THE SITUATION WITH CALLMECARSON

Since the early 2010s Minecraft has been a massive phenomenon throughout the gaming community that shows no sign of quitting now especially with the new wave of youtubers centered around the game. Taking up the spots once held by SkyDoesMinecraft, JeromeASF, StampyLongHead, Yogscast, and more along side the few lasting members of the community such as CaptainSparklez and AntVenom, these new Minecraft youtubers have carried it all the way into 2021 but the new year has left them with a rocky start.

This game’s community is no stranger to controversy with it’s original creator, Notch, being distanced from the company in 2017 and a prominent content creator, LionMaker, was accused of pedophilia in 2015 and 2016, among many other controversies through the years across various channels. Despite these set backs Minecraft had always pulled through and the community had grown stronger since but it was going to take something big to bring it back into the spotlight after so many years. That’s where the Lunch Club and SMPLive come in during March of 2019, revitalizing the game’s community and bringing back to the public eye once again.

The Lunch Club was a group of Youtubers, CallMeCarson, Slimecicle, jschlatt, traves, Ted Nivison, cscoop, and Hugbox, who together made SMPLive, a survival Minecraft server which  brought in not just Minecraft channels but even traditional Twitch streamers and Youtubers such as 24 Frames of Nick, Weeest, Pokimane, The Misfits, and more. After SMPLive came more and more servers centered around the Survival Multiplayer aspect such as the Dream SMP, SMP Earth, and the OfflineTV SMP.

Throughout this time the Lunch Club still stayed the center of attention with its members only growing more popular and spreading their exposure with the help of their new colleagues. While all this was happening in 2019, CallMeCarson, 19 at the time, entered into a relationship with a 17 year old girl named Sam, a fan of Carson’s content. If you’re wondering where exactly the issue is, you’d be in the same boat as many fans and follow content creators. 19 and 17 isn’t really illegal, had they been in the same school they likely would have shared classes. Being a fan might bring up concerns of the power dynamic but the evidence given by Sam and confirmed by Carson himself shows no abuse of power and unless Carson wants to only date fellow content creators, who is he supposed to date? Despite this argument Carson’s career is well in jeopardy and many friends and fans are turning their back on him. So why is that?

The big thing is they sent inappropriate images. While a relationship among may not be illegal, images are. Throughout the DMs presented it’s apparent that they used Snapchat to send each other explicit images and frequently discussed such things.

As well it, in general, just isn’t a good idea for someone who is a legal adult to a minor online. Bigger age gaps exist and sure had they been in high school they would have been fine but they weren’t in high school and regardless of other age gaps she was still a minor at the time while he was an adult. The way their relationship started was not some Romeo and Juliet story in which they were meant to be either.

Sam had joked on Twitter that Carson should be her boyfriend and he responded in her Direct Messages leading to the relationship filled with apprehensive thoughts, off and on sexting, and Carson himself admitting it was wrong while doing little to put it to and end. He may not have done anything egregious but he still did something wrong and is paying the consequences for it. While I don’t believe he should lose his entire career over this situation, he was a dumb teen new to fame with less than good self control, he still needs some consequence because his actions and our response to them set a precedent for the future.

We can’t show this behavior as acceptable, allowing it to continue from Carson or happen again with other creators.