‘Social Experiment’ YouTube Star Joey Salads Wasn’t At The Charlottesville Rally After All


A controversial YouTube personality named Joey Salads was incorrectly identified by Twitter as participating in Saturday’s disturbing Charlottesville rally.

An account on the social media app themed around exposing the identities of those who reportedly took part in the egregious event, which left three people dead, as the Inquisitr reported, claimed to have an image of Salads wearing Nazi-related regalia at the “Unite the Right” gathering in Charlottesville, on Twitter early Sunday.

The image was then posted to the account and shared multiple times by various users.

In the past, Salads has been called out by media publications, including the Daily Beast, and even fellow YouTube stars, including news personality Philip DeFranco, for performing “social experiments” that seemed to purposely display ignorance and violence from people of color and different religious backgrounds, in order to prove some kind of necessary point about “togetherness.”

Salads, born Joseph Saladino, has since gone on record and claimed that he was nowhere near the contentious rally in Charlottesville with the Staten Island Live and called the matter a “hoax,” as he was allegedly vacationing with family members in Jamaica.

On August 12, a Twitter account belonging to Yes, You’re Racist shared a picture said to be Salads standing among those who reportedly shouted pro-white supremacy statements at police officers and Virginia residents (the image has since been deleted from Twitter, but can be viewed below).

An image of Joey Salads at the Charlottesville rally began circulating on Twitter early Sunday, but the YouTube personality says the image is a “hoax.” [Image by ‘Yes, You’re Racist’/Twitter/Joey Salads/YouTube]

Among the many who were there was Heather Heyer, a 32-year-old peaceful protester, who was struck with a car by an angry driver as she defended those who the alleged supremacists attempted to attack, as Fox News provides.

Two Virginia lawmen who were at the rally to protect the public at large, were also claimed to have been massacred at the event by supposed white supremacists.

On Monday, August 14, Joey took to YouTube and, in a video shared by the Staten Island Live, attempted to clear his name.

“It was just fake news spread from a screenshot,” Salads said in the visual.

“Twitter accounts wanted shock value from me. It was purposely misleading. It was posted in a thread, the same thread of all the Nazis at the rally.”

Joey continued that the screenshot was taken from one of his many “social experiments” that saw him take part in another rally, this one themed for then-Republican presidential candidate, Donald J. Trump.

“I am in Jamaica chilling on vacation,” Salads also said, “[and] there is a photo going around of me of me as a Nazi and they think that I’m at the Charlottesville Nazi protest. [It’s] false, fake news.”

Salads’ rebuttal video can be seen below.

In response, the Yes, You’re Racist Twitter account removed the offensive, but mistaken image of Joey Salads from the thread of Charlottesville rally spectators, and issued and apology through their social media profile.

In October of last year, writers for the Daily Beast blasted Joey Salads for performing another of his supposed “social experiments” for YouTube, that involved three black men destroying a car that Joey claimed belonged to a supporter of Donald Trump.

The three men were ultimately found to be actors that Salads hired for the stunt.

“[YouTube’s] Joey Salads claimed he had damning evidence that the [African-American] community is very violent toward Donald Trump and his supporters,” they wrote.

“You may have seen on the internet and through the polls that a lot of black people don’t like Trump,” Salads said in his now-deleted YouTube video, “and they don’t even like his supporters in some cases. So what I did was, I got a car, put some Trump apparel on it, and we’re gonna park it in a black neighborhood and see what happens.”

“Within hours of its posting to Salads’ more than 1.4 million YouTube subscribers, the video went viral, racking up more than a million views. It was even featured at the top of the Drudge Report,” the Daily Beast described of Joey’s “social experiment.”

YouTube star Joey Salads was witnessed participating in the Charlottesville rally — the same event where Heather Heyer, a 32-year-old peaceful protester, was murdered on Saturday. [Image by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images]

The next day, on October 20, the-then 22 year old Salads removed the video from the sharing site, and released a public apology for the race-themed performance — one day after DeFranco released his own video themed around Salads’ ongoing, problematic ways.

DeFranco’s video on Joey Salads can be seen below (be advised it is slightly NSFW).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctHFDXXalis

The person running the Yes, You’re Racist Twitter account did not specify why they used the picture of Joey Salads in the thread of supposed Charlottesville rally participants.

[Featured Image by Joey Salads/Facebook]

Share this article: ‘Social Experiment’ YouTube Star Joey Salads Wasn’t At The Charlottesville Rally After All
More from Inquisitr