JERUSALEM—Fans mourn the loss of Ethan Klein, cult YouTube phenom and podcast host, following a fatal cardiac episode.
Klein built an online empire with his “H3H3” brand – later shortened to “H3” – combining a unique blend of celebrity gossip and online trolling. As his star rose, Klein leveraged his gains into his “Teddy Fresh” fashion line – whose stylings centered childhood innocence and play. Many however found his public persona to be distasteful, often citing Klein’s lurid fixation on the opposite sex. Where H3 satirized targets for their womanly shortcomings, Klein himself fell prey for a very different vulnerability: his Judaism.
The backlash was co-ordinated in the belly of the grimm web, where legions of suggestible imageboard posers were directed to enact Judaism-related abuse at the behest of Daniel Keem “Star,” while the lion’s share of the trolling was spear-headed by alt-right darling Ricky_Vaughn99. Klein defied the hateful stereotyping with a wave of frivolous lawsuits, but it just wasn’t enough.
After a decade of turbulence, the Kleins took a sabbatical to Tel Aviv, offering moral support to relatives in the IDF amidst regional tensions. When President Donald Trump declared hostilities open, panic broke out as Iran announced the first missile salvo.
“Oh shit! This is it! This is the big one!” Klein reportedly exclaimed, before fighting his way to the bathroom. After an hour spent incapacitated with his bowel, concerned family checked in, but found Klein had expired in the tumult.
Ethan is survived by his wife Hila Klein and their three sons. She attributes her husband’s failing health to a decade plus of cyber abuse.
“It just sucks, you know? We’ve had to deal with these people for as long as we’ve been online. Ethan had Tourettes, and I watched as he degenerated in front of my eyes. New ticks and spasms came about the worse the abuse got. We’d get prank calls from people claiming to be Aryan nation or domestic terrorists. At one point we had a visit from the FBI regarding a credible bomb threat. But ever since October 7th these progressives started harassing us as well. In fact, they pretty much took it over. They tried to get CPS to take our children away by saying we were eating dog faeces. Then they started turning our friends and collaborators against us, first Hasan Piker, then Ian Jomha. I’ve been working on this make-up line for two years but they harassed my staff till they all quit, it’s practically dead on launch. Now this. My husband gone. My children without a father. I guess they finally got what they wanted!”
Chronicle reached out to Ian Jomha for an explanation on his position, his anger was stark, “look, I didn’t like the guy by the end, it’s no secret. The feuding got petty, I’ll admit, but that shit isn’t just one-sided.”
“That shit isn’t just one-sided.”
Jomha described a lengthy tit-for-tat that culminated in an unlikely irony:
“My wife and I do commentary on 90 Day Fiance on our twitch stream. Well one of the cast this season was an Iranian marrying his way into the US, but the whole time he won’t shut up about how glorious America is and how oppressive Iran is. It’s like, dude, they have aircraft carriers en route to the gulf of Oman, are you kidding me? This is blatant propaganda! Of course I’m calling that shit out!”
Klein seized on the opportunity and brought the Iranian in question – Mahdi Jahromi – onto his H3 Podcast. As Jahromi told of the regime’s brutal whippings, Klein introduced him to a very western form of punishment; the humiliation ritual.
“Come on dude, look at him, he’s faking it! He’s not anti-war, he’s just saying it for the pussy!”
Jomha was resolute in his stance, but it just wasn’t enough. Quickly, the very same nihilists that hounded Klein into a decades long mental health spiral now turned on him for insufficient jingoism.
“This is the worst thing in the world to say I told you so about, but, well, shit, I told him so!” Jomha was audibly despondent on the call, verging on tears, “what’s it all worth, man? I used to work with this guy. Then he starts crashing out over the genocide and everyone’s like, what the fuck. I tried explaining to him what the military were doing, but he treated it like it’s just more gossip. There he is waving the Shah’s flag on his podcast. I’d just about written him off, his brain was so scrambled by propaganda. Then this war actually breaks out, just as I warned him, and then his heart fails? On the damn toilet? I mean, I wanted the last laugh, sure, but not like this… Not like this…”
While Jomha’s emotions on the matter were palpable, many in the comment-o-sphere attribute this to firebrand wife; Anisa Jomha, for whom he is accused of serving as a mouth piece. Chronicle reporters reached out to Jomha (Anisa) separately, but were astonished by her doctrine, “I spit on that Zionist pig’s grave!”
When pressed for specifics, Anisa deferred to modern history. “Qaddafi’s teachings still hold truth here, we must pursue the Third Universal Theory now more than ever,” she said. “What do you think happens exactly when the Islamist yoke finally falters? Tehran has been modernising for years, cultural standards soften despite what Zionist vermin claim. Do you expect them to just kowtow to yet more fanatical hicks? No! True liberation for Iran will come only at the hands of the People’s Congress, and with them, the fall of Baal, his acolytes, and the dream of Babylon’s rebirth. DEATH TO AMERICA! DEATH TO THE EPSTEIN CABBAL!”
When asked for any final thoughts on the drama, Jomha was curt, “I don’t know, maybe if he’d just cleaned up after his dog none of this would have happened.”