The Amazing Atheist
About
The Amazing Atheist is the YouTube handle of Terroja Kincaid, a vlogger who produces monologue videos expressing his opinions on controversial topics. Initially, he spoke mostly about atheism and anti-theism, but later branched out to cover a wider variety of political and social issues.
Online History
On November 20th, 2006, TheAmazingAtheist[1] released his first video titled "Rant #1," in which he discussed his views on various world religions and atheism (shown below). Many people criticized the video for Kincaid's use of ethnic slurs, including "towel head" and "nigger."
On January 7th, 2009, the @amazingatheist Twitter[11] feed was created, which received over 26,000 followers within the next four years. On December 27th, 2010, "The Amazing Atheist" Facebook[10] page was created, accumulating over 38,500 likes within the next two years. As of October 30th, 2012, TheAmazingAtheist YouTube channel has over 118 million video views, 320,000 subscribers and 530 video uploads.
On That Guy With Glasses
In 2009, TheAmazingAtheist joined the review team on Doug Walker's website That Guy With The Glasses[2], where he took the alias of TheDistressedWatcher.[3] Among his contributions to the site were Trailer Failure,[4] a show in which he would review numerous movie trailers, and Sour Note[5] , which featured his sarcastic commentaries on music videos. His videos were poorly received by the audience, who created numerous petitions for him to be removed from the site. After being ousted from the site in September of 2011, he posted a video on YouTube stating that he understood why he was no longer part of the site's review team.
Notable Videos
Books
Kincaid has written four books, including In Defense of Evil,[12] Neckbeard Uprising,[16] Scumbag: Musings of a Subhuman[13] and The Final Revelation.[14] Each book contains Kincaid's beliefs on various topics written in a similar style to his YouTube videos.
Reputation
October 2011: Banana-Gate
In October 2011, a personal video of TheAmazingAtheist was leaked on the internet depicting him performing a sexual act with a banana. The video quickly spread across other internet culture blogs, soon leading 4chan users to mobilize a raid against his Facebook page and website. On October 31st, Kincaid posted a video titled "BananaGate 2011," in which he attempted to explain the context of the banana video (shown below). The video was subsequently reblogged by IGN[6], DailyDot[7] and Escapist Magazine.[8]
February 2012: Rape Joke Controversy
On February 8th, 2012, Kincaid mocked a proclaimed rape survivor on the social news site Reddit and was subsequently attacked by many members of the community. Kincaid reacted by deleting his Reddit account, but several screenshots of his comments were taken prior to their removal (shown below).
On The following day, the Internet news site The Daily Dot[15] published an article titled "The Amazing Atheist Quits Reddit After Rape Comments," reporting that the controversy may have resulted in hundreds of people unsubscribing from Kincaid's YouTube channel. The article also included a screenshot showing Kincaid's apology to the Redditor he had insulted (shown below).
August 2013: Mysterious Takedowns
On August 19th, 2013, TheAmazingAtheist posted an urgent announcement (shown below) via his YouTube channel revealing that at least a dozen of his video commentaries were recently removed without an explanation. Although it still remain unclear as to what exactly prompted the mass removal, TheAmazingAtheist's update instantly sparked a debate between his fans and the critics in the comments section of the video page, garnering more than 127,000 views and 9,200 comments within the first 24 hours.
Later that same day, TheAmazingAtheist posted a screenshot of a YouTube Community Guidelines warning notification he had received on the grounds of "hate speech."
Search Interest
External References
[1] Youtube – AmazingAtheist's channel
[2] ThatGuyWithTheGlasses via archive.org
[3] Channel Awesome wiki – Distressed Watcher
[4] Channel Awesome wiki – Trailer Failure
[5] Channel Awesome wiki – Sour Note
[6] IGN – The Amazing Atheist made a video shoving a banana up his ass and it got leaked
[7] Daily Dot – Banana Slip Doesn't Hurt Amazing Atheist's Appeal
[8] Escapist Magazine – BananaGate
[9] The X Blog – Time to Shut Down the Amazing Atheist via Way Back Machine
[10] Facebook – The Amazing Atheist
[11] Twitter – @amazingatheist
[12] Amazon – In Defense of Evil
[13] Amazon – Scumbag – Musings of a subhuman
[14] Amazon – The Final Revelation
[15] The Daily Dot – The Amazing Atheist Quits Reddit After Rape Comments
[16] Amazon – Neckbeard Uprising
Top Comments
Jellote
Oct 26, 2012 at 07:19AM EDT
Ilied111
Apr 04, 2013 at 08:11PM EDT