 Who is Keemstar? Well I'm Keemstar and this is my story. Back in 2009 I was in my seventh or eighth year working at the attorney's office and I started getting into Halo 3. I had my own Xbox and I had a gamer tag called DJ Keemstar and the reason why I came up with that gamer tag is because on the weekends I would DJ weddings. So I worked at the attorney's office and on the weekends I would DJ weddings and events and I was making a killing and I was doing really good for myself and I just found out that I was about to be a father. All this happened at the same time. One night I was out drinking with some friends and I came home and I was a little drunk and the thing that I loved about Halo is the social aspect of the game right right before the match would start you would tell the other team I'm gonna own you I'm gonna do this I'm gonna do that I'm gonna kick your butt and I became in love with the trash talk as much as I became in love with the actual game in fact more in love with the trash talk but anyhow one night I came home from the bar like I said a little drunk and I started really reaming into the other team. I didn't think much of it and then the next day I got online and I got a couple messages and the next day more messages and finally a week later I realized that there was some video of me up on YouTube somewhere now I never inspired to be a YouTuber or a gaming entertainer it just happened this guy called Duranker recorded me and put me online when I saw the video it had 20,000 views and I was shocked I was a little embarrassed about some of the trash talk that I was saying but it was funny it was comedic um at least some people thought it was you know comedy is a weird thing not everyone thinks things are funny but 20,000 people did and I got contacted by the guy that uploaded the video his name was Duranker and he told me that you know a group of people just got together and they created this thing called F-A-G not Fag F-A-G the Federation of asshole gamers and they asked me if I wanted to be a part of it and I was like I don't know he explained to me that you know they got together and they would make videos on Halo 3 you know they'd capture trash talk and they'd pull pranks and do all kinds of different stuff like get people to betray you and then boot them out and just you know funny little pranks and said what the hell why not so I started making videos with them and I decided at some point that I wanted to make my own channel so I made my own channel and fast fast fast like super fast I got up to 3,000 subscribers now at that time I didn't know how to run a capture card I didn't know how to edit a video I didn't know how to do any of this stuff in fact how I made all my videos was I had a guy in the lobby with me that would always record me I called him my cameraman he would make the videos for me and then upload them to my channel he had the password the thing took off at 3,000 subscribers I got a message from Machinima and they invited me to be a director on their channel I didn't know what that was started looking into it and I was like super super happy so I put together a video and I sent it to him but again I was about to be a parent my child was about to be born and I remember I woke up one morning and one afternoon and Melissa spent the night in the hospital because there were some complications or whatever and I had to go home to take care of some work again I was still working at the attorney's office I went home hurried up had like a cat nap I woke up like in the afternoon and CNN was on the background and I saw that Michael Jackson just passed away at that time they said you know he's on the way the hospital they believe he passed away it's pretty scary I was like wow the king of pop dead then I walked over to my computer and I went to my channel and my channel had 300 new subscribers now that might seem a lot like in today's day and age but back in 2009 that was huge I'm like what's going on and then I realized my first video went up on Machinima and then the phone rang I answered the phone it was Melissa she said I'm having the baby now so I rushed down to the hospital I became a father and all this happened in one day and then from there we started getting a lot of comments on our videos I started getting comments that you know these trolls were fake and all this stuff was set up and staged we were the first of its kind you know before there were trolling videos all over YouTube there was FAG we kind of started the trend there were a few trolling videos prior to uh to us back in 2009 in late 2008 but uh nothing organized no group no actual channel dedicated to this type of content we were trend setters but we started getting all these comments like I was saying that it was staged it was fake it was fake it wasn't real so I wanted to prove to everyone that we were actually doing this so I started streaming on JustinTV at the time and then we went to Ustream and then finally I found my home on blog tv and I had a very successful stream back in 2010 there was like 3,000 people watching me every single night live um and I was making so much money and I was doing so well for myself because even then gaming channels couldn't get partnered but my gaming channel with FAG Halo A-holes got partnered and it was the fifth gaming channel to ever get partnered so that was a huge deal so we started making money from that I was making money from my stream and I became the number one most subscribed person beating like Shay Carl and and Philip DeFranco and all these guys on blog tv which was huge I made enough money where I was able to quit my job at the attorney's office and pursue whatever this was gaming entertainment at the course of that summer in 2010 um the Xbox live enforcement team really started cracking down on me and they started banning my consoles over and over and over again to the point where I couldn't uh make trolling videos anymore I just couldn't like every time I would stream they would just ban my oxbox so I started going over to another website called Battlecam and Battlecam was like a live streaming uh website where you would talk trash to each other and battle it out and see who can stay on the longest and I became friends with the owner of the website which is Elkie David who was a billionaire and at the same time this was going on um I stumbled across