Not to be confused with Turkey Tom, who previously went by "Zaptie" on Twitter/X.
Edwin Berg (born: May 29, 1996), better known online as Zaptie, is a Canadian former commentary YouTuber.
Content[]
Zaptie started out as a channel named Not A Hipster, where he would post movie reviews. Sometimes he would talk about social subjects, but took a broad approach to them and covered them in depth. Eventually he would change his visuals from gameplay to character stills of his profile picture, a teddy bear. Eventually his change in content garnered a huge audience. He was inspired by creators like Colossal Is Crazy and I Hate Everything, and his popularity would explode when he and several others appeared in Pyrocynical's SO BAD ITS GOOD video.[1] Pyro also constantly promoted him and told his fans to check him out. He gained more than 50,000 subscribers in a month.
He also hosted a podcast, Hot Wet Soup, that had guests like soph, Chris Ray Gun, Bunty King and Keemstar.
He would keep his face secret until his bear head accidentally fell off during a BionicPIG livestream.
Personal Life[]
He was born in Canada. He went to law school, but dropped out to pursue his YouTube career.
Controversy[]
Accusations of sociopathy[]
On February 26, 2017, the last episode of Hot Wet Soup, Hot Wet Controversy, was uploaded.[2]
Zaptie reacted by tweeting "make of it what you will" and followed up this tweet by a Twitlonger where he felt like his friends weren't wrong about posting the episode but they should listen to the whole thing.[3]
Grooming allegations[]
On February 4, 2018, two days after the podcast episode, someone named Cephyrs/Heather, posted a Twitlonger claiming that he and her engaged in sexual conversations when she was 16 and he was 20.[4] Accusations of grooming began to fly, and Ed's reputation soured to the point he was known as "the sociopathic pedo". Creators like Deodor Anthony and ImAllexx were in full support of her. On February 13th, Ed posted a Twitlonger saying he was never really diagnosed as a sociopath, and he never presented any proof of that.[5] However, he had been presented with major depressive disorder. He admitted to being manipulative but he wanted to a better person. He wasn't heard from until June of that year, where he posted a Reddit post apologizing.[6] He said that he was still getting harassment from people, and that the girl who was thirteen lied about her age. In November 3rd, 2018, he made one final return, with a video reviewing the movie Halloween H40, completely ignoring the controversial situation.[7] His fans seemed happy that he had returned, but their happiness was short lived, as his channel was then deleted a month later. Cephyrs made one last Twitlonger.[8]
On October 9, 2019, Nicholas DeOrio would unexpectedly reopen the Zaptie case and disprove several key allegations levied against him.[9] This video notably featured a text interview with both Cephyrs and BionicPIG and was the first major positively received video since the initial allegations were made in 2017. Turkey Tom was also skeptical of most of these claims and his friend ran the Zaptie archive channel. Tom released his own video some time later, signal boosting the corrected information,[10] He was not alone - even Danarchy (formerly VWQ) made a video saying that he didn't agree that Zaptie was a sociopath.[11]
Tom analyzed Heather's Twitlonger and realized how they contradicted each other - she claimed to be 17 but was actually 13. She was also from a state where 16 was the age of consent (Washington). So she actually lied to Ed and he was under the idea that she was older. Tom said that while a 16 year old and a 20 year old e-dating was disgusting and reprehensible Zaptie deserved to be called out for it, but didn't deserve to have his life ruined by it, especially as he had been lied to and had been expressing suicidal thoughts.[12]
On December 14, 2020, Nicholas DeOrio released the third installment of his Zaptie series which featured full interview with Zaptie.[13]
Trivia[]
- He is well aware of Turkey Tom's using his name as a Twitter handle, and says he should keep it.
- He was going to rebrand himself as "Good Airline Food", it was going to be a channel based off movies, but then he got doxxed again.[14]
References[]
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FyTFNdjQ74&ab_channel=Pyrocynical
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3t7RRESaBM&ab_channel=ZaptieArchive
- ↑ http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1spjcp8
- ↑ https://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1spjh6s
- ↑ https://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1spkatt
- ↑ https://www.reddit.com/r/Zaptie/comments/6kalxm/enough/
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMbS4HOhGk4&ab_channel=ZaptieArchive
- ↑ http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1spjk2n
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoYlvg8-DsI&t=21s
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LV6zb7LXls&t=1971s&ab_channel=TurkeyTom
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgd5CROStlI&ab_channel=Danarchy
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LV6zb7LXls
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_Axn7g6yqY&t=602s&ab_channel=NicholasDeOrio
- ↑ https://youtu.be/mg7eYhkL6i0?t=557