ShadyVox aka Blake Swift aka Matt Robinson of Scratch21 aka Patrick has been threatening me for the last four years.
I am going to refer to him as Patrick for the remainder of this document, as it is a) his real name, b) his least favorite name, and c) the name he signed the second email he sent me with, where he essentially confessed to all of this before he actively executed it.
Here is a clear, abbreviated timeline of events:
2010
I meet Patrick and his good friend xthedarkone through making anime parodies
2011-2014
I observe Patrick mistreating his friends, and the women he is close to, for years while maintaining a distance
2015-2017
I become significantly closer friends with xthedarkone, to the point of thinking of him as my best friend
2018
I learn, from direct messages from Patrick himself, that he is subscribed to Breitbart, Milo Yiannopoulos, etc. He asks me to remove any reference to it people are making in my YouTube comments. I point out that he could just not subscribe to Breitbart or Milo if he is this ashamed.
He continues to subscribe to them.
After a month or so, I yell at him about it. Soon after, I apologized profusely. He forgave me.
At least, he did to my face.
Early 2019
Patrick tells me that my best friend is a rapist and when I take his word for it and remove my best friend from my life, his response is “I wish you hadn’t done that” and says that it happened a long time ago and my best friend has “gotten much better.”
I find proof that Patrick lied to me. Which means he didn’t just lie, he told an alleged victim’s story without their consent. And misrepresented it while doing so. And expected me to just take his word for it.
When I tell Patrick he was wrong - he proceeds to scream at me repeatedly, shrieking that my friends are liars, that the alleged victim is a liar, and so on, and so on.
I block him because his behavior is, at this point, already very frightening.
The Rest of 2019
Patrick emails me three times. The first time, he continues to pour accusations upon my best friend while threatening to tell everyone I held back a secret that HE told ME. A secret that isn’t even TRUE.
The second email, which he signs bizarrely with his real name Patrick despite hating it so much, is a long, much more coherent piece of pseudo-poetic prose that tells me that I did nothing wrong, that I listened to him, that I am the bestest person ever, that he is the problem, not me, it’s all Patrick. He’s the bad guy. He says it in his own words. And then he ends the email - before signing it PATRICK - with “I am going to leave you alone forever.”
The third email following that is nothing but threats, accusations that I cover up for predators, and the direct implication that he has all my wrongdoings documented and that he is going to make a public statement to ruin my reputation if I do not confess myself.
It is, of course, a huge bluff as he just sent me a signed email several months previously to explain to me how super super nice and cool I am - and he wishes he was just like me, by the way.
Patrick. The guy who just ruined my life, and would continue to do so for years. Wants to be just like me.
I do not respond to any of the emails. In fact, I am documenting them myself.
2020
Every single day since his threats begin, I am terrified that this will happen. That the next YGO Abridged episode I release will coincide with his decision to try and ruin not just my life, but the lives of people I’m close to, people who are victims of his bullshit and people who are just straight up victims.
Patrick continues to work in the background - telling old friends of mine, emailing people who I don’t even know, responding to fans’ dms - accusing me of defending a rapist. I am aware of it, of course, even if I don’t directly see it. I see comments from people who are being misled. I see vague hints that this stuff is known.
Patrick knows he cannot directly accuse anyone of anything because he has no actual evidence and he doesn’t have the alleged victim’s consent. So instead of making a clear statement, he starts leaving breadcrumbs - morsels of information that directly imply that I did something really, really, really bad.
And saddest of all, he does it in videos where he is rapping.
And every single day, I wait for another email. Because Patrick is clearly up to something.
2021
I am invited back to be in a videogame based on a flash animated series I co-starred in with Patrick. Patrick played the protagonist of the series, and would be the headliner of the game. I say no, for multiple reasons, but the only one that matters right now is that I was not comfortable working alongside someone who was clearly engaging in threatening behavior toward me.
I say no multiple times, and the person in charge of the project begs me to come back - and when I explain at length what Patrick is doing, the response is essentially “I already know about that, but I still would ask that you do the job”
I talk to multiple people involved in the project and bring Patrick’s behavior to their attention. Because some of them are still close with him and I hoped maybe I’d gain some understanding, or at least someone would listen to me.
One of the people involved in production reaches out to Patrick and talks to him one on one. They learn that he is working on ANOTHER rap that will allude to my awful behavior and drag me across the coals.
They ask him to stop. They ask him nicely.
Patrick refuses.
Sometime that year, Patrick gets in touch with people who have been trying to tie my personal reputation to that of a number of toxic personalities I once knew and bring me to justice.
Patrick feeds them the story he made up. And gives them the impression that this story is the alleged victim’s truth.
It is not.
Everything - EVERYTHING - the callout group, the victims, did from that point on was Patrick’s fault.
2022
Patrick releases his shitty new rap that calls me and multiple other people out, without actually calling anyone out.
He knows his shitty little rap will likely be referenced in the upcoming public callout attempt to ruin my life.
For some reason, this doesn’t make him cringe into his own belly button and ping out of existence.
2023
Here we are.
I release Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged episode 85. My cat has been diagnosed with cancer. I continue to try to push through the news.
The callout document you have all been forced to be aware of drops the same day as my episode releases.
Patrick’s plan is in motion.
But I have been thinking about all of this EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. for the last four years, and I am ready.
I respond to the callout post with great seriousness. I treat it seriously. It is important that the victims are not at fault - it is important everyone sees this.
