After 1,023 days, David Dobrik has returned to vlogging on his YouTube channel. With 17 million subscribers, Dobrik was once the undisputed king of holding a camera and taping his daily antics.
Each of his biweekly vlogs throughout the latter half of the 2010s pulled in millions of views. Through his videos, fans built relationships with recurring faces like Jason Nash, Zane Hijazi, and Corinna Kopf.
The new vlog sees Dobrik returning to form. He’s traveling the world with these faces we haven’t seen on his channel and showing off a rippling body transformation. The video ends with MrBeast, a face I cannot escape from, giving Dorbik’s best friend Ilya Fedorovich a fancy sports car and a promise from Dobrik to continue vlogging.
It was poetic that MrBeast was heralding Dobrik into his next phase of content. The pair share very similar styles, pushing high-energy edits and giving away lavish gifts to engage their audiences. They’ve both dealt with massive scandals and will keep trucking along for an audience that can never seem to get enough.
The Fall of Dobrik
Dobrik’s star was skyrocketing four years ago and seemingly would never stop soaring. But in 2021, an investigation by Business Insider revealed that one of Dobrik’s long-time collaborators Dom Zeglaitis had been accused of sexual assault by two different women, one of whose experience was captured in a Dobrik vlog.
I was initially a Dobrik fan who watched every vlog. But I worked at Business Insider when during the publication of that story. I even had the smallest hand in its production (I sent one email).
Seeing the multiple apology videos and responses in real time, I became more aware of the power dynamics in his videos. I saw how Dobrik created a hostile environment that could easily bend to people to his will. I even got to watch Casey Neistat’s unreleased documentary on Dobrik.
In my opinion, it shows how Dobrik ignored how his actions affected people in the pursuit of making videos. It’s unclear if that documentary will ever see the light of day. Neistat has said on multiple podcasts that he still feels a connection to Dobrik and can’t trash his bro.
Dobrik Returns To Nash, But Why?
In one moment in Dobrik’s latest vlog, the YouTuber tells Nash that they will restart their Views podcast. Nash, overcome with emotion, starts bawling his eyes out, unable to say words.
Nash is a 51-year-old comedian who was never afraid to do whatever was necessary for the vlogs, willingly taping himself to a wall or getting shot with a paintball gun. The vlogs transformed him from an out-of-work actor into a bonafide influencer, with their Views podcast being the crowning jewel that would continue to pay for his lavish LA lifestyle.
But amidst the controversy, Dobrik decided that he didn’t want to continue the podcast, leaving Nash without a monetary safety net.
“He walked away from millions of dollars and all he had to do was talk to me for 40 minutes a week,” Nash said in a 2023 podcast interview. Over the past two years, Nash spent almost every single day on TikTok Live begging for donations and being the punching bag for YouTube commentary channels.
Dobrik is a multi-millionaire who has consistently posted to Snapchat to maintain his audience during his “break.” He makes a passive income with his Doughbricks pizza spot in Los Angeles. He seemingly doesn’t need the podcast as much as Nash. I’m unsure of how much Dobrik even needs the vlogs beyond a desire to return to his once-great kingdom.
And that kind of left me feeling icky watching Dobrik’s latest upload. It feels like a time capsule of 2018 when he would give away cars and joke with personalities that we as fans got attached to. But a lot has happened in the past half-decade. Watching those fast-paced edits and giveaways without being reminded of the behind-the-scenes antics it took to make them is more complicated.
