Several of YouTube’s biggest content creators have responded to Casey Neistat’s controversial video where he encourages viewers to swarm other YouTube channels and ask why they haven’t endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton yet.
Neistat, a popular YouTuber himself with over 5,400,000 subscribers, uploaded the video last week where he labelled Clinton “mentally sound”, “responsible”, and “sane”, before hinting that those who hadn’t yet endorsed Clinton lacked “backbone”.
“If your favorite YouTuber says things like ‘I don’t like to talk politics on my channel’ or ‘I’m not gonna reveal who I’m voting for’, call them out” said Neistat in his video, which has received over 220,000 dislikes. “Sitting on the sidelines this time around is not okay… And if this guy gets elected, and you stood back with your arms folded and didn’t stand against him, it makes you complicit.”
The video has since generated a wave of backlash from both viewers and content creators alike, including popular YouTube channel’s H3H3Productions, Boogie2988, and Philip DeFranco, who criticized Neistat’s call for attack against moderates.
“Towards the end of the video he gets into this whole thing about how we’re all morally obligated to vote for Hillary, and he even goes as far as to telling people to ask their favorite creators on YouTube to ‘get a spine and backbone’ and make sure that we all vote for Hillary” explained Ethan Klein on his popular YouTube channel H3H3Productions, which has nearly 2,500,000 subscribers. “That kind of rubbed me the wrong way”.
“The way Casey talks about Donald Trump is that he almost implies he’s some kind of Adolf Hitler, and implies if you don’t vote for Hillary, you’re going to be liable for whatever Holocaust he has up his sleeve” Ethan continued. “He almost paints him as an inhuman demon, which is just so unproductive”.
“Don’t listen to me, don’t listen to Casey. I’m just a YouTuber. How does that qualify me to tell you who to vote for” he concluded. “And here’s Casey saying ‘if you don’t vote for Hillary, you’re responsible for the Holocaust part 2. It’s like tone it down dog. Get off your fucking white horse. You just make fucking vlogs”.
Ethan concluded the video hinting that he was going to vote for a third party candidate, adding: “Don’t let people bully you and make you feel like shit because you want to be in the middle. More people should be in the middle”.
Philip DeFranco, a popular YouTuber with nearly 5,000,000 subscribers, also criticized Neistat’s video last week.
“I feel it’s weird if [popular YouTube channel] Smosh get called out to tell their viewers who to vote for” said DeFranco. “Why should they have to go political and get called out in a way now that if they don’t say anything everyone’s going to come down and be like ‘you support Trump! You’re racist!'”.
Referencing the part of Neistat’s video where he encourages viewers to call other YouTubers out, DeFranco claimed that at this moment “Casey released a hate mob”.
“I saw this as a general annoyance, some going as far as to say that Casey Neistat is actually breaking terms of service with this. Specifically in the terms of the service, the harassment and cyberbullying section which says ‘harassment may included incitement to harass other users or creators'”.
Boogie2988, who has over 3,600,000 subscribers, also publicly challenged Neistat, declaring that he doesn’t “welcome that kind of thing”.
“By creating a video like that, Casey has put me into a position where even though I’ve chosen not to talk about it to avoid that negative response, I’m now getting that negative response because people are taking his challenge and now challenging me to talk about it” said Boogie2988, before revealing that this might be the first election in his lifetime where he wouldn’t vote Democrat.
Neistat has also been criticized on Twitter by various YouTubers, including SpazKid and TribeTyler, while Flater’s response took a more explicit tone in his video “Casey Neistat Wants to F**k Hillary Clinton”.
Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook.