There have been many YouTuber scandals going on recently, Logan Paul kicking off the New Year by glamorising suicide, Oli White (and others) continuously exploiting their teenage fans with rubbish and overpriced merch, and most recently, Alfie Deyes waving his privilege right in front of our noses as he attempts to only spend £1 on food and drink in a day.
Let's address this video of yours first, Alfie, shall we, before we get into the real meanings of this blog post? You may have uploaded the video as a 'harmless joke' and 'unintended to cause offence' but here's the thing, Alf - just because you didn't mean to offend anyone doesn't mean it's not offensive. The video was made in poor taste and to wave off living on £1 in a day as a 'joke' makes light of poverty and homelessness and the fact that some people in our country do actually face that struggle every day and they definitely don't live in a £1.7 million mansion in Brighton. Saying it's going to be 'difficult' because you live in a rich area? Going to town and buying the most pointless items just because you can? Do you need another way to point out just how wealthy you are for basically having what's a pretty easy career compared to some of the jobs people do? Basically, Alfie, no, you don't. I'm not in any way saying that the video was intended to be distasteful, I just think Alfie is extremely naive and immature for thinking a video like that was appropriate. Although not as bad as what Logan Paul did, it's the same sort of thing - no one points out to these people that what they're doing could be construed as offensive and wrong.
And this is the big problem you have with 'big' YouTubers and to a certain extent 'big' bloggers today. No one calls them out because they are big. And why the hell is that? No one is too big and important to accept that they've done something wrong. These people have huge amounts of privilege - sure, they've worked incredibly hard building a career out of doing what they do, but it gets to ridiculous points where stupid, poor taste and gimmicky videos are made just so they can stay relevant. What people don't seem to understand is that they are not invincible, they cannot do whatever they want because they have a big online following. When you have a platform, you have to be extremely careful about what you say and how you say things, and while of course, there are people who are going to be offended by anything, there are certain things that we should never ever consider making a joke out of - one of them being suicide, one of them being homelessness and one of them being cancer and other life-threatening diseases (a bit of a drama I was involved in a while ago on Twitter). It's an increasing problem that people just don't think before they post and a lot of the time that's because they've never been affected by the issues that are brought up in the content so are simply immune to feeling any sort of offence by it. But, when you have as big a following as Logan Paul or Alfie Deyes, there are certain things you have a responsibility for and one of them is making sure you are tasteful and respectful at all times. I'm not saying they all absolutely have to use their privilege for good, but imagine what they could do if they did? That amount of money and the celebrity they have could be used for so much - Alfie could have donated a significant amount of money to a homeless charity and used that video to raise awareness of the plight of homeless people but no, he chose not to because he's blind to their struggles.
And it makes me wonder - are people like this killing their platform and their career? Unfortunately for me, the answer is a resounding yes. I haven't uploaded on YouTube for a long time because I'm just so incredibly disheartened by the whole thing. Smaller creators who put serious effort and work into their videos and maintain their integrity the whole time have no chance to grow on YouTube because it's just not in our favour. It puts young creatives like myself and others I know from Twitter off creating and that just shouldn't be the case - no one should feel like they shouldn't create. But, if the only way to grow is to compromise our integrity and do stupid, naive, insensitive things for views, then why would we? And this is exactly the reason we get laughed down when we say we create on YouTube, because no one appreciates the creativity behind it anymore - they see the ridiculous gimmicky videos that people make and YouTubers are shot down as not having a real career, and that's exactly why YouTube is becoming less and less popular. There's deeper debates we could go into here but I think this post is a bit too long anyway so I might just leave it here! As always, stay kind and respectful in the comments. My space on the internet will always stay that way, even if others don't.
What do you think about YouTubers killing their own platform?
Em xx
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