Your past can haunt you on YouTube!

Being famous can bring you an endless stream of advantages, and all the pleasant things that come with stardom. But having fame can be a double-edge sword with the potential to ruin you with in the wrong circumstances. This holds true for most internet celebrities and YouTube superstars, who, while enjoying many great benefits from their fame, get caught in a web of scandals, rumors, and all kinds of bad publicity.

Such is the case for Canadian YouTube Partner David Rock, who stars in his own YouTube channel Davidsfarm. Rock’s criminal past has been unearthed by QMI, a local TV network, revealing to the general public that Rock was a child sexual offender who had pleaded guilty to seven charges of sexual assault in 1992. The integrity of Rock’s show has been questioned ever since— with people even asking whether he has sexually abused any kid at his farm. Rock made waves again when YouTube suspended his account in mid-October, although the channel’s up and running again (without ad revenue though).

It’s the same in cyberspace and in the film and TV landscape: if you want to get famous, then be ready to have your personal life exposed to everyone, and make sure you don’t have anything in your past to hide. Of course, there are also cases where bad publicity comes first, like when people appear in sex scandals or after becoming the subject of some nasty remark from a rival. This is what British publicist Mark Borkowski refers to in his book “The Fame Formula” as bad fame.

For the most part I believe that bad publicity is still good publicity— but not in a situation like David’s. It’ll be interesting to see how he handles this all now and moves forward without having any ad revenue from YouTube.  I imagine he’s going to have to find a new job pretty soon because he’s not going to be able to sustain himself with that channel anymore and it certainly won’t lead to any potential sponsors or off-shoot TV shows or other types of productions with his current association to child molestation.

So just remember that everything you do, online or offline, can (and probably will) come back to haunt you in the future.  If you’re going to do something ridiculous/daring/stupid/illegal either on the internet or out in the real world, just know that the past usually won’t stay in the past… when you become famous!

What about you?  Have you had anything from your past come back to bite you later on?  Have you seen other examples of celebrities having something from their past come out and either hurt or help their career?

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YouTube Comment of the Day:

funfunwoah has made a comment on Mean voicemail messages: if they dont like u they SHOULD GET A MOTHER F**KING LIFE u know i mean they should get a life i mean really