YouTube Producers Milk Fatal Toronto Explosion For Fun And Profit

Michael Learmonth | August 20, 2008 8:10 AM

torontoexplosion.jpg

The fiery mushroom cloud that rose over downtown Toronto last week must have been pretty scary to everyone who saw it. The explosion of a propane storage facility killed two people and forced 12,000 people to evacuate.

The conflagration also made a big impact in the world of Web video: Hundreds of witnesses recorded what they saw and uploaded the scene to YouTube. As of yesterday, a search of "Toronto propane explosion" on YouTube yielded 310 results.

But at least two of those videos -- which happen to be some of site's most popular clips -- aren't what they purport to be.

It just so happens that some of YouTube's biggest stars were in town for the 888 YouTube Gathering. Two of them, sxephil, kevjumba, thought it would be funny to make bogus, "Cloverfield"-style clips of the disaster -- using footage shot by someone who really witnessed it, Toronto resident Saejinoh.

The two videos, which are supposed to appear as if they were made by people who saw the explosions from a hotel balcony, are sort of clever. They've racked up more than 850,000 views in a little more than a week, and they give you a sense of why sxephil and kevjumba are some of YouTube's most-followed video producers. But they also makes us feel at least a little bit squeamish, given the very real impact of the disaster.

Since sxephil and kevjumba are YouTube partners, they're making money from the videos, as is YouTube. How much? At least a few thousand dollars apiece, given that YouTube sells AdSense for video at about $15 per thousand impressions, and hands over about half of that to the video creator. As of Tuesday, YouTube was running ads for Revlon and Ecko on the videos.

Now kevjumba, who says he just graduated from high school, appears to be having second thoughts about this one. He added to the description of his video:

I want to thank Saejinoh for the footage, the video was not meant to trick you into thinking we recorded this as the gas tank exploded, the purpose was to create a Cloverfield-style video from two viewpoints..

No word yet from Sxephil.

All three versions, two fake and one real, posted below.

Toronto Propane Explosion from My Angle (kevjumba): 508,300 views

Toronto Propane Explosion Caught On Tape (sXePhil's Angle): 351,094 views

Original video of the explosion

 

See Also:
YouTube Restores Video of Pro-Tibet Rally Over IOC and China Screams
Sorry, Investors: The Online Video Pie Just Shrank By 65%
YouTube Exec: We're Selling Ads Against 'Less Than 3%' Of Our Videos

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16 Comments

Christopher (URL) said:
Hi,

A friend just posted to me in my chatroom on IRC this entry post..

I have to say very good entry on it and I would like to share with you my post on it, I too wrote a blog entry on this subject..

This was wrote about a week ago..

Feel free to comment on it if you wish!

http://cmarlow480.blogspot.com/2008/08/youtube-madness.html#links

-- Christopher
Johan said:
Wow, you are a complete moron. Where did you EVER get the idea that he was trying to make money? He and Kevjumba are not partners, and where the hell did you get the idea that YouTube pays people money for videos??? Did you get dropped on your head, or have you just lived under a rock for the past 10 years? And you didn't even TRY to contact sxephil! Why are you writing half-truths about a random youtube celebrity?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s76jZDxPmKg
sxephil mentions this post.
Benjamin said:
Your ignorance is gigantic to the extreme. Get over yourself. They did not commercialize, and Phil has just owned you in his daily video. Kill yourself.
jz said:
When I first saw the video I laughed and thought it was a joke. I thought it was in bad taste, but figured there would be some hint that indeed they were kidding around. Maybe even a hint in the side description or credits to saejinoh. Instead what I found was kevjumba and davedays and 4 others listed as witnesses to something that never happened.

I then assumed people would get it. But to my surprise, most of sxephils fans believed him and even praised him for catching such good footage. I then figured they'd clear it up and credit saejinoh in the next video. That never happened either. It soon became apparent that they truly wanted people to believe this.

saejinoh tried to contact sxephil and ask for credit or to have it removed. From what he told me, sxephil blew his questions off and gave him "creepy" responses like, 'do you think I'm a bad person' trying to avoid helping the guy. So the guy filed dmca, but youtube is of course slow unfortunately.

Now, after this story, they've made their videos private. At this point they are obviously running away from what they never should have done to begin with. At least, he should have put in the sidebar something like, "Spoofing clover field guys! video credits saejinoh - real footage". That would have been great and people would have loved it. But again, it seems he really wanted
people to believe he caught that footage.

That said, it seems like sxephil's dumb fans will miss the main point, and show up to deny he wanted to make money etc. Granted he's right that he already makes money on views, the point is he loved the vanity and idea of being the pretend newscaster that seemingly caught that footage. The principal in that itself show a character flaw that far outweighs everything in my opinion. THAT's what people should be noticing. And of course he can also boost his popularity with that video as well. He can't say it didn't help because that's why he did it. Now his only recourse is to say, "Hey we don't really need the views, so you are full of shit about us doing it for money". blah blah.

It of course evades the all the other negatives, like if it's so ok, why did he pretend all of this in the first place. And even if he thought people would catch the spoof, he could clearly see people struggling in comments to understand what really happened. His lack of action shows he was being deceptive and I've lost respect for him. GOOD job writing this article and pushing the buttons. What you said, needed to be said. To think it was so easy for sxephil to credit that guy, but he thought he was too big to, or that his editing would fool enough people. That said, the whole thing was a poor choice that will come back to haunt him.
Anon said:
They only do it for the views and attention, sxephil is the worst at it. Previous titles of his videos: "F*CK YOU!", "Michael Phelps Is a DOUCHEBAG!" just look for yourself. Nobody really likes or cares about him.
Roger said:
Hey Guys,

I really like Kev, but denying he or sxephil aren't making money from youtube seems a bit naive, don't you think?
Roger said:
ups, there is at least one negation too many in my post: "denying they are making money" is of course what I meant
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