AFTER Jesse Ridgeway struggled for years to become a hit on youtube, with bizarre videos
like this reenactment of a Breaking Bad scene that never happened
AFTER striking gold with his Psycho series, and using his new found success to manipulate
his friends and family into constantly stroking his ego
AFTER running out of creative ideas, watching his daily views plummet, and turning his back
on long time friends,
AFTER being honored with a Before They Were Famous video, and reacting to it like a butt
hurt little bitch
Now, here on After They Were Famous, I don't always talk about celebrities who have fallen
out of the spotlight.
I've talked about Eminem, Dr. Dre, and the Cash Me Outside girl, all of whom are very
much still on the top of their game.
Sadly, the same cannot be said of Jesse Ridgeway.
After finding moderate success by lying to his audience, Jesse set out to create a successful
follow up to the Psycho Series.
Sadly, despite numerous absurd attempts to create another popular series, his views began
a sharp decline in the spring of 2016.
The audience had caught on to his shell game, and stopped enabling his production of clickbait
videos.
While many chalk this up as the reason for his often erratic and aggressive behaviour,
others point to a brain injury Jesse suffered many years ago...
What's going on guys?
My name's Michael McCrudden, documenting the life and career of Jesse Ridgeway, after the
fame, here for you on After They Were Famous.
Now as you guys might know, Jesse has begun making a whole bunch of videos on yours truly,
Michael McCrudden, and none of those videos are particularly nice.
I'm doing this After They Were Famous on Jesse just to get back to him.
I've actually had it planned for a while, and I don't want to let his childish antics
bias the way I tell his story.
Not everything I have to say about Jesse is going to be nice, but it's all just the cold,
hard facts.
And if McJuggernauts can't take that, well, I guess I won't be too surprised.
Jesse Ridgeway was born on September 29th, 1992, in Elmer, New Jersey, and everyone already
knew that.
He grew up with a video camera in hand and began uploading to youtube back in December
of 2006.
After nearly a decade of failures on youtube, he debuted the Psycho Series in 2014, which
launched him into internet fame.
For more information on the rise of Jesse Ridgeway, be sure to check out the Before
They Were Famous video I did on McJuggernuggets.
Now, Jesse has since reacted to that video, with a bunch of whiny complaints.
The only real inaccuracy that exists in it, is the childhood pictures we used.
Rather than posting Jesse's actual childhood pictures, which he keeps private, we decided
to use the closest approximation possible, and used childhood pictures of Jesse's celebrity
look alike, Breckin Meyer.
But since he got super butt hurt over that, I guess I'll have to show you guys some actual
pictures of Jesse as a kid, straight from one of his family albums.
There!
You happy Jesse?
Anyway, just four months prior to the success of Jesse's Psycho videos, McJuggernuggets
attempted to take 21 shots in a single sitting, with his longtime friend Corn, who I'll talk
more about later in this video.
The extraordinarily drunk Jesse does what looks like a prat fall at the end of this
video, but insiders have since revealed that both the alcohol and the fall were both real.
After that fall, Jesse's crew rushed him to the hospital, where he would receive emergency
brain surgery to survive.
Jesse seemed to recover and get back to normal after a few short months.
But for the type of surgery he received, side effects, including aggression, hallucinations,
delusions, narcissism and psychosis can emerge even years later.
His doctors warned him to avoid high stress situations, drugs and alcohol.
Unfortunately, Jesse paid them no mind.
Jesse managed to build up a strong following on youtube with his psycho series, beginning
in May 2014.
While his fans were often understandably under the impression that his freak out videos were
real, they started to catch on after Jesse's attempts to constantly up his antics resulted
in less and less believable material.
After pushing the boundaries with his Psycho Kid Kills Father video, Jesse had reached
the edge of what he could present as real on youtube.
He would soon be fessing up to fans that he was lying all along, and would cap off his
series with a video called Psycho Kid Flees Country, posted on Jun 6, 2016.
By the time Jesse posted this video, of course, his audience was already headed for the door.
While his audience had peaked with an impressive 84 million views in January of 2016, his downfall
was already becoming pretty clear by summertime.
In October of that year, Jesse hit an all-time low, with just 23.6 million views that month.
While many youtubers would be happy to see that many views in any given month, for Jesse
it was a clear sign that his fame was dwindling.
