The First Cancellation of 2024
And you are not gonna believe how it happened.
So - 2024.
How is it going for you so far? Are you enjoying the show? I think we all had our suspicions that this year was going to be… eventful to say the least. Earthquakes and plane crashes in Japan, BRICS expanding, the dissolution of the Artsakh Republic, bombings in Iran, bombings in Iraq, bombings in Lebanon, bombings in Yemen, bombings in Pakistan, generally a lot of bombing, Mickey Mouse in the public domain, Ecuador taking a similar tack to El Salvador and kicking in the teeth of drug cartels, riots in Papua New Guinea, and we still have Eurovision 2024 to look forward to, which will doubtlessly be the most controversial in some time with Europe seemingly gearing up for a larger conflict with Russia, who may not even be invited to participate, U2, Syngman Rhee, Payola and Kennedy, Chubby Checker, Psycho, and Belgians in the Congo.
I know it’s been burning since the world’s been turning, but the fire is most definitely turning up. This is to say nothing of elections in Russia, and Ukraine (supposedly), and Portugal, and Mexico, and Lithuania, and Ghana, and Azerbijan, and Slovakia, and Pakistan, and many, many others, including, perhaps most importantly…
That’s right - Northern Macedonia.
Yes, I think it’s safe to say the eyes of the world will be upon this small nation in the Balkans, where leader of VMRO-DPMNE, Hristijan Mickoski boasts a substantial lead over the embattled incumbent, Dimitar Kovachevski.
Oh, and I guess there’s that whole thing happening in America, too. I suppose that might get some attention, but, let’s be honest - real ones know where the action’s gonna be.
In the midst of all of this chaos, I think it’s important to remember to sit back, take a deep breath, and remember that there really isn’t all that much you can do about it, so rather than sit and wring your hands over which party will eke out victory in North Macedonia (not to be confused with the Macedonia of Alexander) or what dogwater song is going to inevitably win Eurovision this year, sometimes… you just gotta laugh at something.
And, fortunately, the protean realm of YouTube drama, ever churning with the fury of a tempest, is always ready to provide a nice distraction, and, more importantly, someone that you can laugh at and savor the sweet, cathartic burn of schadenfreude. After all, you might have taken a few lumps in these opening days of what’s sure to be an interesting year, but you can rest easy and feel a little better about knowing that 2024 hasn’t treated you as poorly as YouTuber Verbalase.
Yet.
After all - Verbalase has the dubious honor of being the first cancelled social media figure of 2024.
Some of you - most of you, actually - might be shaking your heads and saying to yourself, Now, Yakubian Ape, I actually have a meaningful and fulfilling life outside of the internet, so I have no idea who this Verbalase fellow is.
You may or may not have heard of this guy. With a modest total of almost five and a half million subscribers, Verbalase - the self-styled beatboxer from outer space - is not the largest or most notorious member of the expansive Peanut Gallery that is YouTube.
Really, I shouldn’t really know who this guy is, either, but a few years ago he was someone my friends and I would clown on quite frequently. If the previous statement didn’t give it away, Verbalase - nom de plume of one certain Adym S. Evans - is a forty-year old man that made a name for himself beatboxing on YouTube. He first came to my attention and, more importantly, that of my collective friends, around 2019, when this video began to make the rounds as something of a viral hit.
This video was what launched Verbalase’s career as a minor internet celebrity. It’s, ah… well, it certainly is a video, that’s for sure. In it, Verbalase beatboxes a rendition of the Russian folk song, Korobeiniki, which most know as the Tetris Theme for it’s use as Theme A in the iconic and wildly popular video game. Now, if you want to see a really neat rendition of this song, I’d direct you here to this video of Russian buskers playing it in Germany, which is probably the only time you’ll ever see someone shred on a contrabass balalaika. It’s a lot more impressive than it sounds, believe me.
If they ever made a biographical film about my life, which, not to brag, but I do I anticipate will happen at some point, this is most definitely what I will opt to have play during the montage depicting my days running with Russian transfer students in college and engaging in all manner of wild Slavic debauchery, which was defined by an entirely unethical consumption of alcohol, potato dishes, and sour cream. That’s not a joke, either; that really happened. I know Bert Kreischer’s bullshit bit about The Machine is fake because I lived a pared down version of it and it almost killed me. That loser wishes he was me. Good times, to be sure, but also I’m fairly certain I’d either be homeless in Vladivostok, dead from excess alcohol abuse, or diabetic if I’d continued it any longer than I had.
But that’s a story for another day.
Anyways, my friends - the American ones, not the Russian ones - and I got a real kick out of Mr. Beatboxer from Outerspace’s video and we constantly tried to mimic it, only to end up spraying spit on each other and sounding as if we were stroking out. Even before this, Verbalase’s YouTube channel was experiencing modest success. It turns out that there’s an audience that really, really enjoys beatbox remixes of various music from video games, movies, and other nerd ephemera, and that audience was roughly about two-hundred thousand strong. He also did his fair share of busking in New York, especially the subway, no doubt pestering hard-working employees coming off a long day at work as they tried to get a ride home and disturbing the peace with his beatboxing. There are several videos of seminars that he uploaded as well, which often feature him beatboxing on stage in front of a school auditorium of glassy-eyed children vacantly staring at him. There was one in particular in which he performed at a church, the audience of which was almost exclusively old white people that, if their reactions were anything to go by, are not his target demographic. However, not every live performance was as… indignant at those.
