How’s it going, Guys and Geeks!
(Gonna miss saying that)
I have some really unfortunate news. As some of you know, my channel Geekritique and the associated Google account it was attached to were stolen from me at the start of this month. After a lengthy back and forth with Google and YT account recovery teams, they’ve informed me that they cannot confirm my ownership of the channel I’ve built over the past 10 years.
Shortly after the phishing scam gained access to the account, the thief aired a livestream of some kind which YouTube flagged as spam, and they promptly removed the entire channel from YouTube. I assumed I would be able to get those videos back once I got my account back, but it now appears that neither is going to happen.
Geekritique is gone. I am gutted. It feels like I’ve lost a family member I can’t actually say goodbye to.
I wrote, filmed, edited, and curated over 600 videos in these past 10 years, spending untold thousands of hours on my work, and now they’re all gone. Videos of my dog going on hikes as a puppy, hundreds of reaction videos, vlogs, and geeky reviews and discussions I had with my wife as we were in the first few years of our marriage, collabs, every timeline video I’d ever spent weeks and months toiling over… they’re all gone. And I don’t think I’ll ever get them back.
And in this case it’s my mistake. I was fooled by a phishing scam. It’s on me. I gotta live with that.
To the friends I’ve made along the way, to those of you who’ve helped Geekritique monetarily through Patreon, thank you. Truly, from the bottom of my heart. THANK YOU. To the many millions who’ve watched our videos over the years, to the nearly 39,000 who were subscribed to the channel before it was removed, thank you.
I had gone back and forth on whether or not I wanted to retire from YouTube for a few years now. But there was always more work to be done. I realize there is still work to be done. I don’t know if I’ll get to complete it now. We’ll see.
Thank you,
Dakota and Jenn
Long Live the Timeline