If you’re the type of individual who frequented the more shady back-alleys of the vast series of tubes we call the world wide web, you might have heard the name Shadman. In certain places - namely the internet’s equivalent of red light districts - his name is almost ubiquitous, but it’s rarely ever spoken (or typed) with any degree of admiration. It’s not uncommon for the name Shadman to be spoken and the entire conversation, thread, what have you, just dies, so much so that it’s become a meme on sites like 4chan.
To say he is something of a lightning rod for controversy would be a gross understatement. But it would be exactly that controversy - among other things - that garnered him a devout cult following of what are generally considered to be reprobates most sensible people would not want to associate with. Setting up on the website Newgrounds in 2009, Shadman cultivated a very particular image for himself that was steeped in Nazi imagery and iconography, weaponry, with dashes of violence and steeped in, if not defined, by crass, crude, and extreme shock humor. He had a sense of humor that he and his followers described as edgy, but it was that distinct kind of edgy that often legitimately butt up against common sense and, at times, legality. Like, it’s one thing to shout a naughty word about male genitalia and giggle about it. It's something entirely different to say a racial epithet and then claim all members of that race should have been wiped out in a genocide. You know. Like the Armenians.
Some people… really, really hate Armenians. And Pontic Greeks. For some reason. I mean, there was that other genocide that happened in the 1940's that these guys tend to find to be just pure comedy gold, for some reason, but, uh… well. We're not here to talk about that. When I say that these guys were edgy, I mean that you could cut yourself on the average comment left on the Shadman site.
All of these factors combined to make him something of a rebellious and petulant fourteen year old boy’s idea of cool.
For most of his career, this was who the internet believed Shadman to be. Always clad in a skull-patterned balaclava, a white button-up with the sleeves rolled up a la Obama Business Casual, a black tie, shades, and usually with a cigarette in one hand and a knife in the other. He appeared on YouTube, speaking in an an exaggerated and unidentifiable accent. He turned up at public events. So far as most people knew, this was Shadman.
The admittedly distinctive and striking appearance inspired a lot of people to cosplay as him. Little Shadman clones popped up at anime conventions all over the country in the mid-Oughties. And they were usually perusing the vendors selling pornographic hentai doujinshi, which, if those words mean nothing to you… well, use context clues. You’ll figure it out.
You don’t really see those guys cosplaying Shadman anymore, though. Part of this was due to the general tide of internet culture moving away from the edgy humor that Shadman thrived on, which has since fallen out of favor, even among people like me who don’t really find it offensive so much as annoying, trite, and played out.
Part of it is also because the man everyone thought was Shadman wasn’t. I’m not exactly sure how the guy in the image above and Shadman became so inexorably linked, but the yoked, knife-toting, cigarette-smoking, and most importantly, white figure of hyper-violence and extreme erotica was almost antithetical to who Shadman was in reality. The shroud of mystique and sharp, eye-catching imagery that Shadman had thrived behind throughout the years was thoroughly yanked when actual photos of him surfaced in 2021.
Meet the real Shadman.
Born in 1990, Shadman is (allegedly) the son of an African-American from Lafayette, Louisiana, and a Swiss mother. Where he was born is something of a mystery, but he was raised in the Swiss city of Zurich and possesses dual American-Swiss citizenship. He had dreams of becoming a video game developer, as most socially maladapted and awkward young men do, and chose to do so by means of his most natural talent - art. So, he enrolled in an art school. What art school he attended is unknown, but what is known that, at some point early into his tenure there, a professor found work in his portfolio that was described as both highly disturbing and highly illegal. Supposedly, this professor told him that he was a menace to society - a comment that would go on to be woefully prophetic. Thus, Shadman’s brief academic career came to an end after the professor brought this information to the school administration, who promptly gave him the boot.
This is around the time that he opened his Newgrounds profile and began to share his art with the internet.
As a Swiss citizen, Shadman was obligated by law to participate in mandatory military service, which he did for a short period before dipping out of the Alps and into the frozen white wastes of Canada. That didn’t last too long, either. Ultimately, some time in the early 2010’s, Shadman would end up in Los Angeles, as so many debased souls do, where he remains to this day.
I'll just be blunt with you - Shadman’s main artistic output was pornography. He infamously stated that he could and would make pornographic images of anything and everything. And he meant everything.
Everything.
Reportedly - and to his own great delight - he once stated that he drew his own mother in sexually compromising situations over thirty-eight times during his career. He had a certain penchant for drawing real people, most notably celebrities and online influencers. Remember how there was a period of time when you couldn’t go fucking anywhere on the internet without seeing this chick making some cross-eyed hentai O-face with her tongue hanging out and drool all over her face?
Yeah - he was a big part in popularizing her, ultimately leading to Belle Delphine becoming the Marilyn Munroe of the Zoomer generation.
Oh, and, uh - everything also includes exactly what you probably thought everything entailed. And, for a while, he was just drawing illicit pictures of underage cartoon characters. This, of course, is gross and reprehensible and turned a lot of people against him for obvious reason, but… it gets worse. Oh, trust me… it gets worse. Because he didn’t just stop with underage cartoon characters. He was drawing real minors.
Explicitly.
In 2016, an anonymous user submitted a request to Shadman asking if he would draw a certain YouTuber’s then-seven year old daughter performing a sexual act on then-Presidential candidate Donald Trump. Shadman replied that if Trump won, he would.
Well, Trump did win. And yes. Shadman held good to his word.
Who was the YouTuber who had his daughter depicted in such a fucking ungodly way?
Daniel Keem.
And he was not happy about it. Needless to say, Keem gave Shadman an ultimatum - take the image down, or he would lawyer up. Which, I have applaud his restraint, because if I was in Keem’s position, I would have been hard pressed not to drive to Los Angeles and strangle that twiggy little Swiss fuck with my bare hands.
Ultimately, Shadman complied. Later, in an interview, he would express regret for having drawn the image in the first place, which, uh - yeah. Doubtful. Especially because, shortly after, the attention Keem placed on him led to an influx of public scrutiny that resulted in Shadman taking a pledge that he would abandon drawing minors or underage characters entirely in 2017.
To the surprise of approximately no one, this promise held as much integrity as a wet sheet of single-ply toilet paper.
Ultimately, despite mounting pressure from the public, Shadman continued to do what he did best, and his behavior would become increasingly erratic, leading to a popular theory that he had developed a taste for heroin and perhaps harder drugs still.
Shadman’s reign of terror would come to an end in October of 2021 when the intrepid users of KiwiFarms discovered that he had been arrested in Los Angeles on charges of assault with a deadly weapon and attempted murder. It was these court records that ended up revealing his identity for the first time. Shadman’s most devoted acolytes insist that this is not true, that the images of his true identity like the one above are not actually him because they desperately want to believe he’s the yoked racist giga-chad Neo-Nazi that he portrayed himself to be. Some even say he released the pictures the spindly mulatto as some sort of epic 5D Quatum Chess move to fuck with his haters. Whether Shadman has confirmed or denied these claims that the man in these pictures, I am unaware, but the general consensus among sane individuals is that they are, indeed, photos of the real Shadman. All I know is that, in the aftermath of the attack that landed him in jail, Shadman tweeted that he was alright and that everything was fine. He subsequently shut down his website and took an extended hiatus from the internet. Ultimately, he resurfaced in 2023, although he keeps a much lower profile than before. No one’s even certain how exactly the court proceedings played out, which only gives those who claim that the man in the pictures is not Shadman more ammunition for their argument. If he is still plying his ghoulish trade, I don’t know where he’s doing it. And I’m thankful for that.