I can’t say his reception seemed all that warm, but, hey - props to the guy for having the balls to get in the middle of Madison Square Garden and shooting his shot.
Long before his viral popularity, however, Verbalase started the project that, by and large, would provide the most success and define his YouTube career. On March 19th, 2016, Verbalase would upload the first episode of his animated series… Cartoon Beatbox Battles.
Apparently, beatbox battles are a thing. Kind of like rap battles, but somehow even more lame than two tatted-up meth heads stuttering and sputtering and spitting ad hominems against each other in parking lots behind Denny’s the country over. Verbalase had the idea, in his infinite wisdom, that he could take this already questionable concept and make it even more insufferable. After all, if a bunch of dorks spitting and huffing and clicking their tongues like African bushmen wasn’t entertaining enough, surely people would care if it wasn’t just two no-name street performers, but rather Mickey Mouse and Spongebob.
Well, the jokes on me, I guess, because the video currently has twenty five million views and, even though it took several years and a handful of episodes to pick up steam, later episodes were regularly scoring hundreds of millions of hits at their peak and net Verbalase a pretty penny.
And, to be clear, I don’t mean to disparage the clear talent Verbalase has for his craft of choice, or anyone who can actually beatbox with any modicum of skill. Clearly, it’s not something just anyone, let alone me, can do, and I’m sure that mastering it is no mean feat. The same goes for battle rapping, which, while I have been known to spit some white hot bars from time to time, I definitely cannot do on the fly, unprompted, and without hours of preparation and rehearsal.
But, the whole endeavor - it’s pretty silly. We can all admit that, right? And, for as much as I’m clowning on the guy, I’m not saying that he can’t do what he does or that he’s a bad person for doing it or that, somehow, his goofy cartoon beatbox series is somehow a detriment to wider society. It’s not that serious. This is a light-hearted story about a YouTuber that stepped in some digital shit, not someone who committed a crime. I don’t think Verbalase is a bad person.
I think it’s safe to say, however, that he is not, er… well, he’s not exactly the sharpest of individuals. Certainly when it comes to management of his finances.
If you watch the first installment of his cartoon beatboxing series, you can see just how crude and shoddy the animation is. A year ago, Verbalase released a remaster of the video, displaying a rather marked and jarring improvement in not just the quality of animation, but art and sound production as well.
In his Discord server - which, if you know anything about how public Discord servers for any content creator of any size tend to trend, you’re probably already aware of what direction this is going - Verbalase disclosed that these videos cost him anywhere between thirty five to fifty five thousand dollars per production. And that’s not for the newer ones, which I estimate probably cost substantially more. I get that you have to spend money to make money, but fifty five thousand dollars is more than the average per capita income in Washington state, and more than the average household income in Mississippi, Arkansas, and West Virginia. I suspect that he did not need to be spending that much per video. There’s conflicting information about Verbalase’s net worth, which range from claims of one million to five million, though, for reasons that will become apparent, there’s a strong likelihood that these estimates are grossly overestimated.
Verbalase collects income through sponsored TikTok videos, sponsored product placement in some of his videos (which can easily pay five thousand dollars a pop), and making personalized videos on the platform Cameo, which, again he charges anywhere from $875 to a grand for video shout-outs that only go for about a minute long. Looking to make your little son Throckmorton’s birthday special? Well, Verbalase will make a beatbox just for him for the low, low price of a colonoscopy. And, hey - I’m not knocking the hustle. If you’re good at something, don’t do it for free1. But, still - kind of silly.
The lion’s share of Verbalase’s wealth comes from YouTube ad revenue, which, if estimates are correct, could have amounted to a pretty chunk of change at the peak of the Cartoon Beatbox Battle series’ popularity. With views that range between twenty-something million to over a hundred million, I can’t imagine that he wasn’t making a decent sum - at least enough to keep whatever animation team has been making these videos for him well paid.
However, the unfortunate rub is that both the YouTube algorithm, the YouTube AdSense platform (the system by which creators can monetize their videos), and the YouTube audience are all notoriously fickle mistresses. YouTube is well known for making sharp, almost violent adjustments to their algorithm, which can result in videos that were once highly promoted and circulated all but vanishing from search results with a thoroughness that would make Stalin envious.
AdSense, too, is constantly tinkered with, famously stripping wide swathes of inoffensive videos of their monetization for marginal, and often times nonexistent, offenses against YouTube’s terms of services, rendering creators unable to turn a profit from their videos.
These two factors have tanked creators and channels much larger than VerbalAse.
There are very, very few creators that have managed to sustain a career on YouTube without heavily leaning into personal merchandise sales or other business ventures, and even fewer enjoy prolonged periods of success. Even the biggest names on the platform often have years at which their popularity peaks, and, afterwards, they aren’t unsuccessful, per say, but their audience and engagement numbers shrink precipitously, leaving only a core base of viewers that continue to sustain them. There aren’t many YouTubers that experience the wild success of MrBeast out there, and, even then, I think MrBeast - real name Jimmy Donaldson - has succeeded because of his outright obsessive and scientific study of how to perfectly game the YouTube system. Business partners and collaborators have often spoken of Donaldson’s intensive attention to detail and borderline idiot savant levels of social media savvy.
