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David Dobrik and the Vlog Squad are under fire for their past actions, including allegations of sexual misconduct stemming from a 2018 YouTube video.
The 24-year-old YouTuber, who has nearly 19 million subscribers on his main channel, made headlines earlier this month when a woman accused Dominykas Zeglaitis (better known as “Durte Dom”) of sexual assault. Zeglaitis was previously part of the Vlog Squad, Dobrik’s inner circle who films content for YouTube, TikTok and other social media platforms together.
In a since-deleted video titled “SHE SHOULD NOT HAVE PLAYED WITH FIRE!!” from 2018, Zeglaitis, who no longer films regularly with Dobrik, revealed several college girls responded to his Instagram request to have group sex. While Dobrik initially said in the video that it’s clear the “fivesome” wasn’t going to happen after spending time with the students, one of the women who met up with the group that night has since alleged that Zeglaitis raped her after she was supplied with alcohol by Dobrik’s group.
The woman, who has remained anonymous and was 20 years old at the time, shared her story to Insider reporter Kat Tenbarge, alleging that Zeglaitis had sex with her when she was too drunk to consent. (Zeglaitis, who 860,000 subscribers of his own, has yet to publicly react to the accusations. Insider reports that he declined to comment.)
“This is my third time investigating rape accusations, and the most difficult part often involves bringing those claims to the accused and dealing with pushback,” Tenbarge said. “This time, we didn’t get a response from the man who was accused of rape. But we did hear back from David Dobrik’s lawyers, and part of the reporting process was responding to the issues they took with our story.”
Dobrik’s lawyers released a statement to Insider that read: “David will be addressing his community directly. Anyone who knows him knows he does not condone misconduct in any form. Vlog participants provide consent before anything is posted. Whenever consent is retracted, posts are removed. Any insinuation of wrongdoing is inaccurate and defamatory.”
The David’s Perfume founder later addressed the controversy in a two-minute video uploaded to his and Jason Nash’s podcast Views‘ channel, which has a significantly lower number of subscribers compared to his main channel.
“There’s also been moments where I’ve looked back on videos, and I realize that these don’t represent me anymore, and they’re hurtful to other people, and I don’t want them up because I’ve grown as a content creator and as a person,” he said on March 16, adding that “consent is something that’s super, super important” to him. “And I don’t agree with some of the videos I’ve posted.”
Dobrik has since been dropped by several brands as the fallout continues. Scroll through for a complete breakdown of the controversy:
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