“ Hey what's up, guys, and welcome back to a brand new video on the GODDAMN internet. ” ―LeafyIsHere

Calvin Lee Vail (born: August 18, 1995 (1995-08-18) [age 25]), better known online as LeafyIsHere (or simply Leafy), is an American former YouTube commentator and comedian residing in New York (previously living in Seattle, Washington), who made commentary, reaction, and drama videos. Though his content was heavily criticized and soon led to his rise to fame on YouTube, he was known to popularize the gameplay/commentary format, which soon led to the popularity of similar commentary YouTubers and is still used by many channels today.

Calvin stopped uploading on YouTube on December 12, 2017, due to the changes of YouTube that brought down his channel and he expressed that he'd be gone for the time being. He posted a video responding to drama with iDubbbzTV and his girlfriend on March 31, 2020. Many people speculated that he is returning to YouTube but in an interview conducted by KEEMSTAR of DramaAlert, Calvin says that he would only make videos for fun on LeafyIsHere and post less frequently. Calvin continued to post on an unpredictable schedule, mostly mocking various YouTube drama situations.

On August 21, 2020, Calvin's channel was permanently terminated from YouTube for violations of YouTube's policy on harassment and bullying. On August 23, 2020, Calvin's second channel was terminated as well. Since then, Calvin has switched to Twitch Streaming and has been discussing random topics with KEEMSTAR.

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Career

Although the main focuses of Calvin's videos are his commentaries, he often displays gameplay footage in the background of his videos including various different video games, though most commonly the "surf" game mode in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS: GO), as well as games such as A Story About My Uncle, Doom, and Overwatch.

Origins

Calvin started his YouTube channel originally posting Minecraft gameplay videos at the age of 16. He owned a ParaPVP Minecraft server to game upon, however, he made a kid angry, who ended up calling him a "butt muncher" and DDOSed his Minecraft server. Calvin, therefore, moved onto CS: GO gameplay, which helped his channel grow.

Controversy

Feud with MrBlackDarkness666

In January 2016, Calvin video uploaded a video called "THE SADDEST MAN ON YouTube ", where he talked about the YouTuber known as MrBlackDarkness666, a depressed goth who always got harassed by different people, even little children.

He saw Calvin's video as harassment, so he released a video called LEAFYISHERE GO F**K YOURSELF. In the video, he talked about how his girlfriend broke up with him because she thought that Calvin's video had a point. At the end of the video, he showed a photo of Calvin in real life, setting it on fire with a cigarette and ripping it apart, showing that he could make Calvin leave him alone.

Eventually, Calvin responded with a video THE SADDEST MAN ON THE INTERNET. In the video, Calvin said that the video on MrBlackDarkness666 wasn't intended for harassment and he apologized, but he also said that it wasn't his fault that his ex broke up with him. In the end, the two appeared on DramaAlert, where they apologized to each other.

TommyNC2010 and h3h3Productions Feud

On March 19, 2016, Calvin uploaded a video titled “THE MOST HEROIC FEDORA MAN ON YouTube,” in which he talked about an autistic YouTuber, TommyNC2010. Later that day, TommyNC2010 uploaded a video titled “I am getting Death Threats LeafyIsHere, why?,“ in which TommyNC2010, upset, recorded himself crying and explaining how he was getting a lot of hate and death threats from Leafy's fans, which caused h3h3Productions to make a video about the situation (which is now unlisted).

After Calvin was receiving backlash from h3h3's rant video, he soon took down the video and uploaded an apology video appropriately titled “Apology. However, after h3h3Productions’s former rant about Calvin received over a million views, Calvin made a response video (which is now unlisted) stating that Ethan Klein from h3h3Productions tried to side with Calvin, where he shows several text messages from h3h3Productions talking negativity about the YouTuber Pyrocynical. Pyrocynical eventually made two videos addressing the situation, the latter of which titled “Let's Call it Quits #uniteyoutube.

Keemstar Feud

The first of which Pyrocynical removed. Keemstar attempted to invite both parties to DramaAlert later on to discuss the matter but failed. Later, Ethan from h3h3 apologized for his critique of Calvin, stating that the video was "too personal" and "making it seem that Leafy was his enemy". After this, Calvin started to include a disclaimer on his videos for fans to not "witch hunt" the people/content he reviews.

