EdibleKnife
Member
Vice's tech arm Motherboard just put up an article discussing a phenomenon of YouTube personalities who use their fame garnered from young fans of their Minecraft vids to prey on them; pursuing requests of nude photographs. The major subject of the piece is a YouTuber named LionMaker.
LINK
Only a few excerpts are posted here but I highly recommend reading through the entire piece. I thought it might be one of particular interest to anyone on GAF who has or knows of children within their lives in love with the YT Minecraft scene or YouTube celebs that cater to younger audiences in general.
On December 21, 2015, a Minecraft YouTuber with over 600,000 subscribers appeared to tweet out naked, pornographic photos of an underage fan. “I have fooled all of u and have made plenty of money while doing it,” one tweet said, with another adding that since the fan was 15 years old, "her and I have had several sexual exchanges on Skype."
The tweets were soon deleted, but not before plenty of people saw them, including other young fans. Minecraft, which has sold more than 22 million copies on the PC alone, is hugely popular with kids: children under the age of 15 are reportedly the game's largest demographic.
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LionMaker (real name Marcus Wilton), 27, is a Belgian-based Minecrafter who makes videos for a teen and pre-teen audience of 600,000 YouTube subscribers. His gambols through colossal, blocky wonderlands have been viewed over 200 million times. His nasal, mugging style clearly takes inspiration from videos which have made millions upon millions of dollars for top YouTube gamers such as Pewdiepie. If anything, though, his videos are more saccharine.
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The young girl in the photos posted to LionMaker's Twitter account is known online as "Paige Thepanda." Her family is now involved in police proceedings against LionMaker, one family member said. They believe he took advantage of the 16-year-old. "You have no idea how badly she has been affected," this family member, who asked not to be named to protect the family and Paige's privacy, told Motherboard. "She is utterly brainwashed. All we want is to protect her and keep her from meeting up with him, but we can’t watch her all the time.”
Paige was not the only child that LionMaker befriended.
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Initially, Wiseman, her daughter, and other Minecraft players who knew her daughter couldn't believe that LionMaker would engage in this kind of behavior. They started posting about the story and sharing screencaps of the conversation and reaching out to his friends. The online buzz was that LionMaker must have been hacked, explaining his odd behavior.
The next day, LionMaker resurfaced to claim that he wasn't the one who solicited the nude photographs. Instead, he explained, he had been simultaneously hacked by a blackmailer and spent the night in jail for an unspecified, unrelated offence.
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There is one celebrity YouTuber who has been convicted of sexual misconduct. Lee Carson, alias "L for Leeeeee," had 350,000 YouTube subscribers when he was busted for a string of sexual offences last summer (though he himself was only 16 at the time). According to news reports, he sent threatening messages and obscene photos of himself to a number of women, and broke into one woman’s house to use her underwear in a sex act. He is still uploading Minecraft videos to a warm reception from his fans. “I know you and I would do anything to make you scream,” he wrote to one 18-year-old.
Yamimash (real name is Aaron Ash), a 26-year-old YouTuber with 1.3 million subscribers who plays Minecraft and other games on his channel, was accused of sending obscene messages and photos of himself to a 14-year-old last year. He took to YouTube to clear his name in a statement rank with victim-blaming. While he admits that he flirted with the 14-year-old, and that the police stepped in to “warn” him against “grooming” young children, he argues that the child was “manipulative” and “trying to entice him”, and that she “looks a lot older than she is.”
Like LionMaker, he paints himself as a benevolent, avuncular figure. “I felt bad for her so I spoke to her for a while,” he claimed. “She wants to be the victim.” Fans commenting on his YouTube videos appear to accept he was sexting the child out of a spirit of charity.
Miniladdd, real name Craig Thompson, 2.6 million subscribers, 21 years old, has admitted to to messaging the same 14-year-old. (“Your breasts are really perky,” he wrote. “The fact they don’t sag is a giant bonus.”In his defence, he argues that “the girl was suicidal, so I followed her to show her that life was worth living.” Again, judging by YouTube comments, his fans overwhelmingly agree that this justifies the messages he sent to the girl.
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People in the industry knew that LionMaker preyed on his underage fans, said Jason Leisure, another Minecrafter and a former friend of LionMaker.
“Other YouTubers know about it and keep quiet just because they want to work with them and make money,” he told Motherboard via Skype. “What sickens me is the YouTubers that knew their friends were like this and kept quiet.”
Cheenks, the 16-year-old who LionMaker offered $500 for naked pictures, has come to the same conclusion. “LionMaker was a big YouTuber," he said. "He had connections, he had a big channel, he was very popular. There’s money to be made from it, and people stick around because their channels will go into a shithole and die if his goes down.”
LINK
Only a few excerpts are posted here but I highly recommend reading through the entire piece. I thought it might be one of particular interest to anyone on GAF who has or knows of children within their lives in love with the YT Minecraft scene or YouTube celebs that cater to younger audiences in general.