Some speculate that he’s still highly active behind the walls of private garden-style Discord servers, as the program has become the last great redoubt for sex perverts and creeps to hide away behind closed doors and do what they do away from prying eyes. Rumors say that he’s as busy with his illicit activities as ever, but, so far as anyone can tell, they are unsubstantiated. If he is still working, he and his fans are keeping a remarkably tight lid on it.
Shadman’s exit from the limelight came at the great disappointment to his fans. Though relatively small in number, his followers are, as I said, nothing if not devoted. One can only speculate as to why. In the absence of their pervert messiah, they’ve taken to establishing various archives and fansites so that no scrap of Shad-work ever disappears from the internet. Great, right? Imagine if they put all that effort into something that wasn’t fucking reprehensible. There’s even a cottage industry of artists who specialize in recreating Shadman’s distinct art style, because apparently his specific brand of degeneracy is like crack-cocaine to this people.
But, all that aside, I think we’ve clearly established that Shadman is, to put it mildly, a divisive and unseemly character1. And someone that Daniel Keem categorically does not like.
When the allegations against Kris Tyson dropped, everyone knew Keem would discuss them. It’s just what the guy does. It’s how he makes his money. But no one knew just how invested Keem would get.
The thing was, an eagle-eyed researcher on Reddit, while combing through hours and hours of MrBeast content, spotted a little piece of art tacked to Tyson’s living room wall from a video filmed in 2017 - a piece that demonstrably, unquestionably came from Shadman. Naturally, this would make such a case much more personal for Keem, especially when these allegations would surface only a month after he repeatedly confronted Tyson over his support of Shadman.
If you want to see the picture in question, I’ll show it below. I put off revealing it because it contains a very prescient piece of evidence that supports one of the central question at the dark and repulsive heart of this entire affair, and one that I think deserves the utmost scrutiny.
As this saga has unfolded, many, many individuals have come out of the woodwork to sling accusations not at Tyson, but at Jimmy Donaldson - MrBeast himself. These accusations range from abuse of those in his employ (i.e. verbal abuse, over-working without compensation, etc.), questionable ethical decisions in personal matters, rigging contests and give-aways to benefit friends and family, and staging much of his content. Just as many former employees and associates have come out defending Donaldson, as well as current employees who have every monetary incentive to ensure that their cash cow doesn't head to the abattoir.
Almost all of these allegations and apologetics on both ends of the spectrum are anecdotal in nature and very little in the way of concrete evidence has been presented to verify either side. For that reason, we are not going to focus or discuss much, if any, of these allegations about Donaldson and his enterprise. This is not about Jimmy Donaldson. Any allegations swung at his business and the way he runs it are adjacent to the matter at hand, but just that - adjacent. Whether Donaldson mistreats those under his employ or has been staging his content for years is largely irrelevant to the Tyson allegations and, frankly, much of the accusations currently being leveled at Donaldson seem to be coming from those with an axe to grind who are using the controversy as an opportune moment to speak their piece and give him a black eye while he’s in the spotlight.
Don’t misunderstand that sentiment as apathy, though. Frankly, if MrBeast is mistreating his employees and manipulating his audience through underhanded means, the public deserves to know. As a public figure of immense influence - especially among children - he should be held to a higher standard and subjected to a high degree of scrutiny than the average internet personality, especially when he’s managed to skate by on so little of the previous accusations leveled against him due to his popularity and, more importantly, his profitability. There is a time and a place for any whistleblowers to release this information, and while I understand why now may seem like the opportune time to dog pile on the man, I also think that this deluge of unsubstantiated allegations have only muddied the water surrounding what should be the most germane question pertaining to Donaldson at the moment.
This brings us to the three main questions at hand that we’ll be covering today and in the future. As it stands, here’s our agenda for the day.
What are the allegations against Tyson?
Did Jimmy Donaldson know?
Why is Tyson not receiving the same decisive public condemnation that other previous internet personalities have in the past when facing similar allegations?
With this in mind, let’s start from the top.
The Tyson Allegations
In early July of 2024, the first accusations of Tyson grooming a minor began to circulate on Twitter. And it is important to stress that the first of these allegations were grooming a minor. There is a difference between grooming and the other allegations we’ll cover shortly. Both are bad, yes, but one is much more egregious than the other.
These messages were first posted anonymously on 4chan in a thread that was critical towards MrBeast. Who posted them and how they got them is anyone’s guess. It was a small YouTuber named Prism42, who largely dabbles in YouTube controversy and drama, who first discovered these messages in this thread before sending them to a laundry list of public figures, inlcuding Turning Point USA CEO and Right-Wing commentator Charlie Kirk, infamous former To Catch A Predator Host, Chris Hason, and YouTube documentarian, Mike Clum, who recently made a name for himself after releasing a documentary of current YouTube bête noire, Boogie2988.
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If Clum seems like an odd pick to seek assistance in bringing eyes to this story, it’s worth noting that Clum has expressed interest in making documentaries on notorious online predators, and is currently working on a documentary about disgraced YouTuber and persona non grata, Bryant Moreland, better known by his YouTube handle… EatDatPussy445. Yes - seriously. This was a big deal at the time because, apparently, people were shocked that a guy who’s username referenced cunnilingus and infamously and openly discussed his degenerate porn addiction was a child predator.
Moreland was busted in July of 2020 in an ad hoc predator sting, infamously came to get a cupcake from what he thought was a thirteen year old girl.
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How disappointed he was to see internet vigilantes with cameras instead of a fresh tray of baked goods. To put it simply, the internet has seen to it that his life has been a living Hell ever since. As it should be.
Some have criticized Kirk and Hanson for their silence on the matter, but at the same time, given that they are all highly public individuals that most likely recieve hundreds of emails a day and are very busy with their own work, I can see why they might have seen an email from a random, no-name YouTuber and just ignored it. Clum, on the other hand, told the publication Rolling Stone why he didn’t take the take upon himself.
But these three weren’t the only ones that recieved emails. Over fifty emails were reportedly sent by Prism42, and two YouTubers going by the handle Acheeto and SensitiveSociety who, you guessed it, make videos about YouTube drama, were quick to find the material. It was their videos that escalated the smoldeirng allegations from a spark to a full-on five alarm fire.
