David Dobrik: An Update
David Dobrik was and still is one of the biggest, most successful internet stars of our generation. His vlogs were unlike anything else on the internet and his lovable group of friends provided feelings of comfort, support, and joy to David’s fans - almost becoming everyone’s own friend group.
If you didn’t read the last article on David Dobrik and you haven’t been keeping up with what is going on, go give that a read first. For everyone else, let’s talk about the recent developments in David’s life and the scandal surrounding him.
One of David’s best friends, a staple in his vlogs and a successful YouTuber in his own right, Jeff Whitteck, recently started posting a docuseries called “Don’t Try This At Home” on his channel recounting the story of his life-threatening injury that until now has been kept completely under wraps. Jeff still was posting while recovering from his injuries, sporting a huge scar on his face, but didn’t tell anyone why he was injured, if he actually was injured, or the extent of his injuries.
The first episode of the docuseries gave background on Jeff’s life and how he met David. Jeff was born and raised in Staten Island, New York, and the beginning of the first episode focuses on his friends, family, and childhood. It then follows the trajectory of his life as he found himself selling drugs and other illegal activities, for which he was arrested. He was in and out of jail for a while, not stopping his law-breaking ways, when he moved to LA to start shipping weed back to New York. It was in LA that he became friends with Viners and started doing social media. He met David through a mutual friend, Toddy Smith, and even says that when he first met David, he thought he was “a jerky kid who’s willing to put anything in a video, didn’t care about other people.”
David constantly was making jokes about Jeff’s criminal past, which initially pissed him off, but when David insisted that what he was showing was “real” and Jeff allowed him to post his mugshot, he felt free. Becoming friends with David launched his career, blew up his channel, made him who he is. Jeff does not dispute this and is extremely thankful for it.
The next episode of the docuseries goes into how Jeff got hurt. The story starts in 2020 when the pandemic hit and David stopped vlogging. However, he came up with an idea to film the Vlog Squad doing a bunch of stunts for a “come-back” vlog. One of these stunts included skydiving, which Jeff, to put it lightly, was fucking terrified of. The activity combines his fears of heights and death, but Jeff agrees to do it. He, Todd, and Natalie agree to do 25 jumps to get their skydiving certification so they can do the stunt for the vlog without being strapped to an instructor. The group completes the 25 jumps and Jeff feels on top of the world, and so they move on to the next stunt, due to the time crunch of trying to get everything done in like a week and a half.
The whole Vlog Squad got together and started filming in a lake that was only about a foot or two deep, with a massive excavator with a rope tied to it. They started filming Todd, Zane, and Heath wakeboarding in circles with David driving the excavator , which included controlling the speed at which it spun. Jeff points out that the wakeboarding was cool, but they were there to pull stunts - something crazy, not something already on the internet. First, Corinna Kopf stood in the loop at the end of the rope and let David swing her around, but the rope started to slip and David didn’t let her down fast enough, scaring the shit out of her, essentially. As she got down, Corrinna yelled to David, “you take things too far,” not knowing how right she’d be soon after.
That’s when Jeff got on the rope. He wanted to make something cool, entertain people, but said that he “forgot that the biggest fucking idiot I know was driving” the excavator .
David started swinging Jeff around with the excavator, and it didn’t take long for things to get out of control. All of a sudden, Jeff was hanging by his foot, head in the water, struggling to get free. His friends got him to a hospital as soon as they could, and it turned out that he had broken his foot and hip, tore ligaments in his leg, shattered his skull in nine places, shattered his eye socket and almost lost his eye entirely. Jeff was literally inches from death - he’s lucky to be alive.
In the hospital, Jeff was cracking jokes like always, and David even visited, per Jeff’s request, in a Joker costume, a nod to the scene between the Joker and Two-Face in The Dark Knight. However, he opens up in the docuseries about how hard it was after the accident. He stays positive on the outside, but was feeling really down about himself and his future on the inside. He even said that while he was at home recovering, David was doing better than ever, which made him resent his friend. Jeff’s life was completely changed, and he has a long, long road of recovery ahead of him - and he probably will never get to the same place he used to be physically.
Of David, Jeff says, “he’s a kid still in my eyes...but he has proved to me that he wants to do the right thing.” Things between the friends were intense, to say the least. Jeff constantly threatened to take out David’s eye for a literal eye for an eye, but these were jokes; what wasn’t a joke was getting David to actually beinvolved in one of the dangerous stunts he’d gotten his friends to do - so Jeff got David to agree to skydive.“I don’t want a fuckin’ car, I don’t want money, I want [David] to risk [his] life and [him] not be in control for once,” Jeff said.
David did it - for the first time, he took a risk that he had expected of others but hadn’t participated in himself. “Bro, that was fucking terrifying,” he said of the experience.
Unfortunately, no amount of skydiving, apologizing, or jokes will take back David’s recklessness and immaturity in the situation, but Jeff still wants to forgive his friends and not let bitterness linger, since he already has enough shit to deal with physically and career-wise. However, the question still remains - should we, the fans and viewers, forgive David, especially after the sexual assault scandal? Should we give a platform to someone who would let his friends do dangerous and life-threatening things in the name of views? David gets success and money while the people around him get hurt, both emotionally and physically. David has had multiple friends distance themselves from him because of his behavior - BigNik, a former Vine star, called out David’s toxic behavior from when they were friends. He was constantly ridiculed by David because he has dwarfism, and it got to a point that made BigNik uncomfortable, yet David wouldn’t stop. Clearly, if something will get people to click on David’s videos, no matter how mean or life-threatening or destructive it is, David will push to make it happen despite the consequences. Yes, this results in extremely entertaining content, but David needs to do some growing up and reevaluate his priorities before he can be someone who people are proud to support, someone who uses their platform for good.