One of Verbalase’s most damning mistakes that brought his rising stock to a standstill was that, at the very zenith of Cartoon Beatbox Battle’s popularity - he stopped. No warning. No explanation. Not so much as an update video. The series went on an unannounced hiatus that completely and totally stalled his momentum as a creator. If there’s one thing you do not do as a YouTube creator, it’s halt production when things are going well - your videos will fall out of the algorithm’s circulation, and you will suffer as a result. Like most jobs or careers, YouTube is something you can just stop at your leisure and decide to pick up again down the road and expect to enjoy the same level of success you did before.
This isn’t to say that Verbalase wasn’t making content. The guy was uploading scads of smaller, less intensive videos, beatbox remixes, behind-the-scenes peeks at his production, and a whole lot of short-form content for YouTube’s TikTok-esque shorts feature (most of which were already posted on his TikTok account and re-uploaded to YouTube) but his main bread and butter - Cartoon Beatbox Battles - simply stopped. Unfortunately for Verbalase, people did not want lessons on how to recreate the Thanos beatbox for themselves.
This was another meme that made the rounds on TikTok and other video sharing sites, and another one that me and my friend’s made an inside joke out of that we promptly beat into the ground. I can’t tell you how many times I opened a spoilered video on our own group chat to find this crudely animated Thanos slobbering all over himself. And I laughed every time.
But Verbalase’s audience proved to be a tougher nut to crack. His viewership wanted to see Baby Groot and Pikachu spit bars at each other, and they wanted it fucking animated, god damn it, and if they weren’t getting that? They didn’t give a damn.
After a nearly year long pause, Verbalase began to release new episodes of Cartoon Beatbox Battles, but the damage was already done. Looking at his view counts, the momentum was lost, and viewership declined precipitously. It may sound a bit strange to say that only two million views is a pitiful number for his videos to take in, but when you take into account that he has five million subscribers and previous installments were regularly achieving over ten to fifty times those numbers… well, it may not look all that grim, but it doesn’t look good, either. Over the past year or so, Verbalase’s regular uploads struggle to crack one hundred thousand views, and a good portion of his newer content often only average around thirty to fifty thousand hits per video. Now that is dire.
This resulted in Verbalase uploading this video in December of 2023.
In it, Verbalase makes an appeal to his viewers to help animate the newest installment of Cartoon Beatbox Battles, which, he confirms, is effectively dead at the moment. To do this, he requests the aid of other content creators, asking them to contribute their own piece of video for his the next installment, which apparently is that of Luigi from Super Mario Brothers beatboxing against Tails from Sonic the Hedgehog. I know, I know - that concept just sounds like a hoot and a half to me, too.
He isn’t just accepting animations, either - stop-motion, live action, 3D animation, anything goes, and, out of nine contributors who’s content will make up the video, one will get the coveted prize… are you sitting down? Well, the winner will recieve a signed plush toy. Of Verbalase.
Don’t everybody rush to contribute, now. I know I have a lot of creative people, in my audience, so, if you feel like throwing your hat in the ring… well, I wish you the best of luck. You have my undying support. I really hope you win that signed plush of a forty year old man who pretends to the Joker and beatboxes on YouTube. Questing knights in search of the Holy Grail could scarcely dream of such a sumptuous prize.
Oh, and as for all the other contributors - Verbalase will give you credit for your bit, a big thank you, and a whole lot of gratitude. No money. Not even a plush. Just exposure. You know, that thing that artists and creatives apparently eat, since that seems to be the only thing most people want to pay them in. And, uh… well, you also get bragging rights that you animated Luigi beatboxing Tails from Sonic the Hedgehog. Truly, you’ll be the coolest kid on the playground. Or perhaps the most coveted lunatic in the insane asylum.
And, look - I get it. Exposure is better than nothing. But when it’s exposure from a channel that’s on a steep and perhaps terminal decline, done by a guy who’s now made a name for himself as the guy who - well, we’ll get to it, but let’s just say that if there’s one thing artists and creatives don’t particularly like, it’s having their hard work paid for in exposure.
This video raised a lot of questions. Not really among Verbalase’s dwindling audience, but more from outside observers. The guy admits that he isn’t getting the viewership to justify continuing the series or further investment in it, and, to be perfectly blunt, he’s basically begging for free hand-outs from other creatives to make it happen. He claims that it’s the big bad algorithm beating him down, but, again - I’m not sure if that’s the entire story.
If you want to know how this move was received, not even a full month later, Verbalase uploaded this video, revealing that the future of his beatboxing battle videos - at least, for the time being - is puppets.
Because playing with puppets is cheaper than paying animators, you know. And the only thing more entertaining than watching cartoon characters beatboxing is watching cartoon characters beatboxing… but they’re puppets.
Are you excited? I know I am.
Ultimately, this raised the question of how? And more importantly - why? Though I can’t find instances of this on his social media pages, apparently, Mr. Ase was rather fond of showing off his wealth on his Discord server to his fans. Y’know - showin’ the paypiggies where their hard-earned cash was going when they subscribed to his Patreon or paid for a thirty-second beatbox clip.
It’s been corroborated that Verbalase had recently bought a house in the New York City area - a place famously known for it’s affordable, reasonable cost of living - as well as a new car, the make and model of which I couldn’t find, but apparently he was very proud of it. I’ve heard rumors that it was a Tesla, which boast a price tag of seventy-five grand for a base new base model, though, again, I’ve seen no hard evidence of it.
More than that, however, Verbalase was very proud to announce that he’d purchased a mascot costume. Y’know - the kind that walk-around characters at Disney parks wear. The kind underpaid seventeen year olds working at Chuck E. Cheese have to put on to suffer untold abuse at the hands of grade schoolers on a sugar high. What kind of mascot costume did Verbalase buy?
