David Dobrik: The Sexual Assault Scandal

By Tiffany Fang, Edited by Anvitha Mattapalli & Arushi Patil, Art by Sahithi Lingampalli, Layout by Tiffany Fang, & blogged by Sahithi Lingampalli

Trigger Warning: Sexual Assault

David Dobrik: one of the most arguably famous and one of the most-loved YouTubers online. Dobrik first rose to fame after filming vines with his friends, and quickly grew an audience on Youtube after Vine had been discontinued. In his short vlogs, he mostly films his friends who later nicknamed themselves the “Vlog Squad”, a group of creators who film content together. He and his friends often film themselves going to parties, playing bizarre pranks, and even giving away very expensive cars. Essentially, his videos are short-form comedy videos that contain skits and snippets of numerous famous individuals, making his videos very entertaining for his young adult demographic. But no matter how real his life may seem, edited videos online never reveal the whole truth.

This raises the question: how far has David Dobrik really gone to keep his vlogs entertaining and exciting?

Dobrik’s Background

David Dobrik has been long-renowned as Youtube’s very own “golden boy”, which by definition means “a boy or man who is popular, admired and successful whose faults are often overlooked by others''. Many YouTubers do absurd things to gain more views, popularity, and money, and unfortunately, Dobrik is no exception.

In fact, there is an alarming amount of deleted footage that captures the numerous offensive racist and sexist jokes and pranks that Dobrik has done such as encouraging his friends to make such as saying the n-word twice in a vine and pointing the camera towards black men, urging his friends do blackface in a vlog, making fun of the way Japanese people speak in a Japanese candy-tasting video with Liza Koshy, and repeatedly directing inappropriate sexist jokes towards vlog squad members Corinna Kopf and Gabby Hanna, none of which were really brought to the public’s attention until an article titled “A woman featured on YouTube star David Dobrik's channel says she was r*ped by a Vlog Squad member in 2018 the night they filmed a video about group sex” was published on Insider, disgusting many of Dobrik’s audience members and tainting Dobrik’s squeaky-clean image forever.

The Video:

The article discusses the sexual assault that took place behind the scenes of a vlog that Dobrik posted on November 8, 2018, titled, “SHE SHOULD NOT HAVE PLAYED WITH FIRE!!” with evidence from Hannah (pseudonym chosen by Insider), the girl who faced sexual assault from Dominykas Zeglaitis, also known as “Durte Dom” for the sex addict character that he played in Dobrik’s vlogs.

At the beginning of the vlog, Zeglaitis declares that he “invited [these] girls over to have a fivesome” so that he could “hopefully have a fivesome today” (SHE SHOULD NOT HAVE PLAYED WITH FIRE!!). The vlog then cuts to Dobrik’s apartment in which a couple of college girls enter the room already filled with some of the vlog squad members including Jeff Witteck, Todd Smith, Jason Nash, and Trisha Paytas.

After sitting down, one of the girls informed the vlog squad that “she had to let [them] know” that she “didn’t know any of [the vlog squad members]”. The vlog squad then cracked some jokes. Dobrik voice-overs that “after a couple of minutes of talking, it was clear there was no five-some happening”. However, the video then transitions while Dobrik voice-overs that “by some stroke of luck and master negotiating, Zeglaitis made progress”, suggesting that the girls did not want to participate in the situation at all.

Shortly after, the vlog cuts to a clip of Dobrik filming him and his friends making jokes after opening Zeglaitis’s room where he was supposedly having a fivesome with the college girls (who were previously introduced in the vlog). According to Jeff Witteck, one of the vlog squad members who opened the door to “do a headcount for the vlog”, claimed that Zeglaitis and the other college girls were not actually in the room shown in the video (the room is dark and does not show any people) and were simply faking it for the sake of comedic content. But according to one of Hannah’s friends, the room was not empty, and Hannah and another girl were in the room with Zeglaitis. The next clip reveals Zeglaitis, sweating and shirtless. Dobrik proceeds to ask if it was Zeglaitis’s first threesome, to which Zeglaitis agrees with and thanks Dobrik for arranging the entire situation.

The scene switches again one final time to Dobrik, Smith, and Calvillo in the car where Dobrik says that “Dom just had a threesome and I think we’re all– ” and Smith finishes his sentence by saying “going to jail.” Dobrik laughs and repeats, “I think we’re all going to jail.” Calvillo then jokes, “See you in 20 years.”

The vlog was taken down a couple of hours later at Hannah’s request.

The Victim’s Story

Hannah, one of the college girls invited to Dobrik’s apartment to have a supposed fivesome with Zeglaitis, had reached out to a writer at Insider magazine to write the article that revealed much of the information that was hidden behind the scenes of the original vlog. She and her friends talked to the writer at Insider by recalling both their own perspectives of the situation and showing proof of text messages and DMs as well. Hannah and her friends’ recollection of the night reveal much more than what was shown on camera.

