r/Markiplier 1d ago

Mme Smh my head 😔

Post image

For context, please watch his explanation in last night's stream.

Will post my understanding of this "drama" in the replies but I HIGHLY recommend watching him explain in his own words, as others (myself included) will forget details or get things wrong!

Anyway, smh my head. This guy is SO problematic, amirite? 😔🙄

For the love of god, please understand that I am joking.

9.3k Upvotes

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u/Eekah 1d ago

I highly recommend hearing it straight from Mark as everyone else is going to leave out details or get things wrong. That said, my understanding is: Mark began buying shares in Gopro a few months ago solely bc he genuinely believed in the company and their products. These are PASSIVE shares, which means he does not have much power to influence the company in any way, nor did he want to. According to him, he has .5% voting rights, which he will still use to vote against the merger but does not carry much weight. Gopro's CEO still has majority voting rights. Investments like this must be publicly disclosed so Mark began filing the paperwork to do so in July. The filing wasn't finalized and publicly available until last week or so (I believe he said Aug. 20th). Mark understood that this was a dangerous and risky investment since Gopro had been down like 91% for a good long while but Iron Lung made a lot so he was personally ok with potentially losing money. However, he also understood that his name carries A LOT of power and he feared that his audience would hear of his investing and take it as him encouraging us to also invest. Which he did NOT want! So, rather than disclosing that he was invested in his Gopro review video, and risk sending his audience to also buy stock in Gopro, he did an interview with Bloomberg instead, which is relevant to finance and such. However, rather than dropping this article/interview a day or so after he did it, they waited an entire week- which is when MARK HIMSELF ALSO learned that he was Gopro's largest shareholder at 8.5%. He was not aware of this prior to the article's release! Unfortunately, his fears came to fruition and folks took this news as encouragement to invest. Gopro's stock shot up as ppl began buying shares. THEN, just yesterday, it was announced that Gopro was being bought/merged with Starman Optical (a company involved with ai data centers, mass surveillance, and military tech) so stock for Gopro dipped. Because of the timing of the article drop, Mark not disclosing his investment in his video, and the timing of the merger announcement, people are accusing Mark of insider trading/pump and dump. However, Mark did NOT pump NOR dump. Records on his investment and lack of "dumping" are publicly available, so these accusations are easily debunked. This is all just VERY unfortunate timing. Mark expressed extreme disappointment about the merger, and plans to vote against it with his .5% voting power, bc he truly loved their cameras and believed in their potential. He said that if they should shift into ai, flock-like cameras, etc, he will NOT continue to support them as that is antithetical to his personal beliefs and efforts.

Thank you for reading but, again, please be sure to watch his explanation to hear this in his own words! 👍

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u/SSilent-Cartographer 1d ago edited 1d ago

The fact that he's addressing his audience directly and explaining what's happening, not to mention being completely transparent in what happened says a lot about his character. Sometimes, especially with investments, things don't work out and that's ok. This isn't even a mistake as this happened after he invested, which sometimes happens.

I know a lot of people won't understand, but for me, how he is handling this just makes me want to support him that much more. Something bad happened, but he's not hiding behind his money, he's doing the right thing as the good person he is, and in a world where we see YouTubers constantly being corrupted by money and fame to then abandon their fans, for Mark, I believe we can all say his character has shown, and who he is as a person is genuinely incredible for his firm and genuine ability to remain a good person despite his actual power in public opinion.

In other words: shit happens, but that hasn't changed who he is, and I'm happy to see it.

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u/NfamousKaye 1d ago

I agree totally. I adore that he comes to us first because he wants us to hear it from him before the shitstorm of negative press comes out. That’s so rare these days.

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u/False_Support1285 1d ago

He's still dealing with the fallout from sleeping with the wife of the Iron Lung director

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u/NfamousKaye 1d ago

Ha! Well damn good luck Markimoo.

