WatchMojo made a video called “Ten YouTubers Who Made Videos When They Knew They Were Dying.” They monetized it. Then, in the middle of covering the deaths of TotalBiscuit and Technoblade, they cut to a promotional segment for their new AI music channel, Sound Mojo.
That is not a misread. That is the sequence of events.
What WatchMojo Actually Did
The video itself, which was a monetized listicle covering creators who kept posting through terminal illness, was already drawing criticism before the Sound Mojo clip surfaced. WatchMojo, founded in 2006, has nearly 26 million subscribers and built its entire brand on exactly this format: take a topic with high search volume, rank it, collect the ad revenue. Applying that template to the final months of people’s lives is a creative choice the channel made without apparent hesitation.
Then came the mid-video plug. According to footage captured by Jack Douglas (JacksFilms), a YouTube creator who has been active since the platform’s early years, WatchMojo inserted a promotional clip for Sound Mojo, their new music venture, while the video was actively discussing TotalBiscuit’s death. The clip featured what viewers immediately identified as an AI-generated rock cover of a classical piece. No AI disclosure appeared anywhere in the video.
TotalBiscuit’s Wife Responded Publicly
Genna Bain, widow of John “TotalBiscuit” Bain, the British gaming critic who died of bowel cancer in 2018 at 33 after documenting his illness publicly on YouTube, posted a direct response. She described having her late husband mentioned in a “monetized lazy listicle” as tasteless, and called the Sound Mojo plug inside it “unforgivable.” She added that WatchMojo “knew exactly what they were doing” and said she had been “sick to my stomach” since seeing it.
That statement landed. It is one thing for anonymous commenters to criticize a channel’s editorial choices. It is another thing entirely for the spouse of the person being featured to say the word “unforgivable” on the record.
The AI Disclosure Problem
Beyond the context of the video, the Sound Mojo clip had a separate issue: it did not disclose that the music was AI-generated. YouTube’s own creator guidelines require disclosure of AI-generated content in certain contexts. JacksFilms pointed this out, and the credits on the Sound Mojo release confirmed the problem, as the listed credits included the CEO for “lyrics, concept and direction,” plus two others for “sound architecture, music orchestration and video.” No vocalist credit appears anywhere.
WatchMojo CEO Ashkan Karbasfrooshan had previously published a blog post explaining the Sound Mojo project in April 2026. In it, he described initial resistance to using AI tools, then acknowledgment that AI “could serve as a powerful tool for producing demos.” He compared the move to the introduction of electric guitars and synthesizers. The Sound Mojo account on YouTube had, in the weeks before this incident, been actively engaging in comment disputes with viewers calling the music AI-generated, at one point telling a commenter that anyone who couldn’t appreciate the work “lacks taste.”
WatchMojo’s Response and What It Changed
WatchMojo edited the video and description to remove the Sound Mojo plug. They published a comment acknowledging “unintended and accidental insensitivity” and announced that 100% of the video’s proceeds would go to their charitable initiative, Mojo Gives, which donates to causes including colon cancer research.
The comments section did not respond warmly. New comments posted after the edit continued to criticize the video’s existence rather than its Sound Mojo insertion. The charitable donation announcement, which under different circumstances might have functioned as a genuine gesture, arrived in a context where the audience had already decided the video should not have been made at all.
JacksFilms also flagged a pattern worth noting: the tone and phrasing in Sound Mojo’s comment-section arguments closely resembled previous public posts attributed to Karbasfrooshan. This includes a now-notorious comment WatchMojo left on a small creator’s video titled “WatchMojo’s Downfall Should Be Celebrated” in May 2026, where the account showed up to dispute the video’s premise despite claiming not to have watched it. Whether the CEO is personally authoring those comments remains speculation. The writing style is not.
What This Actually Reveals About WatchMojo in 2026
The Sound Mojo situation did not happen in isolation. In May 2026, YouTuber Voyan posted a nearly 30-minute critique of WatchMojo’s decline. The channel’s response, a pinned comment that opened with a typo (“The day no one talks you is the day you are irrelevant”) and proceeded through a bullet-pointed defense of their legacy, became its own viral moment. The dead YouTubers controversy arrived weeks later, adding a second data point to the same story.
WatchMojo’s core problem is not AI music. It’s that a channel which defined a format in the 2010s is now applying that same format to subjects that require judgment rather than optimization. Ranking the ten best superhero movies requires no particular sensitivity. Ranking people’s deaths and then using those deaths to market a product is a different category of decision, and the backlash reflects that the audience understands the distinction even if the algorithm does not.
Sources
- YouTube: WatchMojo Channel & JacksFilms Commentary
- Medium / LinkedIn: Sound Mojo Announcement by Ashkan Karbasfrooshan
- Twitter / X: Genna Bain (@GennaBain) Public Response
About the Author
Your 36-year-old older sister who has been watching YouTube since before it had ads and now treats every platform controversy as a personal affront requiring a full written brief.
