Overview

Haedox Becomes a Benedictine Monk refers to an announcement by video game YouTuber Haedox in December 2024 explaining how he officially quit content creation to pursue monasticism and live as a Benedictine monk. Haedox made the announcement in a video titled "From Content Crater to Catholic: The End of Haedox" and deleted most of his other content when he posted the video, also apologizing for his past content in general and claiming he didn't play most of the games he reviewed in his videos. The viral video inspired discourse online following its publication.

Background

Haedox

Haedox was a gaming YouTuber who focused on reviews and video essays about Nintendo games. He posted his first video to YouTube,^[1] a review of the game Sonc Boom: Rise of Lyric, on November 12th, 2014, which is the only remaining video on his channel apart from his final video. He had over 145,000 subscribers at the time of posting his last video.

Haedox regularly posted content over the following years and was open with his audience about several incidents that happened in his life, including an assault in 2016 and another in 2021, which he discussed in a now-deleted, archived video uploaded to YouTube^[2] on September 9th, 2021.

On July 25th, 2022, he posted a video titled "Goodbye" in which he discusses both these assaults again and his struggles with feelings of depression, announcing his retirement from content creation (archived reupload shown below).^[3]

On October 28th, 2022, he uploaded another video to YouTube^[4] titled "Why I Haven't Played a Game in Over a Year" (deleted, archived) in which he talks at length about why he quit being a YouTuber and how he hardly games anymore. This was the last video uploaded by Haedox until 2024.

"From Content Crater to Catholic: The End of Haedox" Video

On December 30th, 2024, Haedox uploaded a video to YouTube^[5] titled "From Content Crater to Catholic: The End of Haedox," garnering over 25,900 views in a day.

In the video, Haedox says goodbye to his old audience and announces that he will be living as a Benedictine monk (a monastic order of the Catholic Church that follows the Rule of Saint Benedict). He goes on to apologize for his past content, claiming he didn't even play most of the games he reviewed and used other people's gameplay footage without their consent, also apologizing for the humor in his videos.

Haedox claims that the last few years of his life have been "turbulent" and that his relationship with God is all that's got him through. He says he needs to "shut this door firmly," meaning his career as a YouTuber, and encourages anyone struggling in life to seek out the Catholic church.

Online Reactions

Haedox's video became the subject of discussions and posts online shortly after it was uploaded. For example, on December 30th, 2024, Redditor u/shadowhunter997 made a post to the subreddit /r/youtubedrama^[6] about the video, expressing well wishes for Haedox, writing, "I hope that he has found something through all of this. I wish he could be proud of the work he did: his video essay 'When Should Games Die' really spoke to me when I watched it a while back," garnering over 80 upvotes in a day.

Later that day, X^[7] user @bahlivern then made a vague post alluding to Haedox's video without directly naming him, describing the video as "surreal," garnering over 34,000 likes and 1,700 reposts in a day.

Search Interest

External References