I read through all the Reddit threads, and there’s only speculation.

All the videos are gone now, but apparently he had been acting a little strange in his recent live streams. You can find comments about it on Reddit even if the video is gone. In short, he seemed off.

There was also some evidence presented that the bullshit accusations levied against him were, unfortunately, really getting to him.

Still hoping it was all just some tragic accident. We’ll probably never know for sure. But it’s a huge loss to the community - gone far too young.

It says so much that every single creator had such wonderful things to say about him. We should all strive to be such a positive force in the world.

Relevant Video

An older article about it: https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2025/09/15/troops-with-medical-shaving-waivers-to-face-separation-hegseth-says/

In March, the Marine Corps ordered Marines diagnosed with pseudofolliculitis barbae, which leads to unwanted bumps and painful ingrown hair from frequent shaving, to undergo medical reevaluation within 90 days to determine whether they still required a waiver.

That administrative message outlined a phased treatment plan for Marines affected by the condition, with the ultimate goal of “returning service members to grooming standards and ensuring maximum warfighting readiness.”

About 60% of Black men are affected by the condition, according to the American Osteopathic College of Dermatology.

Highly recommend everyone give this a listen. It covered most of the other possibilities people are bringing up in this thread:

• They have to be pulled out, moved, and pushed back in to change the state
• The plane cannot take off with them in the wrong position
• There is no procedure to ever toggle both off at the same time, and no procedure to toggle them off period at their low altitude
• Both were toggled off within 1 seconds of each other
• The engines were functioning normally when they were toggled off

Captain Steve really tried to not blame the pilots in previous videos about this crash, in fact he really believed it had to be something else, so it says a lot that this is the only conclusion he can come up with.

I watched this video awhile ago about 3 Yale professors leaving the U.S. because of the rise in fascism.

From that video, Marci Shore, Historian of Totalitarianism:

There’s an expression in Polish: “I found myself at the very bottom. And then I heard knocking from below.” In Russian that gets abbreviated to “dna ne sushchestvuet” - “there is no bottom”. What starts to matter, is not what is concealed, but what has been normalized. There’s no limit to the depravity, and the sadism, and the cruelty that we are watching now play out in real time.

For all the people cheering or indifferent to this:

1. This would affect more than social media - this would affect ANYWHERE that has user accounts that can post content - blogs, wikis, website builders, hell, even email.

2. The summary states this is so it can be “renegotiated”. Considering the current authoritarian direction of the United States, now would be absolutely the worst time to rewrite online content policing laws - it will absolutely be used to silence dissent.

But surely one user posting illegal content would get blasted to all connected instances making everyone guilty.

So… Worse. Much worse.

I don’t disagree that it could work, but I’m also not sure it’s that simple either.

There’s a big difference in trying to get people to protest for the threat that is over the horizon than the one in power for 40 years. People just aren’t good at conceptualizing the weight of that future pain against what they currently stand to lose.

And they could lose a lot - their job first, which also means their house and their health insurance. Not to mention plenty of laws criminalizing most protest already, where you are bound to be caught on camera or via other digital surveillance, and a single arrest on your permanent record means no future employment, and missed payments on your credit history means no future economic prospects.

And believe me I know the risk of that is worth it, and the risks you’d have in the future are even worse, but most people in the country still aren’t ready to make that trade - hell, most still deny the direction things are headed.

Yeah, people abroad are wondering why Americans won’t just stand up, but the reality is that the country is massive and you need an incredible organizing effort to offer any real, organized resistance.

And sure, some groups have tried, but you really need your opposition party, or some kind of major celebrity, or someone else with major reach to organize something that reaches every American and pulls them together to action.

And that just hasn’t happened. Some people have spoken out, but nobody has been willing to lead that next step and really lead a movement. Words aren’t gonna be enough to counter this.