This article discusses graphic topics, including mentions of sexual assault and suicide, so if you are sensitive to these subjects, please stop reading now

On April 23, 2005, the internet was forever changed when a man named Jawed Karim uploaded a 19-second video clip to the infant platform known as YouTube.

Since then, the world of digital media and the amount of platforms people can use to put themselves out there has increased dramatically.

Hundreds of thousands of people have risen to fame and made an immense amount of money that many of us could never even dream of.

Yet time and time again, we watch as these people do horrible things to others all in the name of views and likes. It’s gotten to the point where when these videos come across my YouTube feed, I feel sick. Entertainment should not make you feel that way.

One of these people who has been a large cause for concern recently is the Kick streamer, Jack Doherty.

Doherty live-streamed himself texting and driving moments before he lost control of his vehicle and crashed on the side of the freeway, resulting in minor injuries to himself and more severe injuries to his passenger.

Once out of the wreck, Doherty instructed his passenger to continue live-streaming the aftermath while his passenger was bleeding from his head. He continuously put content above the safety of himself and the people around him.

Now, we must ask why people are willing to support someone who live-streams himself committing an actual crime. Doherty serves as an abhorrent example to the people who watch his content.

When people watch this kind of content, it subconsciously implants the idea into their heads that these actions are okay. This opens the doorway to copycat behavior in those people which needless to say, is incredibly dangerous and has the potential to ruin hundreds of lives.

This is best proven with the YouTube pranking community, where fans of the pranksters would go out and pull the same pranks on unsuspecting people on the street and put themselves in danger just to be like their idols.

The saddest thing is that Doherty is just the most recent in a long line of grievous misuse of fame from social media influencers. On December 31, 2017, Youtuber Logan Paul posted a now-deleted video where he ventured into Japan’s Aokigahara forest where he recorded the body of a deceased man then uploaded it to YouTube.

It only took a day for him to take down the video but by that time, over six million people had viewed it. Paul received an incredible amount of backlash and even had his YouTube partnership terminated so he could no longer make money on the platform for a short while.

In the aftermath Paul took a break from social media and discouraged his fans from engaging in stupid behavior like he had. Paul also took caution when navigating the topic of suicide and encouraged those struggling with depression to reach out for help.

While what Paul did was awful, he handled the situation very maturely and expressed regret over his mistake. However, it doesn’t change the fact that over six million people watched that video and were exposed to something as graphic as suicide.

Unfortunately everyday people are not safe from the harassment and degenerate behavior of some of these influencers.

In 2023, a Kick streamer named Johnny Somali caused havoc in Japan for several weeks by harassing and displaying blatant racism on stream.
Somali rose to infamy when on May 18, 2023, clips of him were posted online of him saying “Hiroshima, Nagasaki, we do again because you can’t behave.”

Somali was confronted several times during his time in Japan however, Kick did not step in until he ultimately was arrested for trespassing onto a hotel construction site and shouting “Fukushima” at the workers.

All these incidents prove that these influencers put content above the well being of others. When they have hundreds of thousands of people tuning into their streams or videos to hear what they have to say, there are bound to be people who follow in the footsteps of their so called idols.

So why are influencers paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to exploit the people around them? Why are they allowed to commit crimes for the sake of views? Why does it take so long for their platforms to punish them enough?

The harassment and public displays of degeneracy in the name of content needs to end. These people need to be punished with indefinite bans from their platforms, legal fines, and even potential jail time depending on their actions. Consumers need to stop supporting people who deliberately ruin the experiences of others just for social media clicks.