YouTube’s Most Dramatic Moments
Jake Paul accuses FaZe Banks of assaulting his assistant
August 17, 2017
Jake Paul, who is the younger of the notorious Paul brothers, who both will be mentioned in this article multiple times for providing or being involved in some of YouTube’s most dramatic moments, accused another well known YouTuber FaZe Banks of straight up assaulting his assistant. In one of Jake’s vlogs titled, “My assistant was assaulted…”, he, his assistant Meg, and two other witnesses to “the assault” explained their recollections of a night out at the club Warwick in LA.
Before we get started, FaZe Banks and Jake Paul had some “beef” with each other because FaZe was dating Jake’s ex girlfriend at the time, Alissa Violet.
So back to the accusation, Meg was at the club with Jake Paul and his crew Team 10, she needed to go to the bathroom so she went but got lost trying to find her friends again. While she was looking for Team 10, FaZe Banks allegedly grabbed her to bring her into his party-space. When he grabbed her, he “clotheslined” her neck really hard which knocked the wind out of her and left a nasty bruise. Meg also claimed that she saw FaZe making out with a girl who wasn’t his gf at the time, Alissa Violet. Jake Paul also stated that FaZe didn’t even know that Meg was apart of Team 10, so he basically assaulted a random girl he didn’t know.
Before any of this went public, while the two parties were messaging each other about the incident, FaZe responded with apologizing to Meg saying that he couldn’t remember much because he was intoxicated at the club but he never intentionally meant to hurt her. But after Jake’s video went online accusing Faze of hurting Meg and being abusive towards women, FaZe made his own video titled “My girlfriend was assaulted…” In it, FaZe claims Team 10 was lying and being manipulative in order to defame him. Two of Faze’s friends who were with him at the club that night said that FaZe never made out with any random girls. They explained that FaZe would have been stupid to cheat on his girlfriend in front people who were both mutual friends with him and her.
In the same video, Jake’s ex, now FaZe’s current girlfriend, Alissa Violet, said that she had never seen FaZe be abusive towards her or women in general. She then went on to tell stories about how Jake would be ‘aggressive’ towards her when they were together.
FaZe then said he was going to sue Jake Paul for trying to defame him. Within 24 hours of FaZe’s video being uploaded, Jake lost 200,000 subscribers and FaZe gained 60,000.
Then, Jake’s older brother, Logan Paul decided to chime in on the situation with a video of his own. He basically said that it would be hard for someone to “accidentally clothesline” someone, implying that he didn’t believe FaZe’s side of the story.
Jake Paul also replied to Alissa’s comments about his aggressive behavior towards her. He basically said that if it were true she would have told everyone during their explosive breakup.
The whole thing ends with Jake putting out another video titled “Here’s what really happened…” of him backtracking the whole situation. He spoke about how “they didn’t handle the situation the right way” and that “they weren’t being good role models.” Jake claimed “he was all about positivity” and that he reached out to FaZe to handle it off camera. Which they eventually did.
Now, FaZe isn’t dating Alissa anymore and Jake Paul went on to become involved in bigger dramas.
Logan Paul’s Suicide Forest Vlog
December 31, 2017
Logan Paul vlogging at “The Suicide Forest”
On December 31, 2017, one of YouTube’d biggest creators, Logan Paul uploaded a vlog that got him into a lot of trouble. The video was called “We found a dead body in the Japanese Suicide Forest…” and the thumbnail showed a corpse hanging from a tree behind Logan while he was vlogging. Within 24 hours the video got 6.3 million views. Almost instantly, people began criticizing Logan for the way he acted in the video and his depiction of the corpse. Celebrities, politicians and other YouTubers accused Logan of being disrespectful and insensitive towards suicide victims. The next day Logan took down the video and apologized on twitter, saying his behavior was the result of a “coping mechanism.” YouTube then released a statement condemning Logan’s video and announced they were going to removed his content from Google Preferred. Logan’s YouTube Red upcoming movie New World Order was put on hold and the two shows he was apart of Foursome and Logan Vs fired him. There was even a petition on change.org that had 500,000 signatures for YouTube to remove his channel entirely. Logan took a whole month off of vlogging then came back with videos about eating Tide Pods, giving a sick fish CPR and tasering a dead rat. YouTube took away ads on his channel for his “pattern of behavior.” Eventually he got ads back and Logan Paul kept on being Logan Paul with even more shenanigans up his sleeves.