Well, it’s one of himself. But as a cartoon.
Which is totally something that normal people do. Personally, I’ve always wanted a big, unwieldy, bulky mass of felt and foam designed to resemble some goggle-eyed cartoon simulacra of myself to sweat my nuts off in.
Not content to simply wear the skinned pelt of his cartoon-sona, Verbalase also purchased another mascot costume - this one of Mario’s brother Luigi, which, if the frequency with which Luigi appears in Verbalase’s content, I can only assume is his comfort character, or something. My man really likes the green plumber.
And, then - he bought another one. You know. As you do.
Nothing says wise financial decision like buying a third mascot costume of Piccolo from Dragon Ball, wouldn’t you agree? He is not beating the allegations that black dudes fucking love Dragon Ball, either.
And, just in case you thought this wasn’t a problem, he also purchased one of Mickey Mouse. Like, a really, really nice one, too. This wasn’t the rinky-dink, ratty-ass, budget-friendly Michael Mouse get-up you order off of Aliexpress, either - the kind that crackheads wear in Times Square so they can photobomb your pictures and then demand you pay them a hundred bucks because you supposedly took a picture with them.
Oh, no. Verbalase is a lot of things, but he is not a slouch, and the man does not skimp when it comes to his mascot costumes. It’s only the finest of cartoon costumes for Mister Ase. Though the screencap is extremely crusty because TikTok search results on Google images refuse to load in higher definition, for some reason, but you can still clearly see that his Mickey get-up is pretty high quality, probably closer to something you could find in one of the parks that what you see slamming bottles of Mad Dog 20/20 in the back alleys of Manhattan.
How much did all this put Mr. Ase out? Well, I decided to do some research into how much these costumes cost. As per this Google search, you can see that there is what I’d consider to be a comically absurd amount of bootleg Luigi costumes for sale on various sites.
As you can also see, for the reasonable price of a small medical payment, you, too, can have a terrible Luigi skin-suit made of carcinogenic polyester fashioned by the expert touch of Bangladeshi child laborers. Again - don’t you all rush out to buy one at once.
Personally, I’m thinking about snagging this one for myself.
Not for any particular reason. I think I’m allowed to look cute, every once in a while.
Anyways, I can’t find exactly where Verbalase purchased his costume, but given the professional quality of it, I suspect that he may have had it custom made. Which is a thing you can do, if you really want. There are a number of services out there that offer custom commissioned mascot costumes, since there’s a lot of high schools out there and each and every one of them needs a nasty, sweat-soaked, bobble-headed cartoon goon to run around the field in one-hundred and ten degree heat, reeking like sweat, body odor, and unwashed laundry. I remember my neighbor was our high school mascot and she let me try on the head once - it smelled like puke inside. She swore it wasn't because of her, and I believed her since I could tell the thing hadn't been washed since before we were born.
Let’s also not forget that furries have created a cottage industry of manufacturing high-quality, pimped out mascot costumes that rival anything Disney’s Imagineers might make. You’d be surprised all the tech you can fit into one. One time at A-Kon in Dallas, I met a furry who’s fursuit was a fat possum or some shit that had a small air conditioning unit on the inside, which, in Texas, is probably the smart move since I’m fairly sure that it gets hot enough to cook a pizza in one of those things during the summer heat. Just your low-end, bog standard fursuits run about sixteen to eighteen hundred dollars, but real dedicated perverts furries can and will spend upwards of twenty thousand dollars on those things, if not more. Objectively, the craftmanship is impressive. I just wish the people making them used their talents for the betterment of society.
But, again - can’t knock the hustle.
When similar searches for a Piccolo costume on par with Verbalase’s failed to return any results that weren’t just men with bad green face-paint jobs wearing bathrobes, I knew that I was on the right track. There’s almost no doubt in my mind that he had these custom made. I mean, he already had to get the costume depicting himself as imagined by a Japanese pervert made from the ground up - why not the rest?
So, how much do these costumes cost? Well, all the sites I visited asked me to submit an idea to receive a quote. I knew from that alone that this was not going to be a cheap endeavor, but, for the sake of scientific exploration and my unquenchable thirst for information that men should not know, I decided to plow forward and do my due diligence before accusing Verbalase of spending the average household income of a West Virginian on costumes of cartoon characters. I shall cast no stones without proper evidence, first. I am an ape with principles. Since I don’t have infinite time to waste on invest in this endeavor, I decided I’d only go through with one service, just to get a ball-park estimate. I went with PromoBearUSA (which, despite the name, is Dutch-owned), since their own website had the icon of a smiling cartoon bear, and it amused me. They’re trusted by over 2,000 clients worldwide since 2006.
With customers like Cheetos, DuoLingo, and Northwest University, I couldn't pass it up. What, you never heard of Northwest University? Well, it’s only the largest private Christian college in Washington state, based in Kirkland. You know; like the Costco brand2. If it’s good enough for them, well, it’s good enough for me.
Now, we’re cooking with gas, my friends. You’re only getting the most in-depth, thoroughly and scientifically researched content on Substack right here.
In order to get them to give me a quote, I was required to engage in some duplicitous actions. Normally, I am an ape of honor, but in order to acquire the information I seek, sometimes, a monkey must engage in a bit of creative storytelling.
Here is what I wrote them.
