Joseth Francois, 26, is more widely known on the internet as Seth, an influencer who was part of megafamous YouTuber David Dobrik’s Vlog Squad. The crew of content creators often filmed the banality of their lives and the hijinks they’d pull on each other — making them pioneers of what’s now become typical YouTube content.
But now, after almost four years and 10 million views, Francois is unpacking his experience from one “prank” video with Dobrik, saying it was sexual assault. He’s also reckoning with the realization that he was used as the punchline for racist jokes as the only Black member of the squad.
Francois told BuzzFeed News he’s speaking out now to “reverse the damage” and to prevent incidents like this from happening in the industry again.
“I honestly didn’t realize how much that situation affected me until the beginning of last year when COVID happened,” he said. “I remember sitting in my room in Atlanta and I was thinking to myself, That video was wrong. I just felt like that shouldn’t have happened to me.”
Dobrik and his team did not respond to multiple requests for comment from BuzzFeed News.
Francois first shared his allegations on H3 Podcast earlier this month. There, he recounted an incident to hosts Hila and Ethan Klein where he felt “pressured to participate in bits that [came] off culturally insensitive.” In one sketch a few years ago, when Francois was an active member of Vlog Squad, he was asked to open a refrigerator, only to find watermelon spilling out.
At the time, he said on the podcast, his association with the successful YouTube collective made him feel like he couldn’t say no to these sketches.
“It was an unwritten thing where you see a pattern of people saying, ‘Yo, I’m uncomfortable with this,'” he said. “All of a sudden they disappear and they’re not in videos anymore.”
Francois told BuzzFeed News in an interview Tuesday that being written into sketches like this enabled fans to openly make racist jokes about him.
“I had fans on my page putting my face on pieces of fried chicken — stuff that was pretty disgraceful,” he said. “I was at a breaking point, thinking, Maybe it’s just my friends and they’re not really tasteful. Maybe it’s my job to educate them.”
After the pandemic was declared and as Black Lives Matter protests were taking place last summer, Francois spent time reflecting and processing the various levels of trauma he had experienced while part of Dobrik’s Vlog Squad.
“The most horrific experience, and I am still experiencing trauma, is that bit with Jason Nash,” Francois told BuzzFeed News. Nash didn’t respond to a request for comment.
In June 2017, Dobrik published a video titled “HE THOUGHT HE WAS KISSING HER!! (SUPER CRINGEY)” that’s now been watched almost 10 million times. In it, Dobrik says he’s going to pull a prank on Francois by making him believe he’s making out with another Vlog Squad member, Corinna, who was supposed to be wearing a disguise. In reality, he was making out with another member, Nash, who was the person in disguise.
Leave a Reply