20 Popular Influencers Who Turned Out to Be TERRIBLE People

20 Popular Influencers Who Turned Out to Be TERRIBLE People

Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re exploring the most infamous times when fans of social media stars turned on them after the influencer’s problematic behavior, crimes, or scandals came to light, leading to massive backlash.

SSSniperWolf

Rising to fame with gaming content, it was switching to reaction videos that led to drama for Alia Shelesh, AKA SSSniperWolf. She was criticized by several people, including Jack Douglass, who runs jacksfilms, for making money from other people’s content without credit, sparking a feud. However, rather than keeping it online and lighthearted, Shelesh went scorched earth. In 2023, she released a video showing where Douglass lived. Outrage spread all over the internet, forcing Shelesh to apologize for doxxing. However, that didn’t stop YouTube from demonetizing her channels. 2023 was also the year when Shelesh’s ex-husband, Evan Young, filed a lawsuit against her. He alleges she breached their contract after keeping income he believed he was entitled to for his contributions to her channels.

Caroline Calloway

With plans to be a published author, Caroline Calloway Gotschall made Calloway her last name as she believed it would look better on books. She then documented her life on her Instagram, which led to her publishing deal. Then the scandals began to mount. Firstly, there was a book falling through in 2017, followed by the cancelled “Creativity Workshop Tour,” which was compared to the infamous Fyre Festival fiasco. Yet in 2019, it got worse when Calloway’s former best friend, Natalie Beach, claimed that she’d ghostwritten some of Calloway’s work and spoke about her ex-friend’s toxic behavior. While Calloway tried to repair her reputation in 2023 with a new book, it also emerged that she’d lied in her application to Cambridge University.

Brittany Dawn

Barely into her career as a fitness influencer, the wheels fell off when Dawn offered bespoke workout plans and diets for clients. Part of the deal included Dawn checking in regularly. However, many clients began complaining that the plans were generic and that Dawn didn’t contact them. Allegedly, Dawn began deleting negative reviews for her business and blocked those who authored them. She then offered refunds, but only if they signed an NDA. When the media took notice in 2019, Dawn issued an apology. However, in 2022, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Dawn for violating consumer rights, which was settled out of court. With her fitness career over, Dawn switched her content to Christianity and claimed she was a victim of cancel culture.

Liver King

For a portion of the internet, nostalgia for times they didn’t live in is a huge interest. Alongside Trad Wives, there was Brian Johnson, AKA the Liver King, who promoted his “ancestral lifestyle.” If you wanted to have the same physique as him, all you needed to do was follow his intense throwback workouts and partake in a carnivore diet, especially with raw meat. However, Johnson had another ingredient that he didn’t disclose. In 2022, his emails were leaked that showed Johnson was spending $11,000 per month on steroids and other performance-enhancing substances. While he initially claimed the emails were digitally altered, he then admitted to the purchases and apologized, ending his short reign as a popular fitness influencer.

Shane Dawson

Beginning his YouTube career in 2008, Dawson eventually rose to be one of the platform’s most recognizable stars, earning him millions of subscribers. However, since 2014, he’s experienced several scandals that have severely dented his reputation. For example, Dawson has been heavily criticized for using racial slurs and donning blackface for videos. Another time, he joked about assault and his cat. With each apology from Dawson, the effect he hoped for became weaker. In 2020, an old video of his resurfaced where he made a crass joke about Willow Smith, who was a minor at the time, causing her family to publicly criticize him. Due to the mounting scandals, Target removed Dawson’s books from its stores and YouTube demonetized his channels.

Austin Jones

With “Pitch Perfect” and “Glee” helping to elevate a cappella music, Jones enjoyed that popularity as he released covers of famous songs in the same style on YouTube, leading to him releasing several of his own albums. Yet in 2015, as he prepared to join the Vans Warped Tour, it emerged that Jones was messaging underage fans and requesting inappropriate videos, for which he released an apology. However, in 2017, he was arrested at O'Hare International Airport. The authorities had previously searched Jones’s residence and found illegal content in his possession. Reportedly, he told the victims the content was for modelling opportunities. In 2019, after pleading guilty to one count of receiving indecent content, Jones was sentenced to ten years in jail.

