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mantharay-blog1 · 7 years

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ARTISTS BEWARE

Avoid collaborations with dubious monetized YouTube channel GeekyComTV

I’ve held my tongue about this channel for almost a month and I can’t frickin’ do it anymore. This is a call out post.

[WHY?] To make a long story short, this user has been posting videos for over a year now, using miraculous art. Although in some cases he has asked permission to repost, he began monetizing [making money off of] his videos at some point without notifying any of the artists.

None of the artists agreed to monetization.

@maristoryart is only one of many artists that reported him upon finding the monetization, but for some reason, Geeky has focused on her as the reason his channel is being reported [for a second time at least, since this isn’t the first account he has lost]…

GeekyComTV’s creator has resorted to blackmail, to defamation, to actual threats, and finally to identity theft, in an attempt to bully mari and others into complying with his wishes.

It’s gross and it is NOT okay.

[^^^ just 20 of the 200+ videos being monetized]

[WHY? part 2: the long version] And now the entire thing. Strap in and get ready to get real damn mad. And apologies in advance for the lack of a read more, but I need to avoid censorship of this post. So yes, this post is VERY LONG, but this needs to be seen.

For ease of reading, I will do a bullet list+screenshot setup.

July 9th, GeekyComTV’s channel is linked amidst 4 others by a discord user on a small ml server.

Geeky’s is shown to be directly monetizing most of the videos.

Maristoryart is the only one active at the time whose art is on there, so she reports the videos using her content.

[censoring names for protection from this creep]

A few days later [the 13th], the owner of the channel begins to message Mari via her social media and email

He reminds her she gave him permission to post the artwork on his channel and asks why she reported him; he reveals her reports put two strikes on his account

He says he will remove the videos if she retracts her claims

^^^ to explain: He has 2 strikes on his account. He counterclaims them, which means he is disputing the strikes and youtube cancels the deletion of the videos. If he deletes the videos now, the strikes remain on his account. If Mari retracts her claims, his account is in the clear.

Mari asks for advice from the chat and we unanimously tell her not to retract her claims, since he monetized without notifying her OR ANY OF THE 100+ ARTISTS HE IS STEALING FROM

During this conversation, another user who dealt with him previously points out Geeky’s previous channel was shut down for the same reason, so we learn he is a repeat offender

Mari ultimately decides to tell Geeky she will not retract her claim due to the monetization of hers and others art without their permission

At the same time, I share Geeky’s channel with the main public ml art server and begin to contact artists on tumblr

[in which a user lets us know geeky tried to find out who ‘told on him’ lol. spoilers: it only matters cos he wanted to send threats and blackmail to the person lol]

yes, geeky:

[just one of a few ppl who likely ended up reporting him lol]

[lol yea that 2 years of hard work putting songs on top of ppl’s art and making money off it, boo hoo lol]

[^^^ talking about his previous channel, which is deleted now. jan 11 is when the posts about his new [current main] channel started to appear for a while.]

Immediately after Mari sends her explanation, Geeky tries to claim he only monetized a month ago

Another user calls bs; she had tried to contact him several months prior about removing videos with her art because she didn’t allow monetization

Geeky offers to pay Mari the money he made off her work, if she will remove the strikes

Geeky begins to message Mari incessantly, repeating that he will pay her

He tries to claim it wasn’t he who ‘decided to monetize the videos’ … [note: heartbeat indicates nearly all his videos are monetized by him DIRECTLY, save for one or two, which are monetized by WMG for music used]

Meanwhile, I have gotten in touch with one of the artists on tumblr and explain the situation to them

This artist chooses to contact Geeky personally

When this artist asks Geeky to remove the video with their content, he claims he can’t remove any videos until Mari removes her strikes from his account [note: this isn’t how youtube works lol. this is also part of the blackmail aspect]

During this convo, Geeky has caught on that artists in this community actually talk to each other and he begins to set his videos to private so that no one else can claim their artwork

Thankfully I still have the window with all the videos still loaded, so I begin to send individual urls to the artists i recognize from the thumbnails, so they can remove their work from his channel

[^screenshot the tumblr artist sent]

The third and final strike on Geeky’s account comes from @ferisae, who sometimes allows dubs, but does not allow monetization

Despite being private, Feri still had the URL, so she was able to report her video

Geeky emails Feri, saying she made a mistake, she doesn’t want to do this etc

Feri clearly tells him she never gave approval for her work to be monetized, and he repeatedly messages her and tries to tell her he wasn’t monetizing, that she is making a big mistake, etc

Feri lets him know she has an app that lets her see when a video is monetized and by who, says she won’t talk about it anymore, and blocks him

[^ i don’t have screenshots of this exchange, it was relayed on voicechat]

Geeky begins to message all the people who contacted him to remove their art, asking them if they know Feri and Mari, could they message them about the issue, etc etc

He begins to message Mari multiple times per day, interrupting her daily life

[she ignores the messages]

He also makes a new email account and begins to message Feri again, begging her to resolve this

[she ignores him as well]

[^from the new email to feri. bigger image … pls note the lie about removing the videos. they were all still on private, NOT deleted.]

Finally, when no one responds, he resorts to threats [on the 14th and 15th]

Mari asks for advice on how to respond, and one of the users in the chat helps her craft an email to send him.

