Grant Thompson aka The King of Random dies in Paragliding accident

Last week we featured the tragic news about the death of UK Youtuber Emily Hartridge, today it has been announced that US Youtube creator Grant Thompson, aka The King of Random has been found dead after he went missing.

The 38 year old had gone paragliding in Utah and was recently found by a search party. Thompson proved a very popular figure on Youtube with over 11 million subscribers and nearly 2.5 billion views. Unlike many Youtube stars, he wasn't really involved in controversy or politics but instead gave out consistently interesting content.
In fact, you could say that he was very influential to the platform in regards to shaping its current creators content, as he was one of the first originators to do experimental videos, something which has been a popular craze on the site for years now. Looking back at his channel for instance, his first experiment video was making a DIY flashlight some 8 years ago - and since then he has done many more unusual videos which ooze creativity and keep fans entertained.

Rest in peace King of Random

- Youtube Drama

Overly attached girlfriend creator quits Youtube

Yesterday a shock announcement video was released by Youtuber Laina Morris - who declared that she was leaving the platform.
Her channel, Laina has over 1 million subscribers and she grew her popularity from creating the 'Overly attached girlfriend' meme which was a response to Justin Biebers 'Girlfriend' song; here she was pictured staring menacingly into the camera which was the basis of the funny/creepy meme.

Anyway, most of her videos followed the vlogging format and she racked up over 160 million views but stopped consistently uploading two years ago, and did little since then.
Her latest quitting video explained how she was suffering from anxiety and depression and that she thanked her fans for their support, getting tearful towards the end.

Hopefully Laina gets better and leads a happy life, but also one thing which seems to be growing with the Youtube community is the theme of anxiety and depression which sparks a wider debate as to whether the platform can actually have a bad affect on a creators health, especially when dealing with issues such as trolling or the obscurity of overnight fame. Recently Etika killed himself at age 29 for instance in an act which shocked millions.

- Youtube Drama

Belle Delphine sends H3H3 a mystery package (her spit in a jar) - and gets banned from Instagram

Yes folks, Belle Delphine is at it again.

She is no stranger to controversy and for a 19 year old is seemingly very clever at self-promotion. This time her antics were featured on the H3 podcast as she sent Ethan Klein and the gang a 'mystery package'.
This package featured a small haiku poem, a video and a jar containing a mystery substance. The video showed exactly what the substance was...it was her spit as the audio file contained Delphine spitting her saliva into the jar.
The meme got even weirder when Ethan and his guests decided to open the jar and smell the spit, with Klein even stating some of it had solidified into bacteria and Hila Klein claiming it smelled like soda bread. Gross.

Not only this, but Ethan gave the British creator a nod by repeatedly saying he was impressed by her entrepreneurial skills when it came to selling weird stuff online to her strange fan-base. He even acknowledged that the spit jar would probably be worth $2500.

However, it is not all sunshine and unicorns for Delphine, as her lewd behaviour has also seen her kicked off Instagram in recent days as her posts were reported en-masse for being too provocative. No doubt this will harm her fame if she is not allowed back on the platform, but knowing her it won't be long until she is back in the news again with a new, crazy idea.

- Youtube Drama

Shane Dawson returns with 1 hour documentary interview with Eugenia Cooney about her eating disorder

Yesterday Youtube documentary maker and generally good guy Shane Dawson returned to the site after a 5 month absence from posting any videos on his channel.

The video maker presented a 1 hour documentary discussing the saga around fellow Youtuber Eugenia Cooney and her battle with her eating disorder.
Here he discussed the nature of her battle and then interviewed her at her house. Overall the documentary is very well made and tasteful throughout, as Dawson appears genuinely concerned for his friend whilst providing an insight into her condition. This allows Cooney to open up and show what she went through over the years of her battle.

Perhaps the saddest part of the documentary is the highlighting of online trolling which was a daily thing for Cooney to endure, where she would constantly get abusive comments in her videos based around her eating disorder; many of the comments recommending her to die etc.

However, overall the documentary has a positive and wholesome message that Cooney is now doing much better after a stint in rehab and is in a more positive mental and physical place.
On another note, it is nice to see a friendly story on Youtube for a change, at a time where drama often means easy views whereas this video clearly has a lot of thought and sincerity gone into it which helps raise awareness of the sensitive issue. Here's to Shane Dawson who once again has shown himself as an upstanding man and hopefully he continues to do so with similar videos in the future.

- Youtube Drama

Tana Mongeau and Jake Paul get engaged

They have been dating for a few months now and whilst many cynics have called it a publicity front, this week they got engaged with a media frenzy and obligatory Youtube reveal videos which followed.

If this is real then it probably won't last due to their crazy personalities, but if it isn't real then it makes for good drama and is a wise financial decision from the young pair. For months now they have been teasing whether their relationship is true, and after this latest piece of news it seems the speculation will only mount further. No wedding date has been confirmed as of yet, but one thing is for sure; if it happens it may just be the trashiest wedding ceremony ever.

- Youtube Drama

UK Youtube personality Emily Hartridge tragically dies in electric scooter crash

For those that don't know, Emily Hartridge was a 35 year old TV presenter and Youtube creator from the United Kingdom.

This week she tragically died when riding her electric scooter crashed with a lorry in London, it is believed to be the first death involving an electric scooter.

Hartridge was a popular Youtube figure with over 340,000 subscribers and over 130 million views, most of which were based around her '10 reasons' series which were short, comical videos based around romance and sex.

- Youtube Drama

Good news? Youtube changes manual copyright infringement policy

Today generally positive news broke out for the Youtube creator community as it was announced by Youtube that creators would now have more protection when dealing with manual copyright claims.

Basically, what this means is that now creators can see a timestamp of the exact part of their video which is supposedly infringing, i.e. a 10 second audio clip. With this new policy, they can chose to change audio, remove it etc and supposedly this would still allow monetization of their video if the copyright is dealt with in a proper manner.

Whilst this marks good progression, the one negative is that automatic claims are still under the same rules as always; that is a creator cannot see the reason for the copyright and they are still in the dark in that sense.

Nonetheless, the news has mostly been received with happiness from the majority of Youtubers so at least it is a step in the right direction because before the policy (at times) was clearly abused and used as a tool to bully smaller creators.

- Youtube Drama