YouTube Viewers Are Smarter Than We Think

Clearly, YouTube has received its fair share of controversy over the years, particularly bringing popular content creators to light as scams, cheats, and, in some occasions, outright offensive or criminal. With that in mind, it would be easy to assume that the people who watch YouTube, who purchase tickets to see their favorite creators, or buy merchandise, are too thick-headed to recognize the scandals or see when they have been cheated. In the past, creators may have tried to take advantage of their audience, but I think that viewers might be smarter than we think.

In recent memory, one famous rising of the audience against a content creator came during November 2017, when British Youtuber Zoe Sugg - also known as Zoella - released an advent calendar. The calendar, which covered the final twelve days leading to Christmas, was called a scam by many consumers, who purchased the expensive calendar expecting their money's worth in Zoella products, and instead received a pen, a handful of stickers, and a few cookie cutters. At the time, many videos popped up, calling the calendar a scam, and Twitter saw the hashtag "#ZoellaIsOver" trending.

Whether Zugg meant to scam her fans or not, it seems more important than that was a rising up by the audience. The viewers, who have invested their time and money into Sugg, felt betrayed. Instead of following along on a string to consume and eat out of Sugg's hand, the audience took on a critical eye, and I respect that, despite Sugg's plunge in popularity.

In the recent weeks, instead of a YouTuber selling overpriced merchandise, a feud between creators who are known for beauty tutorials and commentating on new makeup products came to a head following Shane Dawson's documentary about Jeffree Star. Star, who has a past of controversy seeming to follow his every move, was called out following a now-deleted tweet from Gabriel Zamora. In the tweet, Zamora first posted a picture with friends Manny Gutierrez, Nikita Dragun, and Laura Lee, claiming, in essence, that they were better off without Star, then adding a tweet that he didn't understand by anyone would support someone who had made racist comments in the past, once again directing attention to Star.

However, the audience, in clear favor of Star, did not fall for Zamora's tweets. Instead, attention turned from Star to Zamora, Gutierrez, Dragun, and Lee, and viewers were quick to produce old tweets containing slurs, particularly from Zamora and Lee. The aftermath that followed, briefly, consisted of Lee making a 5-minute-long apology that has been critiqued as disingenuous on some accounts, to downright humorous in others, and Zamora pointing a finger towards Gutierrez as the main antagonist, who created a negative image of Star, leading to the tweets, and then not moving to support his friends when the internet began to rip them apart, in reference to Lee. Zamora's video, titled "My Truth," essentially cleared his name, while Dragun has remained out of the thick of the attention, hidden behind the target painted on Gutierrez's back.

While I could comment on who I think in this situation, I would rather commend the community for not simply following the first scent of blood in the water. By that, I mean that the Internet seems to like turning on certain people, Star serving as a prime example, and opinion has always been subject to rapid change. However, I would dare to say that viewers might start to take a more critical eye to the creators they watch, to pick out those they truly feel are genuine, and to call out an apology such as Laura Lee's, which seems to fall into a unanimous agreement as insincere and has missed the mark.