joji, onision, filthy frank, idubbzz, edgy youtubers

From Filthy Frank to Onision: Where are the ‘edgy’ YouTubers of the 2010s now?

Joji is a literal rockstar

3 years ago

Do you remember the days where people could say and do literally whatever they wanted on YouTube? When Shane Dawson would make overtly racist and sexist jokes on his channel with over a million subscribers, or when Filthy Frank and co made a cake out of their own hair and ate it? There was a small category of creators on YouTube that certainly did NOT hold back, obviously unaware that a day would come where you wouldn’t be allowed to say offensive things about people on such an open platform (who’d have thought it?).

Since then, these “edgy” creators have predictably gone in every direction you could possibly think of now that YouTube is a lot more heavily moderated – so, from the astronomical rise of Joji to the current controversy surrounding Onision, here’s what the edgy YouTubers of the 2010s are up to now.

Filthy Frank

Arguably the most successful of the original gang of “edgy” YouTubers is Filthy Frank, who now goes by Joji. This man’s success has been nothing short of brilliant, going from one of the most popular video creators on the platform (even inventing the Harlem shake dance) to becoming a proper musician who has played at festivals like Coachella and Reading.

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He released his debut single in 2017, and has since collaborated with Lil Yachty, Diplo and Trippie Redd. He has nearly 15 million monthly Spotify listeners, with SLOW DANCING IN THE DARK having been streamed over 550 million times.

iDubbbz

iDubbbz was probably the most controversial of the edgy YouTuber friendship group for the fact that nothing was off bounds for him. Known for openly saying racial and homophobic slurs as well as generally making jokes about topics that were completely off-limits to most other creators, iDubbbz lamented himself as a creator who made a career of calling out and taking down other creators.

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Ian still makes content to this day, but as you can imagine, he’s really had to reign it in since the days of being able to say and do whatever you wanted on YouTube. In fact, he seems to have completely regressed against this character he used to portray, making commentary style videos and generally just complaining about particular topics – and it’s still just as entertaining.

He still makes content, it still does pretty well, and he’s still with girlfriend Anisa.

Max Moefoe

The third main member of the group was Max Moefoe, an Aussie bloke who delighted in the disgusting – vomit, eating gross concoctions and pain. Max hasn’t uploaded to his main account since the boys stopped hanging out, and now uploads full time on his Pokemon account, which has 1.5 million subscribers.

And I cannot stop watching.

Watch this video for one minute and you’ll be hooked on seeing what kind of Pokemon card he’s going to pull from the box – some of them can end up being worth thousands.

In 2019 he started the Cold Ones podcast with Anything4Views, where they discussed Joji and his new career in music. In another clip, Max cried whilst particularly intoxicated listening to Joji’s Sanctuary.

HowToBasic

If you’re anything like the comments section of HowToBasic’s videos, those who aren’t subscribed to him likely won’t have been recommended any of his videos by the algorithm, but he’s still making a load of content. Although his identity has been a constant secret and running joke on YouTube, he appeared in a number of videos with the boys off-camera.

Obviously, we still don’t know who the man behind the channel is, and although he did an anonymous interview with an Australian news station, little is known of his identity to this day.

Looking through his videos, it seems like he’s just as successful as he ever was – not one of his videos has got less than one million views that I can find, and he’s still going for the whole smashing eggs and causing chaos thing.

Onision

So everyone always had a weird view of Onision. He was this very polarising figure that seemed to be in his own little bubble, making often quite critical videos of others and, of course, creating the above monstrosity – yet he still consistently got views for a good while.

However, he always seemed to be in some form of controversy with partners and other creators, which has unfortunately culminated in a documentary headed up by To Catch A Predator’s Chris Hansen about his various alleged activities over the past decade.

The documentary covers a number of controversies, amongst them allegations of abuse and child grooming. He responded by calling the claims “nonsense”.

H3H3

Remember when H3H3 dropped the Vape Nation video? Back when we thought vapes were just going to be another fad that would disappear into the abyss?

Ethan and Hila Klein have, as I’m sure most people are aware, gone on to have blossoming careers in YouTube. Ethan presents the Frenemies podcast with Trisha Paytas, and they fairly recently bought a ginormous house in LA.

On the Frenemies podcast currently, Ethan and Trisha are exploring claims made against David Dobrik and Jason Nash of the Vlog Squad, none of which either have responded to.

Trisha became engaged to Moses, Hila Klein’s brother last year – you can read a full timeline of their relationship here.