After Some Time (...and a break or two)
Ugh... okay, its here. The big one. Let me preface this by saying I wont be doing a count by count story of what happened, itās too many hour and headaches that I donāt need to be fair. But I said Iād get to it... and boy howdy has it been swirling in my head since.
The Slazo Situation Revisited
Ā So small backstory for those who havenāt boarded this crazy train of bullshit and migraines, this story is about a fairly large commentary youtuber by the name of Slazo (Or Micheal) who was caught in a controversy when hisĀ āEx-Girlfriendā exposed him in a Twitlonger for being a manipulative, sexual harasser. DMās and screenshots of chat logs were shown and it made Slazo look pretty scummy. A few days later Slazo releases his defence video outlining the parts that were true and a lot of points that were fabricated to make him look evil in the eyes of the internet, with added proof and conveniently missing parts of his exes proof that would have exonerated him on the spot in the eyes of the internet courtroom. For opinions sake, yes I do think Slazo is innocent of the more damning accusations that were put against him, no I do not think he was 100% innocent. Of what he was guilty of? maybe being a pretty shitty boyfriend.... though at the age of 15-16... its slap on the back of the head material... not cancellation worthy.
Slazo was pretty much cleared of it all and everybody went on with their day... heck it shouldnāt even be called the Slazo situation, because while his name was brought up a lot, he wasnāt really all that key to what happened next...Ā
Commentary youtubers from all corners of the internet had an opinion on what Slazo had done and how guilty he was (again, I will not be doing a play by play of every accusation) which boiled down to two camps
1. āSlazo is guilty and here is why... Oh and have a bunch of off-cuff situations I witnessed where Slazo was really creepy that I only just now remember and want to bring up.ā
2. āLotta commentary youtubers being liars, snakes or hypocrites up in here.ā
Which in turn brought two youtubers under the microscope themselves, ImAlexx and Hyojin.
Alex first as itās easier and is the least weird of the two. Alex jumped on the Slazo hate bandwagon pretty quickly and started accusing Slazo of a bunch of things that couldnāt easily be proven, while also completely backing up the story that Chey (the ex) has given in her Twitlonger, despite the fact it had been blown open with so many holes that not even a brain dead goldfish could find logic in it. Alex would later admit he had a part in writing the Twitlonger, as did many other prominent commentary youtubers and friends,outing the Twitlonger as more of a team effort rather than just Chey writing it herself.
After this Alex was accused of a bunch of stuff himself including being a social climber to get more popular since he was a pretty good friend to Slazo before all of this happened, as well as a snake since he supported Chey and the Twitlonger until it was criticised as untrue.... and Alex said the same to cover for himself.
To this day there hasnāt been a clear end point to this, Alex has tried to brush away from it all and has taken the bumps of being called controversial, hoping for it to all die down eventually. (While writing this Alex appeared on the Happy Hour Podcast to give a rundown of the situation to the hosts who admitted they knew nothing of the situation. Whatās worse Alex seems to have glazed over many of his own wrongdoings that only escalated the drama further.) Opinion? To be honest, I donāt know... Alex obviously tried to ride the controversy to boost himself, that much is sure, yet when it came back to bite him he tried to hide and wait for it to blow over. Itās sad, It IS snakeworthy and since a proper apology hasnāt been issued... itās not a good look for him at all.
Hyojin to me was the worst of the two to me. While she didnāt say as much publicly, it was was was happening behind the scenes that just frustrated me.
(Be aware, if you like Hyojin and think she can do no wrong, DO NOT READ PAST THIS POINT. A lot of hot-takes will be thrown out there and a lot of criticism will be put out there too. I WILL be talking about the aftermath at length which is where the support poured in for Hyojin. I will being ripping that apart just as much, if not more for the bullshit that it was.)
Hyojin sucks, and I mean she really sucks. A lot of what was thrown out about Slazo in the Twitlonger allegedly was orchestrated and was the idea of Hyojin herself, taking what Chey was saying and embellishing it with the rest of their friend group. Itās alleged however and wonāt be part of the criticism thrown at her.
While the incident was being investigated, Hyojin was too, including her colourful hot takes on Slazo and how creepy he was. Hyojin would never publicly call out Slazo since at the time, anybody who did was getting rinsed by the internet very quickly. So instead she hid on her discord and talked in DMās about destroying Slazoās career so he would never recover and deleting messages that challenged how Chey publicly omitted any evidence that made Slazo look like less of a monster. Shady.
During the internet investigations, it was discovered that Hyojin had an old art Twitter where her fictional character was drawn fucking her friends in several positions. The problem was, several of these friends were underage and despite her defence that none of these friends minded.... it was still there for public viewing as was still wrong. One instance even had another youtuber by the name of Kavos in one of these pictures even though he was never asked, nor gave his permission. The irony of all this being that much of what Hyojin criticised Slazo for, she was guilty of herself. Creepy.
Hereās where it gets controversial... probably more for me. Dog dropping rumours aside. (trust me, it was stupid)
Hyojin was getting major flak for everything that was found out about her and it seemed to get too much for her, which is understandable. Her response to all of this was a tweet telling everyone she was going to kill herself. The public response actually became something that confused me, because in the blink of an eye everyone retracted their criticisms and gave out well wishes instead. To make the trend even more sympathetic the youtubers involved in writing the Twitlonger started urging people to give her space and lay off on the nasty comments.
I for one, did not care. Heartless of me? Maybe. But it was all backed up by reasoning. Here was a girl ready to throw the life of a person under the bus for being a slightly shitty boyfriend and lying to make it sound worse. Helping to write up a statement that grossly exaggerated things to such a degree that Slazo was the most hated person on the internet and was blasted by everyone left, right and centre. After he proved to everyone he wasnāt like that, the attention turned on Chey and the friends that helped her and when their dirty laundry was put out there and they were being criticised.... now it was unacceptable? Now it was too much?
YOU TRIED TO OUT A GUY FOR BEING A SEX PEST! Shit that will follow him for life. But people calling out racist remarks you made? the underage porn you had drawn? The toxic behaviour you exhibited to anyone who questioned you?
....yeah that was too much and the line had to be drawn right?
But hey, itās okay, you can just back to twitter the second the drama blows over and everything is all good now right?
Now this is where I direct it to the people who think that Hyojin is infallible, that she can do no wrong. She messed up bad, real bad. If anything sheās the true villain behind all of this and itās shocking the lengths people were going to just to defend her. If every racist, abuser or sex pest threatened their life to be let off, this world would be screwed, but the second a darling Tumblr artist with links to popular youtubers does it, itās a crime to list the irony that she attempted to cancel a guy with far worse repercussions that would lead to life long damage.
The worst part of all of this was that an apology would have cleared all of this. They knew they were wrong but an apology was impossible for them, so instead itās made bigger, uglier and dirty laundry is shown. If anything, Iām happy it got to where it did since it showed the ugly side of Hyojin for everyone to see. So my opinion of Hyojin?