“ | What! What the fuck! |
” |
―JonTron |
Jonathan Aryan Jafari (born: March 24, 1990YouTuber, commentator, comedian, and reviewer known for his reviews of retro, odd, and bad video games and movies. He reviews video games, movies, and television shows of varying genres in a retrospective and comedic manner in his YouTube web series JonTron. Jafari was co-creator and former co-host of the Let's Play web series GameGrumps before his departure on June 25, 2013, and co-created the video game entertainment website NormalBoots.
), better known online as JonTron, is an AmericanHistory & Content[]
Personal Life[]
Jafari was born and raised in Rancho Palos Verdes in Los Angeles County, California, and currently resides in Queens, New York City. He is of Hungarian descent on his mother's side and Iranian descent on his father's side.[1]
He is known for his quirky personality, never really taking anything seriously until the situation calls for it. He's also known to have a bit of a temper, usually shown when playing any anger-inducing games.
He married Charlotte Jafari (née Claw) on October 23, 2019.
Career[]
Before Jafari started his channel in 2010, he started a vlogging channel in 2006 that went inactive in 2007; to this day, the channel has still not been identified.
Later, Jafari created the JonTron channel on August 31, 2010, with his 2-part review of Daikatana, usually posting videos on YouTube and/or Normalboots.com. Since then, his videos have been refined, as well as an upgraded in production values.
On July 18, 2012, he and Arin "Egoraptor" Hanson started a new shared gameplay channel named Game Grumps. However, after about a year of working on the channel, he eventually quit to return to his own YouTube channel and was replaced by Danny "Sexbang" Avidan as Arin's co-host.
Jafari played Banjo-Kazooie in June 2014 on a Twitch stream to collect donations for Teach For America's GoFundMe campaign. Jafari stated that if the $25,000 proposed goal was hit, he would reprise a cover of Katy Perry's song "Firework" originally recorded for his 2011 review of DinoCity. The full version of the cover was uploaded to Jafari's YouTube channel on February 14, 2016.
Characters[]
Jacques[]
Jacques is the name of Jon's robotic bird (Green-cheeked conure) who assists Jon in filming his videos or, in most cases, criticizes Jon. He spent a brief period of time fighting in a war of unknown origins. Jacques, being a cybernetic bird, is equipped with lasers in his eyes, a teleporter, and the ability to morph into a falcon; he also has the ability to reconstruct himself after an accidental death occurs, whether by a self-given paradox or his lasers being reflected back at him by Jon over a copy of Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, which is a horrendous game in Jon's point of view. As of now, Jacques is currently in retirement, but still lives with Jon.
Malkovich[]
Malkovich's relation to Jon is unknown, and not much is known about him in general, although he seems to be of Slavic origins based on his "accent". However, he has starred in both of his public access television show, which Jon had displayed on his main channel. In Malkovich's Gaming Game Show, it is revealed that Jon had been impersonating Malkovich to keep him protected while he was in stasis in the Himalayas. He is also revealed to somehow be the key to the human race's victory in the war with the Randors.
Game Grumps[]
In mid-2012, Jon and his friend Arin Hanson started a joint gameplay channel where they played games that were typically less than par. This was inspired by "Continue?", another show on Normalboots.com. This channel was widely loved by both fans of Jon's original channel and Arin's animation channel, Egoraptor. Jon's run-on Game Grumps lasted almost a year until, in June 2013, he left Game Grumps at the request of his fans to continue work on his original channel. Soon after he left, he was replaced by Danny Sexbang, one of the members of YouTube channel NinjaSexParty, who currently works as Arin's cogamer, and a part of the Steam Train, another group on the channel consisting of Danny, Ross "RubberRoss" O'Donovan, and occasionally by Arin himself. Whether he will return to work with the guys again is unknown, the chance of it happening being little to none, due to the racism controversy (talked about below).
NormalBoots[]
NormalBoots was created in late 2010 by Jafari and Austin "PeanutButterGamer" Hargrave to act as a hub where Jafari and Hargrave could post content and receive advertisement revenue. Soon after its creation, NormalBoots added DidYouKnowGaming?, The Completionist, Indie Games Searchlight, and Continue? to its roster of shows. The site was closed down in 2012, as Google's AdSense program offered better revenue options for the content creators. NormalBoots was relaunched on January 24, 2014, with the addition of other video game-focused channels ProJared and Satchbag's Goods. It was announced on May 18, 2017, that Jafari would no longer be an active part of the group, but still remain as a founding member.
Controversies[]
Racism accusations[]
Despite his political views rarely entering his videos save for the occasional quip, Jon has expressed many controversial views aligning with alt-right and white supremacist talking points.
On March 13, 2017, Jafari appeared on a livestream with noted political YouTuber Destiny. Before the debate, Jafari had been expressing his views regarding the at-the-time political climate on Twitter, when Destiny invited him to the stream. During the stream, he stated that, "nobody wants to become a minority in their own country" and stated that he took issue with white people being labeled as racist for wanting to remain a majority. He said that he saw this reaction as hypocritical with how the majority of other countries are regarded. Over the course of the one-and-a-quarter-hour appearance, he also commented that he had seen statistics that “wealthy blacks commit more crimes than poor whites”, as well as debating if the colonization of Africa by European countries was a good thing.[2]
Shortly afterwards, many outlets criticized his statements and specifically questioned his claim about crimes committed by wealthy blacks. He lost a lot of sponsors as well as posted two (but now deleted) videos. One was his response to the incident while the other was a Q&A. In the Q&A, Jon mentioned that he would be taking a break for a few months. He also experienced a minor loss of subscribers.
