David Dobrik currently has 4 million subscribers on Youtube and is much loved by fans globally by his witty skits and numerous friends that appear in his vlogs. The David’s Vlogs franchise is growing rapidly alongside other current social media influencers like Jake Paul, and is following the steps of typical Youtuber expansion like releasing merch and appearing at Vidcon. The long list of recurring people in David’s vlogs, not to forget his fellow Youtuber girlfriend Liza Koshy, include many youtubers who work for David, including Jason Nash and Big Nik. One of these friends, who recently ran into trouble due to the nature of his content, is controversial social media star widely known as DurteDom.
In another article written by Fleur Henley for Affinity Magazine, details of accusations against Dom are explored, explaining that he filmed a 15 year old girl at a party sexually dancing, and the defence some of his fans conveyed when he started to receive backlash for his actions. The issue of consent and previous claims of sexual harassment were raised and became a hot topic for twitter users, both those for and against Dom’s action. Nowadays it is hard for any Youtuber to ignore mass negative attention, especially when about such a sensitive and serious issue, as we all remember from Sam Pepper’s similar experience, so shorty after the controversy exploded, an short apology was uploaded to DurteDom’s Youtube channel.
In the video Dom firstly adresses the accusations made, about Vidcon in particular, and is quick to recognise his behviour instead of denying it, saying they are true “to an extent”. He then goes on to describe his agressive nature with women that causes him to be portrayed as disrespectful and a womanizer. Later in the video, Dom apologises directly to the anyone he offended and his friends for bringing negativity into their videos. Additionally, he promises to be respectful to people and goes onto directly address the issue of the filmed 15 year old girl. Wisely, Dom admits his actions were wrong regardless of her age because of her lack of consent. This is interesting as many DurteDom fans were quick to defend him by saying the girl was in the wrong because of her presence underage at a party. He then ends the video by admitting that the apology can’t change his actions but states he “needs to get it off [his] chest”.
Dom is obviously aware of the drama and controversial points surrounding the debate about his nature and content, and has chosen to address heavily argued issues that this poses. The video itself has already received criticism due to its length, at 1 minute 43 seconds, as some people expressed their concern on how such a big offence can be made up for in such a short amount of time. It is also questionable as to how much a person really can change when it seems disrespectful behaviour is so engrained in their personality as part of their online content. Some may choose to accept Dom’s apology as genuine, since it does look and sound so, however understandably many people will not so easily forget his actions, despite his pledges to change.
The validity of DurteDom’s apology can only be seen with time—by observing his behaviour in both his videos as well as his roommates and friends’ content. But many a loyal fan are likely to keep watching the groups uploads, regardless of the drama. This isn’t the end of the controversy surrounding David’s Vlogs— with new criticism arising surrounding Jason Nash’s racism in playing his role Carmelita and the group of friends teasing Big Nik about his disability.
