Ethan Johnson (born: April 12, 2000YouTuber and music critic. His channel is gone, but his videos can still be found in a Google Drive archive folder called "TheDoubleArchive".[1] He joined YouTube on June 22, 2014, and deleted the channel about 10 years later on May 2nd 2024. On his channel, he usually reviewed the Top 20 on the Billboard Hot 100 or made lists of the best/worst hit songs of the year.[2] He would claim to follow a rough biweekly schedule but it was often closer to monthly.[3] He had very often appeared in videos on the Sean Fay-Wolf | Diamond Axe Studios Music channel,[4] and Sean Fay-Wolfe from said channel had appeared in his videos.[5]
), better known online as AA (formerly TheDoubleAgent and Worst Music Of The Year), is an American formerDespite being mostly known for his music criticism videos, his most viewed video is "Ravioli Remix: Black and Yellow by Wiz Krablifa"[6] which is a remix of Wiz Khalifa's "Black and Yellow" with clips from the Spongebob Squarepants episode "Imitation Krabs" inserted at the end of several lines, which collected over 5 million views prior to deletion.
Early life[]
Ethan Johnson was born and raised in the United States.
Channel[]
Ethan's channel has been deleted. Prior to deletion, many of Ethan's older videos were already unlisted, and they had been unlisted since 2017. He likely unlisted them because, as they were created when he was very young, they are low in quality in terms of research, writing, and delivery. Fortunately, most of these older videos have been reuploaded by the archive channel The Quadruple Agent.[7] This channel is not affiliated with TheDoubleAgent, but the two have likely been in contact, as Quad's original reupload of TheDoubleAgent's infamous "Top 10 Worst Chris Brown Songs" video has disappeared, being replaced by a new edit with several instances of a particularly offensive image of Rihanna removed.[8] The description states that this was done at TheDoubleAgent's request. The Quadruple Agent has likely downloaded all of his newer videos, as well, and might be reuploading them soon.
Plagiarism[]
For a brief 4 month period prior to the deletion of his channel, all of Ethan's videos were suddenly unlisted. Even the newer ones, which were seemingly of higher quality. This is due to the fact that he had copied several jokes and lines from other popular music YouTubers, particularly Todd in the Shadows. He made a video citing his sources for his recent "Top 20 Almost Hit Songs of the 2010's" video, which was simply titled "Citing My Sources".[9] In the video, he explains where many of his observations and a good handful of his jokes originally came from. He felt this was necessary in the wake of Hbomberguy's "Plagarism and You(Tube)" video.[10] TheDoubleAgent figured that most people who watched his video would assume that all of his words were his own rather than the truth that they were copy/pasted directly from decade old Todd In The Shadows videos on Drive By[11] and the Worst Hit Songs of 2011[12] with a couple of words changed, and he reasonably concluded that this was unfair to Todd. Why didn't he come to this conclusion on his own while he was copy/pasting these jokes? Who's to say?
TheDoubleAgent unlisted everything on his channel during the production of "Citing My Sources," and he included a clip of the mass-unlisting process at the end of the video. All of his videos were briefly relisted for archival purposes, before being hidden once again, and eventually deleted. Most of them can still be found in an unlisted Google Drive folder called TheDoubleArchive.[1] The initial unlisting in January 2024 was prompted by his humiliation at being called out by the many, many comments shown near the end of the video pointing out that he was very evidently copying Todd In The Shadows's format, editing, and style of humor and critique without adding much of his own. Ethan likely figured that, at the very least, he should prevent new people from seeing years of what he calls "embarassing Todd fanfiction."
Despite the comments on the original video being mostly supportive and claiming that his joke and style theft was actually not plagiarism but some different other thing, there is a strong case to be made that aping someone else's entire style, and failing to develop it meaningfully for 9 years, is plagiarism. Hbomberguy made this case in his original video on Plagiarism[13], a clip of which was included in "Citing My Sources."
Trivia[]
- Most of Ethan's videos can still be found in a hidden Google Drive folder called TheDoubleArchive.[1] Some segments seem to have been automatically trimmed out due to copyright blocks.
- Many of his videos can be found on The Internet Archive.[14]
References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1AuDy3IU5k2JQebJ8PqCDL5hK3-79Nw5m?usp=sharing
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/c/DoubleAgentReviews/videos
- ↑ https://outsidethemeasure.wordpress.com/thedoubleagent/
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGUcO_EYMME
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YZfRZaP0O4
- ↑ https://youtu.be/3Q12xOukVAI?si=aGuURfKqE57YGJ0L
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/@thequadrupleagent4130/videos
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aJ5v_7p8s4&t=1s
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20240124033111/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhkIjK21dDA
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDp3cB5fHXQ
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fcdBQqLeI4
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0i4tAcrd4cI
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDtJ7bte_zg
- ↑ https://archive.org/details/doubleagentarchive_201907