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Jane @JaneDash The moderation team for a content creator just came out with pretty big news. We cared so much and worked with this person for years, even calling them a friend, it breaks my heart. If anyone needs support or has anything, are here for you we Other than that, f--- him mighty claw Todey 211 P deveryone A statement to the Cafcast community Recently we have been made aware of events that have taken place behind the scenes bstween Caff and varlous members of communities he is prominent in Corroborated and proven evidence has come to light that shows that Caff has been abusing his position asa content creator for at least the last 3 years to pursue sexual relationships with those he has power and influence over, usingg his position as a point of coercion and control. As of the writing of this statement at least 8 separate women have come forward to share their stories in the last 3 days, including several current members of the staf. Call consistently suggested we hire women to the mod team even those women were fairly inactive community members or unsuitable to hold the position. Scme ol these suggestions were rejected, hawever it was later found that others who we accepted were predated on further by Caff. We now believe in retrospect that his reasons for suggesting these women were to gain additional access to these members in a closer emvironment to be able to mare easily groom them for his sexual motivations Alongside these incidents, Caff has been in a long term relationship with his girlfriend for over 6 years Only the older mods were aware of this and had been asked by Caff to keep it quiet. Looking back on this, we now believe that he wanted to keep this out off the public eye and even fram newer staff members to appear single in arder to groom and enter into relationships with members of the community We won't be going into detail to spare the victims of his actions public scrutiny, but suffice it to say his actions are condemned by all members of the team and we believe the abuse of his position in this way to be utterly reprehensible Due to these revelations as of today the entire staff team is leaving this community as we cannet stand complicit in support of Caf. We would encourage those of you who see this to make others both in the community and who have ance been in the community aware as we do not want him to have any more unsuspecting people to prey upon We are aware there may be more victims than the 8 we have spoken to in the last 3 days and should you have any additional information or just want support for your experiences we will still be available through discord ar other social media for you to talk to. Caft's ex-staff team 5:27 AM 5 Jul 2019

MY MOM ALWAYS TOLD ME: WHEN IN DOUBT AIM FOR THEASS

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About • Online History • Yogventures • Notable Episodes • Related Memes • Search Interest • External References • Recent Images • Recent Videos

About

The Yogscast is an online collective of eight gamers who host and produce Let's Play videos on YouTube. Created by Lewis “Xephos” Brindley and Simon “Honeydew” Lane, the Yogscast is best known for its coverage of Minecraft, but has also featured World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, Diablo III and other popular massively multiplayer online games in their videos.

Online History

Lewis Brindley and Simon Lane created the YouTube channel BlueXephos^[1] on July 9th, 2008, using the acronym Y.O.G.S. from the name of their former Something Awful-organized World of Warcraft guild, Ye Olde Goone Squade.^[4] According to the Yogscast FAQ^[8], they came up with the idea after Brindley took notice of Lane's ability to provide unique commentary while playing games and wanted to share his humor with a broader audience through YouTube. Their first video was a play-through guide for conquering the World of Warcraft boss Kalecgos.^[9] As of August 2012, the video has more than 384,000 views. This video was later hidden.

Podcast

On Feburary 5th, 2009, the group began a spinoff podcast^[7] series titled "YoGPoD," featuring discussion of world events and personal news, as well as fan questions and answers.^[11] In 2011, YouTuber FredMalm^[12] began animating some of the stories told during the podcasts. As of August 2012, there are nearly 50 animations^[13] for the 88 recorded episodes.

Shadow of Israphel

Shadow of Israphel is a separate comedy-drama series^[27], in which Lewis and Simon play a spaceman named Xephos and a Honeydew the dwarf who find themselves stranded in a fictional world called Minecraftia. The characters are faced with a mission to save the world from Israphel^[28], a Creeper-like character out to destroy the world. As of August 2012, the show has 42 episodes^[29] split across three seasons.

