As we've seen time and time again, the likable and trustworthy seeming people we see on our computer screens are not quite as nice as it seems. PewDiePie is well known outside of YouTube for making a video that many say sympathizes with Nazis, and for posting a live stream of him calling someone the N-word out of anger, but "not in a bad way."
Youtubers are far from perfect.
Most of them are regular people who make honest mistakes. What differentiates YouTube from other forms of entertainment is the production. TV shows have directors, multiple producers, and multiple editors. It also takes much more time to write, film, and edit a TV show as compared to a YouTube video. For the most part, YouTube videos are written, filmed, directed, and edited by the same person which make it easier for offensive content to be posted.
The goal of YouTube is to get views. This means YouTubers might be inclined to film more scandalous videos in order to get those views. We’ve seen this continuously with YouTubers like Jake and Logan Paul, whose videos still continue to shock us. However, even in the aftermath of Logan Paul’s “Suicide Forest” video, his notoriety won him, 80,000 new subscribers.
YouTubers are trying to make money too.
This problem is more evident in the beauty community is YouTubers making money from promoting products even if the YouTuber doesn’t actually like or using the product. These types of videos are just glorified sales pitches, but since it’s more personal the effect is a little more insidious.
Although YouTubers are supposed to disclose when a product is sponsored, it can just be written in the description, not announced during the video. A lot of YouTubers argue justly that they would never promote a product they didn’t like, but take it with a grain of salt. Money talks.
Why are there so many controversial people flocking to YouTube? Well, it has a lot to do with how YouTube handles its content. Logan Paul's video was not taken down from YouTube because it violated their terms of service.
Paul removed it himself from his channel after about 24 hours. Actually, it took YouTube three days to strike his channel for gory content, and nine days to officially respond to the controversy. YouTube as a company and as a community created this culture and continues to let these people post content and make money.
So if YouTube won't ban content creators like Logan Paul, what should we do?
He still has millions of subscribers and rakes in thousands of dollars from ad revenue with every video. We know that there are thousands of his fans that will defend from doing just about anything. It's simple. Don't watch these videos.
Views are the ultimate goal of posting a video. Don't buy anything they promote as that is another way they'll make money. All in all, just stop paying attention to these people. Stop talking and tweeting about kids on the internet. As we've seen with Logan Paul, even when he loses, he still wins.
