Reddit’s favorite YouTube channel, H3H3Productions — a husband and wife team that makes humorous reaction videos about content found online — is being sued by a man who’s been dubbed “The Dumbest Person on YouTube,” a misogyny- and parkour-obsessed content creator who goes by the moniker Bold Guy.
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If you don’t waste away your days intentionally watching terrible YouTube videos, you may have missed out on the Bold Guy phenomenon.
Matt Hosseinzadeh, AKA Bold Guy, makes fictional videos combining terrible parkour and picking up girls off the street in a desperate attempt to appear young and virile despite his receding hair line. Many of his videos have more than 1 million views — but based on the number of dislikes, most of the views could be considered hate watches.
Watch this, and you’ll get a sense of what we’re dealing with here:
Enter Ethan and Hila Klein, the co-hosts of H3H3, whose stock-in-trade is making reaction videos mocking other YouTubers and using their clips for comedic effect. Bold Guy was an obvious target for their channel. As Ethan says: “If cringe were an art form, Matt is Picasso.”
Bold Guy launched a copyright claim against the Kleins for using clips from his content and got their video taken down. The couple, however, re-uploaded their video later.
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According to the Kleins, before filing the suit Bold Guy wanted $4,000. When that offer was refused, according to the couple, he asked the Kleins to make videos about how much they respected Bold Guy and were sorry for stealing his video. Obviously, they refused.
Now the two parties are locked into a lawsuit, which according to the Kleins could cost the couple as much as $100,000. H3H3 has the principle of fair use on their side — the principle that you can use a part of a work in order to comment on it — but it has to be argued in court, meaning a trial and extensive legal fees. Not to mention that a jury probably would not be well versed in the nuances of YouTube’s copyright policy.
At least I already know what I'm wearing to court. pic.twitter.com/uG6XY248s3
— Ethan Klein (@h3h3productions) May 25, 2016
What’s even stranger than the odd settlement offers, however, is Bold Guy’s apparent covert PR campaign on Reddit. H3H3 already has a fairly active subreddit dedicated to discussing their YouTube videos, so Bold Guy created a subreddit last night for his channel r/MattHossZone. Well, apparently.
Under the name AgentPao, who insists he’s totally not Bold Guy, “not” Bold Guy attempted to drum up support — which back fired tremendously.
The current top post on r/MattHossZone is titled “You’re an asshole, Matt.” Meanwhile, “not” Bold Guy’s own posts, like “Lets be honest, reddit hates MattHossZone and always has because of his video(s) that expose the feminist agenda,” do not fair as well.
What’s even stranger is that when a Reddit user dissentience uploaded H3H3’s video talking about the lawsuit to r/videos, the user got a strange message from a guy, again claiming to totally not be Bold Guy.
Totally not Bold Guy later backtracked, saying the offer was fake and deleted the account.
Then another similarly named account popped up, again saying they are not Bold Guy, and accused dissentience of doctoring the messages and threatening his family.
So who really is Bold Guy? He clearly has an exorbitant load of money not only to create self-gratifying YouTube videos with a revolving door of paid attractive actresses, but to launch frivolous lawsuits against people who actually earn their living from YouTube.
Matt Hosseinzadeh did not immediately respond to Heat Street requests for comment.
Despite his economic advantage, this crybaby has already lost the war of public opinion no matter how many Reddit accounts he totally does not make.
Follow me on Twitter @William__Hicks
