Ray William Johnson Tried to Warn Them 

Its interesting because we see similar big companies taking advantage of young TikTok/Instagram influencers nowadays.

Ray William Johnson did something no other RU-vidr succeeded. Updated his style of content with shorter length but also kept the zany sense of humour his videos had. To do that for more than a decade and still be relevant is actually an accomplishment. Respect to Ray for that.

I'm obsessed with early RU-vid and I'm amazed you were able to dig up all this information. Incredible video. I'd love to see you do one about what happened to Lisa Nova aka Lisa Donovan. It seems like she refuses to acknowledge her RU-vid career now. How did it get to this point?

I was a victim too… their contract is quite complicated. I lost all monetization for two years under them as they couldn’t get any music license for covers like google do. And kinda destroyed the algorithm of my channel. =,(

Ray’s sudden success on TikTok was not what I expected out of this year.

The irony and surrealness of The Fine Bros at one point being the victims of corporate bullies, only to later attempt to do the same thing. lol

"Pewdiepie's racism saved RU-vid" is one hell of a line. This is an AMAZING video.

I like how PewDiePie casually destroyed the company 😂

MatPat made a video explaining all of this, and said RU-vidrs (including himself) suddenly stopped being paid for a while, because the company was broke and had to pay investors instead of the content creators, so apparently they all got scammed. I don’t know if things changed after that, but apparently all RU-vidrs signed with them just stopped getting paid eventually

Insane how fine the line between scam and legitimate business is.

I was around for all of this. Man, the stories I could tell you hahaha

It's so weird that today we only remember Kassem G for harassing cosplayers at Comicon, when he was involved in so much other toxic stuff to destroy the community.

I love the fact that Ray still gets 1 million views on every video he does, even to this day! Not even just on shorts, but on his long-form videos as well. Makes me happy that he’s doing well.

You kinda have to appreciate how long Ray is on RU-vid now. Great vid. ❤

It's so crazy watching this because I like many other people got dragged into an MCN to make money and avoid copyright claims on videos. Newer RU-vid people have no idea what a wild west this place was in the 2010s. It's astonishingly well run and stable these days considering what it came from 😱 (also great video analysis PAtrick you keep hitting it out of the park with these!)

Great video! I was one of those who were part of Maker. Thank goodness I was able to get out in time before the meltdown.

Didn't pewdiepie start his own network because of this, ran it ethically, realized it's not a sustainable business model and gave up?

I had no idea that Ray was the most subscribed RU-vidr at the time, just shows how hard he worked to get away from that evil company and continue to make content that he enjoys.

Back then I didn't understand what was happening, but I loved watching Ray's videos. Thank you so much for telling their story! 💗

I rarely comment on any video. But this shook me so hard. Growing up Kassem G was by far my favorite youtuber and yet I had no idea he was involved in shit like this. Thanks for the news, it really is good to know stuff like this. Keep up the good work!

"Disney did not want youtubers to ruin their IP." So they did it themselfes a few years later.

You skipped over the part where Lisa Donovan was mostly known for trying to redirect people from videos by aggressively spamming the comment section of more popular videos with links to her and other Maker videos. RU-vid actually made a policy change to stop that sort of behavior. She lost a giant chunk of her Disney change to an astrology app she invested in; just another scam. That one backfired though. She's down to about 5M and falling now. Danny Zappin is down to about 9M (but he tells people 19M). Kassam is making a comeback; probably tied to his loss of net assets now valued at about 3M.

I give thanks to you for the online investigation. I was a young RU-vid user in 2013, when I entered Highschool. I started watching Seananners and became increasingly aware of other and bigger RU-vidrs but all this you laid before me is news I hardly heard about at that time or did not piece together afterwards. I am grateful for your internet journalism.

Holy crap, I had no idea this had happened. I used to watch =3 religiously and this makes me respect RWJ even more. Stool his ground, exposed their crap, and his content still didn't miss a beat

Aww shiiit! Randomly clicked on a video in my suggested and got mentioned twice! Lmao awesome!