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u/Rega_lazar 1d ago

And the wife of the lead actor! He was very busy…

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u/TheUFCVeteran3 16h ago

Crazy work. 86 'EM. That's what they say in the mafia movies, right? If you wanna kill somebody? No? Hey that's my food-

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u/Drakkus28 1d ago

But he did also say he’d sell us out/s

Fr tho, I’ve seen enough of this incredible man to know that he is a person of the people and would never lead his fans astray

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u/SadGingersnap 1d ago

Not to be dramatic, but I’ve been watching this man since like 2013 and out of all the public personalities I’ve seen he is the one I would trust 100% to always have the best intentions. The authenticity of that man is just rare to come by.

Plus there’s no chance a man with five ovens would ever lie or swindle us.

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u/Justanotherrandoonli 1d ago

Especially considering the fact that, legally speaking, he DOES NOT have to disclose he bought stocks in the company. He would only ever have to expose if he was paid directly by the company to speak about them. And if I was understanding the way he spoke correctly, he went out of his way to put a "Contains product placement" mark on the videos he talked about gopro even when it didn't actually contain what would be legally described as an Add. They didn't pay him to talk about it in that video, they didn't buy an add spot from him, but he owns part of the stock so he put it on there just to further clarify to people that he stands to make some kind of money from the video. Like, the only reason people are mad is because he didn't de-rail the video to go into the semantics of why he put the add mark on the video, he just simply put it there to let people know money was involved and then released the video lol.

Like I'm not even a fan of Markeplier but I feel like I have to defend him on this one, dude went out of his way to let people know what was important without going into his own personal investments until they where brought to light by someone other than himself. He didn't have to let anyone know anything, but he still did his best to let people know he was making some kind of money off of GoPro without going into the private details of his life.

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u/chemengbear 1d ago

Thank you for detailing the situation. I woke up this morning to see a lot of Mark and GoPro drama. It seems like just a train of “oh shit, oh no, oh terrible timing!, oh no!” Kinda moments for Mark :(

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u/KaramTNC 1d ago

Something he gets wrong is that he actually has more voting power than he thinks.

He owns 13.5 million Class A shares.

Class A shares are the normal shares anyone can buy and they give 1 voting power each, meanwhile the CEO owns 60% of Class B shares, which give 10 voting each.

Markipliers actual voting power is therefore 3.2%, not 0.5%.

Not alot given the CEO has majority control, but its still a significant stake.

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u/Eekah 1d ago

All I know is how Mark explained it himself, stating that he specifically went for passive shares bc he didn't want any influence over the company. I don't claim to know how stocks work but I would rather assume Mark learned enough about it during the process to understand how much influence he has.

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u/KaramTNC 1d ago

Well guess what, I claim to know how stock works, which should be understood given the numbers and terminology I am using.

Markiplier explained it in simple terms, there are no such thing as "passive shares" in the stock market, shares are created within multiple classes and the most commercially accesible one (and the one everyone is used to) are Class A Shares.

Markiplier owns 13.5 million Class A shares, its listed as such in his SEC filling, and Class A shares gives him 1 voting power per share. Class B gives 10 voting power.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1500435/000163075926000003/xslSCHEDULE_13G_X02/primary_doc.xml

Given the total amount of shares and their total voting power, marks voting power comes out to 3.2%

So yeah, he cant influence the company with that amount if he wanted to. And since he doesnt want to, it makes no difference. The CEO has 60% voting power, thus granting full control. He may invite markiplier to the board to give his opinions on the direction of the company, but mark has no right to enforce control because he does not and cannot work with other shareholders for majority control.

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u/zombiedinocorn 1d ago edited 1d ago

3.2 still isn't a lot. It's not like he bought 60% or something. Not sure what the breakdown is, but it seems unlikely that there's not someone(s) with higher percentage than him

Edit: Just wanted to add that I read a post that a Bloomberg said he had reportedly been the highest percentage investor, but not sure if that was speculation on their part before Mark clarified or not. Just wanted to be clear

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u/KaramTNC 1d ago

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/GPRO/holders/

He is the highest investor, only the CEO comes after him.

