The creator has a history of both erratic behavior and faking pranks for views
Two months after Yousef”FouseyTube” Erakat threw a devastating concert at LA that ended at a bomb threat, the YouTube star says he is giving up his station with 10 million readers. “It’s not worth it,” Erakat said in a movie uploaded last week. While the confession seems real and heartfelt, Erakat’s history of dishonesty in pursuit of viewpoints has left fans wondering if his talk of suicide is real or not.
Erakat is a controversial YouTuber who’s well known for making prank videos and”social experiments,” some of which he admits he falsified viewpoints. In the last year, Erakat is now a source of ridicule on the internet for emerging manic, if not borderline oblivious, in footage he yells about his life, dreams, and fame. His erratic behavior got so intense that fans, along with other big YouTubers, flew people near to him to get involved and talk him into getting some help, since it seemed like the star was dealing with some mental health difficulties.
It appears this negative attention got into the YouTuber, who last week announced a clear departure in a video which has now been taken down. In this footage, Erakat claimed he wanted to kill himself, even taking the opportunity. The catalyst was that the overwhelming negativity it got bad enough he could not deal with any important feedback on his videos, or anywhere else, for that matter. Last month, Erakat deleted all his social media reports.
“I really don’t have social websites anymore,” Erakat states in the video. “I don’t upload videos myself anymore. You wanna understand why? Because whenever… my brain saw a negative remark, it triggered my thoughts of suicide immediately, because that’s an issue I have. Especially now, being off of medications, and having the ability to feel so freely for the first time in my life — the moment I saw anything negative, even if I read one hundred thousand positive things, my brain got triggered.”
Part of what attracted him to the brink, the YouTuber says, was that he was always chasing the incorrect things just to make his station grow or to get attention from audiences. Recently, he says, he understood that this wasn’t the reply to his problem.
Money wasn’t going to make me happy, subscribers was never going to make me joyful, views were never going to make me happy, since I wasn’t happy within,” Erakat says. Erakat claims that he’s leaving supporting YouTube and will open up his channel to become a community platform which will be preserved. Rather than uploading his own movies, his audiences can submit their footage and produce the station into whatever they would like.
“Whoever’s palms it lands , I hope it provides them whatever it is they are searching and longing for, because it served me personally and I am pleased to let them move,” Erakat says. In a follow-up movie , Erakat said he had been doing this partially because he receives daily emails from gifted lovers who ask him to get opportunities, so he watched giving the station away as a way to give back to the community that helped build him up in the first location.
It’s been a week since this announcement, and throughout this time, the FouseyTube channel has hosted three movies by three different low-profile founders. Each is introduced by a friend of Erakat, that explains that from today on, the FouseyTube station will upload a user-submitted movie on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Telling people that they can start thinking about FouseyTube as more of a platform, the friend says,”We’re hacking the machine to get exposure for everyone that deserves it.
The movies so far have been a bizarre combination, with the very first upload promising people that they will discover how to sneak into a school party. While the lifestyle vlog is not inspired, it’s at least marginally entertaining — unlike the next.
Throughout FouseyTubefailed failed occasion back in July, the YouTuber jumped around, destroying the car and damaging and increased on top of his Uber motorist’s vehicle. While that unfolded, the YouTuber told a crowd that gathered around him that he’d buy his Uber drive a new automobile that was even better than the one that he was trashing. Lo and behold, that’s exactly what happens in the second community upload into the station, which can be recorded by the Uber driver’s son.
Jose, the Uber motorist, does thank Erakat for buying him a new vehicle, but the entire thing seems forced — he does not really look excited, for one, but additionally, the entire thing comes across as a advertisement for FouseyTube’s immense generosity, as if to make you forget he messed up the guy’s car in the first place. Given Erakat’s vision for the station, where he invited people to”get crazy” and to not care about views or what people will believe, uploading a movie in this way appears self-serving, if not boring. With this stage,”I purchased [insert person here] a [insert costly thing here]” has become a cliche on YouTube.
If FouseyTube’s brand new function is to take Erakat out of the picture and allow his fans to shine, uploading a movie about how great it is that he’s purchasing a car for someone he wronged appears to defeat the assumed higher purpose of the station. And when Erakat can’t keep to that part of his promise, in addition, it makes it difficult to trust he’s being truthful about other sections of his goodbye note.
The upload of this bunch is hardly worth mentioning — it’s a music video partying and talking about how people didn’t believe in their dreams. It is not good. And as Erakat’s buddy highlights at the start of the footage, these are content creators with a zero subscribers to their name. Erakat does appear dedicated to highlighting creators that are smaller while the selections so far have been questionable.
All the same, questions of who benefits from being hosted on the FouseyTube station have abounded since Erakat’s announcement, with supporters and commentators alike wondering who gets to keep the profits out of the community uploads. In the official entry form, fans are warned that Erakat can”edit, use, publish and exploit your User Posts and your name in connection with your User Posts with no obligation or liability to you or any other party whatsoever,” but it does not clarify whether there are any royalties involved.
Erakat didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, however there is an increasing concern he might be introducing this as a benevolent gesture when he is actually just letting other people make money due to him. It’s hard to say now.
While the possible”for vulnerability” structure of FouseyTube appears to be questionable, creators who are submitting content feel differently than onlookers. YouTube is a tough market to break into: everyone wants to create movies, but it’s increasingly tough to get noticed. The first content creator to get featured on the FouseyTube channel was publicly thrilled to have gotten the opportunity to bring his content to a broader audience. The FouseyTube station itself has a clip where the YouTuber is dropping it as he realizes that new people are discovering his inventions and subscribing to his station. Erakat’s friend makes a point to tell people that the founder went from 500 to 2,500 subscribers because going about the station, meaning he tangibly benefited from being on FouseyTube. It’s a small number compared to the millions subscribed to FouseyTube, but it’s a rise.
For some onlookers, the suicide framing of it reeks of another ploy from Erakat to get views. The YouTuber has confessed in the past to lying and being unscrupulous simply to get folks to listen. His recent concert is a great example of his character: Erakat maintained his fans that he had acts performing, such as Drake, simply to produce none of these.
“I did some shit that literally offered my dignity for opinions and money… you are doing things that you morally don’t believe in, but since the perspectives and AdSense dollars are there, you continue to perform them,” Erakat said on a podcast this season. These are the sorts of admissions that have made it hard for many people to take Erakat’s newest proclamations seriously, especially when he works at a high-pressure environment that has pushed people to do things such as fake pregnancies and murders just for viewpoints.
“FouseyTube needs to stop threatening everyone that he’s going to kill himself!” Tweeted the top YouTube news and gossip reporter Keemstar. “So fucking disgusting of him to do this shit.” If this looks like a harsh reaction to suicide, it’s mainly born from the understanding that Erakat has done and said so many things in the past, it’s difficult to choose what he says at face value. Unsurprising, then, that viewers seem divided on the meaning of the absence from societal media: some view it as a ploy, while others think it is a genuine cry for help.
His YouTube station, that has been curated to have positive remarks, has its share of believers.
“Let’s see some of the other YouTubers calling him all Kinds of crap to give up their YouTube channels to help others build their career… BET none would give up their life’s work for their own fans,” one commenter wrote.
YouTube has made a Great Deal of headlines for its “burnout crisis,” Which is really another way of stating that founders on the platform suffer from the emotional health problems that come from endless content creation. It’s difficult to say whether Erakat fits in that category, however the footage coming out of things like his concert has been hard to observe — the guy appeared unhinged, and continued to spiral on YouTube for weeks before announcing his death. YouTube, meanwhile, has been silent as audiences continue to eat popcorn.