Hello, I run a small local tutoring service in my area and after my friend purchased a mascot costume to do some local promoting, I'm convinced that doing the same would be a big boon to my business. I feel as if a mascot would bring a certain unique je ne sais quois to my business, which is why I've settled on a chimpanzee as my animal of choice, befitting the organization's name. What I have envisioned is a cartoon chimpanzee that wears a labcoat, glasses (circle lens glasses, to be particular!), and a graduation cap to denote intelligence. A large head is a must for comedic purposes. Utilizing AI technology, I have created a rough mock-up of what I had in mind. It isn't one for one, but it's close.
I am also 6'3 if this will help determine how much material will be needed to create this suit. I have no deadline, but I would like it completed within Q2 of this year, or Q3 at the latest. I also am looking to keep my budget within $5,000 dollars, but I can go higher if need be. If you need any more information, please let me know. Thank you and I look forward to hearing from you.
The image below was created utilizing cutting-edge artificial intelligence image generating programs, which I used to bring my idea to life.
Truly, I am pushing this technology to the brink of its capabilities. So, I entered the information.
And, then - I waited.
After sending this request for a quote, I went to the website of Bam! Mascots with IMPACT!, enticed by their powerful and mighty name, and realized that I had probably made the wrong choice in being charmed by PromoBear’s whimsical ursine mascot, which I realized also happens to suspiciously be the color of fresh urine. Very questionable. I felt as if I’d been duped as I perused the offerings of Bam! Mascots with IMPACT!
School mascots? Sports mascots? Brand mascots? I was seized by the need to know more. These mascots features of Bam! Mascots with IMPACT! truly did have, as stated, impact. Even the name left me shaken. So, again - I reached out with the same request in order to expand my sample size. Unlike Verbalase’s costumes, receiving a quote was free, right? So, why not?
I felt a pang of guilt for perhaps wasting the person on the receiving end of this email’s time for a lark, but, at the same time, they gotta work, right? I’m just giving them something to do. I’m keeping them employed. They should be thanking me. A 15% promo code included with my quote would be appreciated.
After I sent my request to Bam! Mascots with IMPACT! I realized that, yet again, I had overlooked the true paragon of mascot costume manufacturing. Out of curiosity, I clicked on the site for Olympus Mascots, which I hadn’t bothered to at first since they lacked a fun, smiling bear icon, and their name was not as arresting as Bam!
What I saw made my jaw drop.
Is that Tony the Tiger? Had I overlooked the company that not only made the costume for the Tony the Tiger, but also the designers of the vaunted Colonel Sanders mascot costume?
Perhaps I’d been too quick to judge. Truly, Olympus mascots was living up to their lofty name, and crafting expert costumes that even the mighty Zeus would look upon with envy. And, knowing that guy, probably want to know carnally, since that dude seemed to want to jump everything that moved in the Peloponnese back in the day.
It occurred to me that I, like Verbalase, may have a problem.
My investigation into the matter of Verbalase’s costumes was growing far more extensive than I could have imagined. As I feverishly and eagerly awaited my response from these websites, I realized - in my pursuit of knowledge to uncover Verbalase’s spending habits, I totally lost the thread of what this article is about.
Well, okay, I didn’t get too far off topic, because, whatever the cost of all these costumes might have been, there is really one fact that remains beyond a shadow of a doubt; clearly, Verbalase likes spending money on what most would call frivolous things. I’m sure he would argue that, no, it was of the utmost importance that he acquire a professional-grade mascot costume of a secondary Dragon Ball Z character to wear to anime conventions, but I don’t think he’d admit that it was done on the cheap. The man likes to spend money. And that’s really at the crux of the matter.
You see, on January 11th, rumors would begin to surface that VerbalAse once lush bank account was all goose eggs. The man, people were saying, was bankrupt. He certainly did not have the money to continue his flagship series, and was rapidly pivoting towards a much lower cost alternative. Maybe he was holding back enough funds to keep his house, his car, his costumes, and any other toys he might have paid for from falling into the clutches of repo men, but the war chest for his YouTube channel was, for all intents and purposes, empty.
To restate the oft-quoted Hemingway line - “How did you go bankrupt? Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”
You might be inclined to think that Verbalase’s suddenly was spending way too fucking much on mascot costumes. I still suspect that, whatever the ultimate price tag for four (and supposedly more) costumes may amount to, those purchases did not help keep his bank account flush with that sweet, sweet YouTube dosh.
After hearing that, you might be inclined to think that Verbalase didn’t have a suddenly, and it was all gradual.
Well, that isn’t exactly true, either. There definitely was a suddenly in this story. You see, it was suspected that Verbalase was in dire financial straits when he began to panhandle his audience for free content. It was confirmed on January 11th, when a several second long scrap of animation was posted to Twitter - sorry, X, featuring the character of Charlie Morningstar from the upcoming animated series Hazbin Hotel.
This little snippet of animation made a lot waves upon being posted. Partially because Hazbin Hotel is a series that has been in production for a long time, and the much-hyped release of the full series is slated to premier on Amazon Prime on January 19th of 2024, which, for future readers, is also the day I have strategically decided to publish the article. It was also because it depicted Charlie Morningstar driven quite literally insane with lust and chasing after a certain someone to this song that I had never heard before, to, um… well, y’know. She didn't wanna just take them to her hotel. Oh, no - she wanted to give them the full V.I.P. treatment… let him into her deluxe suite, if you catch my drift.