These allegations were built on leaked messages between Tyson and an individual identified only as GSLava, who had a long-standing affiliation and relationship with the MrBeast brand. A self-professed fan of MrBeast from an early age, Lava entered a contest held by MrBeast in which one random person who captured their five hundred thousand subscriber mark on akshamittal.com - a site that tracks YouTube page’s subscriber counts in real time - would earn a prize and a follow on Twitter from both Donaldson and Tyson. Lava would win this contest, and recieve both a butterfly knife custom-printed with MrBeast iconography (valued at a grand total of twenty dollars) and, indeed, a follow from both Donaldson and Tyson.
Tyson, it seems, would go on to form a relationship with the then-thirteen year old Lava through direct messages, which would ultimately result in the minor becoming a member, a psuedo-moderator, and frequent presence in Tyson’s private Discord server, which he originally tapped Lava to help him create. Though Lava stated that the intent of the server was to act as a private chat for exchanging memes and banter between Tyson and other close friends, it rapidly swelled in membership as other young fans of MrBeast were allowed in. Allegedly, most of these people were then-minors that Tyson made while playing video games, and if he liked you enough, he’d send you an invite. On this server - which, mind you, was populated by a large percentage of minors - pornography would be openly posted, exchanged, and discussed. When another user suggested that maybe it wasn’t the best idea to be posting pornographic content in a server with children milling around in it, Tyson responded, What do I look like? A parent?
To a degree, Tyson isn’t wrong; it isn’t his responsibility to monitor what children do and don’t consume online, which opens the door to a wider discussion about how active a parent or guardian should be in controlling what activities their children enage in while online. However, as the de facto despot of this server, Tyson did have a responsibility to ensure that if there was going to be pornographic content posted to it, that one of two actions were taken; either the offending images be deleted and the person who posted it banned, or, more reasonably… just don’t bring any fucking minors into a group chat for adults where adult content is being posted. Flagrantly disregarding this is nothing less of than an actual crime under statutes of distributing explicit content to a minor, which can be charged under sexual exploitation of a minor and carry a sentence of seventeen years in prison per image shared. Given that hundreds, if not thousands of explicit images were allegedly shared during this time on Tyson’s server, if he were to be charged for his part in allowing this to happen… well, let’s just say they might as well put him under the prison, because he wouldn’t be walking out in any of our lifetimes. Or his.
That really should be the beginning and end of the conversation, but… there’s more. Because of course there is.
Lava claims that, until 2018, Tyson didn’t know his age. Before - and after - that information was shared, the two would routinely call each other names like big boy, daddy, and sexy. More than once, Lava referenced Tyson’s hentai addiction, which - call me crazy - but, if you have such a thing, you shouldn’t let anyone know. Let alone a minor. But, ah… well, Tyson didn’t do the best job at hiding his predilection for the fine art of oriental erotica.
In the wake of these allegations, users on KiwiFarms, Twitter, Reddit, and 4chan did what they do best and scoured all of Tyson’s social media. By the time Tyson scrubbed his presence from the internet as best he could, it was already to late; they had tracked a username he had previously gone by to a Reddit account that he frequently used to comment on pornography. I won’t share these comments here - if you really feel like gagging, you can find them yourself, but I’ll tell you that if you’re squeamish, I’d recommend you refrain. I’ll tell you this, though; there are a lot - a lot - of comments about loli (a genre of drawn pornographic content depicting underage characters) and bemoaning the fact that the characters in question are underage. And also some comments about, Well, it doesn’t matter if she’s fourteen, too. And other comments about… look, I really cannot repeat them in good consciousness. But trust me. They’re gross. And they’re the worst when they’re about… not respecting consent. Just read between the lines. You know what I mean.
It is deeply disturbing. The ramblings of a debauched lunatic.
Curiously, however, there are also multiple posts in which he alludes to seeing himself as a woman and, at least one case, referring to himself with a homosexual slur, stating, I’ve always been a [REDACTED]. The comments paint a portrait of a man who is deeply entrenched in submissive sexual paraphilia, with a desire to be humiliated and controlled and dominated by other men, and using female clothing and a female identity as a means of achieving said humiliation. He also made comments in which he would openly ponder the deep and profound possibilities of what it must feel like to be one of these underage children in the pictures he found so appealing.
While anyone with any sense would know damn well that a child in those situations - ghastly as it even is to think about it - would be fucking traumatized for the rest of their lives to a likely debilitating degree, Tyson seems to think that it looked like fun.
Put a pin in all of that - we’ll come back to it. Suffice to say that, for now, there is demonstrable evidence that Tyson was and likely is suffering from a crippling addiction to extreme pornography the likes of which would not be tolerated on your average, run-of-the-mill smut site. This much is not up for debate. They guy routinely shared this content among others. He left scads of comments across Reddit gushing over it. He openly talked about it on fucking Twitter, too. I’d say the guy was bad at covering his tracks, but he wasn’t even trying. Like, at all.
Oh, and did I mention that there was a comment he left on one Reddit post - which depicted exactly what you suspect it did - stating, Shadman needs to see this. People have taken this to mean that Tyson must have been acquainted with Shadman, though I’m not sure that’s the case. Still - worth noting nonetheless.
Before we move on, one of the other most contentious content dredged up from Tyson’s past is from a YouTube channel that he ran in 2016 - which carried the same name as his Reddit handle, where he would openly and unabashedly express his love for loli - in which he talked about, exposed, and linked to the explicit photos of former iCarly star, Jeanette McCurdy. You know - like we talked about here. In the video, he states that he would never encourage anyone to look at revenge porn… and then goes on to say that if ya wanna see it, he posted it below so, better check it out before they’re taken down!
Now, McCurdy was over the age of eighteen when these photos were leaked. But I don’t think that makes Tyson’s actions in this video any less disgusting.
Another piece of ancillary evidence that could mean something, could mean nothing, is this photo that was found on Reddit.
That’s Tyson in the background, and if you don’t know the other two individuals… I envy you. This photo was posted by the person in the front, who goes by the handle Finnster. I think. There’s l33tsp34k numbers in there, but, suffice to say, it’s basically Finnster. Finnster started off as a straight, cisgender male streamer who’s entire bit is that he could convincingly pull off looking like a girl. For years, he claimed it was all a schtick, a gimmick for views, and that it was all just an ironic humor thing and that he was actually a based femboy, yet, just like fellow transvestite (remember when that was a word?) Eddie Izzard, that changed. He now considers himself genderfluid. Like I’ve said before - the problem with running jokes is that they always catch up to you. Either way, the pipeline from ironic femboy to transgender is a narrow and short one. I can’t say I ever understood the appeal of his content, but Finnster is largely well regarded by the streaming community and enjoys a sizeable following made up of both people who just find his commentary entertaining and genuine sex perverts that, er - well, you can probably guess why they’re watching. He posted this photograph of a “girl’s” trip to Tokyo with Tyson, but it was the character in the middle that made even some of Finnster’s followers raise eyebrows.
