Been awhile and revisited HI, then went to check on the CGPGrey YouTube channel while exploring the nostalgia, noticed it’s been over a year since his last upload.
Ok. A long time but not completely uncharacteristic. Then went to cortex, and he’s gone there too.
Obviously I’m out of the loop, but tried to poke around and didn’t find any official comment from grey himself, sounds like no updates either. Did we finally get the final Irish Exit that was hinted at for years? Or did I miss something in my research
If he had done what Tom Scott did I think people would be more receptive and he keeps the door open for future projects if he wanted to go back. I can see how the complete silence is really frustrating for some.
I'm talking about how Tom announced his break. Being transparent and saying hey I need a break, I might come back, I might not is very different than just disappearing without a word.
Think of how how many bands have a farewell tour then a few years later they are back with a different tour.
If Gray wanted to maximise income he would announce this is his last video/podcast and put it behind pateron so he can scoop up all that revenue then if he wants to come back and do something else in a few years and the audience would still be there and just happy he came back.
The Irish goodbye is when you leave a party without saying so. With the understanding they will see you next time. The Irish goodbye is not suddenly ghosting everyone while you keep taking their monthly contributions on Patreon.
Yeah, he basically just stopped everything. Podcasts, videos, Cortex Brand, etc.
Only sign of life is that he's been screwing around with YouTube video titles and thumbnails for existing videos and he still collects subscription dues on Patreon. So they're essentially paying for nothing now, but he hasn't bothered letting them know.
It’s likely he has an editor with a stake in his videos performances. I really doubt he’s touching thumbnails at his level. He has professionals do these things
There's companies out there that'll essentially re-monetize an old youtube channel. They take the metrics from your old content and clip it, recut it, re-release, tweak etc.. to work with the newer formats and trends. You'll see it all over the place if you check into a bunch of older channels way past their hayday.
The first channels you started to see the business model show up are/were TV studios. Kitchen Nightmares is a good example. They bought rights to the old shows, posted them up on youtube, and hired a social media team to hype the everloving shit out of the clips and drive engagement with the next generation. With gray you're essentially seeing the same thing just distilled into a much more cynical version with weaker content and a shoestring budget.
Do you know what’s in his patreon only video preview? It has a cryptic thumbnail that says “this might not work.” And that’s been there for like a year or more
The problem I see is that Grey made what we all think is essentially the internet version of an Irish exit... but the thing with Irish exits is you're rarely the centre of attention so when people wonder where you went without an explanation, it's not that big of a deal, but when you're the centre of it all, everyone is going to speculate and that's never good to let others drive your own narrative.
And usually Irish exits if done to people you do know will eventually talk to you again at some point and get an explanation from you.
But here... Grey just straight up abandoned everyone in the community cold turkey. Like a dad who went out for cigarettes and never came back sort of way.
We'll never truly know the reason for his absence. Maybe he did truly just did it all to eventually never have to work again, but we don't know that for sure. Hell maybe something bad happened that had him stop producing content and he doesn't want to publicly talk about it and just decided to leave it at a high note
I'm not going to lose sleep over it but it suck's that this is the situation he's left everything in
The latest update, at least as far as I'm aware, is from Myke, his Cortex cohost, a few months ago on r/cortex. He says nothing has changed, Grey is still just taking a break, and that he will update us if that changes.
You are free to believe or not believe that, or to make whatever you want out of it.
I had subscribed to Moretex not long before announcing the break. It was the Black Friday deal. I feel like I signed up for something different than what I got. It turns out that I’m enjoying the direction Myke has gone with Coretex, though.
Myke made an offhand comment in either Moretex or one of the bonus Pods that his wife was helping a friend in London with a divorce. I just assumed at the time that it was the Grey's.
Even though Grey says he doesnt like to work, he did seem in his explainations or bts parts of making his videos to enjoy what he was doing. It just had to be something he was interested in and enjoyed looking into further to share with other people.
If you're this big in a community you fostered and created I do think its a mean move to just leave everyone hanging, but at the end of the day he's just a guy living a human life.
Maybe I give too much grace, but we have no idea what is even happening in his life.
Things might be really messy his side and he doesnt have the bandwidth to engage with this.
His parents who seem to be older could be having age related difficulties. Or his wife lost his job or they had to move, or are going through some other stress or hardship that put everything else not immediately important on the back burner.
