This week, I have been buried under a series of story tips and reporting leads that I’m excited about, that I think are important, and that I am anxious to get into the world. But I woke up today and realized that I could simply no longer ignore a simmering drama that has been on my radar for weeks that is now breaking containment and demands attention: The YouTube LEGO drama, aka Bricks & Minifigs scandal.
It is, unfortunately, impossible to succinctly or fully explain the YouTube LEGO drama, for I believe it is impossible for one to fully understand or suss out every angle of what is going on. The drama is buried in dozens of YouTube videos—many of which are hours long—police reports, local news reports, police body camera footage (!), cease and desist letters, hostage-style vertical video statements, and more. But it is important that you are at the very least aware of it, and that you know it is occurring, because it is fucking crazy.
One of the things we aspire to do at 404 Media is to amplify the most important stories in individual communities to a wider audience, and this is one such case, which touches on so many things we are at least kind of interested in, is tearing apart the LEGO community, is one of the most popular things happening on YouTube right now, and appears to have become the most important local news story in a small town in Utah called American Fork.
I am not the only one who feels this way. TechDirt’s Mike Masnick, in a post titled “Everyone in This LEGO Dispute Should Have Spoken to a Lawyer Earlier Than They Did,” describes it thusly: “If you haven’t been following the Bricks & Minifigs saga, congratulations on your peaceful existence. It’s a genuinely difficult story to track, partly because you have to watch a bunch of long YouTube videos to piece it together, and partly because almost everyone covering it is pushing a specific angle.”
I could not agree with Masnick more, and if you do not like my writing and want a more detailed legal analysis, then his 6,000-word blog is a good place to go. The drama has spawned its own Wikipedia page called “Bricks & Minifigs—Reckless Ben Controversy,” various Reddit Out of the Loop posts and a “megathread” about the saga on the LEGO subreddit, and local coverage including “Utah agencies inundated with calls as American Fork Police faces controversy over LEGO YouTuber arrest,” which are also good places to track what’s going on.