Back in May 2019, a gaming YouTuber named Jared "ProJared" Knabenbauer became the target of a very public canceling.
While the cancellation of a niche (albeit popular) gaming YouTuber could be considered a blip within the larger context of rampant call-out culture, the details were juicy enough and the backlash loud enough that "ProJared" trended on Twitter. Major media outlets took notice, with publications like The Daily Beast providing in-depth coverage. Popdust wrote an op-ed on ProJared, too, "highlighting and dissecting the drama of a womanizing pedophile." That's what his cancellation was all about.
The SparkNotes version of events played out as follows: Knabenbauer announced he and his wife, professional cosplayer Heidi O'Ferrall, were getting an amicable divorce. O'Ferrall immediately claimed that Knabenbauer had been cheating on her with their mutual friend, gamer/cosplayer Holly Conrad, and had also been soliciting nudes from fans for years. Indeed, Knabenbauer ran an NSFW Tumblr where he posted sexual content and fans could send him nudes. Then it came to light that O'Ferrall had been aware of and okay with her ex-husband's Tumblr activities and that their relationship might have incorporated polyamory. Finally, two former fans––Chai and Charlie––came forward alleging that Knabenbauer, who is 34 years old, had solicited nudes from them, even though he knew they were underage. Charlie also provided screenshots proving the interactions occurred while he was younger than 18.
The fuse had been lit. Knabenbauer became an overnight pariah. His niche communities of fellow creatives cut all ties with him. He faced an endless stream of harassment on Twitter. Countless YouTubers picked him apart. Based on the assumption that ProJared was a pedophile caught red-handed, his punishment felt thoroughly deserved.
The Defense
But then, three months later, Knabenbauer released a 42-minute video responding to the allegations made against him. Even going into this video fully expecting a load of rehearsed backtracking, it's hard to watch the whole thing without feeling like ProJared was wronged––at least to some extent. After all, he has receipts.
Upfront, this is not an all-out defense of Knabenbauer. A good deal of his behavior was, at best, problematic. This is, however, a defense of fairness.
For whatever misdeeds Knabenbauer may have committed, based on the evidence at hand, it is inarguable that he was held responsible for things he did not do by an outraged mob, who seemed to hold no interest in discerning the truth. Most importantly, the outright unfairness of his experience gives cause to reflect on the point of cancel culture: By gleefully "canceling" problematic people online, are we actually serving lofty social goals or just perpetuating more abuse?
Knabenbauer's video is worth watching in its entirety, not for ProJared's sake, but rather for its potential as a case study about the flaws of cancel culture run amok. Regardless of one's opinion of Knabenbauer, he illustrates beyond any shadow of a doubt that cancel culture has a tendency to fuel outrage with decontextualized and potentially false information. This results in a bastardization of social justice which undermines its own end goal of revoking abusive people of their privilege by turning its practitioners into bullies themselves.
Knabenbauer, for his part, was very open in his video about the fact that he did operate an NSFW Tumblr. He also noted time and again that he was very clear about only communicating with people older than 18, a point which multiple people who had participated reiterated to The Daily Beast, as well. Aside from Chai and Charlie, everyone else agreed that, at least via text, Knabenbauer always insisted that anyone he exchanged sexual content with must be 18 or older.
Now here's where we hit some tricky territory. Considering the position Knabenbauer held within his niche community as a prominent YouTuber, a natural power imbalance existed between him and most of the people sending him naked selfies. Moreover, a lot of his fans were younger than he was, which likely heightened the possibility of underaged people interacting with his NSFW content. In short, there's an uncomfortable element to Knabenbauer's lewd online presence.
With that being said, Knabenbauer's professional status should not preclude him from expressing his sexuality with other consenting adults. Saying that his behavior had problematic elements does not necessarily make it predatory. If two consenting adults choose to exchange naked selfies with one another, it's not really anyone else's business.
In a similar vein, regardless of whether or not Knabenbauer cheated on O'Ferrall (or who cheated on whom and in what capacity, we honestly don't know), it's not anyone's business on Twitter. Adult relationships can be messy and complicated, and just because someone has some degree of celebrity, it does not mean that their personal lives should be public.
In short, there are surely a number of fair reasons to dislike Knabenbauer. It's fine to unsubscribe from him for cheating, assuming that's what you believe he did. It's also fine to unfollow someone who engages in what you believe to be problematic behavior. At the same time, I'm not convinced that, in Knabenbauer's case, either of those things warranted the extreme levels of toxicity and hatred he received. And they certainly didn't warrant abuse directed towards his current girlfriend and any of his friends who might not have been quick enough to denounce him as a person.
But then there are the claims of underaged predation, and if those were true, well…
Receipts
In his apology video, the bulk of Knabenbauer's runtime is dedicated to debunking the claims that he knowingly pursued minors in a sexual context. Throughout the entire debacle, only two people accused him of doing so, but their accounts were largely accepted as true.
The first accuser, Chai, alleged that he sent Knabenbauer lewd pictures in early 2016, clearly indicated that he was 16-years-old and that Knabenbauer continued to pursue sexually explicit conversations. Chai had no record of any of these conversations, but he insisted that they happened as described.
Knabenbauer asserts that he does not ever recall interacting with Chai prior to these claims. He does, however, point to a Medium article Chai wrote, discussing a debilitating brain injury he suffered during the same period he claimed to have sexually communicated with Knabenbauer (early 2016). Chai's Medium post characterizes this period as one plagued by severe bouts of memory loss and voices urging him to harm and kill people around him.
The second accuser, Charlie, made similar allegations of inappropriate contact. Charlie provided screenshots of the conversation.
Knabenbauer, in turn, confirmed that he and Charlie had engaged in sexual conversations, with the caveat that Charlie had left out a very important aspect of their relationship––namely, that Charlie had outright lied about his age to Knabenbauer multiple times. In fact, Knabenbauer immediately attempted to clarify that Charlie was 18, and Charlie insisted that he was.
Moreover, both Chai and Charlie seemed to be coordinating efforts to expose Knabenbauer's supposed misdeeds to various other YouTubers, along with promoting one another's Paypal accounts and art commissions. Ultimately, both Chai and Charlie deleted their posts alleging that Knabenbauer was a pedophile. One had a story that, at best, didn't seem to add up under scrutiny or line up with any of Knabenbauer's documented conversations. The other blatantly lied. Despite this, the damage to Knabenbauer and the ProJared brand was done.
Does this mean that Knabenbauer is innocent? Not necessarily. Multiple people seemed to feel that he had behaved creepily in the past, so perhaps there's something to that. But at the same time, we can't just throw accusations of pedophilia around and destroy someone's career based entirely on uncorroborated Twitter posts. If Knabenbauer knowingly sexually pursued minors, he should absolutely be held accountable, both by the public and by the law. The problem here is that the public found him guilty with only limited evidence.
Cancel culture is not necessarily bad, at least as a concept. Oftentimes, powerful people get away with horrendous behavior for too long, and cancel culture puts some of the power back into public hands. When slews of people come forward with corroborating accounts about the same person, chances are high that they're telling the truth. At the same time, if the end goal of "canceling" someone is to hold them accountable for their actions, we should, at the very least, try to make sure that we're holding them accountable for something they actually did. Otherwise, as seems to have been the case with ProJared and anyone caught in the crossfire, what starts as righteous anger can easily devolve into a raging mob of online bullying and harassment.