YouTube, perhaps the Internet’s first major, and undoubtedly largest, video-sharing platform, has been the home of a vast array of content in its more than 10 years of existence. But somewhere between the viral cat videos, the pop music, and the talk show hosts is an ever larger number of individuals who utilize the site for their own personal creative expression. Back in 2007, YouTube made moves to encourage and incentivize user-generated content by launching the YouTube Partners Program—a system that allows creators to monetize their videos and receive a portion of the ad-generated revenue.
With these changes, uploading to YouTube became a viable career path for the site’s most popular creators. And as content became more professional, cohesive, and diverse, YouTube also became steadily more mainstream, attracting more and more viewers to the site. By 2014, only five years after the platform’s first million-subscriber channel, nearly 800 channels had reached the same milestone—and a select few had reached even greater heights, surpassing 10 and sometimes 15 million subscribers. Today, over 2,000 channels boast audiences of over a million, and the most followed channel, PewDiePie—run, like the majority of YouTube channels, by an individual creator from the comfort of his home—has surpassed 40 million subscribers.
With audiences of this size, and a majority of those audiences falling into younger—teen and even preteen—demographics, it is clear that the YouTubers of today command enormous influence over significant numbers of young people. To overlook such influence is to turn a blind eye to a rapidly growing form of entertainment that, by the estimation of many, is quickly replacing traditional media in its appeal. Furthermore, to ignore the sway of YouTubers over their audiences is to permit an immensely complex dynamic of power to flourish without any critical scrutiny or oversight.
Especially in recent years, as the sizes of YouTube audiences have multiplied, the fascination and curiosity among fan communities about the personal lives of the figures they admire has grown astronomically. This admiration (even obsession) has transformed the role of many of YouTube’s most popular content creators from general entertainers to veritable celebrities. Impassioned fans swarm to see them at public appearances, like, retweet, and respond to their posts within seconds, and scramble to uncover the identities of their love interests, their addresses, and their current whereabouts. Although the transaction between YouTubers and their viewers can often be rewarding, this very same dynamic can quickly turn dangerous and even exploitative from both sides.
The complex relationship between content creators on YouTube and their viewership seems to encompass several delicate balancing acts, among them the tradeoff between creators’ right to privacy and fans’ right to express curiosity and intrigue about the lives of their favorite online celebrities. Another key dimension of this relationship is the potential for creators to utilize their public influence in either positive or exploitative ways.
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Internet fandom, in the many years it has existed and the countless manifestations it has taken, provides a number of positive benefits to those who partake in it. In 2016, the locus of fandom on the internet is Tumblr—a microblogging website on which users create carefully curated collections of photos, GIFs, text posts, videos, and the occasional piece of original content. While Tumblr itself has burgeoned into a complex and multivariate outlet for creativity, humor, social justice awareness, and general human awkwardness, one of its most significant functions is playing host to a range of fan communities. Fandom is such a huge part of Tumblr’s Internet niche that its staff runs a specific blog, aptly named “Fandometrics,” dedicated to Tumblr fandoms and their relative week-by-week strengths. Nearly every week for the last two years, the top two positions of the ‘web stuff’ fandom charts have been occupied by YouTubers Dan Howell and Phil Lester, known on the site by their user names danisnotonfire and AmazingPhil. The two are best friends and flatmates from England who create sketch comedy shorts, opinion videos, and vlogs about their lives together and their various self-described “nerdy” interests.
Dan and Phil’s fandom is numerically the strongest by Tumblr’s assessments, and their followers have even dubbed themselves “the Phandom,” a tongue-in-cheek portmanteau of the two creators’ names. Their followers admire and look up to the young men, 24 and 29 years old respectively, for their humor and the chemistry that they share. A sizable portion even enjoys speculating about the possibility of the duo being involved in a romantic relationship with one another. Last year, the pair received the honor of being the number one and two web celebrities on Tumblr from the website’s staff. Other YouTubers also regularly make appearances in the top 10 fandoms: among them are Troye Sivan, a blossoming musician; Connor Franta, a more traditional vlogger who speaks on a variety of subjects and founder and CEO of lifestyle brand Common Culture; and Tyler Oakley, a popular LGBTQ spokesperson, comedic vlogger, and recently the subject of his very own documentary film.
One of the most positive aspects of fandom surrounding these individuals stems from the fact that many fans feel that Internet celebrities represent their own personal identities. Sivan, Franta, and Oakley are all out members of the LGBTQ community and encourage fans to create safe spaces for themselves to talk about sexuality, gender, and other axes of identity in supportive and uplifting ways. Young people across the planet can come together in admiration of these individuals and in doing so find a community of people among whom their various identities are not only accepted, but celebrated.
Tyler Oakley at the 2014 VidCon in Anaheim. Photo Credit: Flickr/Gage Skidmore.
Moreover, fandom, especially on Tumblr, gives viewers an opportunity for unrestricted creative expression through writing and art. Fans can discuss aspects of their favorite creators’ latest video with other people who share in their appreciation. They can create art depicting a favorite moment from a video or photo that a creator posted to her Instagram. They can write about the inspiration they draw from these creators—in the case of Franta for example, they see a young man who grew up in the Midwest and spent much of his life in denial of his sexuality, but eventually gained the courage to accept himself and his identity in front of millions of people, move to Los Angeles, and pursue the career of artistic creation that he had always wanted.
