Onision XYZ
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Smurf Says... |
Onision.xyz was a highly controversial forum Greg launched in 2016. It was removed and replaced by Onision.co in May 2017.
Precursor
In the summer of 2016, Greg began using his Onision.co forum to ask for fan photo submissions for videos. Topics would range from before & after puberty photos to asking for a photo of a mean teacher. He asked fans to write "Onision" in the photos so he would know they were real. ([ Source]) These submission videos began to gain popularity and Greg continued the trend.
By the fall of 2016, he moved his submission to his Tumblr account. He would end submission videos with a topic for fans to submit for a chance to be in the next video. At this point, he was asking for photos of fans making out with objects or of things they were insecure about, like scars. A huge trend began around this time of fans writing "Onision" on their bodies. Frequently writing it on their thighs, chest, or forehead.
Onision.XYZ
Greg launched the forum in October 2016. Unlike previous incarnations of the Onision Forums, the main feature of this forum was the "Pictures for Videos" section. This was for fans to submit photos for Greg to react to in his videos. This was the most popular section of XYZ and the main draw for his fans to join.
On November 14, 2016, the site reached 10,000 posts. (Source)
Controversy
Controversy was grandfathered to the site as there were many people already upset at Greg for judging fan's bodies in videos, many of whom were young girls. Often times users would create threads asking for pictures for Greg to judge their body parts, such as thigh gaps or their weight. Fans would submit photos from fully clothed to in as little as their underwear, sometimes writing "Onision" on their body parts. Greg would then pick a number of photos, then critique them in videos such as "RATE ME FROM 1 TO 10" and "Onision, Would You Date Me?".
Unlike his tumblr submissions from fans, these submissions were connected to fans' forum accounts. People began looking at fans post history to discover very young fans were submitting inappropriate photos. In one instance, it was found that a 12 year old girl posted a photo of her lower body wearing just panties.
On December 18, 2016, a post was made to Reddit titled, "A dangerous YouTuber. Watch your kids online". The post was made by a mother that caught her 13 year old daughter submitting photos in her underwear to Greg's forum. The post gained over 1,000 up-votes and was said to have reached the front page of Reddit before mods deleted the original post. (Source)
On December 20, 2016, an article was posted about Greg's website titled, "YouTuber Onision Runs Creepy Forum Where Young Teenage Girls Post Photos in Their Underwear". The article highlighted many instances of underage fans submitting photos and pointed out they did not see any type of age restriction on the website. The author of the article describes finding girls as young as 11 posting photos to the site. (Source) Later that day, the article was mentioned in a DramaAlert video. (Source) Onision.xyz soon went down due to heavy traffic. When the site was back up, it was noted that threads asking for pictures of fans were being removed from the site. (Source) By the next day, the forum required an account to view it's content.
"Break"
Greg replied to the claims at first with two tweets explaining he did nothing wrong and just gave his opinion to people that asked. (Source) Later that day he uploaded "I'm Done Making These Videos..." to his Speaks channel. In the video, Greg defends the videos he makes using the pictures from his site by saying he helped many people with their body image issues. He is noticeably angry in the video and even curses, something he usually doesn't do. He references the previously mentioned article and goes through parts of the article agreeing with it's statements or defending himself. For example, when the article stated he has called some girl's bodies "Shrek bodies" or "disgusting", he says he was just being bluntly honest. He says the people in these videos submitted the pictures because they want his blunt opinion. Greg defends the pictures of young girls in their underwear on his site by saying it is not illegal because it is not pornographic. He compares these photos to girls wearing bathing suites because they cover the same amount of skin. He says because women don't have penises, they are treated like victims, even though they benefited from submitting photos of themselves in their underwear to get his opinion.