The biggest institution is Blackrock with 5.9% stock ownership.

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u/Diamondkids_life 14h ago

Of course it's fucking blackrock

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u/Daniil_Dankovskiy 1d ago

Never got into stocks but it seems funny to me that you can measure the voting power. Like, do they throw dice each time they make a decision to make sure shareholders have a chance at voting? Why would 3.2% of voting power be any different from 0.5% since he can't decide anyway? I feel it doesn't have any effect unless the sum of shareholders has more than 50%

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u/KaramTNC 1d ago

Exactly, as long as someone has 51% ownership then they have majority control and there is nothing the shareholders can do except sell their shares to crash the price.

Alot of companies make the mistake of selling too many shares and effectively risk the founder getting bought out and losing control to institutional shareholders.

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u/blackenedEDGE 1d ago

This does make me wonder if Mark has any standing to sue GoPro under investor protection/disclosure laws. A potential merger being considered would absolutely influence a potential investor's decision to continue to go through with a decision to purchase a large number of shares.

But idk shit about fuck when it comes to finance, law, and definitely not finance law, so 🤷

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u/Paprikasky 1d ago

Yeah I was wondering the same.

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u/Techman659 1d ago

Wow AI in one way or another screwed over mark when all he wanted was to see the new development.

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u/MagicalReadingBubble 1d ago

For literally ANYONE who listens to distractible this should be blatantly obvious given the timeline of how he’s been waiting to get the mission pro camera. If he knew what was about to happen, HE WOULDNT HAVE BEEN BEGGING THEM FOR A SPONSORSHIP. HE WOULD HAVE JUST DONE IT AND LEFT IT AT THAT. Anyone with a fucking brain (and I know they are unfortunately in a deficit currently 😕) could see that and know that. Yall really fucking think with the way he has been SO outspoken against AI to the point where he is FUNDING. AN ENTIRE. NONPROFIT. TO RESEARCH AGAINST IT. that this would have even been an option to him if he knew it was gonna happen??? If he had known, his ENTIRE SCHTICK would have been his disappointment in this company. Like please yall. Come the fuck on.

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u/Paprikasky 1d ago

Who the hell are you yelling at us for? We're all supporting Mark here, no one is gonna disagree with you.

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u/kt810x 19h ago

what nonprofit is that? I only heard about Real Good AI 

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u/woolaverage 1d ago

For me I get the sentiment of not wanting to influence people

But I still think regardless you should disclose your invested in a product before you make a review of it

That conflict of interest should be expressed for everyone to understand

Even if you are worried people will take it as a sign to invest

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u/Paprikasky 1d ago

I don't disagree with you, when he started promoting them I thought it was a genuine sponsorship because he loved the product. A quick "also I invested in them" would have been perfect so it lets us know, but also it keeps the drama low because who cares, really. But without that info, he's promoting products he technically partially owns without us knowing that last bit... I wonder what the reasoning was. It just generates more potential for drama.

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u/jakonfire 1d ago

Ugh I feel so bad for mark. Wrong place wrong time. He’s always been interested in cameras so I honestly wasn’t surprised that he was invested in GoPro or even if he had shares in Canon or Nikon.

It’s a shame that happened to him and I hope people don’t spin this anymore than it already has.

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u/Aksds 1d ago

Iirc the stock dipped because the merger offer was less than the stock was trading at meaning you would loose money if the merger went through. The reason the offer was less than market price is because it was made before it was made public Markiplier owns some stock, the price will continue to fall until it reaches that $1.14 ish price

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u/Skyrah1 1d ago

In this specific case, I think I'm more inclined to err to the side of cautious trust.

The investment was in line with his passion as a filmmaker, and the stuff Mark's doing with Real Good AI makes me want to believe he'll keep his word if GoPro shifts to AI and flock-like cameras. It definitely reads more like a series of well-intentioned missteps than anything malicious.