But much of the writing and art produced by fans also involves speculation about the personal lives and relationships of the content creators. And the desire for greater queer representation among public figures has at times led fans to imagine or hope for same-sex relationships between individuals where none has ever been confirmed—Howell and Lester are a prime example. Of course, this phenomenon is neither new nor unique to YouTube celebrities. There is an entire tabloid industry dedicated to similar personal speculations with traditional film and music stars as the primary subjects.
But even while there is a substantial measure of acceptance around these practices—“shipping” (imaginary matchmaking), fan fiction, etc.—on the part of content creators (in Howell’s own words, he “[loves] the fan fiction”), others have had complicated relationships with diehard fans. Hank Green, one half of the popular vlogbrothers YouTube channel, addressed this issue in a post on his personal Tumblr. He asserted that the “shipping” of real people “bugs him … It requires a certain amount of objectification to get to a place where you (someone who does not know [these content creators]) are getting up in their junk about the decisions you think they should make in their personal lives.”
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Yet even while these fan practices can violate content creators’ privacy, there is also an arguably greater element of responsibility that must be shouldered by creators themselves. It is too easy for YouTubers in positions of power over audiences that are millions strong to unintentionally—or quite purposefully—exploit the trust and admiration of their viewers.
This culture of exploitation begins in quite simple and even relatively harmless ways. For example, YouTubers often utilize their own fan bases as marketers, incentivizing them to share their videos on social media in return for favorites, follows, likes, and retweets. Perhaps unwittingly, this establishes an immediate divide between fans and the creators they adore, underscoring the idea that even the most minimal amounts of notice from these creators, a measly favorited tweet or a blog follow on Tumblr, is worth something—and that such attention can only be attained in return for something else. This is perhaps a frivolous example, but it is an instantiation of the hierarchy between creators and fans, one that becomes the backdrop for several other layers of exploitation.
A further extension of this relationship, perhaps with somewhat more tangible consequences, is monetary exploitation. One example is a practice that is common practice for some YouTubers: hosting live-streamed shows on online platforms through which fans are able to enter comments and questions into a real-time chat that the broadcaster can then view and respond to.
It all seems quite simple and in keeping with the accessibility motif of YouTube stars, but in some ways this simple gesture can play into uneven power dynamics. On highly popular live streaming sites like YouNow, for example, fans can pay money to send the broadcaster premium messages and gifts and therefore readily gain the attention of the creator, rather than send a regular message that would get buried in a sea of thousands of comments. The issue with this dynamic arises with the fact that some of the money that fans pay in order to garner this extra attention goes directly into the pockets of their favorite celebrities. This is once again—and this time much more explicitly—placing a price on the most minimal level of attention that a YouTuber can afford a viewer. It not only leads to a monetary loss for fans, but it also reinforces the notion that the notice of a YouTube star is something to be passionately desired and, indeed, paid for.
But the exploitation does not always stop there. In the last three years alone there have been at least 30 cases of sexual assault, harassment, and rape at the hands of YouTubers, often targeting young viewers, some of them underage. These individuals, primarily male and all of them over the age of 18, often seem to abuse their roles as public figures. Perhaps most well documented was a video uploaded by a user called Sam Pepper who “pranked” women by inappropriately touching them on the street. After the video rightly left viewers disgusted and upset, other allegations of Pepper’s sexual harassment and assault of women came to light. In other cases, highly popular YouTubers were found soliciting nude photos and sexual favors from fans sometimes as young as 15.
Unlike the scrutiny and media maelstroms that surround sex scandals involving traditional celebrities, however, these scandals have caused only the tiniest ripples outside of the YouTube community. While many of the accused offenders have been effectively blackballed within online circles, there is little in the way of accountability and enforcement to ensure that such abuses of power do not continue or that those who have already been implicated in abusing fans do not have continued access to the avenues by which they were able to do so. These are, of course, problems that persist with rape culture and sexual assault nearly everywhere, but they are in some ways magnified by the unchecked culture of hyper-obsession and admiration that surrounds YouTube celebrities.
While many YouTube stars have used their platforms in resoundingly positive ways, championing social causes and charities, launching mental health awareness and anti-bullying campaigns, and promoting community service and cultural awareness, it is clear that the intoxicating power of public influence can easily become insidious and overtly destructive. In the same vein, the practices of fans can also very quickly and at times unintentionally cross the line from appreciative to invasive.
But while the relationship between YouTubers and their most ardent fans is one that is undeniably complicated and fraught, at the heart of the matter is an incredibly positive and groundbreaking way for any person to share their creativity with the world and find communities of people willing to engage with and celebrate it. Only with heightened awareness of the dangers of celebrity culture on the part of those within, and especially those outside of, the YouTube community, can an adherence to those original values and intents of the platform be maintained.
Image source: Flickr/Gage Skidmore