Now, the animation itself is not explicit. At no point does Charlie yank off her lacy unmentionables and show her demonic bajingo in all of its sinful glory, but it gets close enough with her strutting around in nothing but her delicates. It could be safely classified as risque and was unquestionably made to be deposited directly into someone's spank-bank.
Oh, by the way, this is Charlie.
Cute, right? Well, I mean… if you’re into that sort of thing. I guess. I wouldn’t know. She doesn’t do anything for me. Honest.
Nominally, she’s a demon - hence the name Morningstar - but, in my opinion, she kind of looks more like a clown than a demon, though, the difference between the two may be thinner than most might think. After all, regular readers may remember how I feel about clowns.
Well, Verbalase certainly fucking thought this little demon strumpet was a Grade A cutie, because the character in question that Charlie is chasing with hearts in her eyes is his cartoon avatar.
Yeah. Fucking this one.
Almost immediately, the entire thing was met with equal parts disbelief, ridicule, and laughter. No one really knew what the thing was, or why it existed, but everyone knew that Verbalase had to be behind it to some degree, because no one else - fucking no one else - would have commissioned an animation where his Original the Character cartoon persona is chased down by a minxy demon clown girl other than Verbalase himself. I mean, would you pay to have someone else's self-insert score with a cartoon baddie? That would be, like, cartoon self-cucking. Or something. None of these words are in the Bible, by the way. I feel like I should point that out.
And, after not two, not three, but four (and rumored to be more) mascot costume purchases, let’s just say that most people were already beginning to suspect the guy was not above spending exorbitant amounts of money on ridiculously, almost sinfully self-indulgent shit that appealed to him and him alone.
Well, within, like, three hours, someone came forward with the entire video.
Supposedly, this was someone who’s friend worked on the animation, which is how they had the whole thing. To almost everyone’s surprise, the video ran a full three minutes long, and was even more explicit than the leaked clip. And when I mean explicit, I mean that Charlie strips down to her infernal skivvies and shakes that bare clown butt for Cartoon!Verbalase, who's tied to a fucking bed and protesting the whole time. Y’know, like he isn’t really into getting some clown-demon strange. It ends, quite literally, with Charlie forcing herself on Verbalase.
Which is, uh… well, it’s not a good look for a guy who’s audience is children, who’s Discord server is full of minors, and who regularly runs around conventions hobnobbing with little kids dressed like fucking Luigi.
Do I even need to explain why?
Within short order, insiders close to the animator who’d worked on the project confirmed that, yes, the animation had been privately commissioned by Verbalase himself, which was also verified by users within Verbalase's Discord chat - receipts will follow shortly.
It was also quickly confirmed that the price tag for this little piece of self-indulgent smut was fifty-thousand dollars.
Needless to say, the denizens of the internet did what they do best and quickly set about doing what they do best and absolutely dunking on the Verbalase harder than Vince Carter at the top of his career. For being such a niche topic, the resulting flood of memes has been simply delectable. Here’s some choice cuts.
And, because I can’t make my own gifs or save TikTok videos, I’m just going to add this caption myself.
Worse still, the cavalcade of damning information continued to roll out as users from Verbalase’s Discord confirmed that, yes, about two years ago, Verbalase himself had disclosed that he had paid a hefty chunk of change for a big private project. People at the time figured that he was just investing in more Cartoon Beat Box Battle content. But no.
He was paying half a hundred grand for self-insert cartoon soft-core pornography. It’s so god damned ridiculous that I almost want to say it comes all the way around from being utterly absurd to based, but it really doesn’t.
Now, the thing is, Verbalase is a grown man. He controls his own purse strings. He can spend his money on whatever he pleases. That’s his prerogative. If he really wants to spend his money on masturbatory self-insert animations of him swapping spit with a demon chick, well… I certainly wouldn’t recommend it, but it’s a free country. He can do that.
But, to lean on this overused quote:
And I think it’s pretty fucking clear that Verbalase shouldn’t have paid fifty bands for three minutes of his personal coomer daydream, because it was also confirmed - again, thanks to people in his own Discord server - that this personal project he’d told them about had been paid with money that was originally supposed to be used to fund more Cartoon Beatbox Battles. In fact, Cartoon Beatbox Battle’s conspicuous hiatus began - well, wouldn’t you know it - around that time.
In his Discord server, he literally said the choice ‘bankrupted’ him. I don’t think that he meant that literally. I don’t think that he’s literally, actually filing for bankruptcy as we speak… though, I could be wrong. But I do think the guy’s in a world of financial shit. If he’s not bankrupt now, I wouldn’t be surprised if he is in the foreseeable future. That YouTube cheddar may not be rolling in, but the mortgage on that house certainly will be.
So, let’s recap. Just so we’re all on the same page.
Verbalase took $50,000 dollars that was supposed to go towards continuing his most profitable, popular, and successful series, spent it on a soft-core pornographic animation that was strictly for his own private enjoyment, which left him unable to continue the very same series that funded his success, and has, for all intents and purposes, killed his YouTube career, which he is now panhandling to his dwindling audience in order to hopefully give it a shot in the arm.
Oh, and all of this happened on his birthday, too. Happy birthday, Verbalase!