I still remember when MCNs were a thing and how grateful I am for the new generation of RU-vidrs who don't have to deal with the shit that older RU-vidrs had to deal with now.

I was there at Maker through all of this. Wild to see videos I was in in this video. They helped me out a good amount. I had a producer and budget for my weekly videos. It definitely was nice for a couple years. Then it all fell apart when Disney stepped in.

Ray was always and will always be my favorite content creator since his launch. I didn’t really know too much of what was going on behind the scenes but this video made it super clear. This what happens when you try to milk other people’s passion. Thankfully RU-vid is in a better place today than before. Thanks Patrick for the info, really amazing work!!💙

This makes Norm MacDonald's public humiliation of Kassem even funnier than it already was.

Ray has been in RU-vid for 14 years...yet he still doesn't lose his motivation to make videos he loves to make. Truly an absolute chad!

It’s crazy how much I enjoyed Shay Carl’s content before he cheated on his wife and blamed it on alcoholism…. RU-vidrs should never be put on a pedestal.

Thank you putting this all together! This is the story of every RU-vidr’s dreams and how the truth reveals itself after the storm. Go it alone and listen to your neighbor, not the men who are dressed in sheep’s clothing who, on the inside, are ravening wolves.

I love seeing Ray’s channel slowly turning into a true crime commentary shorts. He used to only talk about viral videos but I noticed now he’s doing more videos on things normally only true crime people like to search up, like bite-size summaries of real crimes and events without all the emotional fluff

RWJ is the physical embodiment of “do something and stick to it no matter what”

This is like finding out an old high school buddy was way more messed up than you thought. I remember watching Maker videos all the time when I was younger This is also like learning the kid everyone made fun of was right all along. I remember everyone made fun of Ray (and a lot still do) for being obnoxious and Maker went so far as to to basically publicly shame him with a dumbass cat puppet Hell I remember the whole story unfolding and Shays weird response in his clog. Man this video was a trip! Very well done!

Who woulda thought doing business with a criminal was a bad idea 🤷🏼‍♂️

Crazy to think how RU-vid has evolved over the years and the drama that has unfolded. Goes to show that some corporations will exploit creators for their own gain. It's a brutal world out there!

I never understood how people turned back on Ray, he is a funny dude who gave us moist cr1tikal and other funny RU-vidrs, the fact that his old team YFM turned on him and deleted his stuff was clearly unprofessional and unethical. I'm glad ray is making new videos

I just love how an anti-semantic joke is what basically saved so many youtubers😂

Sadly I fell for the trap by Makers too with one of my old channels in 2010. They sold me all the benefits I would receive by signing with them, even though I was already monetized on RU-vid. They took 30% of my ad revenue for over a year and provided absolutely no support! Somehow I was able to get out of it by sending tons of email telling them how they did not provide anything in exchange for taking a cut. I am glad MNCs aren't a thing anymore and that RU-vid has stepped up their game.

I had a friend that was duped into this kind of scam. He lived in a giant mansion with other creators and made videos like he was living in a RU-vid sweatshop.

This is why it's important for creatives to try to understand the business side of things and to be aware of what's going on. Otherwise there's always a greedy business person trying to take a majority of what you created and call it their own. I am glad to see Ray back in the game.

I'm just happy that Ray has started posting videos on TikTok. He was out of my life but now he's back 💖

I remember watching Ray William Johnson back when I was active duty Navy. His videos helped my time on watch pass quickly. I remember when his Your Favorite Martian channel announced it had ended and I never knew why. This is some good closure for me.

At this point it is rather obvious where the trend is moving and as far as I can tell it is more because of AMS39K by Amazon than anything else. These guys entering the scene is a huge win to all of us

I remember being excited when a new episode of =3 dropped, Ray has done a great job adapting to the new RU-vid and staying successful

I'll never forget when i first got on RU-vid, my friend told me about it and the first time i got on there it was full of my favorite bands, Blessed Be.