Yogventures

On April 6th, 2012, the Yogscast launched a Kickstarter campaign^[30] to create their own open world sandbox adventure game, Yogventures. It surpassed its goal of $250,000 on May 6th, 2012, raising $567,665 to fund the creation of the game. At E3 2012, the group had a booth where they revealed the first demo of the game. Planned features for the game include zombies, crystal harvesting, carnivorous plants, ice and fire biomes and character customization.^[31] As of August 2012, the game is still in development but their official website^[32] is accepting pre-orders for the open beta, scheduled to be released in January 2013. However, on July 7th, 2014 the Yogscast announced that the game was stopping development due to several complications including the rising costs, difficulties in programming the game, and many of the developers leaving the project. After the announcement, many took to Youtube comments to protest the decision, citing the large amount of funds put into the game development via Kickstarter that would not be returned.

Notable Episodes

Reputation

On October 8th, 2011, Yogscast published a video to celebrate the milestone of breaking 1 million subscribers. On July 9th, 2012, which marked the channel's 4th anniversary of launch, the channel broke 2 million subscribers.^[10] As of August 2012, BlueXephos has 2,201,441 subscribers and 1,204,071,283 views across their 1619 videos, averaging out to approximately 806,478 views per day. The Facebook fan page^[5] has almost 75,000 likes while the fan page for their podcast^[6] has 194,000 likes. The group also maintains an official Twitter^[3], which has nearly 252,000 followers. There is also a YogWiki^[14] and a forum^[15] where fans, known as Yognauts^[16], convene.

Whale Lords

Whale Lords is a modded Minecraft Skyblock survival series featuring Simon, Lewis, Duncan, Sjin and Sips.

Issues With Notch

At the second annual Minecon in November 2011, several members of The Yogscast were invited as special guests to host a panel on their show. Instead of doing a Q&A, the crew chose to show videos instead. On November 21st, 2011, Notch made several tweets^[17] stating that he was disappointed in the behavior of the Yogscast crew, noting that they were the only people who demanded to be paid to attend the convention, calling them "an isolated island of egos." The same day, a Minecon staff member submitted a Reddit post^[18], calling the team "self-entitled pricks" who "acted like they were the Kings of Minecraft." However, these reports were refuted by another Minecon staffer in the comments^[19], who was supposedly escorting the team around the event. These accusations were covered by gaming site Edge^[20], Nerd-Age^[21], Crafthub^[23] and appeared in discussion threads on the Yogscast Forum^[22] and Neogaf.^[24]

Due to their travelling from the convention in Las Vegas back home to England, the Yogscast was not able to issue an official response to the tweets until two days later on November 23rd via Reddit^[25] and YouTube (shown above). In the video, Brindley and Lane stated that they were not paid, nor did they demand to be, and that the things Notch attributed to them in the tweets were not said or published by them. Following their response, Notch apologized via Twitter, calling his initial response a “stress related misunderstanding.”^[26]

CaffCast Abuse

In 2016, content creator Matthew “CaffCast” Meredith joined Yogscast and on July 5th, 2019, @JaneDash,^[24] a moderator working with CaffCast tweeted a statement about Caff abusing his position to pursue sexual relationships with those he has power over and said, "The moderation team for a content creator just came out with pretty big news. We cared so much and worked with this person for years, even calling them a friend, it breaks my heart. If anyone needs support or has anything, we are here for you. Other than that, fuck him" (shown below). The tweet gained over 3,200 likes and 600 retweets in 13 days.

