Virtually Vain is one of the most popular YouTubers in recent years who came to fame for his amazing African Drug Lord imitation. With his deep voice, he was able to scare off some of the biggest steam gamers in the Call of Duty franchise, “Ghost”. To many, he is one of the funniest YouTubers out there, but for others he has been representing the issues surrounding privacy.
Vain created his channel on the 25th of September, 2012 and since then he has been able to gather over 1 million subscribers. Whilst he has only uploaded 12 videos as of 2019, his videos have been viewed over 65 million times on YouTube. Let us now get to know a bit more about his work, shall we?
Virtually Vain: Man Behind the Channel
Despite several attempts to find out, no one really knows the man who is behind this channel. Many have tried and failed to find more about this “African Drug Lord”. This mystery YouTuber came into existence on the 25th of September, 2012 and has been rocking the gaming community ever since. In the last 6 years, he has been able to amass over a million subscribers for just 12 videos.
Evidently, he has been able to create contents that have been able to attract a large audience from all over the globe. He, however, likes to keep himself out of the radar making it very hard for people to find more about him.
Virtually Vain: What He Does
If you do not already know by now, Virtually Vain is famous for frightening gamers whilst pretending to be a man from Zimbabwe with a deep voice and a thick accent. On most occasions, his videos begin with Vain being a seemingly random person from Africa who gets mocked and insulted for his accent. This then leads to him scaring the living daylight of the people that mock him. He starts sharing all the information of these gamers including their names, locations, their family members and even their phone numbers on occasions.
Whilst these videos are hilarious for us as viewers, we can only imagine what the victim’s of these pranks go through. For a random stranger to know everything about you, and threatening you in a gaming session is as scary as it gets. Thankfully, Vain does reassure them after the prank is over. As a nice touch, he even asks if he can upload these videos on YouTube.
Virtually Vain: How He Does It
As per the creator of these videos, it is not just for the entertainment that he is making them. He believes that is it a public service to show that our information is not always safe. According to an interview with Vain on Business Insider, he says that there is nothing illegal about what he is doing. Vain also goes on to say that there is no hacking involved and these informative/entertaining videos help aware people to be more responsible with the information that they share online.
To find information about the gamers, Vain begins by searching the gamer tag or their usernames on the internet. Once he gets his hands on the social media platforms via these usernames, Vain can potentially access the location and phone number details of a user. It is not as simple as that, Vain also uses the site “Whitepages.com” which allows you to find information regarding the location and phone number all whilst working under the law. Moreover, he even uses IP addresses to track the location of these gamers. And with all this information combined, gamers will be living their worst nightmares while it is all fun and games for us as viewers.
Virtually Vain: How You Can Be Safe
Privacy has been a concert for the modern age with various aspects of your information present somewhere on the internet. We can, however, be careful with the details we share online. You can start by creating an alias or a username different than your name. In this way, you can better protect information that is vital to you.
Next thing that you can do is be on a virtual network. There are various software and extensions that allow you to do so. Using a Virtual Private Network can cover up your IP address and you can be surfing on the internet from a whole different location. However, not all VPN software or extensions are reliable, so be sure to choose the right one.
With all this said and done, no one’s information is really safe in this time and age. Nevertheless, you can make things harder and stay on the safer side of things. You can also get to know more about Vain and his work on YouTube where he goes by the handle VirtuallyVain.
