after she had turned 18.

But most were more concerned about Leanna's aggressive tone during cooperative gameplay. [DSP:] "Everyone press Start. (laughter)" [PandaLee:] Let's press the Start before I kill you all.

(mockingly) " 'Press X', huh-huh-huh-huh! " "I know how to press a button! " (unintelligible) "I'm a better gamer than half of you.

. . " [DSP:] "Forget it, ready up!

" 2011 also marked other strange behaviors from Phillip. For example, for his DSPtriesit series, he took a video of himself showering with an Axe body scrubber. (I don't think I'm understanding what he's saying here.

Any contributor care to transcribe this for me? ) But even compared to all of this, his worst trouble was yet to come, trouble that would arise from an unexpected place: his own fan base. [Chapter 5: A Former Fan's Rebellion] In 2012, one of Phillip's fans going by the name evilaj2010 was blocked from commenting on Philip's videos, when he mentioned his belief that PandaLee was the cause of Phillip's change of attitude, and therefore loss of viewers.

Incensed by his banning, evilaj published a montage of Phillip's gameplay footage of "Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty" in early 2013, and titling it "This Is How You Don't Play MGS2". Throughout the nearly hour-long montage, he peppered in comments from viewers frustrated with how poorly Phillip was playing, especially noting how he was ignoring important mechanics as a direct response to Phillip's claim that viewers were extremely positive to the playthrough. This video showcase some of the worst of his play, where he would often blame the controls or game design for his poor performance.

When exactly this video went online and its precise viewership have been lost, but some sources claimed that it quickly garnered over a million views. One of Phillip's tweets (apparently criticizing the video for stealing his footage) predates the upload that currently exists. These imply that the original was somehow taken down, possibly by Phillip, and then later reuploaded by evilaj on February 15th, 2013.

Whatever the exact case may be, this video quickly sparked a series of similar montages, each with the title of prefix "This Is How You Don't Play", Showcasing Phillip's worst moments, these videos would range in length from 10 minutes to over 2 hours. In short order, these montages would overtake Phillip's own video content when searching for his channel due to their popularity, pushing his own content farther down the search results. Phillip, enraged by this, said about attempting to remove these videos from YouTube.

In a misunderstanding of Fair Use law, he claimed that these videos were violating his copyright, and argued that while his videos were transformative since he was playing a game, these other videos were stealing his content by using his video footage, and so he went about systematically flagging the videos for YouTube's review. Despite his efforts, these videos would stay online and continue to multiply as the months dragged on. Along with this, another series parodying the DSPtriesit videos would gain popularity, criticizing different aspects of his failures or his character, especially his ego.

For example, one user criticized Phillip's belief that his Let's Play videos were works of art, and that the game and his commentary are his "ingredients" to create it. [DSP:] There's $60. I paid them their fee to utilize the ingredients to make my work of art.

(clip from Spider-Man 2) (J. Jonah Jameson's laughter) (JJ continues laughing) "You serious? " Though he was gaining newfound notoriety, it wasn't enough to change the downward trend of his viewership.

As more and more of these videos proliferated, public opinion against Phillip worsened, as did his viewer account and more internet denizens became aware of his existence through a negative paradigm. Even switching over from using a video camera to direct capture couldn't staunch the leaking viewership. To make matters worse, Machinima had again cut his pay in early 2013, increasing Phillip's financial strain.

However, with his AdSense account disabled indefinitely and his public image souring, Phillip had little recourse. To supplement his income, he began streaming on a new platform called Twitch, which offered an online venue for gamers to play games and interact with fans live. But even here, he couldn't escape trouble.

He became known for banning and censoring people with negative comments, as well as berating and insulting his viewers. [DSP:] "Some people just aren't as intelligent. " "I don't even know what else to say, because if you're in my stream right now, and you're whining and stomping your feet like a five-year-old brat.

. . " "Uh.

. . You're just making yourself look bad.

That's. . .

" [Fred:] Most egregious to his fanbase was when his girlfriend Leanna derided the game "Kingdom Hearts 2", in the chat section, while Phillip was playing it. And when the chat devolved into argumentation, Phillip locked the chat so that only subscribers could talk. The bad reputation from Phillip had suddenly spilled over onto Leanna, too.

[DSP:] "So, fuck all you who are acting immature. This is what you get now. " "We're putting into sub only, love.

Fuckin' idiots. " "I'm here tryin' to play a fuckin' game, it's hard to concentrate, but a bunch of little immature shi. .

. " [Fred:] Phillip continued to quietly make videos and stream through 2013, as his viewership hemorrhaged, and his detractors uploaded more and more "This Is How You Don't Play" and parody DSPtriesit videos. [Chapter 6: Hemorrhaging Viewership] 2014 saw major changes for Phillip.

Taking out more loans, he purchased a new condominium, this one in Seattle, Washington, bringing Leanna to live with him. He believed that a new location would provide him with the motivation and energy to surge back into popularity. But this living situation proved problematic.

Leanna was unemployed and had no higher education, meaning Philip had to provide for both of them with his dropping income. His problems would worsen later in the year after a dispute with Twitch admins. At the time, Twitch's servers were unable to handle too much bandwidth.

And so, when Philip was streaming at a quality that the servers were unable to handle, they politely requested that he reduce the bitrate of his stream. Philip, annoyed, asked why other streamers could stream at higher bit rates, but the Twitch admin who contacted him remained firm that others did not, and that Philip must abide by the rules as other content creators did. Unwilling to accept the drop in quality, he began streaming on YouTube instead, who had launched their streaming platform, but received far fewer views again decreasing his income while he was still in debt for the condominium.

On January 10th, 2015, prospects were looking better for Philip when he created a Patreon page for himself. In the first month, he made over $1,300 from 134 Patrons helping to shore up his lost income. But this upturn in Phillip's fortunes would not last.

On June 24th, five months after the launch of his Patreon, Phillip was swatted while he was streaming. The term "Swatted" refers to the questionable (read: dangerous) online practice that had been increasing in popularity during that time period. It involves a person calling in an anonymous tip to the police in the area that there is some serious situation at a streamers location, such as a hostage.

Thus instigating a response from a S. W. A.

T. team who would go to the person's house or apartment. The intention is to force the S.

W. A. T.

team to storm the living space, potentially injuring or arresting the streamer inside while the stream is running. This particular incident ended quickly and peacefully however, with the officers bantering to each other that the incident was, quote, "gamer shit". But it was only the beginning in an uptick of negative behavior targeting Phillip.

On June 26th, just two days after the swatting attack, Phillip's stream was struck again, this time with a dedicated (distributed) denial of service attack, better known as a DDoS. The function of such an attack is to overwhelm a person's internet modem, temporarily shutting off internet access. But the largest blow, by far, was against his videos in general.

A small number of people began flagging some of Phillip's videos, claiming that the fanart in the videos was utilized without the permission of the artist. If you were to receive a third strike on either account, the respective account will be taken offline temporarily, cutting him off from one of his few precious sources of revenue. At the recommendation of Machinima, Phillip set all of his videos that used fan art as private, thus removing them from public accessibility.

But this action had an unintended consequence. YouTube's search algorithms considered the views on these videos to be lost. SocialBlade.

com's public graphs show that according to YouTube's algorithms, Phillip net lost 1. 37 million views on his channel in August of 2015, when he set these videos to private. In doing so, his videos were deprioritized by YouTube's search and recommendation functions, further reducing the visibility of his channel.

Between July and September of 2015, Phillip lost approximately 500,000 monthly views, which constituted 15% of his remaining viewership. A sharp downtick in his already dwindling revenue. Machinima, facing trouble after a number of publicized scandals, and seeing Phillip's viewership loss, renegotiated his contract again to pay him even less.

To shore up his income, he announced yet another channel, this one called "KOGaming", which he launched on January 14th, 2016. This channel was created to be a repository for edited content, something Phillip had refrained from doing during most of his career on YouTube. These videos received mixed viewership.

