Calling Out Sam Pepper

   I realize I am about a week late on this but I felt the need to gather my thoughts instead of posting a raging fit of feminist anger and frustration. As most of you may know, popular YouTubers and internet douche bag, Sam Pepper posted a new video on his channel in celebration of a milestone amount of subscribers (I completely forgot how many…) which is all good and fun until we all figured out the video shouted sexual abuse. Just like the Janoskians (another popular group of talentless boys), Sam is known for his zany pranks in which he makes those around him feel uncomfortable. He's known for handcuffing himself to woman, stalking girls through Instagram, pressuring strangers to make out with him, and many more cringe worthy pranks. Though these tricks are awful, Pepper crossed the line of creepy where he squeezed girl's butts without their consent. The whole funny part of the video was that he would stop random women on the street and ask for directions- let me just clear up here that these girl's were doing him a favor! They were nice enough to help him out and he thanked them by squeezing their asses while they weren't looking then going onto cracking up over it while the victims just sat there feeling violated. Let me just start by saying this is illegal! And clearly these women didn't like what had just happened. In fact one of them even flat out said "I don't like that." when she found out he'd been the once pinching her ass all along. YouTuber, Jack Dodge, also made the point on his channel (video below) that when you're making a YouTube video, there are always millions of outtakes so think of how many women he must have done that to and how many reactions there were that he decided weren't suitable for his viewers.
   About four days later, the video had, thank God, been deleted off of YouTube but that didn't stop the responses from wonderful role models such as Candice and her fiancé, Bribry.

   So at this point you may be asking,
"why are you writing a post about something that was already resolved?" well first off, you probably won't be thinking that since I have this thing for putting words in other people's mouths but getting past that, something really important that was sparked by this excuse for a YouTube video's release.
   I don't believe I have ever mentioned Dottie (otherwise known as thisbedottie on YouTube) but she is one of my favorite YouTubers and she recently released a video talking about an experience she had when she was only sixteen years old and Sam was twenty three. She had met him at a meet and greet and she described that by the end, she could easily tell he was into her so he invited a minor to a seemingly innocent date at the movies. Things began getting shady after she let him kiss her and then he began to place his hands on various (intimate) parts of her body. Since she had already outstepped her comfort zone, Dottie took his hands off of her- which let me remind you she had every right to do. She had only spoken to this man once and he was marginally older than her so she wasn't feeling comfortable with the situation and calmly took his hands off her own body. He then continued to place HER hands on his body which she pulled away. Obviously this was too much for her and she made the excuse to get away from him saying she should catch her bus but she could tell he was angry with this and since she was a fan, didn't want to upset him and stayed for the rest of the movie. Once they got out of the cinema, he literally ran away from her without saying goodbye and therefor she Facebook messaged him that night (she provides actual proof in the video) saying,
"You're horrible." but she told him the next morning she was sorry and he should have a nice day because she didn't want him to hate her.

   Dottie was merely a sixteen year old girl and Sam Pepper was a grown man who manipulated her into doing something she clearly didn't want. In the video, she states he stopped being kind to her once she made it clear there was no sexual promise. This video mainly got positive feedback since it was extremely brave of her to post but there was of course one person who had to make a fuss; this being Kalel (otherwise known as "Kalel Kitten").
   Let me start off by just talking a little about something I learned during the whole Alex Day/ Tom Milsom thing; YOU SHOULD ALWAYS BELIEVE THE VICTIM. I think anyone who has ever read through How Fitting could tell that I was a massive Tom and Alex fan and as heartbroken as I was that my heroes would do something like this, that didn't stop me from giving them what they deserved which was definitely not my respect. I, of course, didn't want to believe the accusations were real but I did since there is literally nothing you can do wrong by believing a victim- you are putting faith and defending a vulnerable person who has been through a lot. Kalel completely threw all of those morals aside and had no problem saying that Dottie was probably lying about the entire situation and said that she was overreacting and trying to ruin Sam's life. I could go on and on about how wrong what she did was but to sum it up, Kalel's behavior was repulsive.