If you couldn’t tell just by looking at their brace-faced mug, Jean Hollywood is a skeevy character. I’m not well-versed in the lore surrounding them to confidently say that they’re guilty of anything other than being a porn-sick reprobate, but they do have an association with a truly heinous cretin who called themselves Giggly the Goonclown, who’s story is, without hyperbole, one of the most dark and disturbing I’ve ever come across2. The Goonclown story isn’t a rabbit hole so much as a gaping, possibly endless chasm that is both too deep to go down here and so disgusting that I doubt I’ll ever have the stomach to cover entirely.
If you’re really curious… don’t be. But if you’re a glutton for punishment, YouTuber TurkeyTom has the most definitive and well-researched documentary on the subject, which you can find here. If you choose to watch it, make sure you have a bin on hand, because there’s a strong possibility you might be sick.
This is to say that, whether or not Jean Hollywood is guilty of the same crimes as… Giggly the Goonclown (Christ, I feel dirty just typing that), the fact that there was even a former association between the two3 was enough to raise major red flags, and have resulted in a stain on Finnster’s otherwise positive reputation. Seeing Hollywood hanging out with Finnster and Tyson, let alone traveling abroad with them, is not a good look for either of them, and suggests that they are both very poor judges of character at best, and, at worst, that they run in the same degenerate circles of extremely obsequious and questionable characters like Hollywood.
Between 2016 to 2019, Lava would also regularly camp with his family in a location close to MrBeast’s North Carolina-based studio, which is largely referred to as The Beast Compound. During these trips, he would meet with Tyson in person. Lava has since claimed that nothing happened during these meetings and, because his parents were present, it was acceptable, to which I must politely disagree.
In 2020, Lava would be hired by MrBeast’s production company to serve as a production assistant on their side channel called Beast Gaming. I’m sure you can probably guess what content that channel produced. It was a job that he procured through his connections with Tyson, who introduced him to Trey Yates. It as Yates that hired Lava and, eventually, promoted him to a moderator position on both Beast Gaming’s official Discord and Reddit page. In responses to the allegations, Yates has stated the following:
Ultimately, Lava would depart MrBeast’s employ in 2021, but he and Tyson would remain friends.
When the story about Lava and Tyson would break, Lava would categorically deny that Tyson was grooming him, or did anything wrong at all. He would state the following on Twitter.
The fact that Lava would actively call for both SensitiveSociety and Acheeto’s videos to be mass commented on to stop spreading lies is pretty astounding, and a move that many people - especially SensitiveSociety and Acheeto - were very critical of.
As stated before, it was this situation - not the allegations - that set the already collapsing house of cards around Tyson into a full-on nuclear meltdown. Lava, by defending Tyson, ended up only making the entire situation look worse by appearing to have a severe case of Stockholm Syndrome by going to bat for the person who allegedly groomed him. This is around the time when Tim Pool and Mutahar Anas stepped in, followed shortly by MoistCr1TiKal - one of the most prominent members of the YouTube commentary community with over fifteen million subscribers and a rabid fanbase who love his tepid, room-temperature takes delivered in his trademark monotone drawl. Moist - sorry, I can’t call him that, so we’re calling him by his real name, Charlie - was, at the time (and still is as of this writing, apparently) beefing with Sneako, who… you know what? It’s not important. Just know Sneako is basically off-brand Andrew Tate and a very contentious character, total degenerate, and possible cuckold. Both Charlie and Sneako spoke about the subject briefly during a debate and, if there was one thing they could agree on, it was that Tyson was a freak. Ironic, given that Sneako also argued that the age of consent should be lowered to… well, he didn’t specify, but he did say that the age of consent should be lowered. Oh, and remember how I said Sneako is a self-styled follower of the Andrew Tate School of Philosophy? Yeah, well, Tate’s brother, Tristan, also got in on the action.
Point is, due to the Charlie and Sneako's highly publicized debate, the story of Tyson spread even further. Even Twitch streamer Pokimane, who’s famous for being the poster girl for the hot girl who does nothing and still makes millions of dollars in revenue off simps genre of streaming weighed in on the subject, as did just about every other big name streamer and internet personality of any repute.
We’ll get back to her and some of the others in a future section, but, just know that when Pokimane opens her mouth, there’s a legion of simps that hang on her every word and listen with bated breath. Fellow streamer and simp-succubus Valkyrae echoed her sentiments. While neither offered the most full-throated condemnation of Tyson, the fact that not one, but two of the largest female streamers on Twitch, would say something about it at all was an indicator of just how out of control the situation was becoming for the MrBeast PR team. If Pokimane had stopped shilling her overpriced cookies to the broke boys in her audience long enough to start beefing with Twitter anons over Tyson, the boys back at the Beast Compound had to know that the walls were closing in on them.
It’s no coincidence that shortly after Charlie, Sneako, Valkyrae, and Pokimane began to offer their two cents (which is collectively worth even less), Tyson bowed out of the public eye and zapped their social media. It’s also no coincidence that, around the same time, MrBeast finally responded to the allegations and announced that Tyson would no longer be a part of his enterprise.
Even Lava returned to Twitter to disavow their previous statements. Below is the statement in question. While he is emphatic that he was not a grooming victim, he does acknowledge that Tyson’s behavior was unacceptable.
I’m sure both Tyson and Donaldson were under the impression that it couldn’t get much worse than some of the largest steamers and influencers on YouTube, Twitch, and beyond all dog-piling on them at once.
Unfortunately, as this was happening, the kill-shot was being loaded into the metaphorical howitzer by a former employee and member of Tyson’s discord server. Only identified as Nathan, this individual would take to TikTok and claim that not only had they also been groomed by Tyson, but that Lava was, indeed, suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. You can watch the video here. But Nathan didn’t just come with anecdotal evidence; a day or two after releasing the video, Nathan set up a website on which he would dump over five thousand messages from Tyson’s private Discord server.
Five. Hundred. Thousand. Messages.
Daniel Keem, in turn, hyped the release of these messages up like it was the hottest album of 2024 dropping. Though there was a delay in the launch of this site, it did ultimately come through, and while it didn’t provide any direct evidence of Tyson directly creeping on minors, it did confirm that he was very open about his personal predilections, consumption of pornography, and was extremely dismissive of anyone who said, Maybe we shouldn’t be posted this kind of content when minors are around. Worse still, Nathan claimed that out of all the users in the server - how many there were is a number I have not been able to track down - only two were “Tyson’s age”. Tyson would have been twenty-two when this server launched. I think it’s important to note that wording the statement in such a way seems to be a duplicitous caveat to make the situation sound worse than it is. If Tyson was twenty-two, and there were only two others around his age, that means, for all we know, the majority of users in the server could have been eighteen and, thusly, not minors.
And, if it sounds as if I’m running defense for Tyson, I promise you, I’m not. I just think it’s incredibly important to represent the facts as honestly and, more germane, directly and straightforward as possible. The games of semantics being played by those casting allegations against him are, frankly, irritating, as it helps propagate misinformation and confusion around the situation. To put it as bluntly as I can, if crimes were committed by Tyson, there’s absolutely no need to try and fallaciously exaggerate them through wordplay and games of connotation; the fact a crime was committed is more than enough and will suffice. It doesn’t need to be made out to be anything worse than it is to milk more drama out of the situation. I know that’s Keem and everyone else involved’s modus operandi in order to drum up views and keep eyes on the story, but the simple fact of the matter is that, if a crime was committed, and there is proof, just. Fucking. Say it. No hyperbole. No misleading wording. Anything more obfuscates the truth and, ultimately, will only help the perpetrator hide among purposefully spread lies. Worse still, every exaggeration and outright falsehood stated in these attacks will only allow Tyson to build a libel case against those talking about him.
