Jenna Marbles quits YouTube after blackface backlash
World

Jenna Marbles quits YouTube immediately after blackface backlash

By Steven Anderson / June 26, 2020

“I come to feel like we are at a time in which we are purging ourselves of everything and everything poisonous,” she stated in a video clip titled “A Concept,” in which she apologized for racist and sexist material.

Mourey, who has much more than 20 million subscribers, highlighted unique video clips from 2011 and 2012 — a person in which she donned blackface to impersonate rapper Nicki Minaj, an additional featuring a rap track with a joke about Asians, and 1 online video in which she slammed women who “slept all over.”

“It was not my intention to do blackface,” she claimed of the Minaj impersonation. “I do want to notify you how unbelievably sorry I am if I ever offended you by publishing this online video or by doing this impression, and that that was in no way my intention. It really is not alright. It can be shameful. It is dreadful. I wish it wasn’t portion of my earlier.”

She extra that the rap tune, which provided the lyric “Hey Ching Chong Wing Wong, shake your King Kong ding dong,” was “inexcusable” and “should not have existed.”

The video clips, as very well as other old information from the early many years of her channel, are no more time viewable by the community, she additional.

“For now, I just cannot exist on this channel … I consider I’m just going to shift on from this channel for now,” Mourey claimed, visibly emotional. “I never know how very long it truly is heading to be. I just want to make positive the issues I am placing in the entire world usually are not hurting anybody … so I need to have to be accomplished with this channel, for now or for for good.”

Mourey, whose videos have racked up a lot more than 3 billion complete views, was among the very first introductions to YouTube for several. She made her channel in 2010, when the system was just starting off to go mainstream — effectively before it exploded into the booming industry it is these days.

She is very best acknowledged for her early comedy sketches and satirical how-to video clips — quite a few of which have now been manufactured personal — and extra a short while ago, way of living and Do-it-yourself content material.

Right after she posted Thursday’s video clip, some fans and other influencers defended her on-line, arguing that the incident confirmed the toxicity of “terminate culture” — the phenomenon of public figures being swiftly “canceled” for indicating or performing a thing controversial.

“Let us stop normalizing likely again by way of 10 yrs of somebody’s everyday living hoping you stumble upon a mistake to check out and damage their lifetime,” tweeted singer and fellow YouTuber Gabbie Hanna.

But many others praised Mourey’s response as getting responsibility for previous issues.

“Jenna Marbles may perhaps have quit YouTube for now but don’t forget why she did it,” a single Twitter user posted. “Keep social influencers accountable. Keep general public figures accountable. Do not enable folks get away with problematic matters just since they are well-known or rich.”

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