Nicole Arbour’s YouTube Channel Suspended, Reinstated After Obesity Video Causes Major Controversy

Nicole Arbour has had a tumultuous weekend. On September 6, 2015, the YouTube vlogger and self-proclaimed  “Comedian, Recording Artist, Motivator, and emoji lover” had her channel temporarily shut down and all her videos removed after posting a controversial clip about obesity in America.

Arbour posted her “Dear Fat People” video to her channel on September 5. In a typical jump-cut-filled, direct-to-camera rant replete with attempted comedic asides, she questions whether or not obesity is actually a disease and ponders if fat-shaming is just something overweight people came up with to avoid addressing their bad habits . “That’s the ‘race card’ with no race,” Arbour explains in her video. “Are you going to tell the doctor they’re being ‘mean’ and ‘fat-shaming’ you when you have f***ing heart disease?”. Take a look: 

Arbour asserts towards the tail-end of the video that she’s expressing these polarizing points of view because she believes they’re what overweight individuals need to hear. “The truth is I will actually love you no matter what,” Arbour says. “But I really, really hope this bomb of truth exploding into your face will act as shrapnel that seeps into your soul, makes you want to be healthier so that we can enjoy you as human beings longer on this planet.” Not everyone who viewed the video agreed.  

Other video creators and prominent online video personalities created their own video responses to Arbour’s six-minute long “Dear Fat People” rant. Fellow YouTuber Meghan Tonjes shed some tears in her response, and My Big Fat Fabulous Life star Whitney Way Thore cautioned Arbour and viewers about assuming they understand what obese people are dealing with internally. Grace Helbig even responded to Arbour’s clip, giving her credit for her comedic timing, but saying, “The more you just kind of say whatever you want with disregard to people’s feelings, the less I as a viewer consider you a comedian.”

Arbour responded to the outcry with another video entitled The Most Offensive Video EVER, in which she accuses those who digitally expressed their offense to her last video of “killing comedy.” Take a look: 

Arbour disabled the comments on her “Dear Fat People” video, but wasn’t without her own supporters. She received an influx of positive and negative responses to the clip on other social media outlets and shared tweets from several self-described obese viewers thanking her for her honesty and expressing their agreement with her video. However, the YouTuber also noted how other viewers called her offensive names and told her to kill herself:

Arbour’s “Dear Fat People” hit half a million views before being flagged and taken down by YouTube on September 6. The Canadian YouTube creator and early Periscope adopter told CNN she received an email from Google’s online video site, claiming her channel was in violation of YouTube’s terms of service. Arbour took to Twitter to express her disagreement with being censored based on her comedy choices:

By the evening of September 6, YouTube had restored Arbour’s channel, but the vlogger tweeted that all her videos were gone. Google’s online video site restored Arbour’s content, though, and as of this writing the channel seems to be gaining back all its videos in a kind of piecemeal process. 

Arbour left the comment thread open on her Most Offensive Video EVER, and despite the 37,000+ dislikes and seemingly disproportionate amount of unhappy viewers (you can see a screenshot of a few comments below), the channel is picking up subscribers at a very fast rate. Arbour’s channel ended September 3 with roughly 79,000 subscribers. Since then, it’s grown to more than 106,000 subscribers. That means the controversy has netted Arbour not only her most-viewed video, but roughly 6,700 new subscribers per day over the last four days (which aren’t PewDiePie numbers, but is still a very fast subscriber acquisition rate).

We reached out to YouTube for comment on the initial takedown of Arbour’s channel. We’ll update if we hear anything back.