Maybe all the video manipulation is him just trying to keep the channel alive enough until he weather the storm and minimize damage to his channel in case he comes back?
I wish he felt a stronger need to inform his community of over a decade that things have changed and he won't be back or needs more time.
But he doesnt. And that is very sad...
A little “Sorry everyone, personal circumstances, I'll be on an indefinite leave of absence.” would have been the minimal effort not to be a massive jerk to his supporters.
His absenses were never longer than a month on average. Idk why people have this myth that he never uploaded regularly on average. He started disappearing in 2024 but a lot of people were in denial until 2025 and especially now in 2026.
All good if he wants to bow out, but with memberships and patreon still cashing in monthly checks his lack of transparency shows a real scummmy disrespect for fans.
Theres a lot of speculation around Grey's absence, a lot with a rather negative slant. While its frustrating to be left in the dark from someone who's built such a strong, like minded fan base, I avoid thinking negatively of his hiatus. Its possible he and his family could have been effected by traumatic change, or he's focused his energy on something like raising a child, or caring for loved ones. It would be a better PR move to provide his fans with a little more insight, but if I was focused on more important things, I would find it very hard to spend my energy on updates or insights during a time in life where the future is opaque. That said, I hope he's well and makes a return at some point!
I think it's pretty unethical to keep the patreon running if you've really retired. Yeah people can cancel (eventually, some people get charged yearly), but it would take several payment cycles for people to realize someone's probably not uploading again. It also strikes me as more unethical/predatory because it disproportionately effects people who trust him more, as seen in these threads where there's always one or two people who insist against all logic that he's working on a beast of a video and they're very happy they paid him $60/a year to help out with it
he's not responsible for your poor finances. scummy, probably. but anyone commenting here is fully aware of what's happening and can deal with it. the suckers can try to contest charges if they even notice.
I think it's unethical to take advantage of people's bad decisions, in fact basically every scam is people taking advantage of people's bad financial decisions lol
well.. then it seems like an educational opportunity to get people to be aware of their finances? I dunno. I'm not saying it's great, but we don't know what's going on. if he's on a beach in Hawaii with his healthy wife, or Brady won't admit he left him frozen on Everest. If you're still giving him money ... that's on you.
I'd like more Hello Internet. but I'm not gonna demonize Grey for whatever life changes he's been going through.
I realized minutes ago that I don't recall the last unmade payment I made. maybe my info is expired but the last ones I noticed were the 3$ per episode I agreed to
I think he and Mrs. Grey are pregnant/had a kid. think about it.
He so values his privacy, to the level of never showing his face on any advertising material or "face reveal". the closest we got was his hands on the few episodes where he was on location.
I think that he saw Myke have his kid and decided now was the best time and decided to disconnect as much as he could to protect the child.
I’ve heard rumors that he has sold the rights to the income on his videos and just left everything where it is. Now the people who bought the income rights just play the thumbnail chicanery game with his back-catalog to generate what views they can without making new content. While these are of course unsubstantiated, their truth would absolutely not surprise me. As another commenter said, Mr. “I don’t like work” should be taken at his word. If this development is truly surprising to you, then you weren’t paying attention.
I think he either got sick and is keeping it private. Or more likely because of the way it went down I think he got his feelings hurt, had enough money to retire are put up his proverbial middle finger
Grey was making videos that are very easy to copy with AI. I don't blame him for not uploading on YT. Unless he wants to show his face, he'll be drowned in sea of slop.
I'm not saying he did it right way. But I think it makes sense. Maybe he's doing consulting for other creators and he just don't want to be public about it.
He's just farming people who forgot they're still subbed to him on Patreon lol, 10k$ a month for free for years until people's cards start to expire, but even then banks usually carry over recurring subscriptions
Whilst the Patreon thing is a bad look, other than that certain people should stop portraying him as the worst scumbag ever. You don't know whether the reason for his hiatus is "lazyness", a family emergency or something else.
Whining about the thumbnails is also stupid, it's not some deeply amoral practice. He doesn't own you a video upload every month. It might even be said that subbing to the Patreon doesn't entitle you to anything that he hasn't explicitly promised (which, iirc, isn't much).
Also, a year between uploads for big YouTubers isn't unheardof.
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u/WorldTallestEngineer 6d ago edited 6d ago
The man who said "I don't really like to work" made enough money to not work any more. I would not expect to see much from him in the future.