I love Ray, more youtubers should have his energy. He seems like a good dude and has worked hard for his things and channel

RWJ is one of the few creators from when I joined RU-vid that is still successful and unproblematic. He genuinely seems to deserve the fact that he is still around and doing well.

Yeah, Ray really shined a light on how scummy MCN's can be. Also, it's good to see that he's still around making content, he brought his channel back to life by embracing the Tik Tok style of content.

RIP to my boy Steven. He passed away in 2013 at 15 years old and he knew RU-vid was the future. Rest in power young king❤

Ray came out on top in the end. He switched his style of story telling and kept clever quips. Glad to see he is back and succeeding.

Honestly im impressed Ray is still doing RU-vid after 14 years and still gets good views

Just goes to show, don’t always trust and idolize your fave content creators. Some of those who got paid were in on it 100%.

i was only a early teenager when all this drama was happening so i was too young to really understand what was going on. but i definitely do remember RWJ talking about this in his videos all of a sudden because it was so uncharacteristic of his normal silly content. and then the way a lot of the big name turned on him for speaking out. That's the day i learned about the money behind youtube and how predatory it really was. glad to be able to truly understand what was going on after watching this

This brought me back to the days I was with fullscreen 😂 and then curse and then I moved to the film industry! Amazing video! Was a great nostalgia trip!

PewDiePie being a secret hero to all RU-vidrs who get involved with MAKER is so meta and cool.

AMS39K is like that one player in the game who scores a hat-trick right out of the gate. Absolutely dominating.

I remember my favourite RU-vidr talking about how they take revenue from his videos without doing anything go their videos and also would authorise what they upload it is truly disgusting how pathetic scammers and convicted criminals can get rich of people who put hours into their content and effort

ngl, This is like an inspirational success story from the founders of Maker Studio. good for them, this is a story about people who'll do whatever it takes to succeed.

Pewdiepie just went "I dont have to win... we just both have to lose"

Ray is a legend. i'm so glad to know he's still around making content, even after Equals Three ended

I always remember the incident, but had no idea it was so involved! 😮 Great Report! Enjoyed!

I’m glad I came across this video. I was very sad whenever RWJ stepped away from =3 and now I know what went down!

YES! I'm so glad you're covering him. Ray's the OG

i fell into the MCN trap early in my youtube career. it made you feel "legit," but truly they just take your money without offering much of anything in return.

Its crazy that the maker studios era and the creators involved never get mentioned nowadays. Haven't thought of them in years

Thank you for this video! I didn't know any of this! Love your channel and your info section made me feel inspired! 💥😍

I’ve always loved watching your videos. I never miss an upload of you Patrick

I love the spin that they were "helping other creators succeed" when all these networks have ever done is create a barrier to entry preventing the millions of other youtube creators who were just as good, and often times far better at creating content on their own, from being able to achieve success. Their networks are just thinly veiled botnets manipulating the algorithm so only creators with "network click-through" are ever pushed on the public feeds. And Ray knew these were botnets. So do all the rest of them. None of this has ever been real. It's impossible to do anything but protect the lie moving forward. Which is what I told most of them individually, in person, at the very begging of all of this. I've been saying "I told you so" now for more that a decade. Best part is, this is permanent now. The botnet scam is baked into the algorithm and youtube has to manually push a trending feed just to compete with it. There's a junk feed you can catch if you block all your data sharing. It's been constantly populated by corporately sponsored content that youtube is "amending" the feeds with. You can see every video they are trying to artificially push the moment it's authorized in the system because it will show up on the junk feed in real time. That's the real reason they are trying to shut down all the adblockers and they are disabling feeds that use your data to modify the junk feed with your personal profile. He was right. It's always been a war. A war between botnet millionaires and the corporate curation algorithm. It never had anything to do with any of us. Not since Google bought the company.

Man I've seen RWJ becoming the #1 subbed channel back in the day, when RU-vid had those little achievements on your page. I saw him first i think on #20 of =3 and he blew up so fast. Those were different times ngl, no censorship not big money or any sponsorships. RU-vid was just raw and pure.

