VenomFangX

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VenomFangX is a creationist who hails from the land of Canada. He came to (limited) public cyber attention by posting pro-creation rants on YouTube. In his videos he made a number of outlandish claims about science and religion: dismissing scientists who ignored the Bible; arguing that he could prove the historical reality of biblical events (claiming, for instance that the Grand Canyon could have been formed in five minutes during the Global Flood); and calling the theory of evolution "evil". VenomFangX is also known as PCS (Posterboy for Creationist Stupidity) by his critics, although his long-suffering parents call him Shawn.

VenomFangX is often smacked down by atheists and theists alike, and almost as often deletes his "very important" videos shortly after they are uploaded because he does not like to share the "lulz". He often disables voting on his videos after he gets one or two quick high ratings, and disables or heavily moderates the comments on his videos. Though he lives in a lavish house with his parents, he asks for donations to continue his "ministries" on YouTube.

Recently, VenomFangX encountered difficulties with Paypal, YouTube, and his parents. His Paypal account was shut down.[1] His YouTube account was closed. His parents then shut down his website and posted an apology which read, in part: "This site has been taken offline by the parents of VenomFangX, they don't support/share his views and apologize if he has offended anyone. This site will be offline for good in 3 days."

GEERUP is one of several pretenders to his throne, and ran VenomFangX's channel during his enforced absence.

Contents

[edit] Charity fraud

VenomFangX's family estate complete with pillars and an ornate floor opening. [1]
Normal service will be resumed... uh... when he gets his own place.

During his time on YouTube, before allegedly being shut down by Muslim threats to him and his parents (because giving into terrorism is always the answer), he ran a charity and asked for donations totalling $500 (possibly Canuck bucks?) per month. Donations above the goal of $500 were supposed to be donated to Sick Kids Hospital in Toronto. However, there were many suspicious circumstances surrounding his charitable appeals. First off, it is illegal under Canadian law to collect funds for charity without registering with the government. Moreover, he was quoted as saying that some of the money was to go to his car payments, tuition, and continuation of his "ministries".[2] Eventually, he stopped listing the amount of money donated, and said that no matter how much money a person donated, each donation was counted as one dollar.

Under his original plan, a donation of $1000 would have met his overall target, resulting in $500 dollars going to Sick Kids Hospital. Under the new plan, a donation of $1000 would only count as $1 towards his monthly goal, thus 500 donations of $1000 would result in VenomFangX pocketing $500,000 while contributing a grand total of $0 to charity. He claimed to have made this change in response to requests from his fans, but there is little evidence to suggest that his donors consented to this. PayPal closed his original account, presumably for a terms of use violation. According to the YouTube user lordhathor, VenonFangX went on to create additional PayPal accounts in order to continue soliciting donations in contravention of PayPal's terms of use, but PayPal subsequently closed these accounts.[3]

[edit] Thunderf00t and Ray Comfort

On July 25, 2009, after Thunderf00t and Ray Comfort sat down for a conversation,[4] VenomFangX posted a new video on YouTube where he became unhinged, repeatedly invoking Godwin's law.[5][6]

[edit] Expelled: No abuse of company resources and prosletysing allowed

VenomFangX posted a video (now removed, but mirrored elsewhere) in which he described losing his job, and sought work as an evangelist.[7] He described how he'd been working in a video store, and one day found himself enjoying Ben Stein's Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. Christians are of course persecuted, and VenomFangX is no exception, since he claims to have been fired for watching a video in which God is mentioned and for distributing his Kent Hovind DVDs to customers. He also went on to describe his employer as having some DVD burners, with which VenomFangX by his own estimate produced hundreds of DVDs.

VenomFangX complained that employers do not allow employees to spread the word of God, describing his video store antics as being the third job he'd lost for related reasons. The boy felt obliged to witness to the store's customers in order to save their souls, but perhaps his employers were concerned by his use of company time and resources to harass customers.

[edit] Sporadic removal of videos

VenomFangX had a track record for removing his videos from his channel. Some of these videos contained rather bizarre scenes, such as him wearing makeup based on the Joker (although in his defence, he does do a cracking impression of Heath Ledger's Joker[8]) and in one memorable video he wore a Batman costume and moped around his parent's house looking mean. Many of these videos have been reposted by his critics, with scenes from them used in their videos. Seriously, some of these videos are pretty odd.

[edit] Dprjones

See a fuller timeline and coverage on the dprjones article

Towards the end of 2009 and early 2010 VFX served several Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) complaints against youtube user dprjones. This was just over a year after a similar event with Thunderf00t which ended in VFX apologizing to the entire internet for his abuse of the DMCA. Because of this second offense, dprjones refused to accept a mere apology and demanded that VFX close his account permanently. In an increasingly bizarre series of events - played out for the world to see on YouTube - VFX became increasingly unhinged, leading many to suspect that he had genuine mental problems. The events took a turn for the incredibly serious with Shawn (who has since promised to drop the VenomFangX "persona") calling dprjones a pedophile and urging his followers and subscribers to report him to the relevant authorities. This culminated in a long conversation that involved multiple YouTube users and VFX's parents. Shawn finally, and we presume sincerely, closed his account, dropped the VenomFangX name and vowed to seek the help that he needed.[9]

[edit] Links

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ↑ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5L5agvxVwbw
  2. ↑ http://howgoodisthat.wordpress.com/2009/05/07/venomfangx-has-his-youtube-account-and-website-shut-down/
  3. ↑ lordhathor's history of VenomFangX's PayPal accounts
  4. ↑ Thunderf00t and Ray Comfort on YouTube.
  5. ↑ The video in question
  6. ↑ VenomFangX's rebuttal to a discussion about the video
  7. ↑ VenomFangX describes how he lost his job
  8. ↑ VenomFangX raids his mother's makeup to paint himself up like the Joker
  9. ↑ dprjones - A message from Shawn and his father
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