The Disappearance of John Davis
Hello all,
If you're involved in the knife community on YouTube dating back about 3 years or so, you may be familiar with John Davis. Davis, who went by jdavis882 for most of his YouTube career, was a respected resource in the community regarding knife sharpening, maintenance, testing, and collecting. Another respected, (still active) member of the online knife community, The Apostle P, described him as "an asset to our community."
Mystery now surrounds Davis as, after switching to knife making, he allegedly asked his subscribers to make PayPal donations to him to support his knife making. Later, he subsequently ripped off dozens of people over his fraudulent knife making, never holding his end of the deal; with the exception of only a few, the buyers never received their knives.
The conflict arose shortly after Davis stopped activity on his main channel, switching over to knife making instead of reviewing, etc. The second channel, known as Davis Blade Works, was far less active as the majority of his subscriber base weren't interested in his knife making, but his extensive knowledge about knives and the instructional videos he used to make. As the scandal described above unfolded, activity on his second channel halted without warning. Nobody knew what happened to him until people spoke out against his fraudulent knife business, and the the community began to put the pieces of the puzzle together. I even heard he was sent to prison over this, but I have no validation of that claim.
I'm mostly making this post to help inform those who were as confused as I was, and to compile all of the information I have found into one place.
The worst part of this all was that Davis' activity on YouTube later resumed under the name ATL Infidel, primarily focused on firearm shooting. I've seen claims to ATL Infidel actively deleting any comments pertaining to his previous activities, or the fraudulent knife scandal. It doesn't seem that it is widely recognized that the same person's activity shifted and changed name, or even that it is the same person.
I've done some amateur detective work and I made an album showing ATL Infidel's face and jdavis882's face. Look specifically at images 2 and 4 to see the resemblance. I do believe the claims are true, and that they are one and the same. Ironically, the last image in the album is captured from a video in which he talks about his past, including the lessons from his father about keeping your word, and how important that is to him.
One can hope that Davis will return to our community, and resume sharing his extensive knowledge about it. Ideally he would contact those he ripped off, get them their knives, and clear his name, but that's rather unlikely.
To reiterate, I made this post to centralize this situation, to inform those wondering about the disappearance of jdavis882, and to bring light to an unfortunate situation within our humble community. If there is a more appropriate place to post this, please kindly direct me there.
Relevant links:
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The Apostle P: Older guy sharing his knowledge of knives, reviewing them, being a cool dude. I don't necessarily like the religious elements shoehorned into his otherwise helpful videos, but whatever. I've found him to be a similar source to jdavis882 pertaining to our hobby with regards to reliability and format.
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"Who is jdavis882?": The video I mentioned earlier, and from which the last screenshot in the linked album was taken. He talks about his life story, how he got into the hobby, and why he does what he does.
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"Jdavis882, What Happend?": Another dude on YouTube spoke out regarding this issue, you can watch this video to see where I got some of my information.
"Neither I, nor anyone else I know, has a clue where John disappeared to. Pretty sad, really. He was an asset to our community." - TheApostleP
That's all I got for now. I'll add more / edit as I see fit. Thank you for reading.
Posted Feb 22, 2016, 5:58 AM UTC · edited