TanaCon
June 22-24, 2018
TanaCon began as an alternative conference fans could go to instead of VidCon. Tana Mongeau, a YouTube personality, decided not to attend 2018’s Vidcon over a dispute about a “Featured Creator” badge they did not give her. A joke of her holding a meet and greet in the parking lot at the same time as VidCon spawned the whole idea of hosting a separate formal convention.
In an interview with Forbes promoting the event, Tana said she planned the entire event in a course of “40, maybe 30 days.” She stated she was heavily involved in the planning process, “down to the color of the cups.”
However, TanaCon started falling apart before it even started. Registration was at 6am so thousands of fans stood in line for hours trying to get in. The first people didn’t get in until around 9am. There was no food, water, or even shelter for people in line from the blistering hot sun in the LA summer. People voiced what was happening on twitter, saying people were getting really bad sun burns, heat stroke and even passing out from the heat.
TanaCon’s capacity became full very quickly leaving a lot of people stranded outside, told to come back the next day. Confusion and lack of communication with YouTuber’s schedules left a lot of fans angry that they didn’t see their favorite internet stars when they were advertised to.
In an interview for the YouTube channel DramaAlert, Tana explained that they sold 4,200 tickets to a space that could hold 5,000 people. Despite the event being advertised as “free”, general admission tickets went for $1, while a VIP ticket was $65. Then Tana further explained what happened after an alleged 20,000 people showed up, “Of course, when that happens, anyone waiting in line to get in is now halted by this crazy riot of people pretending that they have tickets… so we stopped letting people in.”
People who were lucky enough to get in, tweeted out how much it sucked. That the inside was barren, there was nothing to do and they basically all got conned out of their money. Several YouTubers meant to do panels there were also confused as to what was happening due to lack of communication from the TanaCon staff.
Tana promised the second day would be better. They planned to move to a different venue nearby to hold another 5,000 people and there would also be a free show that night. But later it all got cancelled with ticket holders being promised they would get refunded.
Tana took full responsibility for everything that happened and issued an apology to all her fans. She received a lot of backlash from YouTubers and the community, criticizing her for leaving too little time to plan an event. While some other creators backed her intentions and said her heart was in a good place.
KSI vs. Logan Paul
August 25, 2018
KSI vs. Logan Paul was a white collar boxing match between the YouTuber’s KSI (real name Olajide Olatunji) and Logan Paul. Also, both of their little brothers, Jake Paul and Deji Olatunji fought each other in the co-main event as well. The Olatunji brothers are British while the Paul brothers are from the US. A white collar boxing match means that no-one has had prior experience in professional boxing before.
It all started when KSI beat another YouTuber named Joe Weller in a white collar boxing match in February 2018. Within 24 hours the fight had 21 million views making it the biggest white collar event ever. After the fight, KSI challenged the Paul brothers to a boxing match, though he really wanted to fight Jake Paul. The Paul brothers responded and they began to work out the details. Logan Paul would fight KSI and Jake Paul would fight KSI’s little brother Deji in a co-main event. Both parties agreed to 2 boxing matches, one in 2018 and one in 2019.
There were two press conferences to promote the fight in 2018, one in LA and one in London. In each conference they both took turns mocking each other and bringing up past dramas. At the second press conference the Paul brothers ended up leaving early due to criticisms on their family. The British fans even attacked Logan and Jake’s cars, who were rented by a friend of theirs, the Las Vegas nightclub promoter Arman Izadi. Izadi threatened to sue Deji for “telling his fans to attack the Pauls”. Deji denied he had anything to do with the attack. Later, some vandalism took place on Deji’s gym where he trained, Izadi took responsibility for knowing who did it. As a result Izadi was banned from coming to the fight.
The fight was held at the Manchester Arena in Manchester England. Tickets went from 30-495 pounds each. The fight was streamed on pay-per-view on YouTube and cost $10 to see.
In the first fight, Jake Paul beat Deji after five rounds. Deji had a really good fight (he was the underdog) but Jake began to dominate him, causing Deji’s corner to throw in the towel after a flurry of shots.
Then in the main event, KSI vs Logan Paul, the fight lasted six 3-minute rounds. The fight was ruled a majority draw, with 2 judges scoring it 57-57, and the other 58-57 in favor of KSI.
