KSI claims DanTDM beef was staged to drive interest in Lunchly and Thick of It

KSI has spoken out about his feud with DanTDM along with his reaction to his new song 'Thick Of It' being memed online - and apparently, all is not what it seems...

The 31-year-old content creator and professional boxer was not happy with fellow YouTuber DanTDM (Daniel Middleton) who criticized KSI (Olajide Olatunji), MrBeast (Jimmy Donaldson), and Logan Paul for promoting junk food to children with the launch of their new pre-packaged meal, “Lunchly".

During this time, KSI also dropped a new song called 'Thick Of It' which has received meme treatment on social media, including from celebrities such as Drake and Connor McGregor and streamer iShowSpeed.

(And the track currently sits at number 64 on the Billboard Hot 100...)

Following the online reaction to the song, KSI hit back at the criticism on his Instagram story on October 7 where he claimed it's "trendy to hate him".

"Imagine spending so much time and effort into making a song for people to then repeatedly take the p*** out of it online. I get it's trendy to hate me rn, but can we like move on?" he posted.

But in a recent appearance on Logan Paul's Impaulsive podcast, KSI has claimed his reactions to these two things were all just one big ploy to publicise Lunchly and his new song.

“Because I had a single coming out I was like ‘Oh my god. I can just use this as a way to market my song’,” KSI explained to his Lunchly partner Logan Paul. “I can use all this hate, all this attention, and just drive it to people going to my song.”

“You can’t fight and beat the internet but you can try and play the internet in a way to work in your favor, so that’s kind of just what I did," and noted how his reaction only further spurred reactions and memes from people online.

KSI also believes DanTDM’s post on X, formerly Twitter, about Lunchly only drew more attention and awareness to the brand.

In his tweet, DanTDM said" "What happened to YouTubers man.. I can't not say anything anymore. This is selling stuff for the sake of making money, simple. How does this benefit their fans? This is selling crap to kids who don't know better than to trust the people who are selling it to them. Do better."

To which KSI added on the podcast: “I’m so glad he tweeted because he just made this thing way bigger than it ever would have been."

However, some viewers aren't convinced that KSI's reaction was all part of a wider marketing strategy.

One person said: "I don't believe he was pretending to be mad. I know a meltdown when I see one."

"KSI trying to act like he really wasn't mad his song was a meme lol," another person wrote.

Someone else added: "Ksi was definitely p***ed about how people were reacting to the song, he was crashing out on Adin’s stream about it. I think this is him coping, pretending like it was all an act all along."

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