Germán Loera

Alongside being a director of a marketing and design company, Loera ran a YouTube channel that offered motivational and business advice to his viewers. The Mexican influencer’s stellar reputation as a young entrepreneur led to him being a speaker at the World Congress of Young Leaders for Peace. However, Lorea didn’t practice what he preached when it came to making money. In 2018, he reportedly led a criminal group that kidnapped a lawyer in Chihuahua, demanding a ransom of around $103,000 in Bitcoin for her return. However, after two days, the police managed to locate the gang and rescue the victim. In 2020, Loera was sentenced to 50 years in jail for his role in organizing the crime.

DaddyOFive

In the search for fame and the money that comes with it, some will go way too far. For Michael Martin’s DaddyOFive YouTube channel, the practical jokes involving his family got more and more extreme to bring in views. The uncomfortable content resulted in some of the children being legally removed and put into their biological mother's care. Yet it got worse for Michael and his wife, Heather, in 2017, when they pleaded guilty via an Alford plea for child neglect, earning them five years of probation. The duo tried to sidestep the scandal by creating other channels, including MommyOFive, which was later renamed FamilyOFive. However, the continued problematic content and probation issues resulted in the Martins' channels being terminated on YouTube.

JayStation

While he’d been involved in multiple scandals before, all of that was forgotten in 2020 when Jason Ethier, also known as JayStation, announced that his partner, fellow YouTuber Alexia Marano, had passed away after a car accident. However, there were suspicions that not everything was as it seemed as Ethier plugged channels and monetized the video. He then followed that video with more content about Marano, coming across as less sincere with each one. After being called out, Ethier admitted he faked Marano’s demise to boost subscribers. YouTube demonetized Ethier’s main channel. However, after he attempted to dodge that by uploading on his secondary channel, both were terminated by the platform in 2021, sparking Ethier to threaten a lawsuit against the company.

Jeffree Star

Anyone unfamiliar with this media personality probably wouldn’t know how controversial he is, simply because he seems to be doing so well. His YouTube channel has millions of subscribers, and his beauty brand, Jeffree Star Cosmetics, is still in business. However, he has faced numerous scandals in his career. Jeffree is reportedly racist, used Nazi imagery on his website, which was disturbingly named ‘Lipstick Nazi’, and even had allegations of sexual assault made against him. To make matters worse, he was accused of paying his supposed victims to keep mum about his indecency. Star lawyered up, claimed there was no truth to the accusations, and moved on. Now, he’s so infamous for his questionable opinions, even cancel culture seems to have given up on him.

Logan Paul

From Vine to YouTube and now the WWE ring, this online personality has somehow maintained his following despite multiple major controversies. In 2017, he uploaded disrespectful footage of Japan’s Aokigahara forest on YouTube. The same year, he came under fire for his song “No Handlebars”, which was criticized for sexualizing women. After a few relatively quiet years, he blew up again in 2023, when he was accused of fraud over a game he co-founded, called CryptoZoo. Paul’s brother, Jake, doesn’t exactly have a clean reputation either. He has been accused of racism, sexual assault, scams, and was openly a COVID-19 denier. Yet, the Paul brothers’ popularity is showing no signs of slowing down.

Myka & James Stauffer

Family vlogging is one of the most popular niches on YouTube. Myka and James Stauffer rose to prominence on the platform through their family vlogs. Some of their most successful videos were those where they discussed their parenting journey. Their channel grew even more when they shared the story of how they adopted a baby boy, Huxley, from China. However, after a short time, Huxley had been rehomed by the Stauffers. The couple claimed that they couldn’t adequately care for the child, who was on the autism spectrum. Subscribers immediately turned on the family, accusing them of adopting the kid for cash and clout. Myka and James have since left YouTube, while Huxley, who now has another name, is in a better home.

James Charles

This beauty YouTuber’s career came crashing down due to repeated controversies. First, he was accused of making advances toward a heterosexual man by his close friend Tati Westbrook. Although the tide turned in his favor eventually, more serious allegations followed. Several underage male accusers claimed James had sent them inappropriate messages and photos. The MUA took accountability for two of those accusations, but emphasized that he didn’t know the boys involved were minors. One of his alleged victims admitted that he had lied to James about being eighteen. Just when things were looking up for the creator, he got involved with fellow influencer Evan Johnson, who was arrested in April 2025 for domestic assault. James denied having a relationship with him, but lost followers nonetheless.

