Calvin Lee Vail (born August 18, 1995), better known online as LeafyIsHere or just Leafy, was an American YouTube commentator and comedian residing in Seattle, Washington, who made commentary and reaction videos. Though his content was heavily criticized and soon led to his infamy on YouTube, he was known to popularize the gameplay/commentary format, which soon led to the popularity of similar commentary YouTubers.
Calvin has established over 4.3 million subscribers (after decline) and 1 billion video views on his LeafyIsHere YouTube channel, gaining 4.8 million at his peak. He had stopped uploading on YouTube on December 12, 2017 due to the changes of YouTube itself, but will be gone for the time being.
Career
Although the main focuses of his videos are his commentaries, he often displays gameplay footage in the background of his videos, including various different video games, though most commonly the "surf" game mode in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, as well as games such as: A Story About My Uncle, Doom, and Overwatch.
Origins
LeafyIsHere started off his YouTube channel originally posting Minecraft gameplay videos at the age of 16. He owned a ParaPVP Minecraft server to game upon, however, he made a kid angry, who ended up calling him a butt muncher and DDOSed his Minecraft server. Leafy, therefore, moved onto CS:GO gameplay which helped his channel grow.
Rapid Growth & Success
In January 2016, LeafyIsHere video uploaded a video called "THE SADDEST MAN ON YOUTUBE ", where he talked about the YouTuber known as MrBlackDarkness666, a depressed goth who always got harassed by different people, even little children, where he would tell them to kill themselves.
He saw Leafy's video as harassment, so he released his video LEAFYISHERE GO FUCK YOURSELF. In the video, he says that his girlfriend broke up with him because she thought that Leafy's video had a point. At the end of the video, he shows a photo of Leafy in real life, setting it on fire with a cigarette and ripping it apart, showing that he can make Leafy leave him alone.
Eventually Leafy responded with a video THE SADDEST MAN ON THE INTERNET. In the video, Leafy says that the video on MrBlackDarkness666 wasn't intended for harassment and that he is apologizing. But he also says that it's not his fault because his ex broke up with him. At the end, the two appeared on DramaAlert, where they apologized to each other.
Controversy
TommyNC2010/h3h3Productions Feud
On March 19, 2016, LeafyIsHere uploaded a video titled “THE MOST HEROIC FEDORA MAN ON YOUTUBE,” in which talked about an autistic YouTuber, TommyNC2010. Later that day, TommyNC2010 uploaded a video titled “I am getting Death Threats LeafyIsHere , why?,“ in which TommyNC2010, upset, recorded himself crying and explaining how he was getting a lot of hate and death threats from Leafy’s fans, which caused h3h3Productions to make a video about the situation (now unlisted).
After Leafy was recieving backlash from h3h3's Leafy rant video, he soon took down the video and uploaded an apology video appropriately titled “Apology. However, after h3h3Productions’s former rant about Leafy received over a million views, Leafy made a response video (now unlisted) stating that Ethan Klein from h3h3Productions tried to side with Leafy, where he shows several text messages from h3h3Productions talking negativity about the YouTuber Pyrocynical. Pyrocynical eventually made two videos addressing the situation, the latter of which titled “Let's Call it Quits #uniteyoutube.
Keemstar Feud
The first of which Pyrocynical removed. Keemstar attempted to invite both parties to DramaAlert later on to discuss the matter but failed. Later Ethan from h3h3 apologized for his critique of Leafy, stating that the video was "too personal" and "making it seem that Leafy was his enemy". Leafy now includes a disclaimer on his videos for fans to not "witch hunt" the people/content he reviews.
On June 13, 2016, Leafy uploaded a video titled "THE KEEMSTAR AND DRAMAALERT RANT", where he talked about how Keemstar was doing "some criminal shit", which included threatening to release people's information if they criticized him. Leafy also talked about how he falsely accuses people of being a pedophile, with one such accusation making an old man cry while he was streaming on Twitch. Another point in the video was, according to Leafy, that Keemstar was being a hypocrite.
When someone informed Keemstar that Leafy was going to make a video about the false pedophile allegations, he told Leafy that if he was to make a tweet or video about him, he would release his DM'S (Direct Messages) with him. Leafy also brought up that Keemstar was invading other people's privacy and revealing their faces. On July 4th, 2016, Leafy’s YouTube channel was hacked by Twitter user PoodleCorp, who changed the video titles of all of LeafyIsHere’s videos to “hacked by twitter.com/poodlecorp".
Moths after the scandal, Leafy was accused of subboting three times. The first incident was when his and Colossal Is Crazy's subcount spiked on social blade, however it turned out to be a glitch. The second time was when a small YouTuber known as Ecy claimed to have evidence of Leafy being registered on a subboting websit and using it, in which Keemstar reported. After Leafy proved the information to be incorrect, Keemstar told his audience the infromation was wrong. However on the third incidence, the hacker group OurMine hacked into his old gmail and found out that Leafy made a shorter link to a subboting website back in 2013, which he denied. Keemstar then reported on the issue. He claimed he wasn't accussing Leafy of subboting but did say in the video that he was on a Skype call with Leafy asking for advice after IDubbbz's Content Cop on Keem caused his subs to decline. He claims that Leafy's response was "Well you can bot the likes...", Leafy then made a statement about the situation, denying the accusations of him subbotting and claiming that the call between him and Keem never happened.
