Takedownman

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Takedownman is a YouTuber who pretends to be an expert hacker and "pedophile hunter" and produces videos about the secrets of the Deep Web, aka the Dark Web. To be fair, even respectable journalists can get taken in by stories of human trafficking.

He uses trappings of an investigative journalist style, often warning his viewer at length about the disturbing sites and images they are about to witness. He then proceeds to narrate over a series of screenshots of Tor hidden services about esoteric material.

In addition to making YouTube videos, Takedownman also campaigns on crowd-funding websites such as Gofundme.com in order to secure payments from his followers to support his "work".

Many are skeptical of Takedownman's grandiose claims about himself, such as him being a CIA agent, an expert in "Chinese healing", and a 'hitman.' In true crank fashion, Takedownman and several YouTube followers have claimed that anyone who doubts his authenticity is a "pedophile".

Background

From about March 2013, Takedownman began producing online content discussing polygamy in the context of the gay marriage debate. At this time, he was running a polygamy resources site at societypl.com, which has since closed. He has 2 wives.

He claims to have stabbed a pedophile in New York and spent time in jail for this. as well as to have spent some time in jail around May 2013 for threatening someone with a gun.

Timeline of coverage

• 1 March 2014: he launches his first deep web video. The first video is factual, covering getting set up with the Tor browser bundle, Pink Meth, an onion links repo 'OnionDir', The Hidden Wiki, counterfeits websites, account selling websites, and the 'Black Market' weapons market (later seized in Operation Onymous). This video would change the focus of his channel from here on.
• 1 April: he discusses Tor2Web in a factual manner.
• 28 April: he does a tour of the Evolution (marketplace) Darknet market.
• 1 May: his deep web videos are bringing in 100,000 views.
• 5 May: Claims to be part of Cicada 3301.
• 16 May: the first questionable video, featuring the Cicada 3301 puzzle. He hides the url of the site because 'he doesn't want to get hacked'. It's unclear if that's a genuine sentiment.
• 22 May: features the 'Black Market' weapons market, which would later be seized in Operation Onymous.
• 24 May: he covers Doxbin. According to his comments, he has since been listed on there. He doesn't know what doxing is at this time.
• 24 May: he does coverage on Exposed.su, but has never heard of the time Exposed.su made the national headlines and its context.
• 27 May: he covers a list of North Korean websites, yet he uses Tor for no discernible reason. Perhaps he is worried about being hacked by North Korea?
• 16 June: he does a report into Pink Meth which gets over 200,000 views.
• 22 Jul: he shames a viewer that asked for information on child pornography.
• 19 October: he shares the updated link to The Hidden Wiki, yet knows nothing about the hack which actually precipitated this. Suggests you need anti-virus prior to visiting The Hidden Wiki.
• 1 December: shortly after Operation Onymous, he claims so many sites have been shut down that this has impacted his ability to create content. The numbers of sites seized do not back a lack of content.
• 16 January 2015: Starts asking for money, claiming he'll be homeless otherwise. Has 7000 subscribers. Around this time, he moved from Knoxville to Tennessee.
• 28 February: He discovers the 'Fund the Islamic struggle' website. He doesn't read any of the research about the matter.
• 16 March: Threatens to HACK an alleged abuser.
• 17 March: He finds the Hell (forum) hacking forum
• 10 April: He discovers 'The Human Experiment' Red Room. He repeats the urban legends about who you can pay money to get real life torture and murder performed and appears to believe this. Assures the viewers 'it's a real thing'. The video gets over 160k views.
• 19 April: Shares a mysterious (and presumably fake) video of a cop turning to plasma. People eat this shit up with +73k views.
• 20 April: He discovers 'TorTube' where such videos are posted.
• 26 April: Finds 'Tell Me Your Secrets', where the pedophile he outed previously is complaining about him. 100k views.
• 28 April: Covers snuff videos on 'Animal Nightmare', 'Scream Bitch' and insists on the existence of Red Rooms again. Discovers crush fetish content. (74k views).
• 5 May: Produces technical tips about using Tor. Doesn't understand the full screen fingerprinting risk. Turns 'all scripts' off but doesn't explain why. Suggests creating a new Tor identity before logging off for some reason. Suggests CC cleaner could be useful somehow. (Why?)
• 21 May: Use of the keywords 'Disturbing' once again rack in over 135k views.
• 29 May: A more sensationalist intro and covering purely 'disturbing' website rakes in 845k views. Claims the existence of Red Rooms… again. Finds one of the fake hitman sites. Finds 'Cam-A-Lot', which is likely a genuine hacked webcam site for perving on children. TDM now has a burgeoning YouTube following.
