The Battle Between YouTube and the Mainstream Media

Mainstream media hasn't had the best of decades. Routinely slated for extremely legitimate reasons (the phone hacking scandal, the Hillsborough verdict, tabloids trying their level-best to incite hate crimes), as well as the more ludicrous (all the bullshit created in Macedonian fake news boiler rooms), public trust in journalists and TV anchors is at an all-time low.

For nearly a decade now, a generation has been deciding for themselves who they want to listen to, and social media has already outstripped TV as the go-to news source for 18 to 24-year-olds. This is no huge surprise: people on Facebook and YouTube and Twitter are infinitely more relatable – guys and girls like you and I, not members of the mainstream media, who have apparently been lying through their back teeth to us for the past ten years.

Recently, though, old media has started to bite back, threatening the autonomy and income of established online personalities.

PewDiePie rose to fame via one of the most fascinating aspects of YouTube culture: the desire people have to watch others play and react to video games. Valentina Palladino of Ars Technica posits that this may be due to something called "mirror neurons" – essentially, that a part of our brain lights up when watching someone do something we enjoy doing. But just as likely is the empathetic connection between viewer and host. They're like us, these people. They play games, they fart around, they like memes. They're not Michael Palin swanning around Calcutta. So viewers relate to them not as celebrities, but almost as friends, like the chat room pals we all made in the early days of the internet.

Problem is, traditional media judges itself and others by entirely different standards and metrics, which has created an interesting dichotomy. It's why, when someone like PewDiePie – hero to millions – hires two Indian men via Fiverr to dance around and wave a placard reading '"DEATH TO ALL JEWS", then posts the video on his channel, the reaction of the mainstream news establishment and Pewds' army of fans is considerably different.

PewDiePie cracking wise about the Holocaust means nothing to his fans – just another zany prank to file along with the rest. In outlets like the Wall Street Journal, however, it's met with shocked disapproval – first that he would think to do something like this, and second that he would receive such overwhelming support from his subscribers.

This, of course, is by no means the wrong take to have; you don't have to be Tipper Gore to think people shouldn't make anti-Semitic gags. However, it's no surprise the WSJ is confused by the reaction of his fans, as stars like PDP have a very different relationship with their followers to the one WSJ has with its readers. When a public figure is your friend in your mind, you give them the benefit of the doubt, as you would a friend in real life. Even if what they do is totally fucked up, you'll use all the mental gymnastics available to you to alleviate your favourites of responsibility.

The main tool utilised here is the word "context" – the great get-out-of-jail-free card for YouTube stars who make jokes that would never ever be acceptable in the MSM (or polite society). In some ways you feel it isn't just the context of the words they're talking about, though. It's also the context of YouTube itself, as a phenomenon. Either way, the majority of the time the context maxim doesn't work; it just exposes the wilful ignorance of these people, who often refuse to accept the responsibility of their actions. And why should they? What the mainstream press has to say about them is largely irrelevant; their fans will still subscribe, their ads will still generate millions in revenue and their work and money won't be affected.

Only, now, the tables are beginning to turn.

After Pewds' gaffe his deals with Disney's Maker Studios – which was originally set up by YouTubers – were terminated. Since Disney acquired Maker in 2015, the company has been plagued by staff layoffs and criticisms from YouTubers, and the move to excommunicate PewDiePie only encouraged more vitriol. Many on YouTube – and the internet at large – began to turn on the press for highlighting Pewds' indiscretion, and Maker for cutting ties with him.

Beyond the Maker deal, PewDiePie himself seems largely unaffected by the controversy; at this point he's just too big for even a Holocaust gag to send him under. However, the same can't be said for other channels whose influence isn't quite as gigantic.

Many channels have begun to complain that their videos are being demonetised. This, they say, is due to YouTube tightening the rules on what's deemed controversial: if a video isn't appropriate, a brand won't want to run ads on it. But the site's definition of controversial seems to have changed. Any allusion to religion, violence, bad language, sex – these are now undesirable. The established model of meritocracy – if you get views, you get money – seems to be changing, and some YouTubers are looking to jump ship.

H3H3, the husband and wife king and queen of YouTube, who we profiled earlier this year, have been embroiled in a spat with the Wall Street Journal and their journalist Jack Nicas. At the end of March, Nicas penned a story in which he claimed YouTube is monetising offensive and racist videos, showing brands like Coca Cola's ads before scandalous content. As a result, H3's Ethan Klein – as well as many other popular YouTubers – claimed that their videos had become demonetised without any warning, causing them to lose a great amount of revenue. He then made a video in which he claimed Nicas had falsified evidence in his report and doctored screenshots of ads shown before offensive videos, but subsequently took it down and apologised for the hasty conclusion he'd come to (though the apology was primarily aimed at his fans, and not Nicas). The conspiracy was envisaged, and debunked, all within a matter of hours.

It's not just those directly affected who are joining in with the conspiracy, either. Videos like the one above offer their own takes on why the mainstream media would want to jeopardise the incomes of YouTubers. It's jealousy, malice, subterfuge. To these people, it's unthinkable that mainstream coverage of YouTube drama is just regular reporting. It must be something larger. It must go straight to the top, because it always does.

This kind of discourse – these near-immediate reactions and subsequent unravellings – could only ever take place online. When Ethan Klein speaks his mind, his hordes of fans will defend him to the bitter end, right or wrong, and people like Jack Nicas will bear the brunt of that reaction. Because he's attacking their friend, and what do you do when someone attacks your friend? You beat the shit out of them.

For something as vastly influential as YouTube, it's bizarre that the mainstream media has so far kept such a distance. Perhaps it just assumed its hegemony was untouchable – that it can change and adapt; write live-blogs and put up paywalls. Or maybe they just don't want to look it in the face, because the rate of change is terrifying – mini cultures and trends incubated, disseminated and killed off in days.

The two would have quite happily existed separately from each other, but they're now beginning to sniff around each other's rears. Controversy has been courted, and this creates potential problems for both sides. While previously YouTubers might not have cared about what the Wall Street Journal has to say, now their incomes are being affected they're going to be forced to pay attention, and the battle is only likely to get more vicious.

Celebrity is changing, but this is different to Zoella filming her everyday life and selling make up, or Instagram stars, or any of that garbage. This is about people with millions of fans getting political, calling journalists falsifiers and a brewing war between old and new. Ultimately, the victor will be decided by what the people care about more: friendship or scandal.

@joe_bish

More from VICE:

H3H3 Productions Are the Married Couple Calling Bullshit on YouTube

YouTube 'Social Experiments' Are the Worst Kind of Smug White Racism

How Standing Rock Birthed a New Generation of Independent Left-Wing Media