Who is Marina Joyce and why does she keep trending on my Facebook? Like, I expect this from Twitter, but Facebook doesn’t usually talk about YouTubers (unless one gives the Pope 'Undertale', which is an entirely different matter). Yet, #savemarinajoyce trended on my Facebook for multiple days, which either means the YouTube fandom has hijacked the Facebook algorithm or this is some serious stuff.

Anyway, so I read a lot of We the Unicorns articles and watched a few videos to get an idea of what was going on and here’s the synopsis: Marina Joyce is an English beauty/fashion vlogger of reasonable popularity (600k subscribers when it started; she is, as of now, up to 1.8 million and counting in light of the media coverage) and in the recent months, her videos have changed, most noticeably her attitude but also the filming. She has bruises on her arms and legs, the appearance of possible scripts, and there is a part in one of her latest videos when she allegedly says, “Help me.” She also planned a meet up at 6:30 a.m. Aug. 3, which is just a bit weird. Fans speculated some crazy theories, ranging from “she was kidnapped and the meetup is a plan by ISIS to kidnap more people” to “she suffers from drug addiction” to “she’s being abused.”

The police have visited her house to confirm her safety, she herself has confirmed in tweets and a livestream that she is fine. Youtuber Philip DeFranco managed to Skype her to ask her some questions and you can judge for yourself if she’s being honest or not.

The whole video is cringe-worthy; you can almost feel Philip’s discomfort. I have my own hypothesis about what is happening, but that’s neither here nor there. What I want to talk about is what we can learn from #savemarinajoyce.

1. YouTubers have such rabid fanbases that they can catch (and hold) traditional media’s attention.

I mean, this isn’t really anything new, but for some reason, people are surprised at how much influence YouTubers have on their subscribers. Many news websites learned of #savemarinajoy and immediately jumped on the bandwagon and perpetuated the drama, despite the fact that this girl was not very well-known before the birth of the hashtag. This is thanks to her fanbase.

2. Drama results in popularity (or maybe notoriety).

Whether this is all a publicity stunt or not, you have to say that her popularity has skyrocketed. So many more people know the name Marina Joyce now. And when this is all over (which it hopefully is by now), she will still have had her name out there and gained over 1,000,000 subscribers during her five minutes (or three days) of fame. So, if you ever need a boost in popularity, you know what to do.

3. Youtube viewers are ridiculously perceptive and creative.

Again, this is nothing new. Have you seen Tumblr? However, it goes further than creating fanart or noticing the slightest possibility of canonical ships. The casual viewer would not have caught the hints (bruises, change in videos, etc.), but the loyal subscribers pieced together clues to create both plausible and entirely absurd ideas.

4. Social media can impact the “real world.”

While I don't endorse social media activism (because honestly, using a hashtag for a cause or liking a post instead of donating is pretty useless), the fact that police actually went to check on Marina, coupled with the evidence of the Ice Bucket Challenge helping ALS research is good. Of course, fans living in the same area as Marina may have just called the police, but still.

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Did this whole matter get wildly out of hand? Yes. However, did it reveal the power of the Internet (or maybe just of fangirls)? Also yes. The whole mess that is #savemarinajoyce is one of many examples which show the ever-increasing effect and impact of online personalities and social media on daily life.

Update: While I was writing this article, Marina did another live stream and (in a moment of poor wording) claimed this was a publicity stunt by her viewers. We can assume she meant that she was not the mastermind behind this mess and that her viewers created this all on their own. Well, I guess this is a good time to plug my “drama is more popular than content” article because it sure worked for Marina this time. I mean, she more than doubled her subscribers, even if #boycottmarinajoyce is also going around.