I was dabbling into Minecraft I had a Minecraft server um you know back at late 2010 early 2011 and you know that was doing very successful so everything was going good but I was kind of leaning away from trolling you know F.A.G ran its course for those two years and somebody sent me a video and they said look Minecraft is coming to Xbox live but it wasn't Minecraft it was actually uh small developer that was creating a game called Fortress Craft and I knew with the popularity that I had at the time that I could make this game huge I could make sure that Katuku and Machinima and all these big gaming companies journalist if you will would write stories about this if I could just spread the word so I contacted the indie developer made a deal with him took ownership uh part ownership over Fortress Craft and I started promoting it and Fortress Craft became this big thing and sold two million copies on Xbox Live so then I was set I was set but the way Microsoft pays is they only pay quarterly and the Xbox Live enforcement team was really crushing down on me to the point where I couldn't make revenue anymore I couldn't stream gameplay because they were banning my Xbox I couldn't do make videos because they were banning my Xbox and my gamer tags so I was to the point where everything started really slowing down and I had no income the only thing I was doing every day is like going on battle cam so I was waiting for this big check I mean a really big check life changing money but I had to wait for Microsoft to pass so all throughout 2011 I was just making it by now you gotta understand that I'm a family or I have a family that I have a child I have a girlfriend you know everyone's needs to eat everyone needs to have gas electric shelter everything needs to be taken care of and I'm the man I have to provide for my family so I was contacting the attorney's office and I was about ready to go back to work all right because I was so hard up when an opportunity came knocking at my door a gentleman contacted me and said that he owned a YouTube network and he wanted me to have half of the YouTube network and all I had to do promote it now you gotta understand I just came out of like promoting fortress crafting and being very successful and I had big money that was going to be paid out to me soon so this was another thing that I knew I could do I knew I could promote I was very successful in marketing that game there would be really easy for me to promote a network so this guy went as far as said we can even call it the Keemstar network I was super excited he told me that he was worried that if we just partner everyone all right that someone would like you know upload offensive content like you know pornography or something like that and get the whole network shut down it was like a standard MCN again I knew nothing about networks you gotta understand like eight months ago like we were the fifth like gaming channel to ever get partnered machinima just started partnering gaming channels this is way before gaming channels could even get partnered there weren't really like networks there was machinima there was like maker there was the game station and and that was it there was a few other the collective maybe there was a few other things out there but this partnering on youtube thing was brand new I didn't really know how it all worked but this guy that contacted me did apparently and he told me that we needed to take a $50 security deposit from each person before we partner to them so we have insurance that they want to get the network shut down so I'll I started promoting it I was super excited super happy start promoting promoting the Keemstar network I even uploaded a video on Halo A-holes saying hey look we'll partner anyone we just need to take a $50 deposit this is an opportunity for anyone to get partnered and to make money on youtube now at that time you got to understand that you couldn't even have a youtube banner unless you were partnered like only people that were partnered had a youtube banner so this was a big deal like close to like 50 people jumped on it right away at that time my channel was partnered with the game station which is maker which recently got purchased by disney and the CEO of maker sent me an email and he said we're unpartnering Halo A-holes right now we're we're we're getting away from your channel what you just did with that video with the $50 deposit that's clearly against youtube rules and I started freaking out I had no idea what I just got myself into so I hurried up and deleted the video and then I went to the guy that was running the PayPal the guy that contacted me the guy that actually had the network and I told him what was said to me by maker and he said ah no we can do that it's fine I checked it and everything but I didn't know what was going on and I said well can we refund everyone can we at least refund everyone because it wasn't my PayPal it was his and he said no it's fine we don't have to do that we don't have to do that the next morning I woke up and my channel was terminated the channel that I worked for like this whole time with with my friends robber robot uh two bucks and drink it was just gone youtube found out and they shut me down I'm like what did I do what did I get involved in so naturally I wanted to refund everyone the guy that contacted me said uh yeah we're not going to refund anyone and I'm going to get the channel back and I'm going to get the the network back up but at this point there were so many people I mean the CEO of maker was telling me that we were in the wrong there were so many people that I just didn't believe this guy anymore and then I found out that this guy purchased this mcn this network off of hack forms that it wasn't even his to begin with I didn't make any money from this in fact I had to borrow money from my parents at at the time because of this and none of those people got refunded because I didn't control the PayPal it was his PayPal and it was just horrible absolutely horrible and long story short I just had to keep moving on the money from fortress craft finally came in I was wealthy and you know I purchased a house in cash and I purchased a brand new car in cash and I purchased everything that my family ever needed hot tub a segue I I I was happy but I had this cloud over me this whole time of what happened with that