• 30 May: Finds a couple of chan sites. Finds one of the fake human trafficking sites as misreported in Vice. Finds a site selling slaves with amputated legs (which totally are not just pulled from amputee fetish sites and a Google Images search). Finds probably a genuine pedophile forum, Violent 'M'.
• 2 June: Plays a creepy 'Zion Kidnapping' video without context.
• 4 June: Talks about the 'Daisy's Destruction' abuse stories. No critical analysis. 500k views. (See #Rebuttals and counter-trolling.)
• 9 June: Frames the (admittedly creatively creepy) videos of 'Tara the Android' as 'confessions of a serial killer'. At this point, it's clear his show is working an angle if it wasn't previously. (See #Rebuttals and counter-trolling.)
• 9 June Becomes the RayWilliamJohnson of creepy videos at this point. 369k views and rising.
• 27 June: Is slightly skeptical of the existence of the Marianas Web, thank God. But thinks the Deep Web is 95% of the internet :(
• 10 June: He finds his link on the Deep Web Wiki which mixes fact and fiction. (See #Wiki self-promotion.)
• 26 June: Threatens to destroy a YouTube channel for using his picture without permission.
• 10 July: Discusses the alleged 'Dafu Love' baby rape video by Peter Scully. In his usual style, he presents wild and sensationalist speculation about the tape's contents as fact, claiming without evidence such things as babies being used as pillows in a pillow fight. His claims are completely at odds with police accounts of Scully's crimes.
• 14 July: Covers Cicada 3301 again, this time getting 300k views. Again suggests it will go to a Red Room.
• 27 July: TDM goes fully creepypasta by simply narrating horror stories. (See #Rebuttals and counter-trolling.)
• 29 July: Child RealDolls! TDM is confused.
• 12 October: Claims he fell off the side of a mountain (remember, he's blind) and rolled down a 20ft cliff — but has no visible injuries.
• 22 November: Couldn't tell the difference between Nair and shaving cream and almost burns his face off.
• 13 December: Calls a 14 year old boy a pedophile (by name without proof) in a YouTube video and Facebook post because the boy confronted him about being a pathological liar. The boy's mother threatens to sue and TakeDownMan removes the YouTube video and Facebook post.
• 15 December: Channel was suspended and has moved to his backup channel.
• 21 December: Channel reinstated, as the removal was due to human error.
• 21 December: Claims a family member stole his laptop, microphone, webcam, new HTC phone, and a few other things, but isn't able to prosecute because his family member crossed state lines.
• 24 December: Releases inconclusive evidence pertaining to busting 515 pedophiles on Facebook. He states he and 30 members of the (non-existent) "Deep Web Outlaws" hacked Facebook to expose pedophiles, when in reality they simply searched through Facebook claiming numerous accounts located in the Philippines, Korea, and Tokyo were linked to pedophilia. No compelling evidence was provided other than a small snippet of a group conversation. All evidence was supposedly turned over to the FBI, yet no action has taken place.
• 4 January 2016: Shows off his "real voice" since he has a sore throat and claims to have a natural Tongan/English accent.
• 6 January: Speaks about "Obama Giving Doctors the Right to Take Guns Away" and makes a fool out of himself. Fans react with over 216 thumbs down.
• 7 January: Uploads a video that plays his roommate snoring (amplified) for two minutes. Fans react with over 115 thumbs down and the loss of 250 subscribers.
• 17 January: Threatens the mother of a 14-year-old boy whom he called a pedophile in a YouTube video and Facebook post for confronting him about being a pathological liar. He also implies in this YouTube comment that he hacked into her personal and medical records, when in reality he gathered the information from her Facebook page.
• 18 January: Claims to be a sociopath (and having alexithymia) and that he "Feel's Nothing Inside". He then states he walked into the hood and shouted racial slurs to get jumped on purpose, when in reality he stole this idea from a scene in Die Hard with a Vengeance. He then admits that when taking "Adderall" and "marijuana" is the only time he feels normal in life.
• 11 January: Complains that his fans want him to keep doing deep web videos, despite the success of his ranting and other video types.
• 19 January: Admits that he makes up content for views and tries to make fun of Nicole Arbour, but fails miserably.
• 27 February: Covers the Besa Mafia Internet assassination scam un-skeptically.
• 7 March: Covers the 'Shadow Web Red Rooms' site but at least suspects it is a scam. Finds the 'MasTOR' hidden webcam site, but doesn't realise it's obviously a scam.
• 13 March: Confirms he's partnering with 'Big Demz' for content production.
• 19 March: Reports that he had the police sent to his old address by trolls, as well as drugs.
• 23 March: A YouTuber critic of TDM, Jim Greenway, mocks him for him 'leading on' a pastor who molested him when he was younger. Jim's channel was terminated shortly after this. Other YouTubers criticised TDM's attack methods.
• 30 March: Takedownman briefly goes to jail!
• 3 April: TDM fires co-contributor Big Demz!

