YouTuber Jeff Wittek says David Dobrik stunt ‘made me resent him’

‘It made me not want to open up YouTube. It just put me in a bad place’

YouTuber Jeff Wittek has revealed how a stunt by Vlog Squad leader David Dobrik left him injured and resentful.

Wittek has been slow-rolling the details of the injuries he says he sustained during the prank, which he first revealed in a June 2020 Instagram post in a series titled “Don’t Try This at Home”.

The first two episodes of the series revealed Wittek injured his eye while swinging from an excavator said to be driven by Dobrik.

Dobrik, a former Vine creator and YouTuber known for pranks, stunts and giveaways, founded the Vlog Squad to make daily vlogs with a group of friends.

One of those friends was Wittek, who captioned the Instagram post of his injuries to say he "got in an accident and broke my face and skull in a few places".

He didn’t reveal what happened until the first two episodes of "Don’t Try This At Home" about 10 months later. He said the Vlog Squad met at Bear Lake in Utah to make a video of themselves swinging from the arm of an excavator.

"I didn’t know I was going to go that fast. So I grabbed the ... rope and I tried to make a goddamn funny video for people," Wittek said.

"This was where I made a mistake. I forgot that the biggest f***ing idiot I know was driving it."

In the latest episode, he said watching Instagram posts of Dobrik while still recovering from his injuries made him resent the YouTube star, who has 18 million subscribers.

“I would click on it and it would be him being praised for something that he had accomplished that week,” Wittek said in the video, entitled “After the Accident”.

“And I’m sitting here in my house, in the worst place I’ve ever been, thinking I’m never going to get back to where I was at.”

He added: “It made me resent him, it made me resent seeing his face, it made me not want to go online. It made me not want to open up YouTube. It just put me in a bad place.”

The video also shows Wittek in treatment and recovery after the accident, while also arguing with friends that Dobrik “didn’t know what to do to be there for you”.