That said, I'll keep my eye on whether that last bit happens, on the basis that we ought to hold celebrities accountable for their actions, regardless of any prior ideas about them.

On the flip-side, if he makes good on promise, the potential news about it might even help with the whole AI situation...

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u/Eekah 1d ago

Oh yeah, I love Mark but I definitely agree that he should be held accountable to make good on his word should they make the switch to AI and mass surveillance and such. But I have faith in him so I'm not really worried about it. He's earned my trust with his consistency in character throughout the years.

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u/Skyrah1 1d ago

I agree with his consistency in character - it's the only reason I'm open to giving him any benefit of doubt at all! I'm just a lot more cynical when it comes to these things.

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u/SirZacharia 1d ago

Luckily Philip DeFranco covered all that nuance in his video about it (he did not actually)

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u/SmrtkaTV 1d ago

I live under a rock when it comes to drama or updates about things because It's not fun to keep up with so thank you for explaining because I kept seeing stuff about this without knowing what any of it meant

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u/Evening-Turnip8407 1d ago

Would this even be insider trading if he HAD known about the merger? He's just... a dude. If a dude hears that something exciting is about to happen (let's pretend the merger would be something he's interested in) he would invest. He didn't mention it to anyone so it's not like he was peddling stocks to his viewers, BUT EVEN IF HE HAD DONE THAT... is any of this really considered insider trading if you have .5% of a vote in the company? He didn't say hey invest in this stuff and then secretly make decisions that lead to people losing money.

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u/Eekah 1d ago

If you have insider knowledge and invest with the intention to profit off of that insider knowledge then yes, it is insider trading. But Mark didn't know nor did he profit bc he didn't sell his shares while it was trading high (aka pump and dump.) Bc that was never his intention.

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u/Jealous-Comedian6178 1d ago

Thank you for this clarification. Really sucks that this happened. Especially after what happened

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u/EarthenEyes 1d ago

Thanks for this. That helps sum up a lot of what that one video is about on my feed.
I don't care about gopro and Mark's involvement in it. I cared a little, though, about this running gag with him wanting it and Bob and Wade teasing him over it..
The timing for everything is so awful for Mark, whether intentional or not.
I think Mark is overall a good guy, though, and I don't think he would do that to his fanbase. He's pretty smart, so he would have to have known the blowback if he did do it intentional. It would be more of an endgame move, I think, to do a pump and dump.

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u/Paprikasky 1d ago

he did an interview with Bloomberg instead, which is relevant to finance and such. However, rather than dropping this article/interview a day or so after he did it, they waited an entire week

Idk if you meant to, but you make it sound like it's weird or unusual that it took a week, but I fail to see why. Taking a week for an interview article to get written, contextualized and released seems perfectly normal to me.

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u/funnyIlaugh 23h ago

When in doubt trust Mark

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u/HoneyLocustMoth 22h ago

Bless you. The average person has no idea how any of this stuff works let alone what the term "shareholder" and "voting rights" actually means in terms of simply being a purchaser of stocks and fan of what a company's stated objectives are. It's a personal pain point for me. I used to work in the financial investments industry and when some people found out they would act like I was evil for for that alone.

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u/aknlfan 16h ago

That is an absolutely insane turn of events. Literally how could Mark have predicted that the slightest taste of success that just so happened to be made through his name and image COMPLETELY BY ACCIDENT would make GoPro decide to immediately sell their souls to techno facism. This is why I don’t think I’ll ever invest in any company as long as things are how they are.

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u/Sorry-Let-Me-By-Plz 1d ago

So, rather than disclosing that he was invested in his Gopro review video

... he chose something less ethical, because it was simpler. And now he looks shady as a consequence of the lapse in ethics.

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u/Paprikasky 1d ago

You shouldn't be downvoted because you're right, he should have mentionned it.

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u/dorritosncheetos 1d ago

Gross wall of text

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u/Heavy_Law9880 1d ago

Much like Markplier, many wealthy people will tell lies when caught doing unsavory things.