"What happened to YouTubers?": young men, power, and how to save them
Captain Cook, arriving in New Holland (the 18th century name for what is now Australia) in 1770, remarked in his journal of the strange equanimity of the natives. “From what I have said of the Natives of New-Holland they may appear to some to be the most wretched people upon Earth,” he wrote. “But in reality they are far more happier [sic] than we Europeans. They live in a Tranquillity which is not disturb’d by the Inequality of Condition.”
Cook – who is a less popular figure in 2024 than he was in his own time – seemed discombobulated by the existence of an indigenous population so totally different to that of his Yorkshire upbringing, and yet possessed of their own distinct, and self-satisfied, culture. Which is not dissimilar to how I felt, tuning into a livestream of a 19-year-old YouTuber attempting to do 1,008 backflips within 24 hours. For some reason.
Darren Jason Watkins Jr – better known as IShowSpeed or just Speed – has been one of the fastest growing creators on the platform over the last year or so. I became familiar with his ‘work’ (against my will) when he was pictured screaming in protest at the Ballon d’Or ceremony (to which he had mysteriously secured a ticket) when Lionel Messi scooped the top gong. Speed is, apparently, a big Cristiano Ronaldo fan. And much of his content seemed to involve non-verbal exuberance and a near-clinical lack of inhibition. But slowly, over the past few months, I’ve come to understand a little more of his appeal. The ebullience – often grating – can be infectious. His life has become an almost constant stream, charting his travels and adventures. He is athletic, charismatic and totally fearless. And he does a good backflip.
The reason I mention Speed is not because he’s particularly relevant to this piece. It's because I want you to recognise – even if just for a moment – some of the strangeness of the current YouTuber landscape. There’s an alchemy at play here where individuals with no obvious skill or talent or appeal can become hugely influential and admired. Gen Z are like the natives of New Holland, transfixed by something that seems strange to the stale Millennial eye. But like turning lead into gold (or underpants into profit, for a truly Millennial pop culture reference) there is something mystical and engimatic that happens between content creation and audience reception. And because it’s hard to understand, it’s hard to replicate and hard to regulate. But to try to comprehend a little more, we need to look at some beef (and no, not the bovine variety Granddad).
From henceforth I will not be doing a glossary relating to YouTubers I mention. If your response to a name is “who the f*** is that?” please utilise Google or a younger relative.
“What happened to YouTubers man..”
This sentence, posted by some cat called DanTDM on September 16th, has sparked a degree of soul-searching within the world of video creation. The author is, himself, a YouTuber of some repute (his channel has, at time of writing, 29.1m subscribers), but more importantly it was targeted at a triumvirate of heavyweights on the medium: MrBeast (319m subs), KSI (16.3m) and Logan Paul (23.6m). They had just launched a new product called Lunchly, an alternative to lunchables, competing in the market for crap kids will eat at school. “This is selling stuff for the sake of making money,” Dan went on. “How does this benefit their fans? This is selling crap to kids who don't know better than to trust the people who are selling it to them. Do better.”
So what did happen to YouTubers?
Lunchly is, basically, an extension of the wildly successful marketing push behind a drink called Prime (you may remember a brief moment when idiot children were purchasing bottles of the drink like it was Bitcoin or Beanie Babies). That was a KSI x Logan Paul joint, both of whom exist on the macho end of mainstream YouTube. They do boxing fights, football matches, and blokeish content, and so flogging a crummy energy drink seemed a reasonable (enough) brand extension. But the addition of MrBeast – the most successful YouTuber in the world right now – changes the demographics. It brings in a lot more school-age children, and so, naturally, the product is explicitly targeted at kids. (If you’re a grown adult eating Lunchly Turkey Snack 'Ems, please take a long hard look at yourself).
DanTDM’s tweet has sparked a month-long, and monodirectional, beef between him and KSI, who has been using the controversy to – you guessed it – sell product. Not just Lunchly, but also his new single. (Take, for example, his creation of myapology.co.uk, which purported to be an apology but actually just redirects to his single – plausibly in contravention of X’s advertising guidelines). The furore, as far as KSI and Paul are concerned, is good for business. For MrBeast, less so. His brand is more wholesome, his business interests more established. And he’s been having a shitty summer anyway.
Back in June, a participant in one of MrBeast’s videos made a series of accusations about the working practices of the organisation. In September, a group of former contestants filed a class action lawsuit against him. That has been accompanied by allegations made against members of the on-screen team, as well as a dispute with the manufacturers of another of his products, the MrBeast Burger. In short, what was once a golden internet brand has now been tarnished. Not tarnished enough to prevent Lunchly being a home-run, but enough that other people in the community – usually so tight-knit in terms of its commercial interests – feel empowered to call him out. After all, what is the point of a nutritionally valueless, expensive boxed lunch, other than to make money from credulous tweens?
But, then again, making money is the very essence of business. It has also, famously, been the thing that digital media struggles most with. Take a platform like VICE, which has gone (all but) bust, but which for a long time commercialised its brand through apparel sales and endeavours like launching its own beer. Are readers who idolised VICE in the early 2010s really served by the creation of over-priced swill? Do they think they’ll turn into Clive Martin if they have a pint of Old Blue Last? And what about those nice, clean-cut Pod Save America bros, and their coffee label? How does that serve their listeners, other than to generate more profit for an already profitable initiative?
