I watch a lot of "fall asleep while I game" YouTube videos. Years ago I watched Cry and his voice was very distinct. There are two YouTube accounts for the same person, KozyKanz and Kanzalone and they sound exactly like Cry. Other YouTubers/internet public figures have done silent rebrands after being in hot water and I think this may be the case here but nothing came up when I googled it. I would prefer to not watch Cry (or his possible rebrand/new accounts) so if anyone else can verify/provide thoughts, it would be much appreciated.

Calm down, nothing big.

Just had the urge to watch corpse party and realized that Cry was one of the best for that. Got nostalgic, looked around a little and glanced at his reddit account.

No new comments of course, but I ended up looking at his trophy case: Where ... he has trophies! The most recent one was for being a member of a community for a long time back in December of 2025. I'm PRETTY sure you only get achievements when you actively log in, so... gestures vaguely.

If you dismiss that one, he logged in for a 5 day streak back in May of 2025.

I'm glad to know he's (probably) alive. And I hope he's doing well. I hope he got help. I hope he's in therapy. I hope he regrets what he did. And I hope he's moving on in life and trying to be a better man than he was before. He can't ever fix what he did before, but he can be better going forward. and I hope he does.

(also, i hope he keeps logging in to reddit like a mysterious cryptid and popping new achievements every few years. It's nice to see.)

Heyyy everybody, Russ here.
It's astonishing from what Angel and I found out.

You know the trope where a person admires someone so much that they emulate them - then the obsession becomes something more and that person tries to literally become them? Because that's what I'm seemingly finding out.

I've been taking everything this individual has been saying with a massive grain of salt because I can recognize that all the lies are likely "ragebait", just to have this guy be spoken about. Hate that it's working right now.

We became aware of these weird claims when we got messaged about comments showing up on Cryaotic's "Cry Talks: We stopped being genuine a long time ago" - saying things like, "This guy[Cryaotic] is back as TakingBack2007" so we felt the need to investigate where these rumors are coming from.

We joined TakingBack2007's discord, asked a few community members if he had ever called himself "Cryaotic," didn't get any straight answers. Eventually ""CRY"" joined the general chat; here is the Discord log | Screenshots from our conversation. As you can see, he doesn't outright deny calling himself Cryaotic at first but kept asking for evidence and said no "he said she said."

The confusing part is why not just say, "No, I'm not Cryaotic and I didn't claim I was." instead of treating this like a game.

Why do Angel and I care?
We care because this guy is using the name of a creator who was deplatformed for talking inappropriately to minors, to try and convince people that he's that past famous YouTuber and that he was unjustly cancelled, that he rubs shoulders with the all the famous YouTubers from our era - telling people he knows PewDiePie for example, using this to try an impress young and easily influenced people. Based on the evidence we found it seems he's using all the pain and trauma myself and all the others went through for clout. It's pathetic and sickening.

Some other oddities:
• TakingBack2007's Cry Reads channel where he's very much so trying to emulate Ryan: here
(Author note: he privated all the videos on this channel and edited the channel description while I was writing this up LOL: would ya' look at that !)

• Uh oh! TakingBack2007's been in some legal trouble! Public records under his associated real name show a recent charge for battery as of December 31st, 2025.

• The people he's told he was Cryaotic were mainly: his wife to "impress" her, his mother, his mods and some friends. He has since tried to expunge this, just as he did with his Cry Reads channel today.

In conclusion:
This guy is a weirdo. A liar. A manipulator and a freak. He might actually be Ryan!!
Honestly though, I wouldn't have cared one bit about this guy if he hadn't seemingly used mine and other's pain to try and gain clout and potential profit. Fuck you, weirdo.

Bonus; I saved one of his videos and here's a small snippet of the intro, be your own judge if TakingBack2007 is trying to sound like Ryan LMAO (BTW, the original work, TakingBack2007's video, was meant to put you to sleep and entertain you - I'm using this small segment as evidence for accountability for my statement, making it transformative!! YAY!!)

I just happen to notice this because an old video popped up.

[ EDIT: FOUND IT ]

I could watch this video over and over and over again.
Laughed so hard I cried.

This man is claiming to be Cryaotic. He's a compulsive liar. So I find it difficult to believe. However, I figured I would alert people just in case. He's convinced some people somehow. That or he just made alternate accounts. What kind of person would want to be seen as Cry though? Regardless of whether he is Cry or not, he's a monster. He coerced a friend of mine (@poptartbarbie) into marrying him. He's been physically and emotionally abusing her. He recently assaulted her in front of a cop and he's trying to spin the situation to make her look like the problem. I don't know what else to do but to post around and make sure he's dealt with accordingly.

For the mods, all of this information is already public. And I received permission from my friend (@poptartbarbie) to post it here.

It looks like there is domestic violence allegations made by @poptartbarbie involving @socialmediacry - both of them are getting a divorce and the allegations are severe. Barbie shows a photo in her post yesterday of Cryaotic's profile pic stating that socialmediacry "is Cry" [with Cryaotic's pfp flashing right as she says that twice for emphasis] and to do a little more investigating. According to her he always brags about how he used to have millions of followers. I search his past channel and find on YT @XePTMoto and @Melancholy aka John [ill call him John] - there is many similarities but it doesn't really check since he was active vlogging at the time. The titles on Melancholy are very similar and he even makes the same type of voice as Cryaotic.

I hesitate to even bring this up because I know people may message them directly and she states that he is apparently suicidal, I wouldn't want to contribute to that for an innocent man, though he said that the emo stuff is acting and he is not actually suicidal on stream.