I really really miss the youtube of old. The videos back then were just absolutely wholesome classics

Still can't believe the fine bros tried to copyright a genre of content that America's funniest home videos has been doing since i was 2 years old

RU-vid before the 2010s was a different. It was so new to the world and we were barely scratching the surface of the internet.

Man I remember these old days on RU-vid, my my how the platform has grown and evolved since then

This is one of those videos that really needed to be made. It's like the original founders didn't receive any consequences at all.

You did not just tell me the biggest controversy on RU-vid is what saved the platform 😂 Pewdiepie is a blessing in disguise

Seems like RU-vid actively conspired with shady 'networks' until they cleaned themselves up in 2012. Possibly some personal relationships were involved?

I remember that video RayWilliamJohnson did! It's actually surreal seeing all of this come full circle now.

The Unus Annus music caught me off guard, but I feel it’s incredibly fitting for the vibe of the video. Great work, wonderfully presented, we need more straight forward commentaries like this

It doesn't matter how much money some people have. They will always want more and will ruin peoples lives to do it.

Ray Williams is an original OG of RU-vid. To this day I still follow him.

Some of the things I don't get about how the company got started is HOW they were getting all these channels millions of views, HOW they got RU-vid to agree to having a dedicated staff member for each affiliate channel, HOW they had the money to have an entire building to work out of and have a roster of employees, HOW they were able to get the copyrights to video game content and actual music. I wish that part was explained because it just kind of was like "He found this group of people, they made a company, and just overhauled the entire system in a few months." No shade to Patrick, the info may not be public so that might be the best info he had when making the video. These are just the big questions I have when watching.

Ray William Johnson was one of the biggest OG’s of YT I miss his content,way more entertaining than what u see now with bigger channels who give in to sponsorships or just straight up go corporate

No matter what your talent is, there is always going to be someone trying to exploit it for their own personal gain

Ray got me through high school. His content was funny and engaging. Even his ‘my favorite Martian’ spinoff was a huge hit.

Thanks for mentioning Soulja, these kids just don't know how big he was at that time. Pretty much the first ever viral rapper, just around when RU-vid was slowly rising

OMZ this video makes me feel so old even though I’m young. 😆😆 You just unlocked some memories, I remember laughing so hard at that cringy teen cribz video. I did not know they turned out to be such horrible people, YIKES!!!

It's still insane to me that MCN's would get the money first. It just makes so much more sense that RU-vidr would pay for their services normally.

Felt nostalgic watching this, Ray William Johnson was the first creator that made me take RU-vid seriously as I loved "Equals3" and still wish he could do a new version, Remember all this playing out at the time and remember being disappointed with KassemG as his series "California On" was also a show I would always watch. Ray is still doing well for himself though which is good to see.

This is the only reason I have respect for RU-vid. They allow anyone to monetize. I get mad about censorship, but they are a private company, not bound by the US constitution. So, my anger is unjustified.

This is great content Patrick cc I never knew of RU-vid until 2012! ❤ never understood the dynamic so thanks! ❤

Corporations need to keep their greedy hands off everything

I realized just yesterday that this is my favorite channel. Good voice, good stories, perfect chemistry for a great channel.

Such an amazing short documentary! Good job. 👍

So glad you made this video, was just thinking how RWJ changed and is now super popular on tik tok

Its funny how that fiver video ended up saving a lot of creator at the cost of PewDiePie's name being all over the media and label as anti-sematic at that time

Imagine Pewdie Pie saying all that dumb shit intentionally as a way to help all those creators get out from underneath those terrible contacts? 😂

Man I never knew any of this about Maker studio. I remember when I first started seeing clips about it, Kassem G was probably my favorite RU-vidr at the time. I honestly hate that all of the California On and Going Deep videos have been erased because I would love to see them again.

Greed and dishonesty is always sledgehammering themselves in the face