After June saw Tana Mongeau's disastrous TanaCon, I truly believed that the video-sharing platform of YouTube would manage to slow down in the drama that has been continuously mounting since the very beginning of this year. Surely no creator would want to put themselves into Mongeau's position within a month after witnessing the on-going backlash. TanaCon has become a meme, mocked by anyone from h3h3 to Pewdiepie, and there are those, such as myself, who believe that the impact of TanaCon is not over, and I do expect that we might hear about lawsuits against Mongeau and the CEO of Good Times, Michael Weist, in the months to follow.
However, any lull of peace over the past weeks since TanaCon was broken when Yousef Erakat, better known to most as fouseyTube, decided to plan an event in a week. His July 15th event took place at the Greek Theater in Los Angles and, in the lead up to the concert, Erakat tweeted at many different celebrities and artists, urging them to come to his show. In a tweet to Ellen DeGeneres, Erakat said that his event was "titled HATES DIES LOVES ARRIVES" and that the event was to take place "through God's blessing."
Erakat's event was ultimately brought to a close when the police evacuated the attendees as well as the featured artists and creators when a bomb threat was called. Though the authorities did not uncover a bomb, the event was shut down before Erakat himself arrived to take the stage and deliver his motivational speeches.
There are many implications and details leading up to and at the event that I will not go in-depth to at this time, though it seems to me that the failure should have been expected, especially so soon after following TanaCon. Thankfully, Erakat's event was free to the audience, both those who attended in-person and those viewing the live stream on YouTube. However, because of the limited time frame to plan an event, where it seems that many of the promised acts were not guaranteed so much as Erakat said they would come - most notably, Erakat's claim that Drake would appear to perform if the stream gained 2 million concurrent viewers, though Drake reportedly reacted to the claims by saying that he "never met the YouTuber, was never booked for Fousey's show, and he's never even heard of him."
All in all, it seems that most of YouTube's creators should shy away from planning events, particularly in short periods of time. Still, Erakat has claimed that July 15 was not a failure, merely that it occurred as God intended it to.
In response, I will not try to dispel the powers that Erakat believes in, nor will I weigh in on whether or not he is going through a manic episode after going off of his bipolar medicine. Instead, as a viewer, I can only say that YouTube has become a train wreck that I cannot stop watching. Like any reality television show, the amount of drama that has taken place between and to big-name YouTubers over the past several months is unfathomable. In less than a month, we have had TanaCon and Erakat's July 15, and in August we will witness the boxing match between KSI and Logan Paul. YouTube has seen plot twists, success stories, falls from grace and rises to fame.
However, unfortunately, it seems that this is not a scripted and planned reality show, but real life with real implications. As both Matthew Patrick of Game Theory said in January following Logan Paul's Japan Trip in his video titled "The Logan Loophole," and Ethan Klein said in his podcast addressing Erakat, YouTube has become a platform that enables people to become famous by means of creating ridiculous content. YouTube allows people to make a name for themselves by one-upping one another to see who can make the most waves. In general, this does not necessarily stem from Erakat's July 15 or TanaCon, though their names have spread more rapidly based on one event than they would normally.
Within the next month, I predict that viewers will see much, much more about KSI and Logan Paul as the boxing match grows closer. Just over the past weeks, KSI's younger brother, Deji, has been rumored to be in a lawsuit for telling fans to vandalize cars owned by Logan Paul's father. I predict that, in order to draw all the more attention and viewership to their fight, KSI and Paul will be engaged in more scandals that will, possibly, increase in intensity.
And just as with a train wreck or a good reality television show, I'll be watching with a bowl of popcorn, because I cannot resist the view.