Belle Gibson

This Aussie influencer serves as a cautionary tale against believing everything you see on the internet. She lied about living with cancer, treating it with alternative medicine, a strict diet of whatever she considered to be healthy foods, and working out, misleading countless followers. She was rolling in dough from successfully launching an app and a cookbook, while faking donations to charities. In 2015, she admitted to fabricating her cancer diagnosis and was ultimately fined two hundred fifty-eight thousand U.S. dollars by the Federal Court of Australia. Gibson’s elaborate scam is the subject of the Netflix documentary “The Search For Instagram's Worst Con Artist” and the crime drama “Apple Cider Vinegar”, starring Kaitlyn Dever.

Ruby Franke

The infamous creator of the “8 Passengers” YouTube channel is another toxic product of the family vlogging culture. Ruby Franke’s entire claim to fame was her family of six children. However, viewers soon started noticing the disturbing modes of discipline she used with them. From allegedly banning her son from sleeping in his bed to sending her daughter to school without lunch, her punishments were reportedly severe and problematic. Things finally came to a head after she started making parenting advice content with her colleague, counselor Jodi Hildebrandt. In 2023, Ruby’s young son escaped from Jodi’s house and showed up injured at a neighbor’s place, seeking sustenance. One of her daughters was also emaciated. Both Ruby and Jodi were arrested and sentenced to prison.

Colleen Ballinger

This creator built her empire on young fans’ support and went on to be accused of behaving inappropriately with minors. Colleen, best known for her character Miranda Sings, was canceled after YouTubers Adam McIntyre and Kodee Dahl accused her of misconduct. The former claimed she had sent him undergarments and explicit images of Trisha Paytas when he was underage. Dahl said she asked him improper questions online when he was a minor. A staff member on the set of her Netflix show “Haters Back Off” also opened up about her alleged racism. This wasn’t surprising, given Colleen’s history of culturally insensitive content. If all this wasn’t bad enough, she made an apology video while playing the ukulele, undermining the seriousness of the accusations.

Mr. Anime

When YouTube was still in its infancy, Trey Sesler, AKA Mr. Anime, created his channel LensCapProductions in 2006. With a focus on short films and anime reviews, he’s been credited for helping turn the latter into a community on the platform. However, in 2012, Sesler began alluding to something he was going to do. Soon after, he took the lives of his mother, father, and brother at their home in Waller, Texas. Sesler then drove to the nearby high school, where he was once a student, armed with multiple weapons. Yet after having second thoughts about the violence he planned, he drove to a friend’s place. In 2012, Sesler pleaded guilty to the murders, earning him life in jail without parole.

Andrew Tate

The kickboxer-turned-face of the manosphere is a self-proclaimed misogynist who thrives by espousing toxic masculinity. This has earned him millions of supporters across social media, many of whom are not even old enough to understand harmful manosphere concepts like involuntary celibacy. His dangerous influence on young minds is explored in Netflix’s viral hit show “Adolescence”. Tate is also known to sell online courses that the BBC believes may be associated with the exploitation of women. In 2022, he was arrested in Romania and later charged with alleged sexual assault, trafficking, and organized criminal activities. Meanwhile, police are looking into whether his purported victims were minors. He is facing similar legal charges in the U.K. and the U.S. Shockingly, Tate’s popularity is hardly fading.

Ladarius Morshun Brownlee

If you’ve ever been on the couple content side of TikTok, you’ve probably come across the account ‘denoandzahra’. The pair running it, Ladarius Morshun Brownlee and his girlfriend Seyeddah Hashemi, had a considerable fan base who adored their seemingly perfect relationship. However, that illusion was shattered when Brownlee was reportedly arrested for shooting Hashemi after an argument turned physical. Luckily, she survived, but allegedly sustained a traumatic brain injury. Ladarius claimed their relationship had always been abusive, and seemingly admitted to shooting her, according to reports. Not long after the incident, social media was abuzz with speculation that the two had gotten back together.

Ali Abulaban

This influencer went from comedy on the clock app to life in prison. Ali Abulaban, also known as JinnKid, shot his wife, Ana, and her friend, Rayburn Cardenas Barron, to death in 2021. His abusive behavior toward Ana was public knowledge, as it was often seen on his live streams. How those videos even earned views without raising red flags is a different question entirely. Abulaban was found guilty of the deaths of both Ana and Rayburn, but the judge doubted whether he was ever regretful. The criminal maintained that he had substances in his system when he committed the heinous act, calling it a crime of passion. Either way, Ali is not going to be stepping out of prison again in his lifetime.

Did you follow any of the people we mentioned in the video before their scandals came to light? Let us know below!