As if this situation couldn’t get worse for the poor man, as Twitter goons combed his Discord server for evidence in order to string this entire fiasco together, they discovered some… less than flattering posts Mister Ase made in the past. Now, people were willing to forgive the video mishap as a silly but ultimately harmless goof. One he was absolutely never going to live down, but, at the same time, not really bad. Oh, no - these leaked messages from the walled garden of Verbalase’s Discord is what brought down the true fury of the cancel-mob.
It would appear that Verbalase - gasp - said the thing. He said the well-known white supremacist hyper-reactionary shibboleth that only vicious racists and fascists would dare udder - Get Woke, Go Broke. Worse still, he said… man, you’re really not gonna believe this - that children shouldn’t be exposed to lascivious material.
Most of this proof of Verbalase being a right-wing fascist acolyte seems to be due to some comments he made criticizing Disney form politicizing their parks and leaning a little too heavy into the Pride marketing schtick. In other screencaps, he’s also seen stating on multiple occasions that he doesn’t think children should be exposed to that kind of material, and in others, he outright says that he dislikes identity politics and doesn’t think there should be any room for it in children’s media.
All of this leads me to the sad conclusion that… well, I didn’t want to say it, but… guys… I think Verbalase might just be… a political moderate.
I can’t believe that the guy who dresses up like Piccolo from Dragon Ball Z and makes animated cartoon beatbox videos doesn’t really care about politics one way or another and pretty much just wants to be left alone to think about his favorite things; cartoons, beatboxing, and, apparently, sweet, sweet animated demon hoes.
Sarcasm aside, I really don’t see anything offensive or even particularly right-wing about any of these takes. These are the same beliefs that notorious milquetoast fence-sitter Tim Pool3 holds, who famously always tries to straddle the line between left and right. Really, Verbalase just seems to have said that he didn’t particularly want drag queens in thongs twerking for children - or perhaps man-children, in his case - in Disneyland, which, I mean… yeah? I don’t think most people do. But, I often forget that we live in an age where some people think the highest form of public good is ensuring that outright pornographic material can be accessed by kindergartners in school libraries, and wanting to keep adult content for, y’know, adults is something of a transgressive view to hold.
This queerphobic rhetoric, as it’s being called - the exact difference it and homophobic rhetoric is unclear to me - is somewhat ironic, given that Hazbin Hotel and it’s sister show, Helluva Boss, are stacked top to bottom with homosexual relations. Even Verbalase’s beloved demonic waifu, Charlie, is canonically biseuxal4 and has a dedicated girlfriend.
Tough break for the beatboxer from outer space, I know. Also, given the sheer amount of homosexuality in the show, I must conclude one of two things; either Verbalase did watch Helluva Boss and the pilot for Hazbin Hotel and didn’t mind the copious amounts of gay demons, excessive swearing, drug use, and rape jokes, or he didn’t watch any of it and just really, really got the hots for Charlie’s based on design along.
With this in mind, Verbalase’s apparent dislike of adult content in children’s spaces is being mocked as hypocritical since he did… well, what he did, but at the same time… is it really? One must keep in mind that it does seem as if he never intended for this to be seen by anyone other than himself. This was not a video he made to be viewed by his large audience of minors. It’s adult content made for an adult.
And I especially don’t think it’s hypocritical for someone to enjoy or consume media made for adults and also say that children shouldn’t be exposed to it. I enjoy The Sopranos, but I’m not a hypocrite for thinking that it shouldn’t be broadcast on Disney Channel or made mandatory viewing for six year olds, and, to be blunt, it would be stupid if someone tried to make the claim that I was. I really think that it’s an argument that could only be made in bad faith.
Again - for whatever reason, this private video was leaked. There’s even rumors that someone involved with the animation used it to extort Verbalase for money, threatening to either delete it before giving him a file copy or leak it to the public if not given even more cash. Again, there’s a lot of dubious claims swirling around this whole brouhaha, and since Verbalase has said nothing to address any of it yet, there’s no way of telling if he’s the victim of extortion or just bad luck and his own poor financial decisions.
At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter. Stupid as the whole affair is… I don’t think Verbalase did anything wrong. Well, ethically, at least. Now, I don’t think he did anything right here, either, that’s for damn sure, and I’m not trying to write apologetics for him, but, so far as I see, he didn’t commit some grand offense or unforgivable transgression that warrants his banishment from polite society. It would be different if he was showing this video and passing it around to children, but he wasn’t. At least, so far as anyone can tell so far. The guy let the wrong head make financial decisions. People have been spending unconscionable amounts of money on commissions of racy, smutty, lewd art even before the internet was a thing. I’m sure more than one German baron in the 16th century drove his once august family into ruin paying artists to paint portraits of lovely ladies showing a bit of ankle in a time where that was enough to get a man hot under the powdered wig.
Of course, that doesn’t justify anything he did; I’m just saying that I don’t think the guy is some evil, reprehensible, vile creature made of sin incarnate. Stupid? Yes. Evil? Probably not.
Ultimately, I don’t think he hurt anyone but himself, here. How bad? That remains to be seen. A lot of the fallout is still settling and, given that the consequences of his decision to dump so much money into a very ill-advised personal investment - investments, really - have been playing out for the better part of two years, I think a lot of the worst damage has already been done to his bottom line.
I don’t think that Verbalase’s career is dead, per say; people have been cancelled over actual crimes and not just financial mismanagement and a couple of controversial comments. He appeared to be doing fine even before his viral success and Cartoon Beatbox Battles of victory, and I assume that, even when YouTube gravy train grinds to it’s final stop, he’ll just go back to spitting fat bars in the open-air sewer that is the New York City subway for tired salary-men and the indigent. But he might have to go back and get a day job. And he’ll always be remembered as that guy that spent fifty bands on a soft-core smut AMV.
