Ethan Klein/H3H3Productions/Ethan and Hila VS Leafy: YouTube drama -

[José Mourinho]

Reopened and changed the title to discuss the drama. I also moved it to Lolcow General. I think this drama is probably worth discussing whether you think they're lolcows or not.

 

[Super Collie]

Some additional backstory on Ethan & h3h3, since I've been a subscriber since they literally had < 1,000 subscribers.

Ethan and Hila originally used to make YouTube Poop-esque videos (called "_____.exe"), they originally rose to fame when this video was featured in a Cracked.com "top 10 funniest videos in 2014 that you haven't seen" article. They also focused predominately on surrealist and parody sketch comedy, most of which has been deleted from their channel (or was reuploaded on the Ethan & Hila channel at some point). Basically, they set out to be "another Tim & Eric" with the combo of quirky/cringey sketches with bizarre video editing and all that.

However, Ethan eventually produced a couple of "reaction" videos to things like Rain Florence and John Sakars, two cows who have threads here, because picking on lolcows is a safe bet when making weird Internet content. These videos began to catch on, so it pretty much became all they did. They started a "vlog" type show on their second channel, and because producing it is far less labor intensive they began focusing more on their vlogging and reaction videos because it yields the highest returns with the least amount of work. Thanks to some previous videos of theirs they already had some in-jokes on their channel they could fall back on for familiarity (Jeff Dunnie, "papa bless", etc).

Ethan kept my attention and interest throughout their format change, but he finally lost my sub when he posted his Leafy video. I had no idea of all the underhanded shit that Leafy has since leaked, but I disagreed vehemently with Ethan's insistence that his channel is some paragon of morality who only pick targets who either have thick skin or are in on the joke. As OP pointed out, that's blatantly false and there are tons of examples of Ethan making videos about all sorts of people. If anything, I get the impression that Ethan feels challenged by Leafy's sudden rise to fame, as they are very close in subscribers. He seems like the type of guy who doesn't take criticism nicely, and has tremendous feelings of inadequacy and uncertainty.

 

[Batman VS Tony Danza]

Ethan shouldn't have tried to take the high ground but Leafy is more vitriol than substance as a youtuber. He spends more time just railing on his subject than bringing up the more interesting aspects of them. If you turned Leafy's videos into threads they'd be considered spergatory material. Both should be called out for this stupid shit though.

Ethan is being a hypocrite and Leafy is all sperg.

 

[NoStinkingBadges]

Some additional backstory on Ethan & h3h3, since I've been a subscriber since they literally had < 1,000 subscribers.

Ethan and Hila originally used to make YouTube Poop-esque videos (called "_____.exe"), they originally rose to fame when this video was featured in a Cracked.com "top 10 funniest videos in 2014 that you haven't seen" article. They also focused predominately on surrealist and parody sketch comedy, most of which has been deleted from their channel (or was reuploaded on the Ethan & Hila channel at some point). Basically, they set out to be "another Tim & Eric" with the combo of quirky/cringey sketches with bizarre video editing and all that.

However, Ethan eventually produced a couple of "reaction" videos to things like Rain Florence and John Sakars, two cows who have threads here, because picking on lolcows is a safe bet when making weird Internet content. These videos began to catch on, so it pretty much became all they did. They started a "vlog" type show on their second channel, and because producing it is far less labor intensive they began focusing more on their vlogging and reaction videos because it yields the highest returns with the least amount of work. Thanks to some previous videos of theirs they already had some in-jokes on their channel they could fall back on for familiarity (Jeff Dunnie, "papa bless", etc).

Ethan kept my attention and interest throughout their format change, but he finally lost my sub when he posted his Leafy video. I had no idea of all the underhanded shit that Leafy has since leaked, but I disagreed vehemently with Ethan's insistence that his channel is some paragon of morality who only pick targets who either have thick skin or are in on the joke. As OP pointed out, that's blatantly false and there are tons of examples of Ethan making videos about all sorts of people. If anything, I get the impression that Ethan feels challenged by Leafy's sudden rise to fame, as they are very close in subscribers. He seems like the type of guy who doesn't take criticism nicely, and has tremendous feelings of inadequacy and uncertainty.

Ethan really comes off as the kind of guy who would go completely off the rails on people trying to "steal" his format (ie Leafy and Pyrocynical) if Hila wasn't around to keep him in check. Heck, he says it outright in the PMs Leafy leaked.

Honestly it was video that made me lose my sub. Most of the backpedaling responses were probably edited by Hila or something, because Ethan would be teething like a puppy with a new chew toy at the idea of ripping apart Leafy for exposing him if Hila wasn't there to beat his response down to a whimpy "he's lyiiiiiing guys don't you believe meeeee"

Come to think of it, if it wasn't for Hila Ethan would probably have a thread dedicated to him long ago.

 

[TheProdigalStunna]

Ethan really comes off as the kind of guy who would go completely off the rails on people trying to "steal" his format (ie Leafy and Pyrocynical) if Hila wasn't around to keep him in check. Heck, he says it outright in the PMs Leafy leaked.

Ethan Klein is not a lolcow, but he is definitely a massive faggot and hypocrite. His entire schtick definitely has some very similar ties to Million Dollar Extreme, the group that our own Jan Rankowski used to work with, but watered down for redditfags. Some have theorized (and Sam Hyde certainly thinks) that his whole style of reaction videos was taken from this video in particular. One of the more egregious examples is when he made this video, which is nearly an exact copy this MDE video. It wasn't until Sam called him out on it that he changed it to a "tribute" video. Admittedly, Sam Hyde isn't exactly known as the friendliest guy around whenever he feels wronged, but still, h3h3 has no claims towards integrity.

 

[KFC]

I know this is late, but in retrospect, here's how I see the situation: Leafy made a video where he unknowingly mocked an autistic kid, that kid got upset, and Ethan saw this as a way to give Leafy some negative attention. Leafy, trying to redirect the negative attention, leaks private chatlogs as revenge. Meanwhile, their respective 12 year-old fanbases had autistic slapfights in the comments. Also, Drama Alert pretends that this is like some kind of YouTube apocalypse.

I agree a little more with H3H3, because Leafy's content is definitely shitty spam, but Ethan's video was clearly an attack on Leafy's channel, and his opinion on Leafy's content was irrelevant to the situation. However, Leafy really needs to learn to control his fanbase. He does little to stop his fans from attacking the subjects of his videos, and if he just put out a warning, or talked to the people in his videos, this situation could've been prevented.

Overall, this is just another case of flavor-of-the-month YouTube drama, and had no effect on my opinions of these people.