The ACE Family

Austin McKinley McBroom (born: May 20, 1992 [age 28]), Dolores Catherine Johnston McBroom (née Paiz; born: August 24, 1990 [age 30]), Elle Lively McBroom (born: May 28, 2016 [age 4]), Alaia Marie McBroom (born: October 17, 2018 [age 2]) & Steel McBroom (born: 20 June 2020 [age 8 months]), better known online collectively as The ACE Family, are an American YouTube family from Los Angeles, California. They upload videos of challenges, family life, pranks, and vlogs. Their YouTube channel is the 243rd most subscribed channel on YouTube.[1] They also became one of the most financially successful YouTubers of all time. Catherine revealed in 2020 that they had married privately.

Having set up their YouTube channel in 2016, Austin McBroom and Catherine Paiz became very well-known for the pranks that they would play on each other. They took part in challenges and began blogging day to day life. The family mainly use humor to entertain their viewers and over time, they became very successful, earning more than 5 million dollars per year.

In June 2018, they held a charity basketball event and announced they would donate $100,000 towards their charity of choice and any further money the event made. The event was a sell-out and included a performance from Glenn Travis. When the ACE Family only donated $75,000 and gave no explanation for why, it caused controversy for fans who deduced they made a higher amount than that, but never went through with their promise to donate every piece of money made. However, other fans have theorized that the other money might have gone towards payment for the event.

Throughout July and August 2018, many tweets posted by Austin were found, which were considered racist and/or sexist. Most of these tweets were posted between 2011 and 2013 and were called out for being offensive particularly to black people, Asian people, and women in general. Many of the tweets had not been taken down until discovery and the ACE Family has since deleted the thread. 

In August 2018, the ACE Family announced both on social media and in a vlog that their house was robbed when they spent the day at Disneyland. However, people thought that the behavior of the police was wrong (e.g. fooling around on camera) and the way they let Austin behave, among other things, contributing to a second controversy that they had faked the robbery. Another video from Austin on Instagram upset people further, and the ACE Family denied they faked anything, and a document filed by the police was found and the burglary was proved to have happened.

In mid-2018, the ACE Family App was released and hype was built upon their main YouTube regarding the exclusive videos available to what Austin described as "real ACE family members". In October, however, it was revealed via Twitter that only those who paid a monthly subscription fee would get to view those videos. It was also pointed out about this time that many who had ordered items from the app had been charged, but had to wait months for their arrival or had not received them at all. When merchandise ran out on the channel, it was not replenished and subscribers continued to be charged resulting in many calling the app a scam. In 2019, they announced they were taking a break from YouTube to focus on their.

In January 2019, Austin was accused of inappropriate behavior when he posted a video on Instagram of himself taking a young girl (who is not one of his children) into an alleged adult shop and buying her a phallic (the third leg) shaped lollipop. Shortly after, he deactivated his Instagram account before reactivating it a few days later with the video removed. “Guys, I’m in so much trouble,” says Austin McBroom in the video. “But she said she was gonna steal it if I didn’t buy it, so…” The child with him is not his own toddler Elle, but appears to be related to his partner, Catherine Paiz, as per BuzzFeed News. The Twitter user who found the footage, @bangtansdurag, alleges Paiz was at the store as well, though she’s not seen in the portion of the video that was uploaded to Twitter. A number of users have responded with concern for the toddler, saying what Austin did constitutes sexualizing a child.