If you have been following the anti-SJW anti-feminist anti-leftism YouTube scene for "only" the last 5 years or so, chances are that you have never even heard of The Amazing Atheist. Or if you are, only in passing.
It's nowadays hard to believe that not only did he actually used to be one of the big names in the YouTube anti-SJW movement, but he was in fact one of the most notorious early pioneers of it, if not outright the first one.
It's hard to find any video critical of feminism or the far-left that's older than that (there may be, but even if there are, they probably don't have even close to that many views and that much popularity). Other early pioneers of YouTube anti-feminism, such as Thunderf00t, had yet to make a single video on that subject (eg. Thunderf00t already had published dozens of videos by that point, but none about feminism or anything even close to that subject).
In fact, in the first 5 or so years of the growth of the YouTube anti-feminism/anti-SJW movement, The Amazing Atheist was one of the most famous people among it, often referred to by others. In fact, he became quite notorious for his quarrels and beefs with big-name feminists, on YouTube and on social media, sometimes gaining great infamy among the left for criticizing particular feminists extremely aggressively (even to the point that even most anti-leftists would rebuke him).
This didn't mean he was a staunch right-wing conservative, though. He made almost as many videos heavily critical of American conservatism as he did of criticism of the left. He used to be back then a slightly left-leaning centrist, with slightly anarchist attitudes.
He wasn't without his controversies though. And quite deliberately so. He always described himself as a misanthrope, he didn't really like to collaborate with anybody, and he didn't have much qualms about saying and doing things that even anti-SJWs would find objectionable. However, back in the day he was so immensely popular that most people didn't really care.
He was also quite a pioneer in promoting the idea of launching a political neutral video sharing platform where all opinions were welcome, without censorship, without political bias (as, even back then, YouTube was already notorious for its political bias, or at least allegedly so). This was actually inspired by Channel Awesome, which was exactly that kind of platform: An independent third-party video sharing platform where the Channel Awesome content producers could publish their videos without fear of copyright strikes and censorship.
And this is one of his most notorious controversies and very questionable actions: You see, he launched a crowd-funding campaign in order to create such a platform, he got tens of thousands of dollars of funding... but the project never went anywhere. He made some videos describing his plans and the problems in implementing them... but as far as I know when the project went south he never, at any point, explain what happened or where the money went to. He never refunded the money to anybody, nor ever explained what happened to it. He completely let down, even borderline defrauded, all the people who donated to the crowd-funding campaign.
Yet, somehow, he was so immensely popular back then that this flew mostly under the radar. Very few of his viewership was even aware of this, and even from those who were few cared much. He essentially got away with it because very few people cared about it or criticized him about it.
Anyway, after this immensely long intro, to the question at hand: What happened?
Given that he was certainly one of the pioneers of anti-feminism and anti-SJW criticism, and arguably one of the biggest names on that front back in the day... why is he pretty much unknown nowadays? He was still making anti-SJW videos 2016 (such as this one, for example). So what happened?
He hasn't stopped making videos, he still very regularly uploads copious amounts of them, so the explanation is not that he stopped making videos.
If you go through his list of uploaded videos, you'll see that he was still making anti-left-wing and anti-right-wing videos up to about 1-2 years ago (he seemed to make about as many anti-Biden videos as he made anti-Trump videos).
Then something seems to have happened and he seems to have gone completely insane, at least based on his deliberate appearance, demeanor and behavior.
Unsurprisingly, his view counts have plummeted. While he was typically racking hundreds of thousands of views per video, with some videos garnering over a million views, for several years now he has trouble reaching the 30 thousand views mark.
It's quite notable, though, that the plummeting of views happened quite many years ago, way before this descent-into-madness and total-swing-to-the-extreme-left phase.
What seems to have happened is that he lost his popularity at some point (causing view counts to plummet), and the reason for this is that he pretty much stopped making entertaining videos.
If you have never followed him you might get the impression from this post so far that he was just a political activist who made only political videos. Not so. And while his YouTube nickname implies that he's an atheist and that he made atheist videos, that's not it either. He did make quite many videos about religion (especially in the early days), but those were not his primary form of video content either.
First and foremost he was an entertainer. He made entertaining videos, comedy sketch videos, social commentary videos most of which were completely apolitical, but playing an entertaining character when doing so. He was fun and entertaining to watch, and many of his points were insightful and agreeable, or at least enjoyable. He oftentimes had extreme reactions and presented quite exaggerated views on things, but in an entertaining and comedic manner. Sometimes he would just make outright pure comedy sketch videos (example, example 2). Even most of his videos criticizing religion were oftentimes comedic and entertaining in nature, rather than being dry serious video essays.
But it seems that some years ago he just changed. He mostly stopped being entertaining. He started making more and more political videos which were longer and longer, and more and more boring, and he made less and less comedy videos.
And thus, his view counts started plummeting and people were just stopping following his channel.
It appears that about a year or so ago he just said "fuck it" to everything and decided to descend into complete insanity and full-on "trans" activism at the same time. Most of his videos are rather insufferable as a result.
He used to be one of the big names during the first years of YouTube anti-feminism. Today nobody even remembers him and he doesn't get mentioned anywhere. Probably nobody who didn't follow the movement over 5 years ago has ever even heard of him.
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