According to Hannah, her friends had been texting Zeglaitis the day before they were invited to the Vlog Squad’s apartment. Hannah herself was unfamiliar with the members of the Vlog Squad, but she tagged along with her friends as they had promised Zeglaitis that they would come to their apartment. Hannah told Insider that she instantly felt very uncomfortable and that she felt a lot of pressure from the YouTubers to act a certain way to provide interesting “content” for their videos. Immediately, Zeglaitis began hitting on Hannah.

Throughout the night, Zeglaitis continued to hit on Hannah and make her feel uncomfortable, continuing to call her “baby”, asking her to become his “Instagram girlfriend”, and repeatedly asking her to kiss him. As the night continued, he took her into a private pitch-black bedroom and forced her to kiss him. Later on, some of the members of the vlog squad went out to buy alcohol for the college girls to drink, who were underage at the time. Hannah and her friends continued to drink and became very drunk as time went by. Hannah’s friend, Audrey, told Insider that much of the alcohol was encouraged by vlog squad members in an attempt to get her drunk for the vlog. A couple of minutes later, Dom led Hannah and Audrey, both very intoxicated, into a dark bedroom where he had sex with both girls.

Hannah could not recall any of this the morning after which is the only reason why she gave Zeglaitis consent to post the vlog. Shortly after, Audrey told Hannah that she had witnessed Dom r*ping Hannah while she was unconscious and blacked-out at the time and that she had “finished him off” so that he would stop assaulting Hannah. Hannah could not process this and laughed it off but later had a panic attack about the situation repeating “I was raped” over and over again.

On November 28, 2018, the vlog with Hannah and her friends came out, which was really difficult for Hannah to process. “It’s difficult to describe how it feels knowing that millions of strangers have seen a video of me in a night that affected me and traumatized me in nearly incomprehensible ways, not knowing that anything was wrong,” she said (Tenbarge).

In February 2019, Hannah finally reached out to Zeglaitis through a long text message explaining the pain that she felt and told him about her wishes of taking down the video to help herself heal from the trauma that she faced.

His only reply was “Okay, I respect your wishes. The videos down.”

History of Allegations

Unfortunately, this was not the first time that Dobrik or Zeglaitis were accused of condoning or curating such disgusting situations. Ally Hardesty, who posted a video titled "DURTE DOM EXPOSED: My Story” in June 2017, told her story involving sexual assault from Zeglaitis. She explained that he had continuously asked her to kiss him, to touch him, and to overall do things with him. She explained how he sat on top of her and touched her nonconsensually while pinning her arms down, and that no one had helped her in the moment, similar to the situation that Hannah faced. At the time that she posted the video, she received a lot of backlash from Dobrik fans, defending him and Zeglaitis and calling Ally a liar. Dobrik also discredited her claims at the time the video was posted. The video has now gained more traction from viewers, many of them now supporting her and praising her for her bravery.

In June of 2017, David posted a vlog titled “HE THOUGHT HE WAS KISSING HER!! (SUPER CRINGEY)” in which he tricked one of the vlog squad members, Seth Francois, into making out with Jason Nash, a 45-year-old comedian, for a fake commercial. Francois was unaware that he would be pranked into kissing Nash, and surprisingly, this was not the first time that Dobrik had tricked Francois into making out with Nash.

Francois was originally told that he would be making out with Corinna Kopf wearing an old man’s mask for the vlog. Corinna then left the room to switch outfits with Jason Nash. Wearing the old man mask, Nash entered the room and started to make out with Francois. After about 20-30 seconds, David revealed that Francois was not kissing Kopf but Nash instead, leaving Francois both shocked and appalled.

On February 12, 2021, Francois spoke to the hosts Ethan and Hila Klein of the H3H3 podcast, telling them about the sexual assault he faced from the vlog squad members, speaking about the negative impact that it had on him. “I was touched by someone I did not consent to,” he told them. It was also apparent that David had tried to hide this entire situation after he began deleting both vlogs and clips from his podcast.

Another incident was revealed recently, on the Frenemies podcast, Trisha Paytas told Ethan Klein of the inappropriate pranks that he played on her including one where he flew to Nash and Paytas’s vacation hotel to scare them. In the video, David hid in the hotel room while Paytas and Nash were having sexual relations in their room until Paytas walked into the bathroom where David jumped out with his camera, filming Payats while she was completely nude and without her consent. Although Paytas’s body is blurred in the video, Paytas told Klein that she did not consent to him posting the video on the internet, nor did she consent to him intruding on her privacy. He had still posted the vlog titled “I SNUCK INTO THEIR HOTEL ROOM!! (SURPRISE)”. Both of these vlogs have been taken down and can no longer be found on Dobrik’s channel.