In these kind of situations, honesty, transparency, and simplicity are of paramount importance - anything else is senseless complication of an already messy and difficult to parse situation.
For example, literally as I type this, more news is breaking regarding sexual assault allegations against Tyson, posted on Twitter by a former personal assistant and employee of MrBeast’s studios. I read them. I walked away from them feeling as if they were extremely, incredibly dubious in their legitimacy, and it felt more than anything as if this individual was greatly misrepresenting the relationship they had with Tyson. Frankly, it’s too much to get into here as this article is already longer than I anticipated, and to substantiate my suspicions would require a methodical and detailed dissection of their Twitter thread in order to explain why the story doesn’t pass the smell test. If you want more details, I highly advise you watch the aforementioned TurkeyTom’s coverage of the story, as there is almost nothing I could say that he doesn’t pertaining to the allegations.
Tom himself says what I feel every time I have to make a caveat about the misinformation and exaggeration surrounding this case - I don’t like Kris Tyson. I don’t want to defend him. I’m not defending him. But when these kind of flimsy allegations like those covered above and, in some cases, outright fabricated and doctored screenshots and conversations, I have to correct the record. This is somewhat out of an obligation I feel to report the facts as truthfully and impartially as I understand them. This is partially because, again, making up stories or stretching the truth when these situations happen only given Tyson the opportunity to hyper-focus on disproving the demonstrably untrue allegations and conveniently skirt the factual ones. Lies and exaggerations are not something that anyone who genuinely wants to see Tyson held accountable for their actions should be promoting.
This is all to say that, did Tyson sexually assault their personal assistant? Reading this assistant’s personal testimony, I do not think so. To me, Tom, and other observers, it sounds like a consensual sexual encounter that the individual later regretted. Don’t get me wrong - it paints Tyson as a complete degenerate sex pest, but nothing recounted by the witness legally constituted as sexual assault.
Did Tyson ever do anything untoward to anyone else in a physical sense? As of right now, we have no evidence of that. If that changes, rest assured I will post a follow-up documenting and explaining what evidence surfaced to prove otherwise.
That leaves us with the question of what Tyson did do. And what Tyson is guilty of - without question - is exchanging sexually explicit messages with at least one minor and, through his Discord and a neglect of his responsibilities as the server’s ringleader, enabling the distribution of illicit content to an unknown amount of others. His behavior was reckless, stupid, and quite possibly criminal.
We also know that, based on records of his online activity, he was and most likely still is extremely interested in very questionable erotic material that, if it doesn’t breach the limits of legality, skirts the very edge of it. He quite plainly had no issue supporting an artist that ardently and proudly drew content that, in my opinion, should be categorically illegal. If he is not a criminal based on his interests and tastes in pornography, he comes very, very close to the line.
Due to libel laws, I will not emphatically state that he is a criminal. That decision will be made by the courts, if it ever comes down to it. But I will say - emphatically so - is that he is, as Kendrick Lamar popularized in his track, Not Like Us, a F.A.N.
And I’m sure you’re wondering, What is a F.A.N.? When the song first released, there was much debate over what Lamar meant by this line when he used it in reference of Not Like Us’s target, the now dearly departed Canadian rapper, Aubrey Drake “Drizzy” Graham4.
I’ll leave you to discover the true meaning of F.A.N., if you want. If you read the lyrics, it becomes exceedingly clear what it’s an acronym for. But, suffice to say, as Lamar states, albeit grammatically incorrectly, a F.A.N. need to stay they ass inside (and better not ever go to cell block one).
Whether or not Tyson acted outside of the bounds of the law is an open question that I have no doubt will be rigorously tested in the coming days and months. But there is no question that he is a disturbed individual with a serious and severe addiction to unacceptable types of pornography, who maintains friendships with extremely sketchy characters who have even shadier connections themselves, and a person in dire need of psychiatric help.
But, with this conclusion reached, we also must ask the next obvious question -
Did Jimmy know?
Meet Jake Franklin.
Online, the Danish-born Franklin is known best by the handle he made famous during his days as a member of the Beast Gang, Jake the Viking. Mr. The Viking worked for MrBeast in unspecified capacities before he was made a made man by Don Donaldson in 2018, after which point he became a staple member of the crew and frequently appeared on camera. This tenure was short-lived as, in 2020, Jake would split from MrBeast. Why is something of a mystery. For Donaldson’s part, he never addressed the matter. One day, Jake was in his videos. The next, he wasn’t. And that was that. Jake, in turn, put out a video on his personal YouTube channel in which he explained that he left of his own accord due to a mixture of the extremely demanding schedule and time restrictions placed on him by MrBeast and a desire to run his own gaming channel, with the emphatic statement that there was no bad blood between himself, Donaldson, or anyone else associated with MrBeast. This statement would be called into question as, over the years, Jake has pivoted from saying that he was fired from MrBeast Studios multiple times. What exactly he was fired for, however, he has no elaborated.
When Jake the Viking,at the time, said there’s no bad blood between himself and Donaldson, I have to call bullshit. Only a day after the headlines pertaining to Tyson began to fly across the tabloids, he released a simple tweet that only said - Jimmy knew.
Again - he failed to elaborate.
Later, he would add more commentary, including, I’m glad they fired me in the wake of the Discord leaks, and a simple There’s more, after an alleged Snapchat conversation was leaked in which Tyson told a fourteen year old, I love you, among other things. So far as I am aware, screenshots of this conversation were doctored and is not an actual exchange Tyson had with a minor.
To be completely transparent, I don’t take Franklin’s cryptic tweets to be gospel. A lot of folks are, but one cannot rightly take a single, two-word statement with no further elaboration as concrete evidence. If Franklin has evidence that Donaldson knew about Tyson’s behavior, he has a responsibility to share it. And the fact he hasn’t strikes me as suspicious. There is the possibility that, as a former member of the Beast Gang, the notoriously litigious Donaldson had him sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement of some kind that legally binds him from elaborating… but an Non-Disclosure Agreement does not prevent you from telling people you had to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement. He could say something to the effect of, Yes, I signed an NDA, no, I cannot currently tell anyone what I know, but I will when I can, and that would go a long way in adding more validation to his claims. Remember how I said that people with a vendetta against MrBeast are coming out of the woodwork to strike while the iron is hot? This is what I was referring to. And make no mistake - I’m not saying Franklin is wrong. But what I am saying is that if he has more to share, he needs to share it before his tweets can be considered anything more than spraying lighter fluid on a dumpster fire.
But that isn’t to say there isn’t evidence that Donaldson was aware of his friend’s behavior.
