YouTuber announces euthanasia plans but reconsiders after fan pushback

GLOUCESTER, Massachusetts (LifeSiteNews) — Popular YouTuber Max “hotdiggedydemon” Gilardi has agreed to reconsider his plans to commit assisted suicide after an outpouring of feedback from shocked and worried supporters at his announcement.

Dexerto reports that Gilardi, a 38-year-old animator with over 2.1 million YouTube subscribers, first revealed in 2024 his struggles with fibromyalgia. During his August 1, 2026 livestream, he announced that he had decided to seek out “doctor-assisted euthanasia” in the next year or two due to fatigue, pain, sleeping problems, cognitive fog, and more, combined with mounting medical bills and lack of conclusive medical tests. 

He explained that he was looking into traveling to Switzerland to end his life, while admitting that he was unsure of the accuracy of the information he had found online. Switzerland allows physician-assisted suicide as long as the “patient” is ultimately the one to commit the lethal act (i.e., ingesting a lethal drug) himself. The country’s lax euthanasia regime has made it an international destination for the grim practice, as well as the place of origin and prospective testing ground of gruesome “innovations” such as the AI-assisted “suicide pods.”

Gilardi’s announcement received numerous pleas not to go through with it, and on August 2 he posted on X, “okay fine haha jk just kidding!! Nevermind!! Jk just kidding jk jk!!” followed by “Decided I’m not thinking clearly, will reassess.” While the update does not rule out suicide, meaning that continued engagement and support will likely be necessary, it offers hope that the YouTuber may still ultimately chose life and serves as a testament to the difference that can be made by people reaching out to those considering euthanasia.

In America, physician-assisted suicide is currently legal in 14 states plus the District of Columbia, with legalization measures pending in a dozen more.

As Patients Rights Action Fund (PRAF) executive director Matt Vallière has argued, current euthanasia programs in the United States constitute discrimination against patients with life-threatening conditions in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, as when a state will “will pay for every instance of assisted suicide” but not palliative care, “I don’t call that autonomy, I call that eugenics.”

Live Action’s Bridget Sielicki further notes that “because a paralytic is involved, a person can look peaceful, while they actually drown to death in their own bodily secretions. Experimental assisted suicide drugs have led to the ‘burning of patients’ mouths and throats, causing some to scream in pain.’ Furthermore, a study in the medical journal Anaesthesia found that a third of patients took up to 30 hours to die after ingesting assisted suicide drugs, while four percent took seven days to die.”