network thing and getting that channel down that mistake that I made that that ignorance that has cost me all all of my work up to that point so I contact a lot of people at YouTube I try to get it back I had no luck I talked to people that interned at YouTube I had a pretty much a team built of trying to fix this problem that I had nothing worked I tried throwing money at it I tried to get an attorney involved nothing worked there was no way I could get out of this horrible thing that I've done and I just said I got to rebuild I got to just continue doing what I've done this whole time and that's make people laugh that's make you know people feel entertained you know I would get emails from kids that would be like I want to kill myself my life was so bad my parents abused me I get bullied at school but every day I would come home and watch your trolling videos and laugh and it's the one thing that left up my spirits and it's it's emails like that and it's the love and stuff that I got from from making people laugh that made me say no matter what I'm not quitting you know I was already set like I didn't need money anymore it wasn't like I was working for money and I wasn't working for money before I actually just loved doing this I loved entertaining people so I wanted to get back into it at that time I started talking to Elkie David which is the owner of Battlecam the billionaire and I was trying to put together a tv show and the tv show would be big youtubers competing and call it duty and you know the grand prize would be like 10 grand or whatever and you know eventually we'd set it up or it would be like pay per view or something like that we ended up calling it billionaires challenge and I got white boy seven street I got what is gamertag xjaws only use me blade wings redemption and freddy w all together to compete for a ten thousand dollar prize and it took off it was the first call of duty event to get a hundred thousand concurrent viewers it was huge and people loved it so this was my new thing this is this is the thing that I was doing now you know I was creating tv shows like it was awesome and I was entertaining people again and it was it was it was amazing but then there was controversies when we tried to do it the second time we we tried to involve more youtubers and elkie david tried to pull some prank or whatever where he said hey we're gonna have an assistant suicide on the stream and the the community really attacked that and they they really were turned off by billionaires challenge and we ended up having a second one and it was a pretty good success in fact nade shot you know I think that was like his first big break to quit mcdonald's he won five thousand dollars and it and it was like online I had holiday dock there we try to set up a third one but at that time billionaires challenge was just done it was over with but from doing billionaires challenge I had a new friend like I had a guy that I really liked a lot and I became friends with him and his name was only use me blade and he lived in Seattle so I contacted him and I just wanted to do something different than trolling I I know I was like really good and I and I know I'm still good and I can pull off amazing pranks um but I wanted to just talk like I'm talking to you right now that's what I wanted to do I wanted to have a podcast and as I'm looking through these youtubers and I'm trying to find the perfect person I stumble on my friend that I'm already friends with his his Sunday chill commentaries and I was like this is the guy that I need to be the host of my podcast so I put a lot of pressure on him and he kept saying no I don't know no no and then finally one day I said listen I'll do all the work we'll split everything 50 50 any profits that come from this thing but I'll do all the work all right you don't have to do anything all you have to do is show up that's a deal I made him and I only use me blade wouldn't care if I said this about him but he's a little bit lazy right no so he that's that's what got him he was like yes let's do it so we started doing this audio podcast and we had you know gas come in and it was a hit it was a hit and I decided I had this weird thing where I wanted to make a music video for some reason so what I did is uh I went to school with this guy Scott Kenmartin and he's a youtuber and he's friends with all these big youtubers like good friends with like Charles Trippie and the Shea Tards and like all these giant like vlogger youtubers he's like good friends with them and I went to high school with this kid and he's really he went to school for like taking photos and stuff video photography I'm murdering that word but you know what I mean all right so I contact him and he's in Florida at the time and again I have this fortress craft money I'm like look I'm gonna fly you up here to shoot this music video it's just gonna be fun I don't care how much money I waste on this it's just gonna be something fun that we do and a contact blade I'm like I'm flying you up as well so I fly up blade and I fly up uh Scott Kenmartin and we create this music video but while we that while we're there I had season tickets to the bills game and I decided let's do a podcast like at the bills game but let's actually film it and we got the footage we edited it and we uploaded it to YouTube and we're down in my basement theater and we're sitting in these big leather couches or chairs or whatever that recline and everything and I got a nice 50 inch TV downstairs in the basement and we're sitting there and we're watching this and something clicks like this is much bigger than we ever thought you know not only did me and blade have an amazing conversation not only where we in the front of this stadium where people are tailgating all around us and we have professional mics on and cameras but we have Scott Kenmartin who's a professional editor who like turned this thing into a TV show and we're watching this and it's magic before our eyes blade comes up with the idea he's like what if I moved a buffalo what if we just do this what if we do this TV show thing so we did it I went to Pax West we hung out with like syndicate and like foyers and a couple other people and while we're there in Seattle we packed up blade we rented a U-Haul and we moved blade all the way across the country me blade and Scott Kenmartin and we