CallMeCarson Is Donating YouTube Profits To Charity — But Does It Excuse His Alleged Grooming Of Minors?
The streamer has returned — but is he welcome?
CallMeCarson / YouTube Carson King, aka CallMeCarson, a YouTuber, Twitch streamer, Minecraft player, has returned to YouTube after a series of grooming allegations against him came to light earlier this year.
His return was a video titled "Moving Forward" in which King revealed plans to combat the “negative situation” with a year of charity.
However, his return begs some questions about just how much one can restore their reputation after alleged grooming.
What happened to CallMeCarson?
During the spring of 2020, King had announced he would be taking a break from social media as a whole, stating “I’m in no way mature enough to handle the responsibility of this job.”
In the series of tweets, he also said that he was on antidepressants and started seeing a counselor to deal with a “whirlwind of emotion and pain in my personal life.”
Months later he found himself in hot water.
CallMeCarson was accused of grooming underage fans.
Twitter user @miniborb tweeted that she had been groomed by the famous Minecraft streamer.
She posted screenshots of conversations they had over discord where he asked her for nude photos and acknowledged that their relationship was wrong. He was 19 at the time of their relationship while she was 17.
On Keemstar’s Drama Alert video, a friend of King's hinted there may have been several victims.
“One day in March he called me… and I picked up the phone and he said ‘I have to tell you something’,” he stated. “He revealed that he had sexted underage girls, and I think that he said that they were fans. That was what I was told.”
Soon, King disappeared. His YouTube, his Instagram, his Twitch, his Twitter went completely silent. No likes, no uploads, no word from CallMeCarson.
CallMeCarson made his YouTube return after the grooming controversy.
In the video, which isn't your average YouTuber apology video, King talks about how he is not going to address or apologize to the people watching.
Instead wants to "turn a negative situation with a lot of eyes on it into something positive that can help a lot of people."
He said that he would return to streaming on September 1st and that he would donate 100% of his profits to a new charity every month for a whole year.
This will be a year of charity, or 'YOC' as he calls it.
There is a massive divide on every social media platform on whether or not Carson should return, who he’ll affiliate with, or what his future holds.
Charlie, otherwise known as MoistCr1tikal or YouTube account penguinz0, said during a stream that “19 and 17 isn’t pedophilia.”
“I was 17 as a high school senior; half my class was 19 and the other half was 17 and 18,” he said. “If you can believe it, some of the 19-year-olds were dating 18 and 17-year-olds. That’s pretty normal. What’s not normal is getting a bunch of nudes from 17-year-olds and keeping it. That’s where it’s bad.”
Popular World of Warcraft personality Asmongold defends CallMeCarson’s grooming accusation. He says, “What? Is he only supposed to date other YouTubers? Any time that a girl approaches him and likes his videos he’s supposed to say ‘don’t talk to me I can’t have a relationship with you?'”
Of that, Hasan Piker, political commentator and twitch streamer who previously worked at The Young Turks and HuffPost, says “I think that it is a little strange.”
“Even if they are of age, to have a conversation with these people [fans] and then have them send you nudes and stuff,” he said on stream, “it’s just exploitative regardless,” and went on to address how there are no "Romeo and Juliet laws" when it comes to nude photos of underage people.
All of these comments overlook the fact that King's alleged victim was clearly uncomfortable with his advances and deserves to have her voice heard.
Overall, from other content creators on Twitch and YouTube, it seems that they’re recognizing the grooming issue and the nude photo problem, but don't seem interested in bashing, hating, or cancelling him.
Instead they want to see him get the help he needs, while also keeping their distance on this 'landmine' of an issue.
Isaac Serna-Diez is a writer who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice and politics.