Sam Pepper has quit YouTube and I hope it's not another prank – there's no other way to get rid of vloggers like him
For anyone who saw his behaviour towards women on Big Brother in 2010 and then followed his success on YouTube, it would have been like watching Rise of the Planet of the Apes
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Your support makes all the difference.When famous people are accused of awful crimes it’s often said that they were “hiding in plain sight”. This is usually because they’re aware that what they’re doing is wrong; they don’t go around filming their arse grabs and kidnappings before uploading them to YouTube.
This is the one of worst things about Sam Pepper, one of YouTube’s most popular vloggers – he hasn't even hidden his exploits. He's done the opposite, and broadcasted them to his 2 million YouTube subscribers.
I say "one of the worst things", because it does get worse: Pepper has also been accused by multiple women of rape and sexual assault. He has denied all of the claims.
Over the course of Pepper's vlogging career he produced three particularly controversial videos: “Fake Hand Ass Pinch”, “How to make out with strangers”, and “Killing best friend prank". In this murder-themed one, he kidnaps another vlogger and pretends to execute their best friend in front of them. Once they've screamed and cried enough for him he reveals it's all a joke.
After a significant campaign, including a petition calling for the deletion of his YouTube channel, Pepper has "quit" and changed the viewing settings on all his YouTube videos to “private”. He has also deleted all his tweets except for one that says “i give up”, and changed his profile photo to a black square.
Pepper's decision to withdraw from the internet makes sense. All you need to do is watch “Fake Hand Ass Pinch” to see how much his departure is overdue. He is clearly blind to the concept of personal space, or sexual assault laws. In the video he walks around looking like both his hands are in his pocket when one is actually fake. While talking to women he then takes his free hand and pinches their bum. They look around in shock while he feigns ignorance.
Afterwards he claimed that it was all “staged and scripted”. But then he also claimed that it was an attempt to raise awareness for male victims of domestic violence. “I don’t want to turn off a light on a very real and scary issue women face,” he said. “I just want to shine a light on an otherwise dark corner – abuse on men.” It all began to look like he knew he had made a terrible mistake and had no idea what to say, or was just a terrible person who knew exactly what he was doing.
After everything he's done there’s almost no-one left who wants to work with Pepper, whether it’s the vlogger friends he’s collaborated with, sponsors, advertisers, or event organisers. Even Zoella has spoken out against him.
What makes less sense is how Pepper had a career in the first place. His problem with women was already clear when he made his break on Big Brother 11 in 2010. At one point during his stay in the house, he was filmed pinning down a female housemate, after asking her “are you going for the cross-dresser look today?”. He then began thrusting his crotch in her face before the camera cuts away. When it returns Sam is out of shot, and all you can see is the woman he straddled lying on the floor with her hands over her face.
Once you’ve seen this clip, his success as part of the vlogging phenomenon that followed Big Brother begins to look more like a noughties horror story. In 2010, the Channel 4 production team could cut away from what Pepper was doing. But a few years later the person whose actions they rightly censored was suddenly in charge of the camera, and able to tap into a huge market for controversial online videos and "social experiments".
Watching his profile grow was a bit like watching Rise of the Planet of the Apes. The production team at Big Brother, accidentally collaborating with the emergence of vlogging, had no idea what they were creating. Suddenly Pepper is appearing next to Zoella, eyeing her up and touching her creepily. Then he’s running across LA, forcibly snogging women and kidnapping his friends so he can pretend to execute people in front of them.
Pepper quitting the internet is a promising sign that he’s finally decided to self-censor, and censor his entire self. But it’s worrying to think about how far he was able to go, or how many people he was able to exploit through his fame, and emotionally damage as a result of his pranks.
What’s worse is that there was never anything we could have done about it – no-one could have stopped him from uploading his videos to YouTube. No authority could have got involved without setting a dangerous precedent. Even the hacker collective Anonymous said that while they disapproved of his videos, forcing Pepper to remove them through direct action would constitute “censorship”. The BBFC has announced that it will be working with YouTube to put age ratings on videos, but this is unlikely to make a difference either.
Perhaps YouTube could have done what Channel 4 did, and jump in to censor Pepper. Although in reality, there's not much we can do except hope that people like Pepper get the message and quit, like he did. However, his videos are still online, and could be made public at any point. So maybe the only thing we can do is ask him nicely: please Sam Pepper, please don’t let this be a prank where you come back. You don't need to thrust yourself into anyone's face any more.
Update: Sam Pepper has now issued an apology and recorded a blurry 20-minute video explaining himself
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