Charles Marlowe, aka YouTuber “thevegancheetah,” has fashioned himself as a critic of vegan YouTube personalities, a community to which he also belongs.
The Vegan Cheetah’s videos often involve loud (very loud) rants about frequent Vegan YouTube Drama Update subjects Harley “Durianrider” Johnstone and his girlfriend Freelee the Banana Girl. Recently, Cheetah encouraged viewers to donate to an IndieGogo campaign supporting some kind of unspecified legal action against Durianrider, who appears to have threatened violence against another vegan YouTuber, Eisel Mazard, who Durianrider apparently accused of sexually predatory behavior at the Raw Till 4 Thai Fruit Festival (after which another vegan YouTuber, Hannah Chloé, accused Durianrider of similarly sexually predatory behavior).
You don’t necessarily need to be following all of this (I barely am), except to note that at some point during our safari trek through the wilds of the vegan YouTube panopticon, things became rather dark!
The Vegan Cheetah, a recovering heroin addict and avid guitar player who used to be a loyal follower of the gospel of Freelee and Durianrider (the latter has claimed that VC took his followers’ money to buy heroin), has also accused Freelee of stealing content and having a secret relationship with her female assistant. (As a completely unrelated side-note, Freelee recently published an extremely grisly photo of the inside of her leg after it was torn open during a bike accident, framing it, rather counter-intuitively, as #inspo. “If you think adventure is dangerous then try ROUTINE, it is lethal!” she wrote underneath the gaping flesh wound.)
Anyway, although he only has about 13,000 subscribers—a fairly small number compared with those of his YouTube foes—VC has gained traction on one particular new series: “The Dumbest Vegans On YouTube.”
Dumbest Vegan #1: Sorsha Morava
In this video, which received over 76,000 views, Vegan Cheetah reacts to Sorsha’s reaction to Nicole Arbour’s video making fun of vegans.
VC explains without a hint of irony that Sorsha, who we have covered previously, “likes to do reaction videos, most of her videos involve somebody else’s name or some kind of drama,” adding that she is a “classic Freelee/Durianrider dickriding clone.” (“Dickrider” is, I believe, a made-up derogatory term for a Durianrider fan.)
After debating Sorsha’s response to Nicole Arbour, he criticizes Sorsha, “the dumbest vegan on YouTube,” for “trying to debate with a YouTube comedian, somebody that I would say is not that much of an intellectual.” VC says that Sorsha refers to herself as a “vegan activist” (in contrast he refers to himself as a “vegan YouTuber,” a designation that is apparently altogether different), and as such shouldn’t be engaging in petty drama. “How is this productive?” he asks Sorsha. Good question.
Dumbest Vegan #2: Happy Healthy Vegan
In this second video, which received about 14,000 views, VC goes in on Happy Healthy Vegan. Happy Healthy Vegan is comprised of Anji and Ryan, a cartoonishly groovy 40-something vegan couple; Ryan, VC claims, is “one of the biggest dickriders on YouTube!”
Ryan posted a video musing over whether Fully Raw Kristina is a vegan activist or not, something Ryan should not have done, in VC’s opinion, “when people in the comments section are requesting a video of your stance about Durianrider and his behavior.”
“You’re a fucking coward,” Cheetah tells Ryan.
Dumbest Vegan #3: Freelee the Banana Girl
The most recent installment of “The Dumbest Vegan on YouTube” involves our very own YouTube drama queen, Freelee the Banana Girl.
VC refers to Freelee, not inaccurately, as a “lunatic, militant vegan” selling a “bullshit permanent vacation lifestyle” who gives terrible advice to kids (in the clip he shows, she tells a young teen whose parents don’t want her to go vegan to “contact the authorities” if they try to force-feed her animal products).
“You live in a fucking fantasy world, you’re fucking stupid,” Vegan Cheetah hollers, gazing into the impenetrable black depths of his webcam. What does all this mean? We don’t know, bye!
This has been a Vegan YouTube Drama Update.
Image via screenshot, animation by Bobby Finger.