...is over?
YouTUBE is a place rife with drama of every sort, however, few times are quite as dramatic as today when I logged in to discover numerous people from across different communities talking about the same thing: VenomFangX has left YouTUBE.
For those who aren’t savvy to this particular part of the Internet, or even this little tribe of thought, I’ll give a little bit of background. VenomFangX is a YouTUBE user who uses his evangelical creationist Christian message to basically run his channel. I mention it because it is the sole and primary purpose of his presence on the site, he makes no pretence about it, and it represents his eminence everywhere he goes. VenomFangX is the worst representation any religion could ever have—he's charismatic, smarmy, insipidly drippy, condescending, and borrows most of his material from fraudsters and asshats. He is, for lack of a better term, a popular villain.
He has left YouTUBE in the past; and now he’s doing it again. (Last time to no effect, obviously, as he didn’t leave.)
And he’s doing it on the heels of a huge donation scandal perpetrated by him. It started out in April when he posted a video about how he couldn’t keep a job because he simply couldn’t keep from proselytizing to customers; and he even proudly strutted his lack of work ethic when he displayed spools of DVDs he had burned at his current employment, using their equipment for his own gain. It is unsurprising that such antisocial behavior got him canned from so many jobs.
Thus, he came to his avid and adoring fan base and asked them for money.
Initially he asked for $500 a month—or, as he put it, for 500 people to give him $1 a month. In the video where he asked for this he intimated that he would give any amount over $500 a month to charity and named Sick Kids Hospital in Canada as the recipient. A misspeak on his end, perhaps, but he did little to then actually offer this money to them; instead he repeatedly attempted to renege on this by pretending that he’d said no such thing when soliciting donations.
Numerous tubers rose up to document, dissect, and point out the flaws of his behavior. His previous behavior certainly did not work in his favor in this as few people outside of his cult following find this to be on par with his previous actions. April ended and he probably collected far, far more than $500 but there’s no indication that he delivered even a cent of it to Sick Kids Hospital.
Numerous complaints rained down on his PayPal account, contacts to the Canadian revenue service, and even Sick Kids Hospital. His PayPal was shut down twice due to fraud. And now, his YouTUBE channel and website are gone.
The reason given is that he’s been receiving death threats from Muslims. A claim yet totally unsubstantiated. However, a message on his website states that his parents took it down, that they don’t support his actions, and they apologize if he offended anyone.
Links to two series on YouTUBE that help elaborate what happened, and who VenomFangX is. These are mostly cultural critiques by people who don’t like him very much, but they will probably give a good example of one side of the story. The other side is accessible via related videos and searches if you want to expand the depth of your net into this seedy event.
Goodbye Venom. Although, I doubt he’ll be gone for long. Here’s hoping this was the community nipping the next Peter Popoff in the bud.
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