YouTube's first lawn care influencer says following the platform’s guidance ruined his life, sent him into hiding for 10 years

His weekly posts on Geek to Freak Lawn Care earned 100,000 or more views in 2013, making him the first lawn care influencer, but it was his other channel that ultimately changed his life.

That channel involved home movies, including videos of his kids. It would lead Chism down a path that made him a lot of money but also likely ruined his life, according to a recent New York Times Magazine article.

Chism’s home videos led to influencer fame

When Chism posted a video of his six- and four-year-old daughters opening a Christmas toy and running with the box on their heads, he didn’t think much of it until he discovered it had been viewed millions of times.

He began posting similar videos that underperformed, but YouTube had noticed his viral hit and invited him to its newly formed YouTube School to learn how to repeat the success. The teacher prompted him to change his channel’s name (he chose Toy Freaks) and taught him about search engine optimization and keywords, so Greg started posting based on popular keywords.

While he was soon making $1,000 a month, fans were fickle, so he had to keep escalating his content, first to food fights with his daughters, then transforming one of his daughters into a “baby” after he saw a popular video with a teen vlogger reminiscing about babyhood.

The baby videos quickly earned millions of views, but things had to escalate to keep fans interested, leading Chism to eventually turn both his other daughter and himself into babies on screen.

After his “Bad Baby” videos garnered over 100 million views, YouTube offered Greg his own advisor, who helped him go mega-viral. In fact, one video, “Bad Baby Real Food Fight Victoria vs Annabelle & Freak Daddy Toy Freaks Family,” ultimately reached 622 million views.

A troubling shift leaves Chism in trouble

Unfortunately, things took a turn for the worse when YouTube Kids came under scrutiny for disturbing content. Viewers became angry at his strange content, and his channel was eventually terminated. Some people also unearthed videos they called disturbing, including one of his daughter bleeding and crying due to a loose tooth, and another where he dumped a frog into the bathtub with his crying daughter.

More troubling, one online poster became convinced that he’d kidnapped one of his daughters, resulting in a SWAT team coming to his home and a child-welfare investigation. While he was cleared of wrongdoing after an investigation, it was still frightening.

Chism ultimately became depressed and reclusive after all the drama and has been in hiding for years. Yet, his past still haunts him, as people still sometimes call the police to report the kidnapping because they don’t realize the story is old.

His daughters haven’t expressed regret, and Chism has restarted a lawn-care channel, but he says he’s resigned to a life of solitude because no one will want to date him. “I mean, dude, I’m ruined,” he told the New York Times. “And if somebody said: ‘But it was worth it. You guys got out of that town. The kids have college savings.’ No. I’d give it all up for it to never have happened.”

Chism’s story is a cautionary tale for influencers

While Chism’s story is unique in that YouTube prompted him to make the strange videos, the practice of sharing his kids online for money isn’t unusual.

Some family vloggers make millions a year, with People reporting that one family featured on Born to Be Viral: The Real Lives of Kidfluencers had earned $150,000 in a single month. “Influencer” is also seen as a top career choice for many young people, including 57% of Gen Zers responding to a 2023 Morning Consult survey.