came here and we started making this high production podcast known as the bad kid cast and somebody for some reason the channel just disappeared and my happy happy grief day or something like that just disappeared I had a channel with videos of my family of Mia and it just disappeared all my channels just disappeared and we couldn't figure out why and this guy contacted us and he said that he was taking us down if you have a youtube channel that gets suspended or shut down you can't have another one and this person was contacting youtube saying hey look keemstar has another channels he has this bad kid cast he has this other thing going on so we're like oh no what do we do we made another channel we talked to the guy we pleaded with him we begged him just please leave us alone made another channel that got taken down in the middle of this I was doing this thing on twitter which was like a troll I was basically like when people were fighting I was shoutcasting it on twitter I'd be like so-and-so is fighting with so-and-so hashtag drama alert and I decided to like turn it into videos and make videos of it and it was retardately successful it was like it was amazing like I created this channel drama alert nation and it got a million views in the first month and 30,000 subscribers but it just got shut down so I made another channel and it got 10,000 subscribers in the first like two days and that one got shut down so all this stuff was happening where I was really excited about and passionate about but it just kept getting shut down so I got together another team and we really really tried to get in contact with youtube which is impossible and we tried to get halo a-holes back because I knew all my channels were gonna be taken down if I did not get halo a-holes back and finally we got through to youtube and this is 18 months later my youtube channel halo a-holes that got shut down for apparently selling partnerships which was not the case it was uh supposed to be a you know a reserve or whatever but that channel came back youtube freed up the channel and I was cleared on youtube and this is early 2013 and I remember I kind of held a party at PAX east in Boston like you know we rented a mansion and you know we had like uh the phase guys phase temper x-jaws and a few other people uh there and I remember like a bunch of these bigger youtubers like telling me like how f-a-g like inspired them I remember like phase Tommy said that he used to do graphics for them before he blew up and now phase is like the biggest clan in all of youtube I mean and he used to do graphics for me I didn't even know that so these other youtubers inspired me to get back into my roots and to do trolling and halo a-holes just came back so I was freed on youtube so I launched killer keemstar and on that channel in 2013 I pulled off some of the greatest pranks ever I mean I really showed this new generation of trolls like what it's like to to pull off a good prank a legit troll and uh we had the fake nuke uh series we had a bunch of stuff up there and it was amazing and it really took off at the same time I launched the drum alert um which was like the fifth drummer channel and that thing started taken off we launched a new bad kid cast and we got all this studio equipment and we had a camera on us and the bad kid cast the third bad kids cast channel was taken off and the new drummer channel was taken off and my personal channel was taken off and everything was amazing at this time I created another game called amputee through uh my gaming company and the game was successful pewdiepie played my game yugs class uh yugs cast played my game all these people played my game like so and then it got on steam and like I had all this great stuff going for me again and then all my channels got shut down halo a-holes got reshot down drum alert got reshot down the bad kid cast got reshot down my personal channel got reshot down I even had like a clan channel uh the thrust clan and we competed at an mlg event and that got shut down as well this mistake that I made you know with you know taking the reserve for partnerships or whatever um has haunted me I don't know why youtube cleared me on youtube and then took it back but this thing has been haunting me forever but I just can't give up like I've already been infected with you like I've already been infected with entertaining people and you know people enjoying what I what I produce and what I make I've already been infected like it doesn't matter who says I can't and I'm not allowed to be here like I'm just gonna make another channel like I'm just like I know I fucked up and I believe that I've paid I've lost years of work um everything I've ever created is gone and I feel like I'm being punished for for that but to just walk away and stop making videos I can't now we're in a situation where drum alert's been shut down like so many times but I just keep creating new channels in fact I've hit a hundred thousand subscribers three different times this year that's that's right you heard me right three channels that have reached a hundred thousand channels and then been shut down a hundred thousand subscribers and then but shut down and you know that's that's proven fact that people want the content that I'm producing and that they love enjoy it otherwise I wouldn't be able to get hit a hundred thousand subs three times this year um and the situation is now is I don't even log into the youtube channel like I don't own the youtube channel there's a loophole in the system um where it says that I can't log into a a channel and I can't own a channel and I can't even profit from a channel which I don't do any of that stuff um I have other people run the channel for me and I'm a contracted worker um and and that's how I'm able to be on youtube but still people are finding a way to shut me down and shut down my channels but there's so much um stuff that's set about me because of the the character that I've played and there's so much misconceptions of me um but I wanted you to hear it from me first that my main objective is just to entertain people that's what I care about more than anything I care about reading comments of people saying that they really enjoyed you know what I've done and and tweets that people that love my stuff like that's that's my drug and I'm never going to rehab that's my story thanks