For one, in the leaks of Tyson’s Discord server provided by Nathan, it was found that Donaldson had been present in the server before. Since I don’t have the time to comb through 500,000 messages between brain-rotted gooners calling each other daddy, I’ll just tell you what others have found.
How long was Donaldson in the server? No one’s certain. He could have joined it for a day and left. He could have been loitering around in the background for months. If that’s the case, he wasn’t very active, or didn’t say anything incriminating outside of one comment he made that just happened to be on the size of Tyson’s… well, just look at the message yourself.
Again, keep in mind - minors were present when these messages were sent.
At present, that’s really one of two controversial or damning pieces of evidence that points to Donaldson’s complicity that has come from the Discord leaks. More may come in the future, but, for now, there’s a more pressing piece of evidence that may serve as the smoking gun.
Remember when I said there was a picture of Tyson with a Shadman original hanging on his wall? Yeah, that was like, twenty minutes ago, at this point. You’re a real champ for sticking with me to this point, by the way. But I’ll see the real G.O.A.T.s at the bottom of the page.
Anyways, here’s that picture, taken from a video in 2017.
There’s pre-transition Tyson in the foreground, looking as if he just clambered off the operating table with enough lingering ketamine to kill a horse. There’s the offending piece of smut, circled so that you can’t miss it. And, oh - who’s that back there, chilling in the background?
Why - it’s MrBeast! Pre-beard, of course, and at the age of 19. Call him TeenBeast, if you will, or just Beast, since he’s a little too young for the Mister title at this point.
Now, as you can see in Exhibit A, Little Donaldson’s eye are going right to that fucking poster. And, maybe I’m just protecting, or maybe it’s hard to tell since he’s out of focus, but… is it just me, or does he look a little uncomfortable? And, you know what? If I were in his position, I’d be looking at the same thing, the same way. Fortunately for all of us, the intrepid internet sleuths managed to find out exactly what Shadman classic is tacked to Tyson’s wall. You might think that they had to trawl through terabytes upon terabytes of smut featuring Belle Delphine and the mom from The Incredibles and goth femboys or whatever the fuck Shadman liked to draw, but Tyson actually made it incredibly easy for them to track it down. Because he fucking posted about it on Twitter when he bought it.
Now, I don’t normally do this, but, I can’t in good consciousness not give a content warning. It’s censored, but… well, I often feel as I’m desensitized to these sorts of things because I’ve been on the internet for entirely too long and spent way too much time on it but even this… something about it makes my skin crawl. It makes me want to actually say this outloud:
Alright. Are you ready? Are you sure? Are you positive you’re sure? Okay.
Behold - Tyson’s Shadman original, in all of it’s foul glory.
This is… lot to unpack. For a lot of reasons. For one, I just… I don’t know. I don’t fucking now. I cannot for the life of me comprehend how someone would see this, like it, like it enough to fucking buy a print of it, put on their fucking wall, and then tell everyone they fucking bought it. I’m seriously getting tremors from second-hand embarrassment. It’s just - wow.
For another… just what the fuck? Bigfoot is real and he tried to eat my pussy? The gun in the the mouth? The weird, cross-eyed, hentai expression? The giant KYS5 “hidden” in the background? Good fucking lord, man - if you’re gonna buy pornography, at least have some god damn standards.
And, uh - does the subject of this certain piece of cringy trash… well, does that look like a grown adult to you?
Because it really doesn’t to me. I’m not going to go into why because, I mean… you have working eyes. You can see. I don’t need to tell you. And, on the off-chance that you’re being dictated the content of this article by a text-to-speech program because you’re blind, or something, I promise you, you aren’t missing out on anything. You don’t even wanna know what the rest of us have to see right now.
Clearly, Tyson owned this… well, I don’t want to call it art, but let’s just say he owned this particular image in a physical format. He had it tacked to his wall, unashamed. He proudly displayed it on Twitter. Even if Donaldson was too busy slaving away on producing content, we know he saw that his friend owned this picture, openly and proudly.
Now… I have a lot of friends. What can I say? I’m a likeable guy. Some of those friends… they have questionable tastes in things. Whether it be food, movies, music… certain features they find sexually appealing. We have some disagreements. Some of them have confided in me that they like some rather unorthodox things. Like eating Kraft macaroni with ketchup. I cannot in good faith condone eating Kraft boxed macaroni, but it's not a crime, even if it should be. I have a friend who only drinks white wine. Again - terrible, but not illegal. I have some friends who like the Disney Star Wars content and collect Funko Pops. I worry about them, but they don't disturb me. Much.
And, I can’t say I understand their eccentricities, but, at the same time, I do know that not everyone can be perfect and have impeccable taste in all things. Like me. Not everyone can be objectively right about everything like I am. And these foibles are nothing that I can’t overlook. They're wrong, of course, drinking only whites and enjoying Disney Star Wars, but I also know that these little quirks are not, y’know - fucking criminal.
I won’t name names, but I had a friend admit to me once, while we were a couple drinks in and engaged in the immortal debate of T&A - if you don’t know what that is, ask your husband or boyfriend - he told me that his favorite part of the female anatomy was, of all things, armpits.
Again - kinda weird. I appreciate that he felt comfortable enough with me to share that, but I also kind of wish he hadn’t told me that. Not a crime, though. Now, if I walked into this friend’s apartment and saw that he had framed images of women’s armpits hanging on the wall, I… I would certainly have questions. I would tell him that he needs to reconsider whether or not that’s really the type of home decor he wants to have since, yeah, that’s a fucking conversation starter right there, but it ain’t gonna start any conversations worth having. I would also call him a freak to his face and tell him he seriously needs to consider detoxing from whatever the fuck erotica he consumes that led him to fetishizing armpits, but, I could leave confident that at the very least he wasn’t a criminal.
But, to quote another Kendrick Lamar track - ever since that day, I was lookin’ at him different.
Now, if I was Jimmy Donaldson, and I walked in to my friend’s apartment to see the above piece of a blonde underage girl sticking a fucking gun in her mouth in a sexual pose with KYS printed on it and her nethers on full display… they would not be my friend anymore.
And, listen - I am one of the most ride or die people you will ever meet. It takes a lot for me to turn my back on a friend. Loyalty is a virtue of extreme scarcity in modern America, especially in a climate where a homie will cross you for a crumb of coochie. I can understand why Donaldson would have been hesitant to walk away from Tyson, regardless of what art he had on his wall. But that is just not something that someone you should want to associate with would own. It is certainly not someone you would ever want intrinsically tied to your business endeavors. If that picture on Tyson’s wall wasn’t a starting gun for Donaldson to run in the opposite direction, at the very least, he was in dire need of beginning to reevaluate their relationship and whether or not he wanted to continue it.
If Donaldson was as close to Tyson as they appeared to be, I have my doubts that this was the only time he saw something like this. I can’t imagine that Tyson didn’t exhibit other red flags that betrayed their true colors as a crippling porn addict. And, grooming allegations aside, even if that’s all Tyson was - just a bog-standard coomer - that would still have made him an extreme liability for Donaldson to keep within his inner-circle, the same way it would be a liability to keep a meth addict or a convicted murderer in close company. Someone predisposed to that kind of vice is always going to run the risk of doing something stupid and dragging you down with them.