Fabrications

Takedownman is known to fabricate his personal life, "third-party" reviews, web pages, and addresses on the Internet that support and promote his sensationalist life and claims.

For instance, he "exposed" a Dark Web website (which was actually the site Keep Calm-o-Matic) that was selling merchandise containing a supposed still image from the child rape video "Daisy's Destruction", which showed a dismembered little girl on a blood-soaked bed. The still image, which is actually taken from the Japanese horror film Ginî piggu 2: Chiniku no hana, and not from "Daisy's Destruction", was found to have been placed on the merchandise by Takedownman himself.

In another example, on September 8th 2015, he published a video showing multiple implausible or incorrect .onion addresses on his web browser. He displays ClearWeb sites in their place, as listed:

• 'utcomsocmtkxlazp.onion' - https://utcomsoc.ece.utexas.edu/
• 'cjtjunfc4ykpdw5v.onion' - https://exposingtheinvisible.org/
• 'n6e64mxbpwglofvs.onion' - https://www.kairos.com/crowd-analytics-sdk
• 'rogue9887655.onion' - http://rogue.macrophile.com/
• 'www.bearchive35241526.onion' - http://www.bearchive.com/

He has stated numerous times that the name "TakeDownMan" comes from his street fighting days, but in this YouTube comment, he states that TakeDownMan represents a letter of each of the 11 members of the Deep Web Outlaws. Which one is it? He doesn't even know the origin of his name.

When his channel was suspended in September, TakeDownMan claims in this YouTube comment that he doesn't make any money off the 100K subscription channel, and that he has another channel on another platform which is more popular (but nobody knows it's him) from which he earns more money.

Wiki self-promotion

In his June video, he read the 'extraordinary claims' made on a deep-web.wikia.com/wiki/Takedownman on the same day he launched his spreadshirt shop, which include:

• Used to fight MMA
• Is Illuminati, CIA, NSA, MI5, etc.
• Trained as an assassin in the army
• Multiple academic awards
• Member of the Cult of the dead cow hacking group
• Started a vigilante group called the 'Deep Web Outlaws' a.k.a. 'Deep Web Pedophiles'.
• Claims in this YouTube comment to have recently left a cult that called themselves "Anabaptist", it was discovered "not true" and determined to be a cover.

However, the revision featured in his video as well as the 'unrelated' comments saying HOLY SHIT!!!! I knew this guy was a bad ass but HOLY SHIT! are from 68.53.245.44. Which is located in Tennessee, where TDM lives.