The Apologies

Dom Zeglaitis was the first member involved in the sexual assault situation to voice his thoughts on the Insider article after it was published. Instead of addressing the situation, however, he went in-depth into his past and overall claimed that he was“the polar opposite” of what people were saying about him (“addressing the drama…”). Numerous viewers were angry with Zeglaitis’s lack of sorrow, and over 116,000 of them disliked the video. The most-liked comment on the video says, “Man just own the fact that you deserve to be in jail for your actions.”. Another comment is angry with “the fact he’s calling him raping a woman ‘drama’” and that he “deserves prison time”.

David has not only tried to hide evidence of his past actions but has also stayed silent for years, waiting for the numerous allegations and drama to blow over as if hoping that everybody will forget what he did. Throughout his entire career, Dobrik has never taken full accountability for his actions, has never spoken out about the accusations he has faced.

Dobrik posted his first-ever apology titled Let’s Talk on March 16, 2021. This video was posted only days after he began to lose large sponsorships that had previously endorsed his videos, raising suspicions from his audience that his apology was ingenuine. In his video, he claimed, “Consent is something that's super, super important to me whether I’m shooting with a friend or shooting with a stranger, I always make sure that whatever the video I’m putting out, I have the approval from that person who consents.”

He alluded to Zeglaitis when he said , “I chose to distance myself because I don't align with some of the actions and I don't stand for any kind of misconduct, and I've been really disappointed by some of my friends and for that reason, I’ve separated from a lot of them.” The issue with this statement is the lack of mentioning that he himself had curated such an environment for his friends to conduct certain actions and also encouraged such actions to occur for his content. In addition, he turned both his comments and video ratings (likes and dislikes) odd, which many viewers perceived as cowardly. Many viewers were also unhappy with the fact that David had posted his apology on his smallest platform, his podcast YouTube Channel, with only 1.7 million subscribers compared to his main vlog channel totaling up to 18.4 million subscribers, suggesting that he was not truly sorry for his actions and was trying to clear the air and testing the waters to see how angry people really were with him.

After receiving even more backlash and losing even more sponsorships after his first apology, David came out with a new apology video about a week later on his main channel titled 3/22/21. At the beginning of the video, he adjusted the camera, sat down informally on the floor, and told the audience that he was alone late at night in a way that many saw as an attempt to manipulate the audience into thinking that he was someone who never had alone time, therefore, making such a circumstance more “raw”. He admitted to a lot of the allegations that he received and apologized for not acknowledging the victim’s statements and instead believing Dom as he “could not wrap his head around the fact that his childhood friend would hurt others this way” (“3/22/21”). And although he seemed to say all the right things and claimed to apologize, many people were still not accepting of his statements as it was difficult for many to look past such terrible actions and blindly accept his assertion that he would grow and improve from this situation. His video currently has over 700,000 likes and over 160,000 dislikes.

The Aftermath

Dobrik has lost over 500,000 subscribers since the Insider article was published, and his entire YouTube channel has been demonetized by YouTube itself. Additionally, many huge brands such as Hello Fresh, HBO Max, DoorDash, Audible, Dollar Shave Club, Honey, Chipotle, and Bumble have informed the public that they will no longer be working with Dobrik as his actions do not align with their companies’ values. Dobrik has also stepped down from his camera and photo-sharing app Dispo shortly after its new launch in March. The second apology video on his main channel has over 150,000 thumbs down but over 700,000 thumbs up: an 82.2% like to dislike ratio. This high like to dislike ratio shows that still a majority of his audience has accepted his apology and is okay with the crimes that he committed and condoned, traumatizing the lives of many people.

Although Dobrik apologized for his actions and was not the one who conducted the sexual assault, he still condone the environment in which it occurred in and gave a platform to a man who had a history of r*ping and sexually assaulting various women. He continued to stand up for the predator and refused to believe the women who were brave enough to stand up for himself and tell their story.

His apology also does not take back what happened to the women who were r*ped and sexually assaulted. It does not erase the pain and trauma that they will have to face for the rest of their life. His refusal to stand up for or believe these women’s stories was also extremely harmful.

Sexual assault is a serious issue that not only physically but mentally harms the lives of so many women and men as well. Accountability is not enough, and it is important to acknowledge victims’ stories and take action to prevent these situations from happening again.

Ways to Help:

Donate: https://www.rainn.org/resources

National Sexual Assault Hotline: 800-656-HOPE (4673)

by Sahithi Lingampalli