After Leafy's ex animator HeyWatchYourMouth spoke out against him, saying that he wasn't paying him good enough and claiming that Leafy and Grade really did backstabb Keem, Leafy started getting hate and losing subs. In October of 2016, Leafy and Keem made their first confrontation in moths in a Baited Podcast episode, with Colossal Is Crazy and Tommy C STFP in the same call. Keem accusses Leafy of backstabbing him, lying about him and trying to ruin his career while Leafy denies most of the claims. Five arguemts where brought up in the Baited episode, Keemstar won five, Leafy only succeded in one and one was tied. After that Baited episode aired, Leafy gained more hate.
However, on an Interview with Keemstar on October 25, 2018, Keemstar asked about the controversy of him and GradeAUnderA attacking Keemstar. Leafy said he did it for revenue.
iDubbbz Content Cop
On September 13, 2016, iDubbbz created a "Content Cop" video, as part of his on-going series on YouTube creators, on LeafyIsHere, criticizing his videos' content for (in iDubbbz's opinion) having a bad format and overall low quality with repetitive jokes. He also played several existing jokes on Leafy, such as referring to Leafy as a cyberbully and mocking the size of Leafy's chin, with these jokes either being combined or used interchangeably, and in satirical nature, to mock Leafy's claim that his videos are "satire", while using the type of jokes Leafy would make in his commentary videos (such as mocking a part of his appearance which the individual can not control), which iDubbbz in play also depicted satire by its true form and definition.
After iDubbbz's video, Leafy's subscriber-count began to fall drastically and eventually, according to SocialBlade, caused Leafy to lose 2,000 subscribers per day. Many however believe iDubbbz wasn't directly involved in this despite his popular video, and Leafy's audience was slowly noticing subconsiously how repetitive Leafy's content was and was gradually starting to lose interest before he jumped in. iDubbbz was simply the last little push the audeince collectively needed.
Decline
On October 2, 2016, HeyWatchYourMouth uploaded a video titled, "The Real LeafyIsHere". In the video, HeyWatchYourMouth accused Leafy of not giving a shoutout, proper payment, or credit, when he worked on Leafy's videos. He also accused Leafy of telling him to make videos on H3h3Productions, and why Leafy and GradeAUnderA attacked Keemstar. The video that HeyWatchYourMouth made was later deleted.
On October 9, 2016, Leafy apologized to HeyWatchYourMouth for not giving enough credit or a shoutout, and lost thousands of subscribers daily, as well as having his viewership has declined rapidly after the drama.
Inactivity
LeafyIsHere has not uploaded since December 12, 2017. His last video was, "this video will make you cry..."[1] and he has mentioned in the video that he hasn't been consistent in uploading because he never was motivated to upload. A YouTuber known as NFKRZ made a video about Leafy not uploading. NFKRZ did say that Leafy might've given up on YouTube and set for life because Leafy has '3 million dollars'. NFKRZ also said Leafy is no longer uploading because he isn't active on Twitter anymore. But Leafy did mention that his Twitter got hacked [2] and was unable to get back in it again because it was locked. It was also mentioned by WildSpartanz that Leafy isn't passionate about YouTube anymore and decided to quit.
Keemstar Interview
On October 18, 2018, Keemstar of DramaAlert posted on Twitter stating that he was going to interview Leafy.[3] and then uploaded a teaser for the interview on the 24th. [4]
Then on October 25, 2018, LeafyIsHere made his comeback in an interview with Keemstar on October 25th [5]. When asked about what he's been up to, he says that he has been doing investments, which could mean that he's had some form of activity in the stock market like online trading for example. At 13:45 Keemstar brings up the beef that happened between them and asks Leafy why he and GradeAUnderA backstabbed him. Leafy replies: "...adsense was at an all-time high, but... and I can only speak for myself, obviously.", basically admitting that he lied and did it for views and money.
Fanbase
LeafyIsHere’s fanbase, who often calls themselves "Reptilians" or "The Reptilian Brotherhood", are known to often spam videos and channels with comments such as "hiss" and "nice shirt" — mostly on videos that Leafy talks about. Around the time when Leafy's channel was first gaining rapid popul
LeafyIsHere’s videos with their titles changed by the hacker
arity, many of Leafy's fans spread the phrases "Hissss" and "Leaf a Like" on multiple websites attracting the attention of large amounts of internet users. Multiple YouTubers, and even the infamous hacker group "Lizard Squad" (known for hacking PlayStation Network and Xbox Live on multiple occasions), once tweeted "hiss" to LeafyIsHere multiple times, which caused “hiss” to become an inside joke on Leafy’s channel.
Subscriber Milestones
Note the following dates are according to SocialBlade.com the dates may vary by about 1 day, and if you live outside of North America the dates may vary by up to 2 days due to the Time Zone Difference.
- 100,000 subscribers: August 15, 2015.