"Testimony" on red rooms

See the main article on this topic: Red room

Takedownman doesn't shy away from presenting rumors of red rooms as first-hand facts in one of his few interviews on the 15th of August:

VGN: Can you tell us what exactly is a red room?
TDM: Yes. It is a portal that requires specific access to watch and even participate during a live feed showing torture, rape and murder.
VGN: Who are these victims? Where did these site owners locate the victims?
TDM: The victims can be babies, teens, women, men – whatever the audience wants. The victims can be teen runaways who were lured by these organizations. They also tend to target homeless women and families by offering a good life for their kids. So, they pay the families, take the babies promising a good life, and end up in horrible situations such as a red room.
VGN: People pay to watch these live streams?
TDM: Yes. Take for an example someone entering a red room. The host tells them five minimum commands before the victim can be killed. Each guest can pay, for example, $10,000 per command. All bitcoin.

Complete fabrication.

He has been skeptically referenced by Vice as a someone who claims to have inside knowledge of the other Deep Web legends such as 'Dafu Love'.

Rebuttals and counter-trolling

On the 23rd of August, he complains about being Doxxed by someone from 8chan and from this point onwards he was having to more aggressively deal with trolling on his video #Fan meetups.

One such claim was he regularly attends fan meetups where he hires private security to deal with the random attacks he gets. However, no evidence of these meetups existing has ever been produced.

On the 17th of September, he responded to a site where a girl was claiming to masturbate then kill herself online, blaming Takedownman; however, he realised this was a hoax at this point possibly produced by someone on 8chan. The site at vlr2s4g732zw6yim.onion has since been replaced by a one-page Islamist site.

• Accused of creating his own wiki page with claims about being a hacker and taking down illegal sites, just to 'debunk it' on a video (#Wiki self-promotion)
• Accused of faking some bloody scenes from his videos with ketchup
• Claims to regularly attend fan meetups which require personal security, but no one has ever seen these meetups (#Fan meetups)
• Doesn't have the technical skills to provide informed advice
• TDM has been accused of fabrication and not following up fakes he encounters by Youtuber Seek the Truth
• Daisy's Destruction - Seeking Truth - debunks his previous video where he suggests that a web store was in fact a gore image from a Japanese horror film possibly made by TDM himself.
• Takedownman, Rabid Cannibal audio Part 1 and Takedownman, Rabid Cannibal Part 2 (The Screaming) - debunks various audio tracks covered
• Takedownman, Confession of a Serial Killer and the Truth - Tara the android rebuttal
• Takedownman - Only The Facts / Part 1 - Created by The Thinker - A MUST WATCH
• Secrets of the Dark - Takedownman - Dark Web Expert or Liar? - a blogger critically analyzes Takedownman and his claims about the "deep web."

Jim Greenway

Prior to his account's termination, Jim Greenway had run a number of videos pointing out inconsistencies and insecurities in TDM's content, starting with an initial 8chan rebuttal video.

Comments included:

TakeDownMan, Once again I invite you to a Skype debate where we can talk about your legitimacy as a self proclaimed pedophile hunter. Regardless of if you're a TDM fan or a JGS subscriber, anyone should support this. TDM has no reason not to get in a Skype call with me and deliver me some of that sweet DWO justice. So let's make this happen. We can even do it live for all of your fans! They will love to see you in action.

However, this wasn't received well from TDM:

So this what is all about still? A collab? I don't collab with pedos, better luck next time

The follow up was:

+Takedownman It's not a collab. That would suggest that we are working together to create something. This is a debate. You an I both know that I'm not a pedophile so don't even try to make that excuse. Stand up for yourself and quit being a fucking coward. Face the heat and address the legitimate criticisms of your videos.

TDM basically says 'fight me bro' in response to this.

This rivalry escalated to the point that Jim was mocking TDM's alleged abuse at the hands of a pastor, leading to Jim's account being terminated.

External links

• https://www.youtube.com/user/Takedownman
• https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoFKoEERduZMniCiTsgh_-g (Back Up Channel)
• https://twitter.com/takedownman1
• https://www.facebook.com/Takedownman/