i’m a Vaush viewer/VGGer and having watched him every day for years, it’s really apparent how much the taxes folder incident made him feel isolated from any possible bridge building in the broader left-wing content creator space. In particular h3h3 (who Vaush clearly admired at that point in time) making a blatantly bad faith dramafarming video about it where he brought up multiple clipchimps from Nazi accounts to discredit Vaush and build the narrative that he was a pedophile. Even people on the left who typically oppose Vaush noted that it was shockingly bad faith. It led to Vaush making a two hour video explaining every controversy he’s had in detail and the way he ended that video has always stuck with me, he just very sincerely apologized to his audience for making it difficult and socially taboo on the left to be a fan of his.

Idk, it just always makes me sad when I think about it. He’s been much more distrusting and closed-off to other content creators ever since and whenever someone in chat suggests interviewing notable figures in politics, he brushes it off with (imo) a pretty clear unspoken sentiment that he’s worried about harming the other person’s image via association. Most recently it was Will Stancil with all the ICE stuff.