On June 13, 2016, Calvin uploaded a video titled "THE KEEMSTAR AND DRAMAALERT RANT", where he talked about how Keemstar was doing "some criminal shit", which included threatening to release people's information if they criticized him. Calvin also talked about how he falsely accuses people of being a pedophile, with one such accusation making an old man cry while he was streaming on Twitch. Another point in the video was, according to Calvin, that Keemstar was being a hypocrite.

When someone informed Keemstar that Calvin was going to make a video about the false pedophile allegations, he told Calvin that if he was to make a tweet or video about him, he would release his DM'S (Direct Messages) with him. Calvin also brought up that Keemstar was invading other people's privacy and revealing their faces. On July 4th, 2016, Calvin’s YouTube channel was hacked by Twitter user PoodleCorp, who changed the video titles of all of Calvin’s videos to “hacked by twitter.com/poodlecorp".

Months after the scandal, Calvin was accused of sub botting three times. The first incident was when his and Colossal is Crazy's sub counts spiked on Social Blade. However, it turned out to be a glitch. The second time was when a small YouTuber known as Ecy claimed to have evidence of Calvin being registered on a sub botting website and using it, in which Keemstar reported. After Calvin proved the information to be incorrect, Keemstar told his audience the information was wrong. However, on the third incidence, the hacker group OurMine hacked into his old Gmail and found out that Calvin made a shorter link to a sub botting website back in 2013, which he denied. Keemstar then reported on the issue. He claimed he wasn't accusing Calvin of sub botting, but did say in the video that he was on a Skype call with Calvin asking for advice after iDubbbzTV's Content Cop on Keem caused his subs to decline. He claims that Calvin's response was "Well you can bot the likes...", Calvin then made a statement about the situation, denying the accusations of him sub botting and claiming that the call between him and Keem never happened.

After Calvin's ex animator HeyWatchYourMouth spoke out against him, saying that he wasn't paying him good enough and claiming that Calvin and Grade did backstab Keem, Calvin started getting hate and losing subs. In October of 2016, Calvin and Keemstar made their first confrontation in months in a Baited Podcast episode, with Colossal is Crazy and Tommy C STFP in the same call. Keem accuses Calvin of backstabbing him, lying about him and trying to ruin his career while Calvin denies most of the claims. Five arguments were brought up in the Baited episode, Keemstar won five, Calvin only succeeded in one and one was tied. After that Baited episode aired, Calvin gained more hate.

However, in an interview with Keemstar on October 25, 2018, Keemstar asked about the controversy of him and GradeAUnderA attacking Keemstar. Calvin said he did it for revenue.

iDubbbz Content Cop

On September 13, 2016, iDubbbzTV created a "Content Cop" video, as part of his on-going series on YouTube creators, on Calvin, criticizing his videos' content for (in iDubbbz's opinion) having a bad format and overall low quality with repetitive jokes. He also played several existing jokes on Calvin, such as referring to Calvin as a cyberbully and mocking the size of Calvin's chin, with these jokes either being combined or used interchangeably and in satirical nature, to mock Calvin's claim that his videos are "satire" while using the type of jokes Calvin would make in his commentary videos (such as mocking a part of his appearance which the individual can not control), which iDubbbz in play also depicted satire by its true form and definition.

After iDubbbz's video, Calvin's subscriber-count began to fall drastically and eventually, according to SocialBlade, caused Calvin to lose 2,000 subscribers per day. Many, however, believe iDubbbz wasn't directly involved in this despite his popular video and Calvin's audience was slowly noticing subconsciously how repetitive Calvin's content was and was gradually starting to lose interest before he jumped in. iDubbbz was simply the last little push the audience collectively needed.

Decline

On October 2, 2016, HeyWatchYourMouth uploaded a video titled, "The Real LeafyIsHere". In the video, HeyWatchYourMouth accused Calvin of not giving a shoutout, proper payment, or credit, when he worked on Calvin's videos. He also accused Calvin of telling him to make videos on H3h3Productions, and why Calvin and GradeAUnderA attacked Keemstar. The video that HeyWatchYourMouth made was later deleted.

On October 9, 2016, Calvin apologized to HeyWatchYourMouth for not giving enough credit or a shoutout, and lost thousands of subscribers daily, as well as having his viewership decline rapidly after the drama.

