Casey Neistat’s David Dobrik documentary exhibits the creator refuses to develop up

The essence of David Dobrik, the puckish topic of Casey Neistat’s documentary Beneath the Affect, first crystallizes on display throughout a high-pressure pitch to Netflix. It is 2020, and the then 24-year-old sits in entrance of a laptop computer, his eyes shining with anticipation as he describes his dream gig: a serotonin supercut of a late-night selection present. “Do you watch Excessive Makeover: Dwelling Version or any of these response exhibits?” he asks representatives from the streaming big. “You are actually simply ready for that remaining second. I sort of want that there was a present that simply skipped all that.” He gestures urgently, “I simply wish to get to that remaining second, I wish to be there continuously.“

Dobrik has made a profession out of chasing these “remaining moments” on digicam, importing breakneck, stake-raising romps usually enhanced by alcohol and intercourse to YouTube. His movies have earned him greater than 18 million subscribers, a present on Discovery+, and sufficient cash to be topped one of many highest-paid YouTube creators of 2020. His success has additionally made stars of a recurring forged of greater than 15 buddies collectively referred to as the “Vlog Squad.” Most now have their very own social media followings, merchandise, and model sponsorships on account of their affiliation with Dobrik and appearances in his movies.

Beneath the Affect examines Dobrik’s explosive rise to fame and inevitable reckoning in 2021 after two career-defining occasions: a March report from Insider alleging that Dobrik was complicit within the 2018 sexual assault of a school scholar who appeared in his vlogs; and the April reveal of a 2020 accident that left a member of his Vlog Squad with a cracked cranium, mind harm, and double imaginative and prescient in a single eye.

The documentary is directed by Neistat, a filmmaker who, from 2015 to 2016, honed a each day vlog type that redefined the style on YouTube. His snappy, vibrant portraits of his international travels and New York Metropolis gambols impressed Dobrik, who discovered success along with his personal model of semi-scripted vlogs combining Jackass-type stunts, stand-up comedy, and actuality tv. “Casey [was] my favourite vlogger on YouTube [until] about two years in the past, after which I began and I simply took over,” Dobrik joked in a video with Neistat from 2017. “That might be humorous if it wasn’t the reality,” Neistat countered.

Regardless of Neistat and Dobrik’s pleasant relationship as contemporaries — or maybe due to it — Beneath the Affect is a balanced and compelling chronicle of the methods during which energy warps, incentivizes, and exploits the motivations of everybody in its orbit. 

Dobrik’s content material depends primarily on the willingness of the Vlog Squad to carry out: as crude caricatures, beginner stunt individuals, and supportive hype males. Security and consent appear to return second to getting the shot, in the event that they’re thought of in any respect. Within the doc, Dobrik notes {that a} vlog he is filming is “not humorous, except somebody will get harm.” His assistant Natalie Mariduena calls herself “Security Sally” however is later proven pressuring Vlog Squad member Corinna Kopf to take away her shirt whereas filming a faux celebration scene in a non-public jet, even after Kopf expresses her discomfort with the thought. 

The Vlog Squad have made some huge cash by placing their lives on the road and sacrificing their dignity in entrance of Dobrik’s viewers of thousands and thousands. Jason Nash, the oldest Squad member at 48, was a divorcee struggling to help his two youngsters earlier than befriending Dobrik, who he says has made him a millionaire.

Dobrik and members of the Vlog Squad, together with Nash and Wittek, on the ninth Annual Streamy Awards in 2019. Credit score: Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Photos for dick clark productions

“Are these individuals kind of being coerced into doing this due to the platform it offers them and the cash it offers them?” asks Kat Tenbarge, the Insider reporter who first broke the story in regards to the alleged rape of a lady by Vlog Squad member Dominykas Zeglaitis. “It is solely when you consider how that energy dynamic is definitely affecting these individuals’s decision-making you could start to see it as one thing that is extra exploitative.”

The documentary consists of graphic footage of the results of that decision-making grey space: a 2020 stunt gone unsuitable. Dobrik is illegally working an excavator on a shallow lake in Utah. Vlog Squad member Jeff Wittek, who made his first look in Dobrik’s movies in 2018, is hooked up to the crane by a skinny rope, swinging in a circle, when Dobrik panics and stops the machine. Wittek crashes into its steel arm and dangles the other way up from the rope, his head under water, floundering as he waits to be rescued.

“Individuals are gonna say you are a fucking fool for getting on that rope and permitting any individual to regulate your life like that,” says Wittek, whose face has been reconstructed and whose mind and eyesight are completely broken. “I wasn’t enthusiastic about it like that. I used to be pondering, ‘Let’s do what we received to do to make this video nice.'”

A screenshot from Jeff Wittek’s YouTube documentary in regards to the accident that completely broken his mind and imaginative and prescient. Wittek is seen right here mid-air, seconds earlier than crashing into the excavator’s steel arm. Credit score: Jeff Wittek

Early within the documentary, Neistat asks Dobrik, “What do you do for a dwelling, David?” It is 2018, and Dobrik is floppy haired and boyish, with an impish appeal. “I persuade individuals I’m having enjoyable,” Dobrik smiles playfully. “It is all a part of my act.” As Beneath the Affect digs deeper, that act begins to really feel like a ploy to keep away from accountability for the high-intensity, fast-and-loose surroundings he nurtured on and off digicam. 

He appears to brush Wittek’s accident off on account of Wittek’s personal recklessness. “Jeff, for some purpose, thought that I wasn’t getting the shot,” he tells Neistat. “So Jeff was like, ‘Let’s do one thing extra thrilling,’ and I’m all the time down for extra thrilling, if somebody brings up an thought of doing one thing cooler, I am all the time down for that.”

When Neistat asks if the Insider article was “honest” Dobrik replies, “No. This text was written as a result of this place wished clicks,” he says whereas sitting in a $13 million home financed by near-death stunts, a podcast named Views, and a line of “clickbait” merch. He appears to see the girl’s account of rape as a pesky rumor, extra dangerous to him than to her. “I do not wish to reply to it as a result of I do not wish to feed the fireplace of simply gossip and hate and drama. I’ve all the time wished to be an individual that whenever you see me, you are identical to, laughing or smiling otherwise you’re pumped to have me round… now I am stained ceaselessly with one thing that I do not essentially assume I ought to be stained with.”

Dobrik wields a Boring Firm flamethrower in a vlog titled “THIS STARTED A FIRE IN HIS HOUSE!! (SURPRISE)” Credit score: David Dobrik

Have these occasions been a stain on Dobrik’s picture? It is exhausting to say. In June 2021, he made his return to YouTube, Vlog Squad in tow, with movies that often rack up greater than 9 million views every. Sponsors like SeatGeek have returned to finance him. And he is selling his Discovery+ sequence Discovering David Dobrik. Although Dobrik continues to spar publicly with Wittek and just lately opened up in regards to the rocky state of his psychological well being, the 25-year-old stays extra profitable than nearly anybody his age. Most significantly, he nonetheless has thousands and thousands of younger individuals following his each transfer.

Because it weaves a fancy tapestry of energy, abuse, and coercion, Beneath the Affect additionally communicates the scope and seriousness of Dobrik’s international affect past YouTube. Amongst different ventures, Dobrik has developed a fragrance and a photo-sharing app, and has a pizza chain within the works. He transcends the platform that made him well-known, and so does his impression on the individuals who watch his movies. Netflix finally ends up passing on Dobrik’s present as a result of “they do not see how a YouTuber can transition into that world.” Neistat is aware of that Dobrik already has.