Our story begins two years ago. For those who don’t know, VenomFangX, aka 22-year-old Shawn, was YouTube’s most popular creationist/Christian evangelist. And during his time on YouTube, he made a lot of enemies not just for his ignorance but for his unparalleled arrogance, narcissism, censorship of ALL negative comments on his videos, and hypocrisy. This led to him practically becoming the star of popular YouTube atheist Thunderf00t’s brilliant “Why people laugh at creationists” series, which earned him the nickname PCS or the Posterboy for Creationist Stupidity.

Shawn decided to challenge Thunderf00t to a debate. Thunderf00t however declined to acquiesce to his request on the grounds that it’d be like Miss Teen South Carolina debating Stephen Hawking on black holes and the existence of gravity, while also exposing Shawn’s total dishonesty.

After viewers got a glimpse of his wealthy parents’ house where he lives and after previously making a specific point of mentioning how he doesn’t accept donations, he soon begged his sycophantic followers for a better camera to better spread “God’s” word. Around that same time he also reported that he’d lost his job as some retail clerk because he was pushing his unwanted Kent Hovind shwag on customers. He seemed genuinely surprised that management frowned on this. So this motivated him to start up a whole new website devoted to his “ministry.” There he called on his fans to donate money to his site under the fraudulent promise that Shawn would donate a portion of those proceeds to a children’s hospital. The only cause that money went to was himself. There was also a brief incident where another well known religious nut on YouTube, Anthony Powell aka Tony48219, who had frequently cited VenomFangX as his inspiration, was involved in a murder/suicide. And while Shawn’s top critics didn’t blame him for Anthony’s behavior or anger, it was nearly impossible to not see how such an unstable personality would be attracted to the fanaticism found in Shawn’s videos.

Then Shawn made a melodramatic formal announcement that he was permanently shutting down his YouTube account due to alleged death threats against himself and his family, followed by an unhalted continuation of his videos. Must have been sweeps week. He did however delete all or most of his previous videos, leading some to wonder if this was all just an act to play the martyr while inventing a convenient excuse to erase all the firmly debunked videos of his past.

But then Shawn started to get ambitious, which led to him getting sloppy. He was caught dishonestly trying to censor his critics by being either directly or indirectly responsible for false DMCA copyright notifications against some of his chief critics, such as Thunderf00t, which backfired when those more knowledgeable of the law informed him that this was a serious legal offense. But when given the opportunity to have Shawn permanently removed from YouTube and take legal action against him, Thunderf00t showed him mercy by dropping the whole matter provided Shawn agreed to go into self-exile from YouTube for one year.

What Shawn failed to consider due to his total ignorance of the law was that use of clips from his videos was protected under Fair Use because his critics included commentary on the material. His claim, based on the misunderstanding of YouTube’s policy, was that the moment he removed a video from his channel that footage ceased to be within Fair Use. Apparently he thought that the legal expectation was that everyone using clips from other Youtubers’ had to remain constantly aware of whether the original source material was still available on YouTube or not. He also left a digital paper trail acknowledging his role in the illegal action and further illustrating extreme dishonesty. Amusingly, as you can see in the last video linked to above, Shawn opened himself to a world of trouble by upping the cockiness as he foolishly believed he was calling an empty bluff. His overconfidence was his downfall as his opponent was holding a Royal Flush.

After making this video a year ago, the VenomFangX channel went into hiatus for awhile. That is, until seven months ago. That’s when Shawn handed over his VenomFangX YouTube channel with all its sycophantic subscribers to the equally deranged YouTuber Gerrup. Then after Thunderf00t met to discuss evolution with creationist Ray “Banana Man” Comfort, VenomFangX made another request for a formal debate with Thunderf00t, to which he agreed on the condition that Shawn come back to YouTube to make more creationist videos. He made this counter offer because quite frankly Thunderf00t realizes that Shawn’s videos only further illustrate how idiotic creationism is and that his only fans are those who already believed similarly to him from the start. But it is an important point that Thunderf00t invited Shawn to return to YouTube as Shawn would later go on to insist that his chief critics were out to silence his voice and get him off YouTube.

Then just recently, Shawn resurfaced on YouTube with a video announcing that he’s now attending college while unintentionally showing just how disconnected he was from the other students around him. Though I could not find that video, here’s a parody of it, which incorporates Shawn’s actual audio.

And that brings us to the final VenomFangX controversy. Popular YouTube atheist, DPRJones made a series of three videos titled, “Why people hate you, VenomFangX” (here, here, and here). In it, he outlined Shawn’s history on YouTube and made a rather compelling case for why he thinks Shawn might be a sociopath. This led to Shawn trying to pull the EXACT same tactic he’d tried on Thunderf00t on DPRJones’ videos. Again, he issued false DMCA claims and again his defense was based on the same exact false interpretation of YouTube’s policy. Despite the fact that this was explained to him the last time, he claimed the policy is that the moment he removed a video from his channel that footage ceased to be within Fair Use.

So then DPRJones gave Shawn a warning to take down his account within ten days, similar to what Thunderf00t had initially done. This led to a lengthy email exchange between the two, chronicled in another series of three videos (here, here, and here). In them, Shawn trotted out the old claim that crazy people had threatened his life and the lives of his family. Though, suspiciously, that didn’t seem to deter him from returning to YouTube the last time. He then proceeded to refuse to accept any responsibility for making his own enemies and refused to accept that by entering the public domain, he opens himself up to legitimate criticism in addition to more or less blaming DPRJones for inciting such threats by merely posting legitimate and intellectual criticisms. The whole exchange is just an ocean of transparent lies, strategic emotional appeals, denials of responsibility, logical fallacies, and just incoherent gibberish.

This was followed by Shawn’s bravado again as he threatened to “take a huge chunk of videos down with me.” So after already undergoing all the other stages in Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’ stages of grief, Shawn at last arrived at Acceptance:

But again, as with the Thunderf00t incident, he thought he was calling a bluff when his opponent had the far superior hand, so he included some of that classic VenomFangX bravado even though its only led to ruin. As one can see from the above video, he refuses to accept responsibility for his actions, blames those he wronged for his troubles when he has no one to blame but himself, and makes a whole lot of excuses to give the impression that leaving YouTube was his choice when it wasn’t. And then, to add insult to injury, he chooses to not walk away without first slandering the critic he himself had wronged. I guess the kid never learns.

Here’s a few reactions to the death of the VenomFangX channel:

TheTachy0n

C0ct0pusPrime

VelcroBanana – He and DPRJones also commented on Shawn’s ridiculous accusation here and exposing his final piece of deliberate dishonesty.

So with that, so long Shawn. I’d like to say it’s been fun but, you know, like most other people, I can’t stand you.

DPR, sue the fucker for slander!

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