Everyone’s favourite problematic family announces they’re leaving Youtube
Popular YouTube family channel “The McBass Fam” recently announced the end of their time on the platform. Over the past seven years, they have raked in 15 million subscribers and over two billion views. They are beloved by their fans, and not-so-loved by everyone else. Through those seven years, parents Chase and Kayla McBass have faced repeated controversies which they handled in different ways.
The McBass family consists of parents Chase and Kayla who met in 2013 after they began “allegedly” cheating on their partners with each other. Prior to marrying Chase in 2014, Kayla had a daughter, nine-year-old Luna, with her previous partner Daniel Johnson. Together, Chase and Kayla have four additional children: five-year-old twin girls Fable Mae and Poet Leigh, three-year-old son Jupiter Mercury, and 14-month-old Kaerysel Opal. In one of their more recent videos, Kayla announced that she’s three months pregnant with her sixth child.
Kayla and Chase treat their children very differently and make choices about their children that seem like they’re mostly for views. The children are money-makers first, kids second. In an Instagram story video, Kayla admitted that Fable and Poet are behind in their schoolwork, saying “they’re supposed to be on level six by now and they’re only on level two, so their teacher sent me an email, and she’s like ‘um, your daughters are a little behind on their reading app.’ Shoot, I didn’t know they were going to notice.” In addition, the twins have speech delays. Both have rarely acknowledged this or admitted that the girls should see a speech therapist, instead opting to hope it’ll go away as they get older.
Jupiter is treated as the golden child for being the first boy in the family. Luna is put in almost every video thumbnail because she was young when the family started posting on YouTube and was a huge reason why the channel grew so quickly. Kaerysel is just kind of there. They give her way less attention compared to the other four, likely because she didn’t bring in as many views as their twins, first son, or the breadwinner stepdaughter.
Recently, Kayla took Fable, Poet, and Kaerysel on a trip to Disneyland for Kaerysel’s first birthday, and then proceeded to only post pictures of Fable and Poet. There wasn’t even a dedicated ‘happy birthday’ post for Kaerysel and vlogs showed the twins telling Kaerysel that she wasn’t allowed on rides simply because they didn’t want her to.
With a sixth baby incoming, Kayla and Chase have already begun trying to parentify Luna. In a video called “We have to make a big decision about Luna…” Kayla talks about how busy Luna is between school and dance and how she wants Luna to be homeschooled. But Kayla and Chase are already busy enough with four young kids that they wouldn’t be able to give Luna a proper homeschool education or meet the standards of California state education. Kayla justifies this by saying that mornings will be easier for the family and Luna will be able to help with the kids and go to dance earlier. It is big Duggar energy to try to get your eldest child to parent your youngers.
A few years ago, Kayla and Chase got rid of their dog because they felt like they couldn’t handle having a dog and all their kids. This was right after Jupiter was born and Luna was six. They posted a vlog including the moment of Kayla and Luna crying in the thumbnail but forgot to edit out part of the video where Kayla directs Luna on how to pose to look like she’s crying. Kayla then ignores her daughter when she says that she’s truly crying and instead tells her she wants her to “cry pretty.”
Last Christmas, Kayla and Chase uploaded a video saying that Fable and Poet won’t receive Christmas gifts that year because of “their long patterns of egregious selfish behaviour.” They were five. She told her kids that they hadn’t properly repented for their sins, because of course the McBass family are evangelical Christians. Instead, the twins had to watch all their other siblings open presents, sit silently, and “contemplate their actions.” Kayla chose to do this when pulling the twins out of kindergarten to clean the house ended up being fun for them instead of the punishment she wanted it to be. She chose losing Christmas as a punishment, despite saying later on that “taking away Christmas presents is the worst thing possible for little kids.”
One of their worst moves was uploading a video last year called “He was diagnosed with cancer….” and using a picture of the family as the thumbnail, which left fans wondering if two-year-old Jupiter had been diagnosed with cancer. But that wasn’t the case. Chase had convinced himself that his son had cancer, but after finding out that Jupiter didn’t have cancer, he decided to make a documentary about young kids with cancer. They exploited these young children battling cancer to make a profit off of their monetized YouTube video.
The McBass Family certainly love their clickbait, including “He was diagnosed with cancer…” Other intense clickbait titles include: “I am NOT Jupiter’s Father… (Truth Revealed),” ‘Luna is about to GIVE UP… (She needs Support),” “I got in a [sic] ACCIDENT *PRANK* on My Family (They Freaked Out),” “Our PUPPY Almost DROWNED,” “I DROPPED OUR BABY PRANK! (My Wife and Kids Freakout…),” and “Our last 24 hours with Luna, Fable, and Poet :(”
They’ve also run several scams over the years. The most prominent being their attempt to make a McBass Family app, where for a monthly fee you could get extra McBass Family content. Several people signed up for this only to realise that the content stopped after the first couple of weeks. There’s also been dozens of rumours over the years of Chase cheating on Kayla. There have been videos of him making out with other girls and several people have come forward saying that they had intimate relations with Chase, but Chase and Kayla vehemently deny these statements. And while they posted that they would be leaving YouTube, I can’t say I fully believe it. It’s their main source of income and there’s no way they won’t make a video about the new baby’s birth.
Instead, they’ve announced the McBass Festival, a one-day festival with theme park rides and music for their fans to attend. Ticket prices have yet to be announced, but I imagine they will be very expensive. And it probably won’t be their only festival if it does well financially.
Until then, goodbye to the McBass family. Please stop exploiting your children.