More than 15,000 people watched the fight inside the arena and 784,000 bought it on YouTube making it the biggest white collar match in history. The purse for the fight was split 50/50 between KSI and Logan Paul. It’s not exactly known how much they made. Some people have estimated between 30-40 million each but they both have denied those high of numbers. The second fight is suppose to be scheduled for November 2019, in the US.
James Charles & Tati Westbrook feud
April 22nd - May 18th, 2019
What happened between Tati Westbrook and James Charles in 2019 was probably the most talked about feud to ever come out of YouTube.
Tati and James are both huge beauty YouTubers, with Tati being one of the OG’s. James calls Tati “mom” because from the beginning Tati always promoted James’ channel and products. She helped mentor him in his career. Now James is one of the leading beauty YouTubers having amassed vast wealth and fame in that scene. He even became the first male face of Cover Girl. Tati and James became such close friends that James did Tati’s makeup on her wedding day.
It all started in April, 2019 when James promoted a product of multivitamin gummies from the brand Sugar Bear Hair. Sounds like no big deal but Sugar Bear Hair is a rival product and direct competitor of Halo Beauty, which is owned by Tati. People thought it was rude of him to promote another person’s product when she helped his career grow so much.
Tati came out with an instagram story to talk about the incident. In it she said, “Everyone says what they need to say and uses who they need to use, and I have had about enough. it’s not right”.
James then came out with an Instagram story of his own apologizing and clearing up the matter. He said that Tati was like a mother to him and he only promoted Sugar Bear Hair because they helped him get security at Coachella when a crowd around him become dangerous. James then said he got no money for the post. He did it as a thank you favor to Sugar Bear Hair.
A few days went by and Tati didn’t address James’ apology yet. Another beauty YouTuber named Gabriel Zamora gave his opinion of the matter in a video quote:
“For me, it looks like someone posted IG Stories. And someone cried… I’m, like, confused because what did James do?… Well Sugar Bear Hair was around before her. Homeboy is exclusive to her?”
Tati didn’t respond until May 10. But when she did she dropped a bombshell on why she didn’t want to be associated with James Charles anymore beyond the Sugar Bear Hair post. She released a 40 minute video explaining herself and it got over 34 million views so far.
Tati was mad that James never gave her a heads up about the Sugar Bear Post. She was also mad because James wouldn’t promote her company Halo on his channel because he “had a teenage audience and it’d be really inappropriate.” But that didn’t stop him from promoting Sugar Bear Hair.
Tati said James was not genuinely apologetic, he was just looking out for his reputation. She claimed that James became angry when she would not respond to his apology.
Tati was also mad that James never apologized to her husband because he had done so much for him and helped him out so many times for no pay. He would look over James’ contracts and “helped him secure millions in brand deals.”
She claimed the Sugar Bear Hair deal was pre-orchestrated and that James came up with a “clever story” to lie and cover up his tracks.
Then the drama got a little PG-13. Tati talked about how James would coerce guys into doing sexual acts with him. She said he would use his fame and money to “threaten”, “ruin”, and “embarrass” men who didn’t reciprocate his advances.”
James then put out a 8 minute video apologizing again to Tati and her husband James. But he didn’t want to explain anything further because “it doesn’t matter.” James also addressed his sexual accusation in a somewhat vague statement.
“I’ve been involved in a lot of unique and strange situations that have left people confused and upset, and I’ve learned the hard way about boys that I’m interested in and ones I should or shouldn’t be talking to.”
On May 12th, another huge beauty YouTuber, Jeffree Star, posted a since deleted tweet where he called James “a danger to society” and “Everything Tati said is 100% true.” After he deleted that post he sent another one congratulating Tati on her hitting 8 million subscribers on YouTube. Since this whole scandal went public, Tati gained followers while James lost them. By May 17th Tati hit 10 million subscribers.
On May 18th James posted a video titled “No More Lies.” In it he addresses all of Tati’s claims against him with screenshots of texts, messages and more. James said that Tati reached out to him to have a meeting but he declined because since she addressed everything publicly that he would too.
Tati tweeted the same day she was taking a “digital break.”
On June 3rd Tati made her first video since she left on hiatus. She also took all the videos that included the feud off her channel.
On June 18th, James posted his first video after the feud. He gave an update of his life outside of YouTube. He announced he was going to post regularly again but would keep in mind his social media obsession.
