Taylor Lorentz is chronicling internet drama brilliantly for the New York Times, and her latest report is on the quasi-downfall of two high-flying YouTubers, Shane Dawson and Jeffree Star. They exemplify the stereotype of YouTube influencers--vacuous narcissists, tireless producers, canny businessmen--facing ruin after years of attention-seeking at the borders of racism, sexism and general abuse. The internet is a permanent record and the ground is liquefying underfoot.
Dawson has racked up billions of views on YouTube, often by engaging in offensive humor. He has posted several videos in blackface, mocked those with disabilities, joked about bestiality, sexualized minors, and once spoke about “figuratively murdering someone.” On June 26, Mr. Dawson posted a teary apology to his channel, in which he tried to make amends for his past, declaring that he deserved to “lose everything.”
No sooner had his apology video posted than a clip of him pretending to sexually gratify himself to a photo of Willow Smith, then 11 years old, resurfaced and began to get shared widely.
That's just one of the most ostentatiously repulsive acts. The catalog of backstabbing, blackmail, and insider grossness is long and deep and Lorentz packs in the links for anyone wanting to take a deep dive. I think the best thing about her work at the Times is how it illustrates the growing dissatisfaction at social media companies reinstituting the hierarchies and well-kept gates of the media world they replaced, then stocked it with all these adolescent psychos.
YouTube's tolerance for abuse caused two knock-on problems: YouTube (especially its comment platform) was ignored by media except as a video hosting site, the culture growing there was ignored as a result, and the people emerging from that culture were (temporarily, it turns out) able to quietly ignore their own earlier work after gaining broader attention. That they are too dumb to remove the old blackface and swastika-strewn videos is testament to the general phenomenon of Zoomers and younger Millennials having no sense of culture and history outside of their algorithmic feed bags. It simply never struck them that anyone might care what they were doing a few years ago or look it up.
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