Danny Duncan is one of the most popular YouTubers on the face of the earth right now. With over six million subscribers, he’s become one of the most easily recognizable pranksters on the internet. On top of his pranks, he’s also posted many videos of him buying houses, cars, and more for his friends and family. That’s not to mention the money he’s given to many people in need. I’ve personally watched tons of his videos and laughed my ass off at a lot of them, and I don’t think there’s a day that I walk around campus that I don’t see someone wearing a “Virginity Rocks” shirt or something else from his brand. By all appearances, Danny seemed like the fun, cool guy that everyone wanted to be around, but appearances are just that: appearances.
Yesterday evening, Aaron Hall (a.k.a. Sunhatkid) posted a video titled “The Truth About Danny Duncan.” Of all of the people Danny has had in his videos, Aaron was always by far the crowd favorite. The comedy that came out of the two working together was always the best content to come from Danny’s channel, but recently Aaron hasn’t appeared in any of Danny’s videos (one of the many reasons why I personally stopped watching, but this article isn’t about my YouTube taste). In response to these questions from fans, Aaron felt compelled to share his story, and I have to applaud him for doing so. Danny Duncan is a huge name, and to go out and talk about everything he endured, against the advisement of many people around him I might add, took some serious balls.
Aaron begins the video by acknowledging all the good that Danny did for him. He brought him onto the team, gave him a place to live when Aaron was homeless, blew his career up, and eventually co-signed for an apartment. But along with that came Aaron signing a contract, a contract that locked him into Danny’s team for ten years and required him to unfollow other YouTubers, many of whom Aaron was friends with.
Despite this odd choice in Danny’s rules for him, Aaron continued working with Danny because he genuinely felt like Danny was his friend and was trying to help him, at least at first. In the video, Aaron goes onto talk about how after a while, Danny began repeatedly physically abusing him. Starting with a couple punches to the head that lead to Aaron being bruised and bleeding and culminating in Danny putting a knife to Aaron’s neck, Danny’s abuse grew and grew. Sadly, no one else in the group said anything to defend or stick up for Aaron, who was always sort of the butt of the joke in Danny’s videos. At first it seemed to be all in good fun, but with this information, it feels a hell of a lot meaner.
Aaron rambles a bit in his video, which is understandable due to the nature of what he’s talking about, but the points he makes are very clear. He repeatedly thanks Danny for all that he did for him and acknowledges that without him, he wouldn’t be where he is today. But he also wants to make people aware of why he is no longer working with him and the truth about what he endured. Finally, he states that he knows Danny has a good heart, but he asks that Danny stop treating people the way he treated Aaron, which unfortunately means there were multiple victims. He says he forgives Danny but needed to make the video in order to heal.
For many, finding out that Danny Duncan is not the chill prankster that he makes himself out to be will be an incredible disappointment, but looking back on the evolution of his videos, it isn’t too surprising. It’s pretty clear that Danny Duncan keeps people around that he can tease, rip on, and mess with for entertainment, and Aaron showed that pretty clearly.
To watch Aaron’s full video, click here.
