A lot has been made about Jose “Chille” DeCastro’s claim on Wednesday that “they” killed his channel and that he had no chance but to start a new channel; the announcement itself had no impact on the market at all with our own on-going expenses fund winning the day with a $10.00 take and absolutely nothing going to DeCastro’s coffers.
DeCastro is right in one regard: his channels are in freefall.
As of this morning, his main Delete Lawz channel is down 70% in new subscribers for the past 30 days and down 58% in new views.
His DLZ Clips channel is doing better, with flat new subscriber growth for the past 30 days and a 2.4% drop in viewership.
However, his American Patriot channel is spiraling hard, with a flat subscriber growth for the past 30 days and a 167.3% decline in views.
DLZ Clips was set up to be DeCastro’s backup channel and features simulcast versions of his live streaming. American Patriot was designed to feature his footage from Ironton, Ohio, filmed in 2022, where he has set himself up as the “hero” of Ironton, despite the real outcome being anything but. It also features simulcasts of his live streams.
Both channels were setup in a time where DeCastro had enough viewers to support three channels, but his channel was in decline even then.
DeCastro burst on the scene in 2022 with his siege on Ironton, Ohio, and became the latest LOLcow fad for most of the year. He was an easy video for most creators, as his stupidity and controversial antics kept his name in the news and everyone seemed happy with the arrangement.
DeCastro would do something or say something outrageous/stupid/funny and at least a dozen channels would react to it. The arrangement was great for everyone, as everyone was making money off of it, including DeCastro.
But DeCastro got greedy. He wanted a share of the revenue from everyone who used his videos. That’s when he began to content strike everyone who used his videos, taking down some big-name channels (at least temporarily) and then embarked on filing a lawsuit in an attempt to get revenue out of the reuse of his content.
Reaction videos pretty much began to quickly decline after the first lawsuit turned into a copyright lawsuit and brought in YouTube. By mid-2023, only the Welsh News Network would touch his material on a regular basis, re-airing his nightly broadcasts in their entirety while providing transformative commentary to the point where YouTube wouldn’t shut the channel down.
By July of 2023, DeCastro was bringing in 50,000 new subscribers a month. Accusations began as far back as the fall of 2022 that DeCastro was buying subscribers and views. YouTube itself declined to give DeCastro a silver plaque or any recognition for his tremendous growth due to “content violations.” Even a year after his lawsuit against the company was dismissed.
The fall of 2023 was not kind to DeCastro. His split with partner Collin “Project Constitution” Campbell and put an end to his lucrative TikTok centered channels. DeCastro would eventually take on an informercial format. Doing nightly three-hour desperate pleas for his fans to buy his trifolds and his then new 5A Cop cards like a pitch man on late night paid promotional television.
By February of 2024, DeCastro’s numbers will still steady, but he wasn’t pulling in the 50,000-70,000 new subscribers per month with declines back to roughly 1,000 new subscribers a day, which DeCastro attributed to his tremendous performance in YouTube shorts.
And then DeCastro went to jail in March of 2024.
Everything declined to negative growth. Only attorney Michael Ehline’s “vertical format” live streams would pull in the huge numbers that DeCastro was accustomed to. And once he returned from jail, DeCastro’s delayed return to live streaming and his refusal to mimic whatever Ehline was doing to get so many views has put his channel in a spiral when it comes to new subscribers and views.
He also lost his final foil while he was in jail. The Welsh News Network’s dissolution in May ended the only channel that was giving him regular coverage by restreaming his content. While other channels briefly touch on his stupidity, no one else has restreamed him to the market of hate watchers who were keeping his name alive in that community.
For all his losses, DeCastro is not *losing* subscribers. He’s never had a period where his subscriber base has declined to more than 1,000 subscribers at a time for the decline to show in Social Blade. Other than his regulars and newcomers, his chat usually consists of the same handful of moderators and friends and is never to the high attendance levels of other auditors with less subscribers than DeCastro has.
In fact, his live streams rarely see more than 500 viewers attend live and most recently he’s complained that he’s had under 300 people across all of the YouTube and external platforms. When a video receives large numbers of viewers, they mysteriously come after most of DeCastro’s audience is asleep.
When DeCastro split with Collin Campbell last year, Campbell said that he was unaware of DeCastro buying subscribers or views. DeCastro has always denied it and there have been campaigns where detractors have bought batches of likes on certain videos that outweighed the actual views of those videos.
Whatever Ehline was doing, he took it to his channel after DeCastro returned from jail and DeCastro hasn’t emulated his style for the quick views and subscriber gains.
DeCastro has also suffered losses with financial backers. Gone are the days when he’d get thousands of dollars a month from a revolving network of female fans who would shower him with super chats.
He no longer has the power to do fundraisers, and his incredible legal bills from hiring lawyers to represent him in various civil and criminal cases has made some speculate that he simply can’t afford to buy subscribers or views. They point out that he’s bleeding money to the point where he’s selling “Friendship bracelets” and other trinkets on his website to try to drum up support from his failing viewership.
DeCastro said that he was going to have to start a new channel and give up his Delete Lawz “empire” because “they destroyed the channel.” It seems pretty obvious that it wasn’t “they,” it was DeCastro himself. And starting over, might not go as easily or return him to glory as fast as he thinks it will.
On that note, if you’d like to keep us from desperately “starting over” to jump start our own failures, we’d be remiss if we didn’t remind you that you can continue to force the college dropout and known cryptid Jim Finch to keep writing this dreadful column each day by contributing to the GoFundMe run by this very channel (https://gofund.me/b8144e31). All proceeds go to keeping the lights on, eating, and writing new stories to feature here and on reallycoolsite.org.