Liability is a word I continue to return to while dwelling on this subject. It really is the only word I can find to describe Tyson’s presence in MrBeast’s inner-circle; a liability. The fact that someone as shrewd and litigious as Donaldson could or would let Tyson remain so close to them is kind of stunning. In my opinion, there are two likely possibilities.
One is that Donaldson simply did legitimately just overlook what should have been warning sirens. Remember in the first article when I called him an idiot savant? I wasn’t trying to be funny - from everything I can see, Donaldson seems to be good at one thing, and one thing only, and that’s playing the social media game. When it comes to everything else, he seems like he’s out of his element. He’s extremely calculating, good with numbers, and has a hyper-fixation on small, granular minutiae. However, he has described himself as an introvert and that his social skills are lacking. I watched old skits he filmed with himself and Tyson and while both of them were (and are) not the types who will ever reach an EGOT, Donaldson in particular comes off as awkward, stiff, and uncomfortable. Watching them, you would never guess someone so clearly unfit for the camera would ever become the face of YouTube and content creation in the 2020’s. And that’s because he shouldn’t have been. His success comes not from his charisma or personality, but a meticulous manipulation of the YouTube algorithm and careful study of social media trends. He’s not a people person, and it’s clear whenever you see him interact with others.
It would not surprise me at all if Donaldson was simply so blinded by his work and study of the algorithm, or perhaps just too socially awkward and emotionally immature to really grasp the severity of what flashes of concern Tyson was displaying.
The other is that Tyson wasn’t just a personal liability, but a legal one. On July 25th, an individual only known as Tyson posted a video to Reddit in which he said the following -
According to Daniel Keem, Dawson later verified his claims of working with MrBeast, but did not share what verification he received. Whether or not Dawson is telling the truth, I think he raises a very interesting possibility as to why Donaldson would have stuck by Tyson through thick and thin, and that would be that Tyson knew too much.
The two had been friends for over fifteen years. From the very beginning, Tyson was a collaborator with Donaldson. For all intents and purposes, Tyson was the Watson to Donaldson’s Holmes. The Bunny Manders to his A.J. Raffles. The Spock to his Kirk. The Donkey to his Shrek. You get it.
If anyone was in a position to have information that Donaldson might not want the public to know, it stands to reason that it would be Tyson. Dawson, along with several other whistleblowers who have conveniently not provided receipts to verify their employment with MrBeast’s production company, have said alluded to this idea that, if Donaldson ever were to turn on Tyson, he would regret it, and that Donaldson was keenly aware of this.
Again, I must stress that these claims are unverified. I am not treating them as if they are fact. But what I am saying is that, the validity of those making the claims aside, they do raise a very pertinent point. More importantly, it must make one wonder - what information might Tyson have on Donaldson that would make him so hesitant to turn on his erstwhile friends?
Did Donaldson know about Tyson’s behavior? Was he complicit in it it? An active participant? Is that what Tyson has hanging over Donaldson’s head? Personally, I think that, if Tyson is holding a dead man’s switch, here, it’s most likely less to do with any accusations of sexual misbehavior on Donaldson’s part and would contain more information on business malpractice. Fraud. Tax evasion. Employee mistreatment. That kind of stuff. I would not at all be surprised if Donaldson is hiding some pretty grotesque corpses in his metaphorical closet. You don’t get to his level of success, especially when you start out at the young, dumb age of thirteen, without harboring some secrets.
But, as it is, I we have no definitive evidence that Donaldson was aware of Tyson’s behavior. We can speculate as much as we want to, and, I’ll admit - it seems very, very difficult to believe that he was completely oblivious. It’s possible that he knew, but was unaware of just how severe Tyson’s addiction and just how reckless his behavior had become behind closed doors, but I find that hard to accept, as well. But the likelihood that he truly was in the dark, as thin as it may be, is still a possibility.
Here’s what we do know, about Donaldson, about Tyson, and about the allegations as a whole. There are many, many allegations swirling around this case. Too many to count. Too many to catalogue here. Some have been demonstrably proven as false. Some have yet to be verified. Most cannot be verified and will remain as simple anecdotal evidence. More may come and, if they do, I’ll write an addendum to this piece with the pertinent information. But, to conclude this section - and this article - let’s review the facts as they are presented, only using the concrete evidence discovered.
We do not know the extent to which Jimmy Donaldson was aware of Tyson’s behavior. We know that he was in Tyson’s Discord server for an unspecified length of time. We know that he saw Tyson’s Shadman picture. We know that he is apparently aware of the size of Tyson’s junk. It stands to reason that, after fifteen years of close friendship with Tyson, he knows far more than he’s letting on, but, at present, that is all that we concretely know that he knows.
Tyson is a pornography addict with a long history of consuming questionable material and perverse tastes. While we have no evidence that he ever did anything physical to anyone, whether it be a minor or an adult, we do know that, due to the Discord leaks, he was exchanging sexual messages and speaking explicitly to at least one minor. He was also present in a Discord in which sexually explicit material was posted and shared in the presence of minors and did nothing to prevent it. His actions were at best reckless, thoughtless, and dangerous, and at worst, felonious.
This leaves us with one last unanswered question - why has Tyson’s allegations been treated so lightly in comparison to other public figures accused of the same behavior? As the debate around Tyson raged, Canadian YouTuber and podcaster Cody Ko career was quickly and brutally dismantled by braying crowds of incensed internet denizens after it came to light that he, at age twenty five, had sexual relations with fellow YouTuber, Tana Monague, when she was seventeen.
The struggle session Ko was subjected to by both mainstream media and online personalities was magnitudes more vicious than that of Tyson, who was only subjected to the consequences of their actions after a protracted and pronounced campaign by smaller YouTube creators who struggled to force the news into the public conscious. Even when they succeeded, they faced significant push back from certain segments of the Twitter population, Reddit, and even the mainstream media. Even one of the major sources I used for information - a Rolling Stone article6 - is highly derisive against these creators, disingenuously labeling them with various aspersions and, of course, accusing them of being right-wing. I don’t know enough about Prism42 and Acheeto to say whether they are or are not politically aligned to the right, but I watch SensitiveSociety’s content enough to know that he is, if anything, a centrist, as are individuals like Mutahar Anas, Tim Pool, Charlie7, and Mike Clum. Perhaps this label may be more apropos for Sneako and Tristan Tate (thoughm I’d disagree), but even then, they’re only two of many figures speaking out against Tyson. To claim that those covering the Tyson allegations are right-wing partisans is supinely dishonest, and to turn the matter of the sexual exploitation of minors into a political dispute is as dangerous as it is stupid.
Unfortunately, this article has gone far over the length I was anticipating, and the answer to that question - and the conclusion about what it all means - will have to wait until we meet again.