I allude to what really went down with Patrick, but I don’t want to overwhelm everyone with information so I let it drip out over the course of a few days.
I wait until the callout people reveal of their own accord that they did not have consent. I do not bully them into revealing this. I simply ask them. Had the document been sent to me privately, I would have told them then.
Instead it had to play out this way, because of Patrick.
After the carelessness has been addressed, I communicate with the author of the document privately and we talk. It is civil. We hear each other.
They retract their statement, apologize to everyone - even my best friend, who never expected as much - and they take down their document.
I reiterate publicly that nobody should go after the victims.
Because this is one person’s fault. One person alone.
Patrick aka ShadyVox aka Blake Swift aka Matt Robinson from Scratch21.
The person who thought he could threaten me for years, ruin multiple people’s lives, fool a group of actual victims into believing his nonsense, deal unimaginable trauma to everyone involved, and just… walk away?
I honestly don’t know what he expects. But all of this was what I expected from the moment he started threatening me.
And now here we are
I’ve been getting a lot of people say “wow I don’t think I could have handled all that as well as you did, Martin.”
I want to assure you that literally the only reason that I did handle this so well, is because I have been anticipating it every single day of every single week of every single month of every single year since Patrick first started attacking me.
If I hadn’t been preparing, worrying, stressing, crying, hoping that I could make this work, that I could make sure nobody got hurt…
I made plans for as many outcomes as I could conceive. And I was afraid every single day that it still wouldn’t be enough.
Please know that it was supremely important - moreso than clearing my own name - to make sure that this didn’t become a scenario people referenced when they try to discount the stories of victims. I couldn’t live with my name being used to silence people who are feeling real pain.
That is why I approached all of this the way I did. Why I made a clear and honest statement when the document dropped, even though I knew that this was all based on bogus information delivered by a dime store Eminem.
I have been scared of this week happening almost every waking moment the last half a decade.
But it is that fear that drove me to behave in the way that seems to have impressed so many of you.
I anticipated, I expected, I planned for every single permutation of this because a monster decided he was pissed at me for childish reasons. Which I’m honestly not even sure what they ARE anymore. Is he mad that I’m not his best friend? Is he mad that xthedarkone is my best friend? Is he mad that I noticed him being all alt-righteous? Is he mad that his shitty little rap video attempting to expose me got about 11k views?
I don’t know the reason. It could be any of them, it could be all of them.
This has all been extremely senseless to me, and I have done everything in my power to make sense of it regardless.
I’ve felt extremely alone. I didn’t want to make a big fuss out of any of this. I didn’t even want it to be public if it didn’t have to be. It could have been some stupid, irrational fear I had for the rest of my life. And hey, I guess it still gets to be that.
Because even though it is all “over,” I still find myself anticipating and planning. Out of fear.
This is not really a callout post.
I know you’re likely at this point in the document thinking, it’s not?!?!
Here’s the thing. I’m not calling anyone out, because I don’t expect to receive any response.
When I went to people and asked them for help in this scenario, it became very apparent to me that the industry and the world Patrick operates within? Allows for this sort of thing. It covers itself up. It forgives itself. Victims be damned.
I’m not saying people should have done more or stopped him. But the fact that I did all the right things, and asked people for help when I needed it, and all of this still happened anyway?
My faith in anything resembling actual justice or even a result of any kind is shaken to its core.
So I’m not even going to suggest it or ask for it. I just wanted to tell my story, because I’ve been sitting here silently enduring everything by myself for so long and frankly I cannot do it anymore.
Like I said, I planned for every single eventuality.
Every single possible outcome.
Except for the possibility that I would be watching my pet slowly die at the EXACT. SAME. TIME all of this came to fruition.
And because I knew all of this was bigger than me, all of this meant more than just the UNIMAGINABLE PAIN it could do to me and the people I loved, I put my pet aside and spent the last full 24 hours I had with him addressing false allegations against me. All orchestrated by Patrick.
My pet’s name was Gordon. He was a fat cat with a fuzzy face and I can still feel his whiskers on the back of my palm when I reach out and think about cuddling him.
He is gone now. The pain is not. The fear is not.
You may be reading this and thinking “wow all of this was unavoidable huh?”
No, I want to stress that it was very avoidable. One person just had to stop and think about what they were doing. One person just had to accept fault in the situation instead of continuing to poke and prod and goad and threaten and manipulate. One person dredged up the pain. One person misled REAL VICTIMS into believing his bullshit, and as a result THEIR reputation is forever tarnished and they will never be listened to the same way again.
Patrick McShittyRap.
Not his real last name, but let’s pretend for now because it makes me feel a little better.
I want to believe this is over. I want to believe that I went through all of this for something. I want to believe that Patrick is done threatening me, that this can just pass like so many bad dreams.
But I still wake in the night thinking he just emailed me.
I still find myself thinking “okay but what if he does this next” and making a mental note of how to best respond.
I still find myself QUESTIONING IF THE THINGS HE SAID ABOUT ME ARE TRUE BECAUSE HE SUCCESSFULLY THREATENED ME INTO DOUBTING MYSELF AND MY OWN INTEGRITY.
So yes.
This is what happened, and why it happened, and how it happened.
And how I felt throughout all of it.
I hope a lot of this makes more sense to you now. I hope that a lot about me and my life makes more sense to you now.
Because none of it makes any sense to me.