mighty claw Today at 2:11 PM @everyone A statement to the Caffcast community: Recently we have been made aware of events that have taken place behind the scenes between Caff and various members of communities he is prominent in. Corroborated and proven evidence has come to light that shows that Caff has been abusing his position as a content creator for at least the last 3 years to pursue sexual relationships with those he has power and influence over, using his position as a point of coercion and control As of the writing of this statement at least 8 separate women have come forward to share their stories in the last 3 days, including several current members of the staff. Caff consistently suggested we hire women to the mod team even if those women were fairly inactive community members or unsuitable to hold the position. Some of these suggestions were rejected however it was later found that others who we accepted were predated on further by Caff. We now believe in retrospect that his reasons for suggesting these women were to gain additional access to these members in a closer environment to be able to more easily groom them for his sexual motivations. Alongside these incidents, Caff has been in a long term relationship with his girlfriend for over 6 years. Only the older mods were aware of this and had been asked by Caff to keep it quiet. Looking back on this, we now believe that he wanted to keep this out of the public eye and even from newer staff members to appear single in order to groom and enter into relationships with members of the community We won't be going into detail to spare the victims of his actions public scrutiny, but suffice it to say his actions are condemned by all members of the team and we believe the abuse of his position in this way to be utterly reprehensible. Due to these revelations as of today the entire staff team is leaving this community as we cannot stand complicit in support of Caff. want him to have any more unsuspecting people to We would encourage those of you who see this to make others both in the community and who have once been in the community aware as prey upon we do not We are aware there may be more victims than the 8 we have spoken to in the last 3 days and should you have any additional information or just want support for your experiences we will still be available through discord or other social media for you to talk to. Caff's ex-staff team X

On July 5th, Redditor RuRu92 began a thread on r/Yogscast^[25] discussing the tweet's information. The post has gained over 3,500 points (99% upvoted) in 13 days. In the thread, CEO Mark “Turps” Turpin made a statement saying that after thorough research Caff has been removed from Yogscast.

On July 17th, Mark Turpin posted to r/Yogscast^[26] a notice of resignation (detailed below). The post garnered over over 5,600 points (97% upvoted) in a day.

"Just to let you know I’ve stepped down as CEO of the Yogscast. When I recently said we expected the highest levels of professionalism from our talent, I need to be held to those standards too.
I have sent some inappropriate messages to several members of our community and I’m deeply embarrassed about this error of judgement. There’s no justification or excuse for my behaviour. I was in a position of considerable responsibility and you all deserved better from me. If you’ve been upset by my actions, I’m very sorry."

Diggy Diggy Hole

In Shadow of Israphel's eighth episode (shown below, left), posted in February 2011, Lewis and Simon must dig to proceed on their quest. While doing so, Simon begins repeating "diggy diggy hole" in a singsong manner. The phrase caught on with fans of the series and six months later, other YouTubers began posting their own versions of the song, either via animation or recreated in Minecraft (shown below, right).

Search Interest

External References

^[1] YouTube – BlueXephos' Channel

^[2] YouTube – Secondary YouTube Channel

^[3] Twitter – @yogscast

^[4] Ye Olde Goone Squade – About

^[5] Facebook – Yogscast

^[6] Facebook – The YoGPoD

^[7] iTunes – The YoGPoD

^[8] Yogscast FAQ – How did you begin?

^[9] World of Warcraft Wiki – Kalecgos

^[10] Yogscast Forum – Yogscast 2 Million Subscribers!

^[11] Yogscast Wiki – The YoGPoD

^[12] YouTube – FredMalm's channel

^[13] YouTube – Playlist of Yogscast Animations

^[14] YogWiki – Home

^[15] Yogscast.com – Forums

^[16] Yogwiki – Yognau(gh)t

^[17] Minecraft Forum – Yogscast Banned from Minecon Forever

^[18] Reddit – My Experience with the Yogscast team at MineCon

^[19] Reddit – sushifishpirate's comment

^[20] Edge – Notch washes hands of Yogscast

^[21] Nerd-Age – Yogscast vs. Notch

^[22] Yogscast Forum – Notch mad at Yogscast?

^[23] CraftHub – Notch Rants Against the Yogscast on Twitter

^[24] Neogaf – Notch calls out Yogscast as "an isolated island of egos".

^[25] Reddit – Yogscast response to Notch's Twitterings

^[26] PC Gamer – Minecon Yogscast fall out down to “stress related misunderstanding” says Notch

^[27] Yogwiki – Minecraft Series

^[28] Yogwiki – Israphel

^[29] YouTube – Yogscast Series Playlist

^[30] Kickstarter – Yogventures!

^[31] Yogwiki – Yogventures!

^[32] Yogventures – Preorders

^[24] Twitter – JaneDash

^[25] Reddit – r/Yogcast

^[26] Reddit – r/Yogcast

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