avatarDari Bazile May 22, 2019
Dari Bazile May 22, 2019

YouTube is no stranger to controversy, especially in the past month. No, we’re not talking about James Charles. The guy sucks, but we’re gamers here. So instead, we’re looking at the latest YouTuber gamer controversy. Let’s talk about all we know so far about ProJared.

First things first: who is ProJared? Jared “ProJared” Knabenbauer is a YouTuber that’s mostly been known for game reviews and Dungeons & Dragons streams. He is most known for his “One Minute Review” videos, which is, well, exactly what it says it is. He was married to Heidi O’Ferrall, a professional cosplayer and artist.

He was a member of NormalBoots, a network of creators largely focused on gaming, after the site relaunched in 2014. He has also collaborated with the Game Grumps before, guest starring on a few episodes. One of the members of the Game Grumps team, animator Ross “RubberNinja” O’Donovan, was married to Holly “Commander Holly” Conrad until they broke up in September of last year. This is actually important.

On May 8, Knabenbauer posted a statement announcing his divorce with O’Ferrall. At the moment, it seemed perfectly normal. People announce changes to their personal life sometimes and O’Donovan and Conrad did the same when they divorced last year. At least until O’Ferrall tried to respond.

And I said “tried” because O’Ferrall couldn’t even respond because Knabenbauer blocked her beforehand. It’s already kind of absurd, but O’Ferrall also added that Knabenbauer was sleeping with Holly Conrad behind her back. A later tweet claims that the relationship had at least been going on since October, though Conrad herself would later say that they met up in early 2018. Knabenbauer was abusive toward O’Ferrall, taking advantage of her giving him the benefit of the doubt, while also gaslighting her to make her believe she’s being the abusive one in the relationship.

But O’Ferrall wasn’t the only one Knabenbauer was taking advantage of. It also came out that Knabenbauer had been soliciting nudes from fans over the past few years. Knabenbauer jokingly asked for nudes from fans on his Tumblr, but that request soon turned sincere and created an NSFW Tumblr, which O’Ferrall was aware of and initially approved of in the case of consenting adults.

Even in the case of consenting adults though, Knabenbauer’s status as a public figure carries a power dynamic that encourages fans to give in to demands, allowing Knabenbauer to take advantage of that. Much like his infidelity, Knabenbauer betrayed O’Ferrall’s trust and kept a private Snapchat running to flirt with and directly get nudes from fans behind her back.

However, he had also solicited nudes from underaged fans. Twitter user @teacupofchai came forward with his story, telling that Knabenbauer manipulated him when he was 16 to engage with him sexually – even despite knowing his age. His friend, @swampborzoi, also told their own experiences with Knabenbauer around the time. It is unknown how deep this goes, especially since Knabenbauer deleted his Tumblr accounts.

As for Conrad, her immediate reaction to all this on Twitter has been deleted. I distinctively remember her replying to Knabenbauer’s statement on the divorce saying that she’ll be there for him, which was incredibly poor in taste given the accusations. She made an official statement on Twitter, which I found written out on Kotaku that said: “If it’s worth anything, you all know me. I’d never hurt anyone and I only want the best and happiness for those around me.”

The internet backlash was immediate. Twitter exploded with memes about ProJared cheating on his wife and being a creep. The NormalBoots network publicly disowned him and his collaborative content with them and the Game Grumps has been taken down. His YouTube subscriber count on his main channel, previously more than a million, has dropped to be a little less than 800,000, and his Let’s Play channel lost 85,000 subscribers.

The mods of his subreddit openly turned on him and is now essentially an “anti-ProJared” subreddit. In the midst of this, ProJared’s nudes were leaked on the Internet and I regret to say that, in my research, I’m no longer part of the “Has Not Seen ProJared’s Dick” club. Last but not least, he lost his verified status, the greatest insult to happen to a blue check mark Twitter user.

Knabenbauer went silent immediately after posting his initial divorce announcement. Well, he posted a poor in timing “I won’t be coming to this event whoops” message two days later, which ended up getting ratioed. Conrad had also disappeared after the 8th, claiming that she checked herself into a hospital for mental health reasons.

On May 17, Knabenbauer posted a statement addressing the whole debacle, but it was a classic “non-apology”, in that it barely addressed his actual behavior. In fact, the statement turned things around on O’Ferrall, accusing her of encouraging an open marriage but refusing that he see Conrad. Much like in O’Ferrall’s accusations, he tried to paint her as the actual abuser in the relationship. He was called out on this, with this statement also getting ratioed.

On May 20th, Conrad also resurfaced to shed her own perspective on Knabenbauer and O’Ferrall in a long Twitter thread. In this thread, she largely backed up Knabenbauer’s side of the story, even claiming that she was trying to help him leave his “abusive relationship.” Both claim that O’Ferrall encouraged him to explore his feelings with Conrad but got vindictive when it started getting more serious.

Conrad posted a screenshot that Knabenbauer had indicating that O’Ferrall had actually consented to the relationship beforehand. Conrad further accused O’Ferrall of screaming at him and at her through Knabenbauer’s phone number, and posted screenshots that claimed that O’Ferrall would try to destroy Knabenbauer’s work.

On the subject of nudes, Conrad, while disappointed that Knabenbauer was abusing his power, defended him from allegations of soliciting nudes from minors; claiming to have seen receipts of him confirming the consent and ages of those he engaged with. She went further to also accuse people that leaked his nudes of spreading revenge porn.

O’Ferrall ended up addressing Conrad’s thread, claiming that the idea of her being an abuser was a narrative that Conrad helped make up. In her own thread (start of which posted above), she claims that Conrad largely took her messages out of context and that the anger in her messages was from her lashing out. She did initially consent to a relationship, but quietly wanted an end to it because it broke the boundaries she set, only becoming angry because they kept seeing each other anyway. Any of the abusive behavior that Conrad claimed O’Ferrall had was because of Knabenbauer’s own neglect of her during all of this.

In all this, there are definite truths. Knabenbauer still saw Conrad without his ex-wife’s consent and all this stuff does not change the fact that Knabenbauer sexually took advantage of fans. Knabenbauer is definitely not a good person. Conrad is not as bad, but her defense of Knabenbauer revealed that she was seeing him before she divorced, which actually makes her less sympathetic.

As it stands, O’Ferrall now lives away from Knabenbauer and it’s currently not known what he’s up to. Maybe he’ll try to keep making video content and pretend nothing happened, like former Polygon journalist Nick Robinson. Maybe he’ll make another apology post that isn’t just blaming his ex-wife for everything. Maybe he will (and should) be investigated for sexually engaging with people that were minors at the time. Regardless of what happens to him in the future, people should stop engaging with the stuff he makes, because it would be an insult to those who he has hurt.

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Dari Bazile

Howdy, I'm Dari, an aspiring game developer and game journalist. I run a review focused joint called Indie Hell Zone that's mainly focused on indie games, but here I'm willing to be all over the place. Avatar is drawn by @ladysaytenn on Twitter!

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