Jenna Marbles Quits YouTube ‘For Now’ In Tearful Apology Video: ‘I Just Can’t Exist On This Channel’

After more than a decade on YouTube, Jenna Marbles is stepping back from her channel.

The internet personality, who racked up 20 million subscribers in her 10 years on the platform, announced her surprising decision in a tearful video posted to her YouTube channel on June 25.

Her choice came amid fan pressure for her to apologize for controversial past videos, including a 2011 blackface impersonation of Nicki Minaj and an original rap song containing a racist lyric dropped that same year.

“I’m literally just here to have a good time. And I don’t think I’m having a good time. And it seems like maybe some other people aren’t having a good time,” Jenna told viewers. “So, for now, I just can’t exist on this channel. … I think I’m just going to move on from this channel for now. I don’t know if that’s forever. I don’t know how long it’s going to be. I just want to make sure the things I put into the world are not hurting anyone. I’m just going to stop for now, or forever.”

Jenna began her video by addressing the current moment, in which many celebrities and content creators are reckoning with and being held accountable for problematic past behavior.

“I feel like we are at a time where we are purging ourselves of everything and anything toxic, and I’m being requested that I address things I’ve done in my past,” she said. “I also get a lot of tweets from people that are saying, ‘We love you, you unproblematic queen!’ Which always makes me uncomfortable, because I’m a person. Those of you who are familiar with how long I’ve been on the internet know that that’s not true. That I’ve definitely done things in the past that weren’t great, and I’m not completely unproblematic. I’ve tried my best to grow up and be a better person.”

Jenna then revealed that she’d spent “a lot of the past view days” making “almost all” of her old content private in an attempt to remove videos that were offensive to viewers and didn’t reflect her current values.

“I’m sorry if [those old videos hold] any nostalgia for you, but I’m literally not trying to put out negative things into the world,” she said. “I think there was a time when having all of my old content exist on the internet showed how much I have grown up as a person, which I am very proud of. And I think now, it’s hard for that content to exist at all, because I think people watch it, and they don’t bother to look when it was posted or care about what path I took to get to where I am. It offends them now. And if that’s the case, where people will watch something and be offended now, I don’t want it to exist.”

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The comedian went on to specifically apologize for a handful of videos that had most egregiously offended fans, including a music video called “Bounce That D**k” containing the lyrics “Ching Cong Wing Wong / shake your King Kong ding dong / Sorry, that was racist / I’m bad at rap songs.”

She also expressed regret over an “unbelievably slut-shamey” 2012 vlog in which she criticized women that “slept around.”

“I was wrong. I had a lot of internalized misogyny I feel like at that time in my life, and I’m sorry if I ever offended you with the thing that I said in that video. It does not reflect my attitude towards anyone and their bodies, and that’s really been eating me up inside for a long time,” she said.

When addressing her Nicki Minaj impersonation, she said that while it was not her “intention to do blackface,” that alone did not make it OK.

“It’s shameful. It’s awful. I wish it wasn’t part of my past,” she said.

Jenna’s decision drew strong reactions, with many commending her for her personal growth and criticizing “cancel culture” for impacting her exit.

See how members of the YouTube community reacted below:

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