There are two key issues here. The first is, obviously, one of audience. YouTubers disproportionately serve an audience of children and young adults. Here in the UK, we have strict advertising controls over what can be show on television programming aimed at children (no junk food, for example). YouTube, similarly, gives creators the opportunity to label their content as created for children (presumably so that they don’t suddenly get served an advert for a local killer clown experience). But it’s opt-in, and the phrasing “created for children” is murky. Clearly Baby Shark or Cocomelon is created for children, but are MrBeast’s videos explicitly created with that purpose? How about KSI or Logan Paul? They could all plausibly deny it. And so it seems improbable that they would self report in that direction, and miss out on those sweet, sweet Killer Clown bucks.
The second is the question of these men – and the protagonists in the current dramas are almost exclusively men, though there are obviously plenty of female content creators – and how they are building their enterprise. And this comes back to something foundational in the YouTuber DNA (and, surprisingly, in podcasting): the idea that you can become rich and famous overnight, without ever leaving your house. You don’t need an agent or a manager or a label or a studio; you just need yourself, and some means of uploading content to the internet. Attempts to professionalise the YouTuber industry have met with audience resistance. While there are plenty of corporate channels that do well, the primary audience can sniff out inauthenticity. They drink Prime and eat Lunchly, not because they are delicious, but because it creates a proximity with the content creators profiting from them. It is what psychologists refer to as a parasocial relationship.
And this is the economic model of much of this part of the internet. Voluntary payments made to show support, or as a status symbol. It’s not just Twitch streamers panhandling for gifted subs – an increasingly large part of digital media is moving to this model, sometimes called value-for-value of V4V (though that neglects the status element, so I’d favour something like money-exchanged-for-respect-or-trusted status, a.k.a. ME ROTS). Go on Wikipedia right now, and you’ll see a request to chip in $5. Go to Vimeo and you’ll see a tip jar. Go to The Guardian and you’ll be told “If you believe in the importance of open, independent journalism, make the most of an All-access digital subscription.” This is all just the same ME ROTS model that has already been deployed for years on Twitch and YouTube.
But the increasing use of product sales does change the dynamic, and I’m not sure the industry is ready for that. Creators act like selling a bottled energy drink to their fans is no different to their fans making voluntary on-stream donations, yet it is. Most importantly, it opens them up to regulation. This is a simple transaction, and the long history of shopkeeping means we know how to deal with that. We know how to call BS on misleading advertising. We know how to ensure that product standards are upheld. And we know how to warn consumers against brands that are of an inferior quality. Can you stop a 20-year-old donating $50 of his college tuition to Pokemane’s stream so that she says his name out loud? No. But can you stop a 9-year-old chugging a Strawberry Watermelon Prime (RRP £2) every afternoon? Possibly.
And there are corporate incentives to have a discussion about whether these young men are the right people to be profiting in this way. Their organisations are far leaner than their rivals, often utilising shadowy practises like ghost kitchens and white labelling (see the Beast Burger furore for further details). In short, these are extremely effective, but tiny, marketing agencies, now competing with major retailers.
I remember a story about how Kylie Jenner – the youngest of the Kardashian clan – had become a billionaire, and yet her cosmetics company only employed seven full-time and five part-time employees. To me, that was nothing to be proud of. Wal-Mart, for all its sins, keeps food on the table for a lot of people. So – “for all its sins,” he kept saying – does Amazon. MrBeast and KSI and Logan Paul are making money for MrBeast and KSI and Logan Paul. These are not organisations giving employees health insurance and pension funds; these are young men with bad politics and big mouthpieces.
But power is intoxicating, and right now the world is in thrall to this new-fangled form of celebrity. Between me starting writing this piece and me reaching this paragraph, reports have emerged of a British YouTuber, Yung Filly, being arrested in Australia on accusation of sexual assault. On Twitter, reports have circulated that he had long been seen as a sketchy character, but that brands were addicted to his online status. He had just completed a campaign with Heinz, for some reason, and inked another deal with M&S, which has now been cancelled. For his young fanbase, the accusations may rob them of an idol, or they may engender a destructive anti-authoritarianism. But questions should be raised about how much influence we’ve vested in these characters who are often young, inexperienced, uneducated, prone to poor business decisions, ripe for manipulation, and then, suddenly, as famous as a Hollywood actor.
It is not dissimilar to the pathway of a professional football. Famous, often as teenagers, with more money than sense, and few positive influences telling them how to learn, invest, dedicate themselves. It is, in part, why we see so many allegations made against footballers. But at least in professional sport there are structures in place to try and address this. Corporate interests might work against regulators, but governing bodies can still issue sanctions, employers can still terminate contracts. YouTubers have all the pitfalls of young athletes, with none of the failsafes.
It’s time to talk about YouTubers. Not as tinpot content creators on the fringes of the internet, publishing Minecraft memes and shitposting about natural disasters. That lets them off the hook. They are now mainstream media outlets. A recent MrBeast video – “50 YouTubers Fight For $1,000,000” – currently has 255m views. If any media organisation in the UK were doing those sort of numbers, there’d be a full public inquiry into undue influence. YouTubers now have audience and money, but, more importantly, they have power.
The answer to DanTDM’s question – “what happened to YouTubers?” – is quite simple. They became big international media and business conglomerates, without ever disinvesting influence or brand equity from the single, fallible characters who founded them. They are first-generation start-ups, but often with few or no investors, no board, no fellow executives to check bad instincts. And this was all fine when it was silly pranks and reaction videos. But now they are responsible for what your kid eats and drinks – and, perhaps more importantly, how they think and vote. It is a metropolis and we’re still calling it the Wild West, because we – grown-ups, drunk on nostalgia and the complacency of being incumbent in the seats of power – aren’t looking properly.
What happened to YouTubers is simple. The question that will shape the next decade of digital content is more complex: “what happens to YouTubers?”
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good stuff