Celebrity

A Friendly Reminder That Being Criticised Online Doesn’t Mean You Can Dox Someone

by Lia Kim  18 October 2023
SSSniperWolf JacksFilms Doxing Youtube YouTuber Drama

Want more Junkee in your life? Sign up to our newsletter, and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook so you always know where to find us.

Popular reaction YouTuber SSSniperWolf is being called out online for doxing fellow YouTuber Jacksfilms, who has been heavily criticising her content for months.

Alia Shelesh, known as SSSniperWolf online, has come under fire for posting a poll to her Instagram story asking if she should pay a visit to Jack Douglass, creator of popular channel Jacksfilms, who apparently lived five minutes away from her shoot. Jack is now calling for SSSniperWolf to be removed from YouTube, arguing that she’s gone beyond being a “silly creator that steals content”, to someone who “stalks and threatens her critics”.

Why Did SSSniperWolf Dox Jacksfilms?

Let’s back up a bit. How exactly did this situation escalate to the point of doxing?

Related
Is TikTok Normalising Doxxing?

Jacksfilms is a popular YouTuber with over 4 million subscribers. His channel was known for parodies, sketches, and really blew up in the early 2010s with his series ‘Your Grammar Sucks’, where he made fun of terribly written internet comments. He’s been on YouTube for over a decade and is well-liked for his satirical comedy and video production.

About a year ago, he made a video about SSSniperWolf and her wildly successful reaction content. He criticised her videos for simply stealing content from creators, with minimal effort to add anything of value to the original content. Plus, he called her out for repeatedly failing to credit the original creators and even muting the content to repeat jokes already made.

He then created his own parody channel called JJJacksfilms. It started off by mimicking SSSniperWolf and reacting to TikToks, then started explicitly calling out her content.

Some people have pointed out Jack’s own behaviour as creepy and targeted, since he is posting about SSSniperWolf extensively on this channel. But others point out that the criticism is valid because she continues to use other creator’s content without consent or credit, and doesn’t makes any attempt to transform the content by adding something new, or providing meaningful criticism or commentary, which would make it more likely to be protected by fair use copyright laws. And his content is encouraging creators whose videos have been used in SSSniperWolf’s content to file copyright claims. It’s giving Chaotic Good.

SSSniperWolf’s Response To Doxing Accusations

Alas, SSSniperWolf is not a fan of being called out, which is totally understandable. What’s less understandable is jumping straight to doxing and posting pictures of Jack’s home on her Instagram story (even though they were quickly deleted).

After Jack called her out for doxing, she claimed that the accusation was defamatory because she has “no idea how to Dox” and that he “literally posted his address on Google” (this might be alluding to an address linked to his LLC which could be found online). She called Jack a “creep” who had been harassing her for months. She added he’s been playing the victim, and accusing her of threatening him when all she wanted to do was talk to him. She also joked that Jack might “not know how to fight or something” due to his response.

SSSniperwolf JacksFilms Doxing Instagram YouTube Drama

Feel free to form your own opinion, but the math ain’t mathing here for me. Jack has undeniably been heavily critical of SSSniperWolf online for months, but this ‘harassment’ consists of videos calling her out for stealing content to react without adding much to it. Yes, it’s a lot of videos, but the crux of his argument isn’t wrong. And she continued to post the same kind of content, so Jack continued to make videos to call her out.

Jack did call her a “creep that stalks and threatens her critics,” which SSSniperWolf noted and claimed that she “just wanted to talk to him” with no “ill intentions.” He called her behaviour “creepy, gross, violating”, and said: “You steal content AND stalk YouTubers.” And he asked YouTube to remove her from the platform for showing up to his home where she posted a video of his house and “dared” him to come out.

While SSSniperWolf may not see her behaviour as ‘threatening’, it’s still way over the line. Jack also didn’t say that he refused to talk to her. No, Jack’s primary gripe was that she physically went to his home without consent, and posted it on her story for all to see. I’m sorry, but in no world does that equate to “I just wanted to talk to him” or that he’s creating “drama”. I don’t make the rules!

Is YouTube Going To Do Anything About SSSniperWolf And Jacksfilms?

The latest update on this saga is Jack’s tweet asking YouTube, again, to remove SSSniperWolf from their platform. Since the actual doxing happened on Instagram though, people are unsure if action will actually be taken by YouTube. After all, SSSniperWolf’s reaction channel rakes in millions of views for the platform and, well, keeps those eyeballs away from TikTok, where much of the content comes from.

But what about the prevalence and ethics of ‘reaction’ content in general? Over the past few years, reaction videos have been getting scrutinised for being a lazy, unoriginal concept. But, again, they tend to pull a lot of views.

As I see it, the only thing that will really stop low-effort reaction videos is either updated copyright laws that prevent that kind of content, or for us viewers to shift the culture around reaction videos, like demanding links and credits to the original creators, and offering some kind of valuable commentary besides just reacting. Or you could just react to your own content, so you’d only be stealing views from yourself. Problem solved.

(Editor’s note: This article has been updated to reflect that JacksFilms did accuse SSSniperWolf of threatening her critics, seen in this post.)