Do we like Cyprien?
Our score: 7 out of 10. A decent record and one old, apologised-for stumble, but the record we could find is thin.
Cyprien is one of the originals of French YouTube. By early 2017 he was nearly ten years into making videos online and had passed 10 million subscribers. He said he never imagined it would become his daily life, and to mark the milestone he went and met fans in Brussels, Casablanca, Geneva, La Réunion and Montreal.
His own account of his career is refreshingly low-key. In a 2022 interview he said YouTube is where he feels most naturally at ease, but that fiction doesn't do well there. He said he was making far fewer fiction pieces on the channel as a result, and that he found TikTok too passive for his taste.
The one real stain is from November 2014. A video about his Romanian roots included a joke that a reader flagged as lumping Roms together and stigmatising them. Asked about it, he said he regretted the line, called it clumsy and said he hadn't meant it. He said he'd address it in his next video, but argued deleting the video wouldn't help because others would re-upload it.
The harm check comes up thin, and we'll say so. We found no comments from him on LGBTQ+ or trans people, climate or vaccines, and no run of projects with anyone pushing harm. What we did find is him speaking up in 2018, when other YouTubers were accused of preying on young fans. He wrote that a few YouTubers abuse their followers and tarnish everyone, and asked not to be lumped in with them.
In 2021 he told Le Parisien he'd heard hallway rumours at YouTuber conventions but hadn't known who was involved. He said he thought such abuse was likely in YouTube as in film and music, and that it was good it was raised so fans could be careful. The article notes he has never been accused of anything himself.
So where does that leave us? A long-running creator with one old joke he regretted, a clean-looking record since, and some modest good. It's a pass on being a decent human, and an asterisk on harm for the Roms joke. We'd hold off on any higher score until there's more on the record about where he stands on the big issues.