We advise her to do what Feri did, to simply block him, but he responds again before she has a chance to and threatens her again

Mari is understandably stressed out and logs off for a while

[^^^ sorry but if simply ignoring your attempts to guilt trip her into removing rightful strikes on ur account isn’t ‘peaceful’, i don’t know what is lol]

[response ^^^ bigger image]

[bigger image]

[bigger image - ^^^ in which he sends basically the same message twice??? and my, i’m so glad ur a good person because you chose not to hack. much brave, very morals, wow!! ]

After seeing this, I am raging, so I start looking into this guy, hoping I can find his family and show them the emails he has been sending to Mari, so maybe they will straighten his ass out :P

I don’t have luck finding his family [aside from a possible sibling], though I do find out where he lives and works

I kick it up to a friend of mine [@seibatooth] who digs up a lot more info on him, including work history

We learn is a college student from Morocco, who hasn’t held a stable job for more than 6 months

I share this all with Mari to reassure her that this guy has no power and to not worry so much lol

In light of all this new information, no one responds to him

[^^^seiba is a boss. again… no one used this information against him, no one contacted him, and it was all obtained by simple google searches.]

He is quiet for a few days, then on the 19th, a very badly worded email from Geeky’s “Lawyer” comes

It is sent to Feri, Mari, and a Third Artist who did not want to be named in this post

It claims he is seeking legal action against all three artists and lists an email, a website, and a linkedin url

A quick search shows this lawyer to be a real person, but that the contact info in the email is incorrect

So here, we learn here that Geeky is impersonating Real Lawyer [which is where we get identity theft]

Seiba calls Real Lawyer to appraise him of the situation

Seiba and Feri then respond to Geeky [on the fake lawyer email] to let him know that Real Lawyer will be contacting him soon

When I check on Friday, his account is still up, but monetization appears to be disabled … YAAAAAAAAAAS

Also, the Third Artist who did not want to be named offered some screenshots from an exchange they had with Geeky:

[Translation: “everyone else is stealing from you so why can’t i????” gross.]

[^^^in which he pretends to be the lawyer from his own acct……..wowww x’DDD]

The next day [i think? it was during SDCC which was chaotic lol], Real Lawyer calls Seiba

Real Lawyer lets her know that he is pursuing legal action against Geeky… fite!

Another few days pass and Geeky begins advertising his new channel on instagram

In each post, he publicly announces that Mari is the reason he is losing his account, that she doesn’t love the miraculous fandom anymore [????] and that he is just a poor wee bab victim who did no wrong guys really ;0;/

[about page on his new channel. goo.gl link just makes you directly subscribe to this new channel >>; ugh.]

[^^^his posts are decently popular]

[…lol fake claims my butt.]

[my fave part about this is that he claims mari incited a buncha artists to riot against him, when in actuality it was the fact he was MAKING MONEY ON OUR ART. mari had nothing to do with it, aside from sharing his gross guilt trippy and then THREATNING responses lmao. sorry bruh, u did it to urself.]

[…..sigh.]

Alright, so while I was tidying up everything to post, Geeky actually has done more things I need to post about. Literally in the past 24 hours, heck, in the last HOUR, he is still screwing artists over and taunting everyone about it. I have permission to name a few artists effected, so I will not censor their names here.

Today, I found out that Geeky has counter-claimed Mari, Feri and the Third Artist

This means his account is still active, despite the previously pending deletion

He has turned on monetization again, so he is again making money off everyone’s artwork

He is publicly taunting everyone about what he has done

[^^^ the comment in yellow has since been removed by geeky]

[^^^ bragging and more threats….also, just lying out his ass. sorry but i have receipts, bruh.]

[^^^ ANOTHER threat/brag. they deleted this comment pretty much immediately but bbwolf was kind enough to screenshot her activity feed so we can still see it lol. also, like how his time frame keeps changing? interesting lol]

[^^^ one of the counterclaims, shared by the Third Artist. Geeky’s explanation (the english bit) as to why he’s allowed to make money on someone elses work is that it’s okay that he is making money off ppl’s work cos we didn’t create the characters…… what??? ?????? ? ? ??? also he lives in morroco, so he can’t actually claim fair use because it doesn’t apply to him lol… alsoalso, NONE OF US ARE MAKING MONEY ON OUR WORK. HE IS. WHICH NEGATIVELY EFFECTS US BECAUSE IT IS AFFECTING HOW WE W. DERP]

[eden is allowing me to name her in this post now]

[^^^ just one of a few that was linked]

[^^^^ proof that he was contacted 6 months ago about monetizing videos. despite the fact he said claimed he only started 1 month ago. proof that he waited a bit and then just turned it back on when eden stopped checking.]

[^^^setting this here as proof he is monetizing in case he turns it off lol]

Aaand that is where we are at this very minute. I will likely update this post via reblog as the situation changes, but good lord, y’all. Can we please work together to take care of this guy? I can’t stand that he seems to be getting away with this behavior.

[THE ACCOUNTS] (as tempted as you may be after this post, DO NOT HARASS THIS USER. just look for your content and report it at your own discretion. if you do harass him, he might use your words as proof he is being ‘wrongly harassed’ … and he will definitely hide the videos again, so that no one can report their artwork. please report discreetly.)

Youtube channel #2 [monetized - channel #1 is gone, deleted by youtube sometime in january] Youtube channel #3 [new channel; as of 7/25, it is not yet monetized] instagram tumblr

#this is the m o s t hilarious thing ive seen in a while #fuck this guy honestly #who does he think hes kidding #god i hate it when people hide behind computer screens and pretend theyre all great and superior when they cant even hold a f u c k i ng jo #jesus #fandom discourse #sort of #idk an appropriate tag for this sorry #ask to tag!!!!#ml

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