He gets frustrated when reading about the Reddit post, then announces he will no longer make body videos because of "moron article writers that assume every other person they encounter is a pedophile". He says he's a "prime target" because people already hate him because they don't like his opinions and can't handle the truth, so they make stuff up about him. He sarcastically thanks the writer of the article and Keemstar. He tells them they ruined something that was helping hundreds of thousands of people. He ends the video reading more tweets from fans thanking him for helping them overcome their body issues. He smiles at the cameras and says, "Bye". ($ource)
It seems Greg had changed his mind as next day, Greg uploaded a fan rating video titled, "Re: Hot or Not?". ($ource)
On 26th, Greg announced he changed the forum rules to me more clear. He made "no inappropriate images" the first rule and added it to the top of the photo submission pages. (Source)
On December 28th, Greg uploaded the rating video "Have Onision Rate You 1-10". During the video, he rates a girl a "solid 8" out of 10. He uses a mocking voice off camera to ask himself "what if she's 15 years old?" Greg replied he's allowed to have opinion about people. He says it's not perverted, it's honesty. ($ource)
Blaire White
On December 27th, Youtuber Blaire White uploaded a video originally titled, "Feminist Onision Is Exploiting Underage Girls (Creepy Asshole)", where she speaks about Greg's XYZ forums and his fan rating videos. Throughout the video she references the Heatstreet article written about him and focuses on the young girls coming to the site to be rated in his videos. (Source) Blaire announced the video with the tweet, "@Onision is a creepy asshole who collects underwear pictures from 13 year olds and uses them for videos."
Greg quickly took to twitter, calling Blaire a lying scumbag. He tells her he doesn't just make videos about 13 year olds, he makes videos about women of all ages. He admits he didn't watch her video, but knew she was a liar from her tweet. (Source)
On December 30th, Greg became aware comedian Jim Norton liked Blaire's tweet stating Greg was a creepy asshole who collects underwear pictures from 13 year olds. Greg tweeted at Jim and tells him not to believe her and that he's a fan of his comedy.
Soon after, Greg announced his now infamous video "She Lied To You..." with the tweet, "A person can only be pushed so far before they push back...". (Source) In the video, he responds to Blaire's video in an extremely aggressive manner. Throughout the video he calls her many names including "cunt" and "dumb bimbo bitch." He uses similar arguments he presented in the video "I'm Done Making These Videos...". He also emphasizes he does not only rate underage fans, he rates all fans. Blaire says girls ages 11-17 were posting on Greg's forum. He says she's lying about there "only" being 11-17 year olds and calls her a "useless fucking dumb piece of shit cunt." He shows his Youtube Analytics and professes his audience is mostly 18-24 year olds.
Greg accuses Blaire of not showing the pictures from the forum posts she's reading about because she doesn't want her audience to know how harmless they are. One example is a post she read from someone begging Greg to take down the video that featured a picture of her friend because she doesn't think it's safe for a picture of a 13 year old's body to be viewed by hundreds of thousands of people. Greg shows the image the friend asked to be removed. He says you can't even tell who she is because she covered her face and she covered a majority of her body. She was wearing yoga pants and a sports bra. The other example he gave was Blaire reads a post from a fan that says she won't tell Greg how old she is because she's been in a few videos of his and she doesn't want to get him into trouble. He shows the image from the post and it was of a fully clothed girl taking a selfie. He does not acknowledge the photos this girl believed would get him into trouble.
He starts the video by saying he didn't want viewers to know who he was responding to, but later in the video he tells his audience if they know who she is to go to her channel and to load her comments with what a fraud she is. (Source)
The next day, Greg issued a privacy complaint on Blaire's video to have her video removed. (Source)
More Blaire stuff goes here
Site Closing
Greg closed the site in May 2017.
At this point, Greg's career and income took a heavy hit due to a number of factors, including the Onision.XYZ controversy. He created a Patron for fans to support him.
Post Site
Later that year??, Greg opened a new forum on his Onision.co domain. This site required members to be at least 18 years old. This was his first website to have an age restriction. Since that point, all of Greg's forums have had an 18+ age restriction.
Changing Stories
Greg began changing his story about his Onision.xyz forum beginning in 2018. The most noticeable shift took place on Greg's visit to Blaire White's livestream in 2018. In the livestream, he lied and said he had an 18+ only age restriction on the site. He apologizes on the stream for not checking people's ages and not being careful about what images he chose to use in videos, despite vehemently defending and justifying his use of underage girls in their underwear in his videos the pervious year. He also lied about only using images of people who claimed to have been 18+ or didn't say their age in his videos, despite him clearly featuring many teenage girls who listed their ages in his videos. (Source)
In 2020, Greg began using screen shots from forums he ran after the 2016-2017 Onision.xyz forum as proof that he had an 18+ only age restriction on the site. The images of age restrictions are actually from his 2017 Onision.co forum and his 2019 Onision.xyz forum. (Source) Greg began using these screen shots on Tumblr. He has since use cropped versions of these screen shots in videos, on Discord, and on Twitter.