Youtube is no stranger to having problematic content creators; Ricegum is just the next one to surface. During a mutual friend’s party on Tuesday night, fellow Youtuber Gabbie Hanna (A.K.A TheGabbieShow) posted on her Snapchat that Ricegum had attacked her and shattered her phone.
It all started when Hanna made a snapchat saying that she was going to challenge Ricegum to a battle and went over to him during the party. She was joking around and they made a video together in which he denied her challenge but kept the mood lighthearted. They were both sitting on a couch, laughing and poking fun.
Here is where things went wrong.
In her next video, Hanna makes a comment about Ricegum’s ghost writer scandal, saying, “So, Rice doesn’t have his ghostwriter today, it’s fine.” You can see his face drop at that comment. For the rest of her Snapchat story, Hanna talks about how he became aggressive and twisted her arm and shattered her phone. She does say that he sent her money to pay for the damage, but this hardly excuses his actions. On her Youtube channel, she posted a follow-up video in which she ends up in tears several times and even reads texts from one of his friends defending Ricegum’s actions.
“And I just don’t think you can be someone on the internet who makes a career on making fun of people and calling people out and roasting people, and then when someone roasts you or calls you out on real shit that you’ve done, that you can be that violent and aggressive,” Hanna said. “Above this being a man hitting a woman thing and a man being very aggressive and violent toward a woman, this is a person to person thing.”
You may ask, who is Ricegum? I asked myself the same question when I first heard about the situation. One quick Youtube search later and you’ll find Ricegum, whose real name Bryan Le, is a guy who makes videos “exposing” other people. He currently has a whopping 5.3 million subscribers. He is known for roasting other Youtube creators, including TheGabbieShow. He had previously made a video about Hanna, making a diss track that included lyrics such as, “I don’t think there is anything bigger than your nose,” and “Nose so long big bird is jealous.” The whole video is meant as a reply to Gabbie, expressing that she should “@ him” in her tweet—a tweet that she had told him was not specifically about him.
It turns out Ricegum has built a whole platform for picking on the insecurities of other creators and tricking fans into believing that he is simply “exposing” them. It’s one thing to expose someone if they actually did something terrible, but it’s another thing to use that as an excuse to pick on someone’s appearance. In one video, he goes above and beyond to slut shame a girl and puts unnecessary censor bars over her body. He even says that he wasn’t impressed when her nudes were leaked online when talking about her video “#nudesat1mil.”
Needless to say, Le is not setting a good example for his fans. For someone who claims that a girl isn’t a good role model for twerking, he is no better for showing his fanbase that they can bully others as long they claim they are exposing them. Most of his channel is a good example of why he is not a good role model.
He is also twisted for thinking that his actions were okay—like Gabbie said herself, this is not an okay reaction for anybody, regardless if he did not like her. He clearly thought that he did nothing wrong when he posted a tweet, which was later deleted, that claimed Gabbie was faking her injuries. This is something a true abuser would do to turn the tables on a victim. Physically assaulting someone for making a lighthearted joke at your expense is not right. Instead of calmly telling her to delete it, Hanna and other witnesses said that he demanded she deleted it, then proceeded to twist her arm.
Ricegum should have been shut down a long time ago. While he has made videos calling out people for actual shitty things, a majority of his roasts are meant to be petty and a weak excuse to pick on someone. Bryan Le is a perfect example how someone can manipulate a lot of people into believing they are a good person, when in reality, they are no worse than the people they “expose.” I would like to say he is officially canceled, but sadly, we live in a society where people will jump through hurdles to defend an abuser and abuse the victim.
I do believe Gabbie will get through this and come out a lot stronger, eventually helping to put an end to problematic Youtubers like Ricegum.
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