Carl Herold was something of a prolific YouTuber. His YouTube channel has almost 20,000 subscribers, totalling nearly 4 million views. This is what his YouTube description says about him:
“My name is Carl Herold and I am a professional programmer and online business expert with over 10 years of experience. I offer a variety of free video lessons on programming as well as run the website www.computerscienceforeveryone.com which is designed to make learning programming easily accessible to anyone who wishes to learn. You can also find me on Reddit”
The site, “Computer Science for Everyone” had a noble goal. It was meant to teach programming lessons to anyone who had the patience to sit through the videos he created. Later, he even hosted users one-on-one, answering their questions and live-streaming the whole experience so others could learn by watching. The website is long gone by now, but thanks to the internet archive and google caches, you can still peruse the site and learn some programming.
He discusses himself and his experience at length on the site, going into things like what programming languages to learn and why, and pat himself on the back for the things he’d accomplished in his career.
Now, I’m a web developer myself, so sites like the one Carl set up are not rare these days. You can watch tutorial videos all over the place, on YouTube or sites like Codecademy. His site and tutorials were thorough and helpful, and his site hosted a forum where you could get help from Carl or other programmers if you got stuck. He set up the site in 2012, and back then, there were fewer resources for learning programming on the internet, especially for free.
He also set up a subreddit under r/carlhprogramming. For years, he’d dutifully answer programming questions and help users through 1-on-1 sessions. He did ask for donations through his website, and charged people for 1-1 training sessions, but otherwise this seemed like mostly a labor of love for him. He was a good programmer and loved programming, and wanted to spread that love across the internet.
He was even awarded Redditor of the Day for July 26th, 2012, which honestly I did not even know was a thing until researching Carl. The thread set up for the award kind of morphed into it’s own AMA, where Carl answered most any question that was posed to him.
When asked if he could change one thing in history, Carl answered Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, “I think that if that had not happened, then perhaps World War 1 and perhaps World War 2 wouldn't have happened, and so on. Of course, butterfly effects are difficult if not impossible to predict, so who knows if the end result would be better or worse.”
On a question about an embarrassing thing that happened to him, Carl replied, “Most embarrassing thing? That would probably be when I showed up to the house of a girl I liked who was having a birthday party, and I had gotten my first pimple! It was huge, and I didn't even know I had it until I had gone to the bathroom and I saw myself in the mirror! Ouch.”
When asked about his idea of happiness, he replied, “Obviously spending time with family and friends is top of the list. Another source of fulfillment is to be able to create something useful to others, and knowing that I have had a positive impact on the lives of others.”
So that’s a little bit about Carl. And you may be asking yourself, why is this guy an Internet Freakshow? He seems just like many other random computer web nerds out there. I mean, in a way, he even seems like me. I’m a developer, and for a time I worked for a company that offered 1-on-1 courses in teaching students how to be developers.
Well, Carl’s other life was put on display for the world in late 2013, when he was arrested in Alabama for one of the worst crimes you can imagine.
He was charged with sodomy, sexual abuse, aggravated child abuse, child pornography production, distributing child pornography and with allowing his child to be depicted in pornography.
Yes, you heard that right. He allowed his 8-year-old son to be depicted in these videos for distribution. And I guess “Allowed” is probably too friendly a word. “Forced” is probably much more accurate. This same guy who said spending time with family is what brought him happiness… well… I guess his version of happiness is not the same as mine.
District Attorney Gabrielle Helix said at a bond hearing that "They held the child captive for eight months and there are no standards, taboos or lines this defendant and his co-defendant hesitated to cross."
He committed these crimes with another man named Charles Dunnavant. They allegedly produced child pornography using Carl’s son and spread the results across the internet as part of a child sex pornography ring.
Carl was found dead in his cell while awaiting trial on November 3, 2014, the victim of an apparent suicide. I think the Reddit comment by user thesoylentmajority, summed it up nicely when he said, “Burn in hell, shitbag. Thanks for the tips on C++.”
His partner in crime, Charles Dunnavant, 29, pled guilty in federal court to crossing a state line with the intent to engage in a sexual act with a minor. On November 2, 2015, he was sentenced to 36 years in prison.
If I can get a little deep Carl and his legacy, I think the most interesting part of him is how different his 2 lives were. Throughout his video tutorials, his live-streams and his Reddit comments, he was a thoughtful, helpful and friendly programmer. In all his posts I read, I never saw him speak ill of anyone else, never insult. He answered most all questions posed to him, thoroughly and helpfully and by any measure was a respected member of the community on Reddit and YouTube and the other sites he frequented. But when he turned his computer off, he changed into a monster. One of the worst human beings, doing some of the worst things human beings are capable of doing. What can create this sort of dichotomy in him? His videos are still available online, and users are still watching them and learning about programming in the communities that he had set up. Are these communities and videos tainted forever by the actions of the presenter, or should we simply ignore the man’s personal life and get some use out of the life that he wasted? The community around him is torn, with some people saying that, despite his crimes, he was still a good teacher and produced amazing learning material. Others say that his crimes cannot be overlooked, and although the material is good and free, you should look elsewhere to learn programming. I’m not sure which side I agree with more, but I find the argument interesting.
His subreddit still has over 11,000 subscribers, although programming talk has taken a back seat to the more recent developments in Carl’s story. Some users still pop in for programming help, but their questions are rarely answered. Instead they inform the people new to programming and new Carl about his history. It’s no longer a subreddit for programming, but instead, a presentation of a gruesome life wasted. A grim reminder that who we pretend to be online isn’t always a representation of who we are in real life.
As a freaky follow up to this story, about 2 years after Carl’s suicide, his account was brought back from the dead. He posted a comment that said, “As I posted a thread on 4chan, you can read upon it. Yes, this is Carl Herold, I escaped and currently am in Russia, going to submit an AmA today for proof. I infact did fake my suicide.” When Reddit users asked for more details and pressed a little, he replied again with, “I escaped from a morgue.”
This was obviously a guy who had hacked into his reddit account, but I find it a fitting end to the legend of Carl Herold. His legacy was born online, and it died in a jail cell, only to be temporarily reborn online.
So burn in hell, shitbag. But thanks for the tips on C++.