I’m not sure which is worse.
Now, I didn’t write about this story because it was important. It really isn’t. More than anything, I found it riotously funny that someone was down so bad for fictional demon strange that they effectively bungled their online career for it, and I just wanted to share it for a laugh. In a week, there will most likely be some other YouTuber or TikToker of notable repute that does something stupid of equal or greater magnitude, and Verbalase will be left the languish in obscurity while the internet collectively dogpiles on the next fool who fumbled their bag.
But, if there’s any moral to this story, it’s probably this; be smart with your money. If you suddenly come into possession of a stack, don’t start using it to finance all your weird desires, like a full menagerie of cartoon mascot costumes or an animation that should have just been a fan-fiction published under a pseudonym on Archive of Our Own. The internet has enabled the creation of an entirely new class of Nouveau Riche on a scale heretofore unseen; people who were completely unprepared for newfound wealth, totally unaware of how to manage it, and lack even the most basic financial literacy skills. If you ever find yourself suddenly rolling in internet bucks, just remember - one day, that gravy train will stop pulling into the station, but your bills are always going to arrive right on time.
That, and for the love of God, do not make a public Discord server for your fans if you’re a big-name content creator. Every time that happens, literally every time I’ve ever seen it done, it always ends with it being combed for unflattering messages that are inevitably taken out of context and used to nail the person in question to the wall at the first sign of shifting winds, and pretty much all those supposed fans are the first person to dig take their knives out and go full open season on the creator. This goes doubly if minors are involved. It does seem that, for all his mistakes, Verbalase did take keeping his Discord server strictly safe-for-work and minor-friendly very seriously, but he could have saved himself a lot of trouble by not letting minors in to begin with. He could have saved himself an even bigger headache by not opening the damn thing, full stop.
Oh - and if you really, really must express your love for a fictional character, regardless of who they might be… just write a fucking fan-fiction, or something. It’s cheaper, and you won’t be the laughing stock of the internet for a week.
In closing, I also have to point out that it is absolutely hilarious to me that, out of all the franchises that Verbalase could have picked a character to make his dearly beloved waifu worthy of spending fifty grand on, it just had to be one from Hazbin Hotel.
I am not going into the dirty details now since this article is already much, much longer than I anticipated it being, but, suffice to say, for a show that’s been in development for over five fucking years and only has one episode currently available to watch, I have never - never - seen a series with as much fandom drama as this one despite having one twenty-two minute animated pilot to go off of. It’s incredible, really. A real anomaly. Maybe there is really something truly demonic about it, given the way that it apparently drives people to madness.
I’d really like to talk about it more, since everyone involved in the stupid production and the fandom seems clinically insane, but, that’s neither here nor there. Hazbin Hotel may be the first fandom to have the dubious honor of boasting enough batshit crazy content to make a Top Ten Bruh Moments list - with honorable mentions - before the show’s even been released. If you add in creator Vivenne Medrano’s first animated series (that’s also currently limping along in a troubled production), Helluva Boss… yeah, no, you’d definitely have the fandom that went the most insane in the shortest amount of time. I certainly think there’s a not insignificant chance that Medrano actually did make a bargain with some infernal entity, since it would explain why she’s had such raging success with two shows that have been in production turmoil since inception, one that barely got off the ground, the other which was so contentious that she was nearly booted out of her own creative team, and all the while performing a delicate balancing act as a bête noire for both the left and right side of the political spectrum for different reasons.
I also just… don’t know what anyone would expect from shows where the cast is almost 100% demons, it takes place in Hell, and angels are the unambiguous bad guys. The series has the word Luciferian stamped all over it big, bold, bright red letters. Of course, the creator’s take on Hell is… well, it’s certainly novel, that’s for sure. But, I guess it shouldn’t really be all that surprising. After all, I think Hazbin Hotel is one of, if not the first, animated programs to be entirely formulated on and made by a creator who cut their teeth on Tumblr, but… that’s a story for another time.
Maybe next time.
Oh! And, uh - by the way; I should probably give you a heads up that if you see a little animation make the rounds here in the next couple of days featuring a certain cartoon ape being tied up and walked on a leash by the goth werewolf bitch from Helluva Boss to the tune of Tom Jones’ Sex Bomb… look, man, it was another guy calling himself Yakubian Ape and also pretends to be a sentient monkey on Substack. It wasn’t me, okay? I have too many bills to pay for something like that.
As of this writing, I have not recieved any quotes for my genius monkey mascot costume. I will keep this space updated when information is available.
Keep that in mind when you read all these lovely free articles I publish for you… ingrates.
Though, Costco is headquarted out of Issequah, which is a thirty minute drive through some of the most dense traffic in the Seattle area.
I mean this in jest - I like Tim Pool.
I feel like I remember her being bisexual when I watched the pilot many moons ago. She could be lesbian. But, also, I don’t really care.
I can't believe I read all that. It was like reading a thriller novel about one of the stupidest goofs in recent history, and I couldn't stop. Good work, sir. Thank you for what you do.
I like that there are still old-fashioned crazy folks like this guy. These days the insane people always seem to be wrapped up in violence, drugs, cults or some kind of criminal element. Verbalase is just a harmless (and hilarious) nutcase and I’m happy he’s out there being a weirdo.