The 2022 Steamies have sparked contention between some of YouTube’s most prominent drama channels.
On January 28th, podcaster Ethan Klein held the second annual Steamies— a satirical awards ceremony honouring the buzziest online drama of the year, produced by his company h3h3Productions. Ethan started the awards last year on the now-defunct Frenemies podcast with his sister-in-law Trisha Paytas. The name is derived from the YouTube Streamys, an awards ceremony that’s been honouring YouTube creators since 2008.
Though Frenemies no longer exists, Ethan made the decision to continue with the Steamies on the H3 Podcast channel. This year’s awards were co-hosted by Dennis Feitosa of popular commentary channel Def Noodles. Fans were asked to vote via Google Forms for categories such as Biggest Covidiot, Spiciest Drama, Worst Apology, Worst Influencer Scam, and Best YouTube Drama/News Coverage.
Following the announcement that the Steamies were back, drama broke out between nominees Adam McIntyre and Rich Lux.
What happened between Adam McIntyre & Rich Lux?
Creators Adam McIntyre and Rich Lux were both nominated for Best YouTube Drama/News Coverage. Hours after the nominations came out, Adam quote tweeted a clip shared on Twitter by drama channel Tea Sesh back in June 2020. In the clip, which was originally from 2018, Rich justifies Jeffree Star’s racist remarks over the years.
“Not that [Jeffree] is, but if he was, ain’t nothing wrong with being a racist, girl. Being a racist is frowned upon, no one likes a racist, but last time I checked it’s not illegal to be a racist,” Rich says in the video. Rich has since removed the video from his channel and apologised for his comments.
Adam quote tweeted Tea Sesh writing, “what😭”. This brought the clip back to the top of the Twitter feed for his 31K+ followers on the day voting opened for the Steamies, leading many to believe this was a strategic move on Adam’s part to suppress votes for Rich.
Rich responded to Adam’s quote tweet in an emotional YouTube video titled ‘ADAM MCINTYRE LEAVE ME ALONE YOU BULLY‘. Throughout the video, Rich claims Adam’s tweet has led to a barrage of hate in his DMs calling him a racist. Rich says he’s apologised multiple times for his comments in that clip and that he is a different person now.
He goes on to imply that Adam brought up “old receipts” from Rich’s past to sabotage the competition and discourage people from voting for Rich.
“For you to go online and regurgitate this propaganda that I’ve apologised and made several videos for just so that you can look good and win a voting competition for Drama Channel of the Year? Go ahead, if it means that much to you,” Rich says. “You’re hitting below the belt to win what?”
Adam addressed Rich’s accusations in a new video where he explains that he was recently sent that Tea Sesh tweet via DMs and he simply reacted to it as he would any other shocking tweet.
“I never, ever tweeted out saying that Rich Lux is a racist. I never once tweeted out anything along those lines,” Adam says. “I was reacting to a pre-existing tweet that had a lot of engagement.”
Adam goes on to watch Rich’s video and respond to it frame-by-frame. “I am so willing to hear what Rich Lux has to say in this video and I really do apologise for upsetting him and I genuinely do,” Adam says.
On the topic of the Steamies, Adam claims his quote tweet was not motivated by wanting to win the award but that he can see where Rich is coming from with that theory. He later says he wishes Rich wouldn’t diminish his reaction to something serious like racism by implying he had an ulterior motive.
In the latter half of Adam’s video, he reacts to a video from drama channel Sebastian Soto who recently spoke on the situation in relation to his own experience with Adam.
What happened between Adam McIntyre & Sebastian Soto?
In his video titled ‘Breaking my silence about Adam McIntyre. My experience.‘, Sebastian calls Adam “mean” for allegedly bringing up Rich’s past on Twitter in order to gain Steamies votes.
Sebastian then shares his experience with Adam. He explains that he and Adam first interacted in 2020 after they both started using the term “besteas” to describe their subscribers. Sebastian says that as a small channel, many people assumed he had stolen the term from Adam and he began receiving a lot of hate. He claims that Adam refused to clarify this with his fanbase.
Sebastian goes on to detail his first in-person encounter with Adam at a nightclub in LA in 2021. He alleges that Adam was rude and dismissive of Sebastian and treated him as if he was a fan.
In response, Adam says Sebastian has made him “uncomfortable so many different times” over the course of knowing him. He claims he only refrained from asking his followers to stop sending hate to Sebastian over the “besteas” situation because he had heard that Sebastian was “actively making fun of me” and using his audience to “talk shit” about Adam during live streams.
On their first in-person encounter in LA, Adam insists he was not rude but rather he cut their conversation short as he was worried about losing his spot in line to get into the club.
“I’m sorry if Sebastian expected so much more of an encounter but that’s how I talk to people on a night out,” he explains. “I go ‘Hi, how are you? It’s good to see you.’ I give you a hug, and then I go, ‘I’ll see you before the end of the night.'”
Adam also claims there were several people there that night who can fact-check his version of events.
Despite Adam’s best efforts to defend himself, fellow drama and commentary channels have commented on Sebastian’s video showing their support, including Rich Lux who said he was “so sorry” this happened to Sebastian.
“Well I love you Seba! I’m really happy we’ve become good friends and I feel honored to have you in my life. You’re truly a kind and genuine soul,” wrote Peter Monn.
“Adam is young and incredibly childish, he has a thirst for notoriety and attention which is very apparent,” Dustin Dailey commented. “everyone says besties. you handled this with poise and tact.”
Nick Schnider, who has been notoriously critical of Adam and how he initially got started on YouTube, also chimed in saying that 2022 is Adam’s year to get “humbled”.
One day later, Sebastian attempted to debunk Adam’s version of events during a live stream where he shares receipts, including a photo which appears to show there was no line to get into the club in LA— alleging that Adam lied about the reason he cut their conversation short.
Rich also reacted to Adam’s video via live stream during which he expressed appreciation to Adam for apologising and deleting his quote tweet.
Adam has not responded to Rich or Sebastian’s live streams at the time of publication.