   The thing that really bothers me about this tweet is how she tells Dottie, someone who was taken advantage of, to just "Calm down and unsub" as though this is something extremely easy to get over. Dottie, as you could tell, was very hurt and scarred by the things Sam did to her- how dare she trivialize that?

   OK Kalel, people make mistakes- it is a natural thing to do as a human being but this wasn't just Sam saying Dottie was stupid, he abused her. Sam Pepper is a grown man and when he touched Dottie, he knew what he was doing. It's not as though one second he was on an innocent date with a sixteen year old and then "Whoops! I guess my hands just accidentally began intimately touching you without consent!"
   Not only did many Twitter users call Kalel out on her shit but popular YouTuber, Emma Blackery, stood up for her good friend and did an awesome job of spreading awareness to her thousands of followers.

   As if the ridiculousness of Sam Pepper didn't stop there, he had to post a part two of girls pinching guy's butts and then a third video claiming it was all a social experiment and we all need to calm down. Can I just comment on how stupid that is? Sam Pepper obviously has an awesome management team but this could't save his ass. As I said in the beginning, Sam is known for this kind of shit and has never apologized for it but when people finally stand up to him, instead of saying sorry like a decent human being, he comes up with some weird excuse. As Bribry said in a video he made with Candice (that is super duper awesome and I will add to this post),
"Sam Pepper has made a video in which he sexually harasses women to tell us how much of a problem sexual harassment is. I would now like to say that I love animals, so I'm going to kick the shit out of some animals and put it in a video to show you how serious animal cruelty is. I like Harry Potter. I'm now going to find Daniel Radcliffe and slap him." This was such a good statement that shows how completely idiotic this "social experiment" is. I would like to pause and say how amazing both Bribry and Candice are and how great role models they have been for me.

   Since the last edition of Sam's series was posted, a large amount of women have been coming out with their own experiences involving this lame excuse of a man talking about how they were sexually harassed by him- there is even a story of rape in there (the survivor of this has posted a fifteen minute video telling her story that I am putting in here- I will warn you that it is quite scary and can be thought of as triggering so if you believe you will be triggered by this kind of thing, I'd advise you not to watch it.)

  The YouTube community and overall internet community needs to figure things out now. How can we let rapists and abusers such as Sam, Alex, and Tom run this place that is supposed to be safe and wonderful? Why are people accusing victims of lying instead of looking into this "hero" and his own behavior? I am sick and tired of hearing "You deserved it." or "You should be grateful." in the comments of these videos. I am tired of people like Sam Pepper being put on a pedestal. We as people on the internet and regular human beings need to take these abusers off websites such as YouTube, tumblr, and twitter because they are a danger to others and do not deserve to be here. To do this, we need to isolate Sam Pepper and other "harmless pranksters" like him. This means, do not click on his ads, watch his videos, or support him in any way possible. I am not saying I want to destroy Sam Pepper's life- I am just done with abusers like him on what is supposed to be safe place for people to create and show off their talents and as Bribry stated,
"YouTube is a wonderful place where people can be creative and show their talents and if your talent is sexually harassing women, you should be in jail."
   I am going to leave you guys with some really great responses towards Sam Pepper and the entire issue of sexual harassment. They are all made by awesome people and I would recommend 100% you watching and reading these responses.

Jack Dodge's video on how we need to make this stop.

Megan Tonjes parody of "Rude" singing about Sam Pepper and his video- it's super well written and Megan Tonjes is overall an ultimate babe.

A really awesome video regarding the things wrong with the entire situation.

Nathan of TheThirdPew on YouTube being real cool- he's an awesome guy and is pretty known for discussing things like this (his most famous video is on the whole Nash Grier situation in December)

I just loved how passive aggressive this was.

Luke Cutforth making fun of the whole "social experiment" (he makes a couple Sam Pepper puns in the end of his latest video) 

Dottie's lovely boyfriend, Patty Walters being great about Dottie's video. 

*Since Blogger is being a jerk, I couldn't upload this video but Laci Green's open letter to Sam Pepper is super important and you need to watch it here

You've been you, I've been repulsed by Sam Pepper and select people of the YouTube community's behavior.