It was announced on May 18, 2017, that Jafari would no longer be an active part of the group NormalBoots, but still remain as a founding member. Although it appeared that the racial controversy was the reason why Jafari left, fellow member Jirard "The Completionist" Khalil claimed in a YouTube comment that Jafari's departure had nothing to do with the controversy surrounding his statements. He stated that Jafari felt that he could no longer contribute to the group due to the extended time it took for him to make videos, and that he had been planning to leave for several months.
Jafari recorded voice parts for a minor character in the game Yooka-Laylee. In response to the controversy, an update was issued the same day as the game's April 2017 release to remove and replace Jafari's voice.[3]
In November 2017, Jafari appeared on the H3H3productions podcast; here, he spoke further about his statements, stating that he should not have gone into the subjects he went into without any prior preparation, and claiming that he did not hold any racist views, while he also stated that he wished people could "[talk] about these things without witch hunting each other."
Statement on Dr. Fauci[]
On October 25, 2021, Jon made a Twitter post saying, "Just trust the science Bro!!!" while displaying three images. The images alleged that scientist Dr. Anthony Fauci had conducted animal abuse on several dogs.[4] Dr. Fauci was also the lead scientist on the Covid-19 vaccine, which many people used against Jon's statement, as some think that he was encouraging people not to get vaccinated. Many people began to bash him for his statements, including theneedledrop and Vaush.
Jon made attempts to prove his point by making two posts about him which include supposed risky research and false claims of an effective vaccine to fight against the virus[5][6]. However, many people soon mocked him for a small amount of research, a video which showed various new articles head lines supposedly showing decreased effectiveness of the vaccines (with one headline he used being from 2011) and responding back to others. Jon made a Twitter post the same day saying that while he does encourage people to get the Covid-19 vaccine, he's also worried that people are more susceptible to science without making up their own opinions.[7]
Quotes[]
- "I get it... I don't get it."
- "Can't forget the flying eggplant."
- " I don't like where this is going."
- "Please Larry you don't understand. You don't know what you're doing here. STOP!"
- "Is that a poop rat? Is that a fucking poop rat?"
- "I give up that's it."
- "Oh, my favorite."
- "Am I dead yet?"
- "You fuckers, you fuckers. You mother fucke-I will rain hell fire upon you!"
- "Excuse me whaaaaaaat."
- "I bought the ticket I'll do what I want."
- "I'll take your entire stock!"
- "OOOOOHHHHHH BOAT!"
- "Fuck you! I aiiiiiiiiin't havin that shit!"
- "THIS WAS A MISTAKE!!!"
- "OK, now you have my attention."
- "You look like a SNAKE!"
- "What?! What the fuck?!"
- "I didn't ask for your Wikipedia, Garrett."
- "Phil, you make me angry Phil!"
- "Ah! Heat was hot!"
- "What the fuck is heat syncope?"
- "Two kids gonna DIE tonight!"
- "Nananananana FAT MAN!"
- "I gooed my pants while watching Rick and Morty because Summer was dancing. *Sigh* Not my proudest one. Not... by a long shot."
Trivia[]
- In 2003, Jafari created a Newgrounds account named "BirdmanXZ6" where he posted 5 animations depicting anthropomorphic onions. In 2006, he created a YouTube channel under the same name.
- There are several deleted videos from the channel that are now re-uploaded. One example is Apples and BREAKS, which was Jafari crying over accidently breaking his Nintendo DS.
- He had also created other series which were also deleted. Some of them include Gaming in Public and Tales of Super Jon, which was discovered by TheGamerFromMars.
- Jafari's "robotic" pet bird, Jacques, is the same species as Jaiden Animations' pet bird, Ari.
- Jafari was going to make a cameo in the game Yooka-Laylee by voicing a minor character, but his voice work was later dropped due to the debate incident.
- Jafari is assumed to be a fan of the Philadelphia Flyers due to the fact he has merchandise bearing their logo in many of his videos.
- Jafari has provided voice-over work for A Hat in Time, a video game by Gears for Breakfast. He also recorded voice work for Playtonic Games' Yooka-Laylee but the content was removed from the game in a day one patch in light of his controversial statements on race.
- Jafari made a video with NASCAR driver Garrett Smithley, they race go-karts and Jafari went to the Charlotte Motor Speedway to watch Smithley race ( and wreck)
- In an interview with Breitbart News, Jafari stated that he voted for Barack Obama both times and that he supported Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primaries, but has said that he doesn't identify as conservative or liberal, preferring instead to decide on a case-by-case basis.
- Jafari has sung professionally in several videos, such as his cover for Katy Perry's Firework.
- Jafari thinks Metroid Prime is overrated and was a bad job converting Super Metroid to 3D.
- Jafari favorite Beach Boys song is "Surfin' Safari" in which he always replaces the word "safari" with his last name which rhymes, when singing the song.
Gallery[]
References[]
- ↑ https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-03-23-playtonic-to-ditch-jontron-from-yooka-laylee-following-anti-immigrant-comments
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RQA9GZprqM
- ↑ http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-03-23-playtonic-removes-controversial-youtuber-jontron-from-yooka-laylee
- ↑ https://twitter.com/JonTronShow/status/1452677661839536130
- ↑ https://twitter.com/JonTronShow/status/1452689728206217218
- ↑ https://twitter.com/JonTronShow/status/1452755426227937289
- ↑ https://twitter.com/JonTronShow/status/1452808460073058309