Inactivity

Calvin stopped uploading after December 12, 2017, with his last video being "this video will make you cry..."[2] He mentioned in the video that he hadn't been consistent in uploading as he lost motivation to upload. Another YouTube commentator, NFKRZ, made a video about Calvin's supposed hiatus. In it, NFKRZ speculated that Calvin quit YouTube as he was set for life. NFKRZ also said Calvin is no longer uploading because he isn't active on Twitter anymore; however Calvin later mentioned that his Twitter account was hacked[3] and was locked out of the account, unable to regain access. It was also mentioned by WildSpartanz that Calvin wasn't passionate about YouTube anymore and decided to quit.

On June 20, 2018, YouTube commentator EmpLemon uploaded the video "Leafy Was Here". In it, he goes on to explain Calvin's YouTube career, from the beginning to the downfall. The video received widespread attention, getting over 3 million views. After being uploaded, some people started referring to Calvin as "LeafyWasHere" instead of "LeafyIsHere".

Keemstar Interview

On October 18, 2018, Keemstar of DramaAlert posted on Twitter stating that he was going to interview Calvin[4] and uploaded a teaser for the interview on the 24th.[5]

On October 25, 2018, the LeafyIsHere interview was uploaded.[6] When asked about what he'd been up to, Calvin said he had been making investments, which could mean that he's had some form of activity in the stock market, such as online trading for example. This was later confirmed almost a year and a half later on episode 3 of the Mom's Basement Podcast, when Keemstar says at 55:34 "...For those of you that don't know, Leafy is heavily invested in the Stock Market, he's basically a stock trader...". Keemstar also claimed in the podcast that Leafy took $2.5 Million of his YouTube earnings to invest in the stock market and made a lot of money.

At 13:45 in the interview, Keemstar brought up the drama that happened between them and asked Calvin why he and GradeAUnderA attacked him. Calvin replies, "...AdSense was at an all-time high, but... and I can only speak for myself, obviously," admitting that he started the feud for sake of money.

Partial Comeback

In October 2019, Leafy changed his subscription box from having other YouTubers to one account called Crisp with the caption "LITTLE SISTER" above it. He's actually Leafy's younger brother. Afterwards, YouTubers started theorizing that Leafy might make a comeback featuring his brother. On January 26, 2020, Leafy changed his description, removed his brother's account from his subscription box, and removed his banner. He also posted on his community tab: "Was fun ride, Happy 2020 everyone!" He was also in Keemstar’s video "Leafy returns to YouTube to talk to Nick Avocado" where he talks to Nick Avocado about the situation of him getting disliked.

On March 31, 2020, Leafy premiered a video titled "idubbbz," which featured thirty seconds of him addressing his former critic. Since then, he was uploading one to two videos a week on an irregular schedule. The first few mainly addressed the people he had past negative interactions with.

Calling out iDubbbz

YouTuber iDubbbzTV, who has made a Content Cop against Calvin, had faced controversy due to his girlfriend creating an OnlyFans account and him expressing his approval of the ordeal.[7] KEEMSTAR of DramaAlert later announced that Calvin might make a response to iDubbbz.[8] On March 31, 2020, Calvin made a 30-second video titled "idubbbz" mentioning that Ian (iDubbbzTV) "is a cuck". At the end of the video, Calvin stated that still does not like YouTube,[9] denying the possibility of a comeback.

Calling out Pokimane

On July 31, 2020, Calvin released a video titled "Content Nuke - Pokimane". Inspired by h3h3Production's "Content Nuke - Keemstar", which is itself a parody of iDubbbzTV's Content Cop series, the video called out Pokimane for copyright striking various videos that criticized her (e.g. ItsAGundam's video).

Termination

On August 21, 2020, the LeafyIsHere YouTube channel was terminated due to "creating content designed to harass, bully or threaten". [10] After news broke out, Calvin made an interview with Keemstar, stating the situation. Many people speculated that some critical people behind the termination were Pokimane and/or Ethan of H3h3productions, all though both parties denied any involvement. Calvin later moved to his second channel, LeafyIsntHere, where he uploaded multiple videos regarding everything that happened. On August 23, 2020, the LeafyIsntHere channel was also terminated. In a later DramaAlert video, Calvin went on to explain that he would be moving to Twitch. As of September 2020, His Twitch account has over 281,000 followers and averages 10,000 live viewers.

Suspended from Twitch

On September 11, 2020, Leafy was permanently suspended on Twitch due to "Engaging in hateful conduct and threats of violence against a person or a group of people".[11]

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