Jay Ethier told his viewers that his girlfriend had been killed by a drunk driver. Ethier is best known as “ImJayStation” on YouTube, with more than 5 million subscribers. After posting a video announcing his girlfriend’s death, Ethier proceeded to post videos about his “dead girlfriend”. In one video, he tried summoning his deceased girlfriend, Alexia Marano with a Ouija board. However, Marano isn’t dead at all; it was just a ruse to lure in more subscribers, as The Washington Post detailed:
“We thought of the idea — actually I thought about the idea — what if we fake your death and then do a skit on YouTube pranking everybody, saying it was just to gain traction on the Dream Team channel,” Ethier, 29, said after deleting the hoax videos. “First we were going to say she died, then we were going to do a Ouija board video, which I did, then we were going to call her at 3 a.m. and we were going to resurrect her. And get more followers on our Dream Team channel.”
Marano surfaced on Tuesday with a video of her own, “ALEXIA IS ALIVE (truth about ImJaystation).” In it, she alleged that Ethier controlled and isolated her and that she went along with the fake death only out of fear.
“I felt sick to my stomach from the minute he posted it,” she said. “I did not want to play with anybody’s emotions. I don’t think it’s a cool stunt to do.”
“We were going to resurrect her in a coffin, I was going to raise her from the dead. That was going to be the last video, and that was the first video that we actually filmed,” Ethier said. “We went and bought a freaking coffin, guys! This is the coffin we bought for that video.”
He asserted that Marano was plotting to steal his YouTube following and that there is “no chance of us ever getting back together, ever.”
The video ended, like so many others, with an appeal to his fans.
“The good thing about this is that a fake person is out of my life, and now I can finally focus on this channel, the channel that you guys love, and keep making banger videos,” he said. “Thank you guys, so much, for all the love.”
image screenshot via Pop Crave