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.
And that's just one of the most ostentatiously repulsive acts. The story is a catalog of backstabbing, blackmail, and insider grossness, and most critically the growing dissatisfaction about how social media companies reinstituted the hierarchies and well-kept gates of the media world they replaced: “This pyramid system where Shane and Jeffree are kings and everyone else is below them is over.”
YouTube's tolerance for racist, sexist and abusive comments caused two knock-on problems: YouTube was ignored by media except as a video hosting platform, 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 Zoomer 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.
