| “ | You know I knew I was going to make a comeback video. But I didn't know it was going to be this. And I didn't know that this might possibly the last video I ever make on this platform because I don't want to support it anymore because of what I am going to talk about. Over the past 48 hours I have discovered a wormhole as I would call it into a softcore pedophile ring on YouTube. | ” |
―MattsWhatItIs, 2019 | ||
Matt Watson, better known online as MattsWhatItIs or Totally Uncreative, was a former YouTuber who first was known for his comedy skits and men's fitness videos. But nowadays he is mostly known for being the main cause of the Third Adpocalypse, the YouTubeWakeUp Hashtag, and his video titled "YouTube is Facilitating the Sexual Exploitation of Children, and it's Being Monetized (2019)" in which he discusses a wormhole of disturbing and pedophilic comments on videos featuring minors. He has been criticized for his handling of the situation and his campaigning and attempts to start an ad boycott by many people in the YouTube community such as EmpLemon, TheRightOpinion, Keemstar, Nerd City, and Bowblax.
Early Online Presence[]
Matt first created his MattsWhatItIs channel on June 29, 2016. He would upload men's fitness videos such as his "no fap vlog" series. He would later create his comedy channel called "Totally Uncreative". This is where most of the odd content and videos commentators would discover at the peak of the YouTubeWakeUp scandal. The Totally Uncreative channel would host anti alt-right satirical comedic type content in which he would poke fun at right wing politics and the "redpill". After a time of making videos on the platform and receiving minimal success, Matt would take a break from the internet and YouTube entirely until 2019.
Controversy[]
| “ | Want to film an adult video? | ” |
―Totally Uncreative/MattsWhatItIs | ||
#YouTubeWakeUp[]
On February 17, 2019, Matt made his now infamous video talking about and entering a wormhole of child exploitation on YouTube[1]. Matt shortly made a premier stream where he links a reddit post he made where he advertises the video and tells his audience to go and upvote it. This is a strict violation of the solicitation rule on r/videos and should have lead to the posts removal. But because Matt streamed, uploaded, and posted the video on the subreddit at 1am on a weekday, most of the moderators were asleep and the violation went completely unnoticed. Allowing the video to gain traction. In the video itself, he talks about disturbing comments that he found on videos featuring children. This included timestamps of minors in suggestive positions. The way he accesses this said wormhole is to search up "bikini haul" in the YouTube search bar and randomly clicking on videos showing up in his suggestion feed. At the end of the video he plays a montage of ads playing on these videos and clips taken out of context of Youtubers such as Count Dankula, Philip DeFranco, H3H3Productions, and many more complaining about the demonetization system trying to paint YouTube and it's creators as ignoring the real problem on the website and as "greedy". He also encouraged his viewers to contact advertisers and multimedia companies in hopes to have them stop advertising on YouTube entirely and start an Adpocalypse. He also started the YouTubeWakeUp hashtag and encouraged his audience to spam the hashtag and promote his video as much as possible. Content creators like Keemstar and Nerd City started to notice Matt's efforts to start an ad boycott and talked to him in multiple streams. Many people started to question Matt's intentions. Keemstar made a DramaAlert about the situation[2] calling Matt a fraud and explaining his interactions with Matt and how he was being disingenuous and twofaced. And revealed that he had an old account on Both YouTube and Twitter and that he lied to Keem when he said he did not have a Twitter account.
Old YouTube channel[]
Matt's old account called "Totally Uncreative" hosted many odd videos. Including him asking a school girl if they wanted to film an adult video from his car, his "no fap" vlog series, and him having relations with a blowup doll. Many found this content as disturbing. Matt defends himself in a Reddit thread[3].
Hypocrisy and "Corporate Shill" Theory[]
Many in the YouTube community pointed out Matt's hypocrisy towards multibillion corporations. As he says in multiple livestreams that giant companies and corporations care about child safety. Ironically this included companies like Nestlé, who are known for using child slaves from third world countries to harvest their coco beans[4][5].
After #YoutubeWakeUp[]
Aftermath[]
The YouTubeWakeUp controversy obviously affected many creators on YouTube income wise. it also is one of the main reasons of why comments are turned off for all content aimed towards kids. Many members in the YouTube community fear that something similar to Matt Watson and YouTubeWakeUp may happen in the future.
Discovery of Matt's throwaway email account[]
Matt publicly broadcasted an outlook email account during a livestream[6]. An anonymous user entered the account information to the email site and they discovered that Matt was emailing news outlets via throwaway account. It is unknown if this account really did help the #YouTubeWakeUp controversy grow by any means because the most of the news outlets seemed to have ignored the tip/request made by the throwaway.
Brief return[]
2 years later after the controversy, Matt made a community post on his YouTube channel addressing some of the criticisms that he has received and later informing his audience that he "does not make videos anymore"[7]. He also made a now deleted Reddit post of him praising TheRightOpinon's video about him[8]. But disregarding Emplemon's video about him as a conspiracy theory[9]. Emp made a follow up to his original documentary and goes into further detail. Matt also said that he does not regret YouTubeWakeUp and described it as "petty internet drama". Matt has since left the internet once again.
Legacy[]
The perspective of Matt Watson as a whole in the YouTube community ranges from mixed to negative. Many content creators/YouTubers, and members of the entire community see him as a person not to trust and as a failed YouTuber who tried to destroy the platform and punish it's creators. Others think he is a creep in his own right because of his old content, people like Mumkey Jones defended Matt in this aspect saying that people thinking he is a pedophile or weirdo because of his old content are just dogpiling and just because Matt liked a different sense of humor that others don't doesn't mean he is a dangerous person of any means. A lot of people who were not in the YouTube community when the controversy was at its peak saw Matt as the "everyday citizen" who tried to expose the horrors of a social media platform. But mostly he is considered as one of the most hated people in YouTube history.
Trivia[]
- Matt is or at least was operating out of Victoria, B.C Canada.
- An account called Kenny Wilbur[10] randomly uploaded all of Matt's old videos from his Totally Uncreative channel. It not only archived all of Matt's old videos after their sudden deletion but chose to reupload them only after they served little purpose to discredit Matt. The purpose of this channel is unknown.
- There is another video discussing the wormhole Matt found that predates Matt's video by a French YouTuber named LE ROI DES RATS[11], it did not get as much attention as Matt's video. This video ironically uses the exact same hashtag Matt used.
- Matt originally had a main Twitter account during the controversy. But he has since deleted it. But The Totally Uncreative and #YouTubeWakeUp Twitter accounts are still up (but inactive)
- Commentator Pyrocynical discovered a similar "worm hole" to what Matt found. But Pyro handled his respective situation differently. Pyro reported the child abuse ring to YouTube and it was dealt with respectively in a week. Pyro is one example most creators point to say that Matt methods that started an entire controversy and ad boycott were useless and YouTubeWakeUp could have been handled more professionally.
References[]
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O13G5A5w5P0&t
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLsYQYHHqoM
- ↑ https://old.reddit.com/r/YoutubeWakeUp/comments/atdfoa/defending_mattswhatitis/eh0kl4x/
- ↑ https://www.legalreader.com/children-chocolate-companies-nestle-slavery-ivory-coast/
- ↑ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/business/hershey-nestle-mars-chocolate-child-labor-west-africa/
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s20T9Jy3va0
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/post/Ugx-TE2u_NFcNbYlhVF4AaABCQ
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWdG_lmLZ70
- ↑ https://youtu.be/nBQFls_elpY
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDbGWazSYAAmJH5dmnm1_QQ
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpQ-wM18Wuo