By August of 2017, he would be bringing in less than half a million views per day.
At this rate, McJuggernuggets is predicted to receive less than a dozen views per day
within just two short years.
On March 4th, 2017, he revealed to his audience that he began drinking again,
What started as a single innocent beer would soon be a return
to alcoholism and womanizing.
As a result of his many vices, Jesse's content would become increasingly erratic.
Here's a since-deleted video he posted of himself playing with fecal matter in the shower.
A warning: the clip you are about to see is extremely disturbing.
So if you don't have the stomach for it, skip ahead by ten seconds.
Eww!
What's wrong with you?
With his channel tanking, Jesse attempted numerous other high concept series, all of
which failed to garner much attention.
There's his Devil Inside Series, his Christmas Series, and his Real Life Vlogs, just to name
a few.
But few people seem to be watching any of them.
Despite spinning off his Rigid Gaming Channel in 2014, at the height of his fame, the channel
has failed to garner more than a couple hundred thousand subs, and his third channel, called
the Psycho Series, has an even smaller audience, of just 150 thousand subscribers.
As the descent continued, McJuggernuggets got to work on a new hobby.
Numerous other creators who saw Jesse beginning to slip would try to help him to recover,
including Boogie 2988.
Sadly, even with the help of more successful you tubers, McJuggernuggets continued to fail.
Just like his psycho series character, the real Jesse Ridgeway was falling apart and
breaking bad.
Jesse took out his anger on those around him.
I already showed you footage of him yelling at his own family in the Before They Were
Famous video I did, but he would lash out at numerous others, as well.
After years working under abusive conditions, Jesse's long time collaborator, Corn, quit
working for the McJuggernuggets channel, and uploaded a disturbing two part tell all video
series on his own channel, ManNamedCorn, called Why I Quit.
In those video, Jesse's former friend details how we was tricked into signing a vague contract
with Jesse, forced to do humiliating work without a day off or regular hours, and denied
healthcare benefits, even as Jesse was raking in millions.
On top of that, Jesse started to turn mean against just about everyone around him.
It got to be so bad that he would even get into a physical altercation with Kid Behind
Camera, Michael Green.
I've actually collaborated with that guy in the past, and he couldn't be a nicer guy.
The fact that Jesse would actually fight the much beloved Pickle Boy is shocking to say
the least.
Sadly, Jesse no longer had any friends.
Now at the end of his rope, he had the opportunity to receive a bit of possitive attention again
when I invited him to collaborate on a Before They Were Famous video.
While he ignored my request the first time around, as my video on Jesse began to garner
some attention, Jesse attempted to leach of the popularity of this show with an over the
top reaction video to our content.
Let's take a quick look at his reaction to our before they were famous video, which he
dramatically called He Destroyed My Career:
I'm just kidding, guys.
But his actual reaction was not that different.
You see
that guys?
McJuggernuggets is saying that I'm leaching off other people's shit in a reaction video
to a video I made.
Great point, Jesse.
You're super smart.
You think he'd leave it at that, but desperate for views, Jesse once again went after me
with another video, in which he quote unquote EXPOSES me.
Let's take a look at that video....
Before you kick my ass?
I'd like to see that Jesse.
Just in case you guys don't know, I'm 6'3'' and Jesse is about 5 foot nothing.
I don't believe in violence, but if he and I were to fight, I think the outcome would
be pretty easy to predict.
Him kicking my ass is about as likely as his youtube career picking back up again.
I mean just look at how mean spirited this guy gets in this video.
See, he's going after
my mother!
That's really uncalled for, dude.
I think it's obvious this guy owes me an apology, but I don't expect it.
With his career floundering, his substance abuse issues growing, and his neurological
disorder taking over his life, I just feel sorry for him.
Even though he was never a particularly talented youtube star, he still was once a major content
creator on the platform.
And it's sad to see an old school youtuber fall from grace.
There was a time when he was putting out popular content.
And now, he's pretty much just doing this.
As for the rest of the story, well, we'll have to wait and see because this is AFTER
They Were Famous.
My name's Michael McCrudden, and I really hope that Jesse can get the help he so clearly
needs.
If you agree, tweet your well wishes to him with the hashtag getwellsoon.
Also be sure to check out the totally accurate before they were famous video I did on McJuggernuggets.