- 200,000 subscribers: September 10, 2015.
- 300,000 subscribers: October 7, 2015.
- 400,000 subscribers: October 29, 2015.
- 500,000 subscribers: December 23, 2015.
- 600,000 subscribers: January 7, 2016.
- 700,000 subscribers: January 18, 2016.
- 800,000 subscribers: January 26, 2016.
- 900,000 subscribers: January 31, 2016.
- 1 million subscribers: February 8, 2016.
- 1.1 million subscribers: February 15, 2016.
- 1.2 million subscribers: February 24, 2016.
- 1.3 million subscribers: March 6, 2016.
- 1.4 million subscribers: March 12, 2016.
- 1.5 million subscribers: March 17, 2016.
- 1.6 million subscribers: March 22, 2016.
- 1.7 million subscribers: March 31, 2016.
- 1.8 million subscribers: April 4, 2016.
- 1.9 million subscribers: April 6, 2016.
- 2 million subscribers: April 9, 2016.
- 2.1 million subscribers: April 12, 2016.
- 2.2 million subscribers: April 18, 2016.
- 2.3 million subscribers: April 24, 2016.
- 2.4 million subscribers: April 29, 2016.
- 2.5 million subscribers: May 3, 2016.
- 2.6 million subscribers: May 8, 2016.
- 2.7 million subscribers: May 15, 2016.
- 2.8 million subscribers: May 18, 2016.
- 2.9 million subscribers: May 22, 2016.
- 3 million subscribers: May 27, 2016.
- 3.1 million subscribers: June 2, 2016.
- 3.2 million subscribers: June 9, 2016.
- 3.3 million subscribers: June 12, 2016.
- 3.4 million subscribers: June 14, 2016.
- 3.5 million subscribers: June 18, 2016.
- 3.6 million subscribers: June 21, 2016.
- 3.7 million subscribers: June 25, 2016.
- 3.8 million subscribers: July 5, 2016.
- 3.9 million subscribers: July 10, 2016.
- 4 million subscribers: July 15, 2016.
- 4.1 million subscribers: July 20, 2016.
- 4.2 million subscribers: July 25, 2016.
- 4.3 million subscribers: July 29, 2016.
- 4.4 million subscribers: August 8, 2016.
- 4.5 million subscribers: August 16, 2016.
- 4.6 million subscribers: August 23, 2016.
- 4.7 million subscribers: August 31, 2016.
- 4.8 million subscribers: September 11, 2016.
Decline
- Below 4.8 million subscribers: October 6, 2016.
- Below 4.7 million subscribers: November 16, 2016.
- Below 4.6 million subscribers: December 21, 2016.
- Below 4.5 million subscribers: February 12, 2017.
- Below 4.4 million subscribers: April 30, 2017.
- Below 4.3 million subscribers: October 8, 2018.
Video View Milestones
- 1 billion views: July 28, 2017
Trivia
- Leafy has once collaborated with RiceGum.
- Leafy is one of the most profane YouTubers on the site, swearing almost every 10 seconds in all his videos.
- Leafy met Billy the Fridge.
- In most of Leafy's commentaries, he begins the clip which he is reacting to with saying “pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-play that SHIT!”
- Some of Leafy’s fellow YouTuber friends include: Pyrocynical, Colossal is Crazy and GradeAUnderA.
- There is a channel called Leafy Radio that contains all the songs Leafy uses in his videos (Leafy does not own this channel).
- In a video released on September 28, 2016 titled "MAN GIVES UP ON LIFE AND GIVES AWAY HIS OWN EYEBALLS TO TINDER GIRL" Leafy reveals that he lives in Seattle. This contradicts previous knowledge of him living in Utah. This is restated in videos discussing Billy The Fridge, where Leafy says he ate at the chicken place Billy was standing next to.
- Leafy has stated in a video that he is 5'9", and in another video in order to stop rumors/allegations by some fans that he is not a midget/very short, he stands up in front of the camera to show his height.
- Leafy's channel has been hacked by PoodleCorp, in which after the incident Leafy had to re-title all his videos (or was backed-up by YouTube).
- In the video "Please Help Me... (Facecam) " he uses the Professor Oak Research lab Theme from Pokemon Red and Blue as the background music for the prologue / skit.
- Leafy has collaborated with YouTuber Luna a few times.
- Due to Leafy mentioning a lot of people in his videos, some of the fans start to unsubscribing the second he uploads due to him "ranting" about them. Currently, Leafy's videos' comment sections are going brutal due to mass amounts of flame wars in the comment sections between Leafy and a person Leafy mentioned.
- Leafy was known for cracking anime jokes. His most common were pronouncing "Na-ru-toe" "nuhh-rue-toe"
- It’s worth mentioning that Mrdarkness666 never actually lifted the curse on Leafy, which would explain the eventual downfall of Leafy's channel..
- PewDiePie mentioned Leafy from the game called "Gang Beast #6" he says "Hey everyone, Leafy here. And I'm gonna kill myself." And just literally got hit by a train. Meaning it just a joke.
Gallery
This page was created on January 21, 2016 by Chemistawee.