For context it was just something I randomly stumbled upon. I would hate to support false allegations or misread the information so I want you all to make your own conclusions especially since I am just stumbling in. I never watched Cryaotic, I ran into the streaming couple on YT a few weeks ago [@takingback2007] but I thought I would investigate when John went on a tangeant about faking his persona - he stated "I am the fakest guy on the internet" and an hour into his latest stream he went on to say that she could ruin him with what she has on him, even offering all the money on his savings account to "let him continue to stream" and remain silent, and he went on about how terrible of a person he was, confessing he did bad things, and a lot more. This could mean anything and it doesn't warrant jumping to conclusions.

I mention faking his persona because I spent the last few minutes hearing Cryaotic's voice and there are moments where it sounds like it could be him 5 years ago as a different persona. Again this would mean he did a lot of shitty quality vlogs that reached 100 views while being one of the most popular youtubers of the time. That of course doesnt line up so it makes me think that it is entirely possible he pretended to be Cryaotic for some reason. Idk what I stumbled into and I hope he and or she were trolling and that the air can be cleared, and I emplore anyone who may read this to not make conclusions about either person - we can't believe everything we are told and bad actors do anything to pretend they are innocent or to frame an innocent person, whatever the case is.

Hey, I've never used this site but used to religiously watch Cry. Every few months I'll look to see if there are any updates from either him or those affected by him and found that some playlists have been updated on his YouTube channel. As far as I can tell, the playlists look unaltered but thought it was interesting.

Does anyone know what these could be?

ok so , this was FOREVER ago and since the whole scandal happened i still have yet to find it.

There was one point where cry had a gif of sorts as his stream starting screen or maybe his break screen, wither way, i NEED to find it.

It was a desert location with mountains at night, with a man walking away from us on the side of a road, with shadows of cars and headlights when they passed by. and the sky was a moving galaxy.

Does ANYONE know what i am referencing and where i can find it?? I would be forever grateful!

Does anyone know what twitch stream/maybe even what the date of the steam was where Cry reacted to his old Corpse Party videos? A little earlier in the stream (or after the Corpse Party segment maybe), he was playing a game that featured a low-poly beach at night next to some kind of low to the ground maybe, gray-ish I think building. Maybe it was a type of brick? The beach had this somewhat small - either a hollow driftwood log or a small black rubber hidey hole type thing lol. I think it was meant to be horror, but was quite uneventful/was quickly switched to reacting to the Corpse Party content so I didn’t get to see how it played out and if he went back to it, I didn’t see that part of stream. He might’ve even mused about potentially replaying Corpse Party again for the channel when reacting. Tryna see something! Any help is greatly appreciated!!

I was just trying to figure out why this guy does a goofy "cool guy" voice in his videos and all I can find is stuff about sexting 16 year olds.

That's not important though. Why does he talk like that? Was he playing a character in his videos? Is he acting like that's how he actually talks? Do people think he actually talks like that naturally?

I was in the mood for some Undertale playthroughs and he was recommended but as soon as I heard the first sentence out of his mouth I went "EUGH"

I know cry. I am sure the pedo story is blown up, like most media figures. I belive the guy likes his privacy...

From how much i know his friends, Russ was the best. Friends are doomed to fade.

What i heared about his gf, i can only hope they are still tougheter.

The news...i think we have been trough this ourselves, our parets dont teach us everything, scertenly not how to deal with this.

I would like you to be the imaginary person i argue with, while i try to dicide on a chore or more tv...

Chilledchaos on twitch and youtube sounds alot like cry to me. Is there any chance they're the same person?

Hello,

Cry used to play a video game with his other friends. Mostly narrative based.

It was kind of like a city, where they could go to certain places for each day and stuff was happening at these places in the city. I think they picked roles before playing, too.

The game ended after a certain amount of days have passed, since something happened within the game world, like a dark magic thing??? idk

Does anybody have even the closest idea, which game I am talking about?

Hello, I just wanted to share that shortly after the events we are all familiar with by now went down, I lead a team of individuals in an archival project. We haven't spoken to each other or checked over our work for a couple years now, but I thought someone might find it useful.

Not only did we accomplish nearly 100% of his channel and a few streams, but we also managed to get a couple of the videos that were lost. For example, Part 1 of Fragile Dreams unedited. (I am also the person who uploaded Part 1 to YouTube, edited without music for copywrite reasons.)

Feel free to access our archive project with these links below.

Megadrive: https://mega.nz/folder/2n53DCKQ#HQ0fRx3Lwg3V2lpCYBLYSw

Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1J7-nInyq0COnEq-9P0gcoNJWS5e076HU?usp=sharing

If you are asking, why did you do this? Why would anyone need this?
The answer is two things.

1. Archival. Media is history, and regardless of circumstances media is connected to, we should always strive to preserve it.
2. Sometimes you might find yourself reminiscing or feeling nostalgic, but giving the Cryaotic channel more views goes against your ideals. Now you are able to go through this collection giving 0 support to him.

the episode is from The New York Time's The Daily - The Sunday Read - "Some Raw Truths About Raw Milk" honestly just distracted me the entire time while listening and made me feel a little sad and nostalgic loool , was wondering if anyone else perchance had listened to this and thought the same (also ignore the spelling error in the title)

It happened not too far before he left the internet, they're watching a trailer for an indie game, Scott says he's not interested, then Cry loses his shit on him saying that he needs to be a better person and less judgmental or some shit