Some performed well while others failed to break 10,000 views even a year later. Phillip began showing strange patterns in his Patreon rewards during 2015 as well. Most notably, he had asked for a significant amount of money to produce a reboot of an old cheaply produced show he had created with some friends about four years prior called "Project 7".

However, after collecting the money, he stated that he would have to postpone the filming of the show indefinitely to concentrate on his regular content. He also made promises for other videos with high monetary goals on Patreon. For example, his Patrons voted for him to make a best and worst moments montage of his playthrough of "Alan Wake", which was to be released that September.

However, after the first part received weak viewership, he decided against fulfilling that obligation. He also made a goal for four extra Minecraft sessions, but he neglected THAT obligation as well, only playing one more session for similar reasons of low viewership. Though these failures attracted considerable negative attention, this was nothing compared to what was about to occur.

[Chapter 7: A Short Lived Controversy] On May 1st, 2016, while preparing for a live stream, Phillip accidentally streamed himself masturbating. Though the video itself wasn't graphic, as it only captured his chest and face, what he was doing was clear. At first, he attempted to cover it up, banning people who mentioned the incident from his channel, but the word spread quickly, even earning himself a spot on Keemstar's show "#DrmaAlert".

This public attention actually increased his viewership for a short time. And so, he changed his tactic, even retweeting some of the images made to joke about the incident. Machinima still attempted to control the spread of information by copyright claiming any videos with the footage of Phillip's mistake.

These extra views, however, would soon peter out. And with a stagnant subscriber count, the gradual decrease in viewers continued throughout the rest of the year. To help salvage his income, he began streaming on Twitch again on November 29th 2016.

Phillip began expressing his concerns for his finances more and more in his blogs, imploring his viewers to watch more of his videos, and to subscribe to his Patreon page. In one blog, he blamed his lack of viewers on the new game releases, and the fact that he claimed he was playing well instead of getting frustrated and angry. [DSP:] "Now, let's look excited, guys.

I've actually been doing way better at Neo than I do at 'Dark Souls', so a lot of group of people who like to see me rage and fail haven't been around. " "Because they watch a couple of streams, and 'fuck those doing good'. 'What the fuck is this?

' and they left and never came back. " (clears throat) "In addition, you know there haven't really been many other games outside of Neo. .

. " [Chapter 8: Afflicted by the Curse] [Fred:] At long last, on March 2nd of 2017, Machinima removed Phillip from their managed partnership program. Since Phillip's AdSense account was still banned, he had no way on his own to make money from any of his YouTube channels.

He began to panic. However, within the month, a company named Curse offered Phillip another contract, and Phillip's attitude immediately turned again, though some of his thoughts were mixed. On one hand, he was making more money than he had been with his Machinima contract.

But on the other, he had lost the protection from automatic content ID claims that Machinima's managed partnership had provided him, meaning that videos of his with copyrighted music or video would have the money earned from them taken away. Sometime in April, a company by the name of Pultavi approached Phillip with a tempting offer. They told Phillip that they could offer him more money than Curse was currently giving him and more.

They promised that they could give him another managed partnership as well as one other thing: That they would find all of the parody videos that had become so popular and claimed them for Phillip, placing advertisements on them and funneling that money to him. Tantalized, Phillip removed his partnership with Curse and began struggling to enter a new partnership with Pultavi, despite being unable to find any information on them online. After being strung along for some time, he realized that he had been duped.

Pultavi was a front for another company, Laveria Media, who currently didn't have the clout with YouTube to offer him a managed partnership or meet any of their other promises. Flustered, Phillip returns to Curse, who agreed to take him back one last time in May. For now, Phillip's short-term future seems somewhat secure, despite everything that has happened to him.

He claims to be making good money from streaming on Twitch, and his partnership with Curse (until July 27th, 2018) will be at least enough for him to pay his bills. Even so, his viewership is steadily decreasing. Where he once had nearly 13.

5 million views a month, this number has decayed to 1. 84 million. And if his deal with Curse were to break (on that date), it's uncertain what he'd do.

He survives online with dwindling viewership, and as a joke amongst other content creators. But he also serves as a warning to those same creators about the volatility of a fanbase, and how quickly it can turn against them.