Ray William Johnson (born: August 14, 1981 [age 39]), formerly Fat Damon, is an American YouTuber, actor and comedian. He became famous through his YouTube show, Equals Three, in which he provided humorous commentary on viral videos. Although his content was dark and crude at times, he managed to gather fans from all over the world ranging in various ages.
Johnson's webshow, Equals Three, led his channel to becoming the most-subscribed on YouTube from June 25, 2011 to January 12, 2013, even it would eventually be surpassed by Smosh. The show included a wide range of celebrity guests, including Gabriel Iglesias, Snoop Dogg and Robin Williams. Due to the show praise all over social media, both positive and negative, it led to Johnson meeting up with other famous YouTubers, including his past rival Smosh.
By early 2012, Johnson was a YouTube millionaire, becoming the first YouTuber to gain a net worth of $USD million.
Though the channel had the biggest and, at one point, the fastest growing following, the show faced criticism from the YouTube community, with some finding it immature, lowbrow, and offensive, and with others claiming that Johnson did not deserve the fame. Some also said that Johnson's style of commenting on viral videos was not only unoriginal, but also lazy and ripe with copyright infringement.
Many would argue that the downfall of his channel began in November 2012 when Maker Studios, his YouTube partner at the time, wanted a higher revenue cut from his Equals Three show. When Johnson refused, his contract was canceled, along with the latest album of an animated musical comedy group he led called Yourfavoritemartian. The channel, at one point, was both the most-subscribed and most viewed music channel on YouTube, which was the same for the Equals Three channel which gained over 10 million subscribers by August 2013 and 3 billion video views by early 2017, hitting one billion views in late 2011. The music channel was as well shut down by Maker Studios, which it gained over 1.2 million dollars worth of sales without any promotion or record label.
The channel, now independent, was run by only Johnson and his crew, later named "Equal Three Studios". The channel was losing popularity, gaining only 1-2 million views per video, when previous videos averaged around 5 million views. Also, due to new changes to the platform, including algorithm changes and the addition of the Trending page, by late 2013, his channel lost its spot within the 10 most-subscribed channels on YouTube.
BreakingNYC, his old vlog channel, was his very first YouTube channel; RunawayPlanet. The channel is no longer active, and Johnson has since deleted all of the videos on it, but still currently posts his Instagram stories to his YouTube channel and is active on Facebook, while also doing stand up comedy show tours.