Will more allegations about Tyson come to the surface in that time? Will more evidence of Donaldson’s complicity come to light? Will the words of Nathan, Jake Franklin, and others be vindicated?
I guess we’ll see.
As I sat down to write this, another large YouTuber - notoriously unfunny “movie critic” Elvis the Alien deleted his Twitter after having a meltdown when confronted over comments he made publicly supporting Shadman. Keemstar also came for his neck.
The long and short of the Giggly the Goonclown story is that he was distributing pornography to minors, willingly and enthusiastically, as well as very plainly grooming them. There’s more, but I am not exaggerating when I say that the list of allegations leveled against them are as extensive as they are revolting.
I say former since Giggly the Goonclown has since retreated from the internet, or at least, the public eye following the revelations pertaining to their activities in Discord.
Drake isn’t actually dead, but Lamar might as well have killed him with Not Like Us.
Internet short-hand for Kill Yourself.
While the article is highly biased in favor of Tyson, it still contains one of the most comprehensive time-lines of events I could find.
Charlie is currently facing backlash of his own for stating that he believes gender transitions should be allowed for children so long as they have parental consent, if that tells you anything about how right wing he is.
As a relatively long-time denizen of some of the internet's more seedier corners, I must admit I did not expect to see the name of Shadman grace the hallowed halls of Substack. While I'm only passingly familiar with the MrBeast Kris Tyson imbroglio (I realized following internet drama online was, surprisingly, bad for my mental health), reliving all the stuff about our friend Shadman was certainly a trip down memory lane.
At the risk of inviting blowback to my own internet reputation: in an earlier phase of life, back when I had some fledgling artistic ambitions of my own and was into it deep learning gesture drawing and basic shapes and lighting online from youtube tutorials, I remembered seeing some of Shadman's YouTube videos on art being in my recommended feed: i.e., Shadman recording monologues of his own artistic journey over a timelapse of a (relatively tame, which by Shadman standards isn't saying much) painting. These would be meditations on how to pursue your art dreams, how to get an audience, how to deal with haters, etc.
When taken out of context, these videos had an undeniable charm and wisdom to my youthful mind: if nothing else, you couldn't say Shadman wasn't experienced in the field of taking public blowback and continuing to pursue your dreams regardless of what the naysayers in your life said. And make no mistake, for all of his other flaws, he was very good at the kind of profane, take-no-prisoners monologue that young teens interested in seedier artistic pursuits might enjoy.
Of course, I soon discovered that Shadman was known for a lot more than just releasing inspirational art videos about following your dreams, and it became somewhat difficult to hold him in high regard thereafter. But I remained fascinated by the seemingly enduring popularity of his fanbase (which, for a brief time, involved real artists and not just edgy 14-year-olds on newgrounds), and on certain days, if I closed my eyes and tried really hard not to think about it, Shadman's voice telling me to pursue my dreams and not care about what society thinks almost sounded inspirational in the right context.
To be up front, Shadman's proclivity for drawing things intended to arouse disgust in the general population wasn't limited to the Humbert Humbert genre; if I recall correctly, he also dabbled in bestiality, organs and gore, necrophilia, coprophilia, gay butt stuff, and everything else under the sun. (I may be misremembering, and for obvious reasons I don't have a burning desire to google this to fact check, but I remember Shadman once saying that he lost more followers when he drew simple gay homoerotica than anything involving extreme gore or lolis- which, if true, tells you something about his fanbase.)
I suppose a lot of his fans found his obvious moral provocations easy to forgive because at least he seemed to be the kind of guy who genuinely believed in the ideal that art should terrorize the comfortable and who was willing to go to any fucked-up lengths to commit to the bit, rather than someone who seemed likely to actually drive a van around offering free candy to kids in real life. In one of his YouTube videos, I remember Shad pretty emphatically saying that thinking about real-life bestiality or real-life kids having sex made him want to vomit, but that he believed in freedom of expression, or something. Now clearly, there are obvious reasons to question Shad's truthfulness as a reliable narrator in this regard, and I'm not going to make the claim that just saying "artistic freedom of expression" means normies should find cartoon pictures of kids and animals doing certain activities hunky-dory. In retrospect, it was kind of obvious that someone who would draw "Hilloli Clinton" with a straight face wasn't exactly going to have a great character arc. (Also, it takes a special kind of person to make someone feel sympathy for Keemstar.)
But if we want to explain how someone so patently offensive could rise up to a measure of genuine fame before crashing down in horrific fashion, I think there's something to be said that for a certain moment in internet time, Shadman was an emblem of the belief that we lived in a society that deserved to have its boundaries pushed in the service of finding one's own truth, and that no provocation, not even descending to fictional cheese pizza, was too far in support of that. Looking back, I'd also admit that Shadman was a canary in the coal mine as far as the notion that "fiction is separate from reality" was ever a thing- that gratuitous violence and horrific sex in pictures on the internet, as disturbing as they were, were still separate from their real-life counterparts. I suspect Shadman himself became painfully aware that he'd destroyed this party for everyone when he decided to drag Keem's daughter into his world; at that point, whatever scraps of high-minded artistic value he might have claimed to defend by drawing fictional little girls evaporated the moment he'd decided to focus on a real one for internet lols.
Also, up until that point, Shadman was well known and loved/hated in the relatively niche R-18 art world, but he'd escaped the civilizing eye of normies who would never have known about his stuff because his stuff, quite frankly, wasn't the kind of stuff you would see unless you were looking for it. Post-Keem, a lot of people became aware of what the gonzo philosophies of "fiction isn't reality" and "art should be uncomfortable" had helped birth in the fertile soil of a legion of edgy Newgrounds teens, and it wasn't pretty. After Shadman, it felt like "freedom of expression" and "all art is valid" was no longer something the principled liberal artist could or would say in all seriousness, because...well, just look at freaking Shadman. The anti-freedom-of-expression people couldn't have ginned up a better coup if they'd tried.
Who knows? Even if Shad hadn't crossed the Rubicon by drawing Keem's real-life offspring, he'd still be a weapons-grade menace to polite society, and even in his best moments, he was never going to be someone the "freedom of expression" people would ever feature front and center. And yet, in some of our culture's more braindead schoolmarmish moments about how fiction needs to be censored to protect the kids, I can't help but wonder in some moments what our world's stances on freedom of expression and fantasy vs. reality would look like now if he'd just stayed that guy giving profane YouTube advice for fledgling artists and hadn't flown too close to the sun. But then again, if he'd done that, he wouldn't be Shadman in the first place, would he?
After that unceasing litany of depravity that takes up the first two thirds of the article, there was simply no way in hell I was looking at that fucking picture. I blocked it with my hand and scrolled on past.
It's striking to me that it's not just one person - you've been documenting an entire ecosystem of Antediluvian perversion. Before the internet, these assholes would have had to live in seedy motels on the other side of the tracks. Now, they seem to be getting empowered.
Also, I view eating Kraft macaroni with ketchup as a war crime that should be tried in the Hague, and in any normal article this would be the most disturbing part.
And as always, the Internet must be destroyed.