Hi everyone and welcome back to my
channel! If you're new here my name is
Giulia and I make video essays about TV
series movies and pop culture and today
I want to talk about the latter because
I was in the midst of writing up a new
video that was requested about Blade
Runner and all of the sudden these all
mess, drama, tea, as the kids call it exploded. I really want to use this example what
happened lately to have a little
bit of a different conversation about
what kind of culture we're currently in
and what does it mean that so many
people were interested in this whole
thing. What I find particularly
interesting about James Charles is that
even at the beginning of 2019
he made some transphobic and racist
comments yet it was not called out for
them. However it took a video from Tati
another beauty guru for the internet to
decide to cancel him which really begs
three questions: 1) why Tati, Jeffree
Star and similar others who came out
with allegations protected and enabled
apparently this guy for years despite
being aware of his behavior ; 2) it makes
you wonder whether Tati would have done
this video if James would have just
promoted her vitamins and 3) how come
that despite similar behaviors from
other youtubers were instantly
rejected and canceled
see for example Laura Lee's old racist
comments but James Charles's were ignored.
Because it does seem to me like in
cancel culture we decide pretty
arbitrarily who should be canceled and
who shouldn't. Generally if it is someone
that is well-liked or perceived to be a
good person which again how can you know
considering you don't know these people
we either brush off their behavior as an
honest mistake as someone who simply needs to grow or make any sort of excuses for
them. But if it's someone that we generally
don't like then we easily hit
the cancel button. For example PewDiePie
has a huge history of misogynistic
comments racist comments he has
supported alt-right and white supremacist
accounts in the past yet somehow we
still adhere to the narrative that it's
all media propaganda traditional media
propaganda that doesn't understand
youtubers and that wants to slander his
name and his reputation. Shane Dawson had
his fair share of controversies which
have been excused once again by fans and
the general audience with the fact that
either too long has passed or that he was
just a silly kid that needed to grow
we all make mistakes we're all humans. Yet
somehow there are people like myself and
I know there are a few amount of them
and some of them are watching this video
right now who despite fucking up all the
time managed to never use the n-word.
Just before all of these controversy
about James Charles came about there was
another controversy that I was kind of
watching on Twitter because he
continuously appeared on my tl about
Shane Dawson and a cat you probably
heard about that and at the same time
there was also another one about tattoo
artist / youtuber Romeo Lacoste that
was accused of pedophilia. Now Shane fans used what was happening with Romeo
Lacoste and said instead of focusing on
Shane
focus on that that's worse. So it's
really interesting that in this all
Shane Dawson slash Romero Lacoste timeline apparently we couldn't do both we
lost the ability to multitask in that
situation. And I've seen that a lot
lately right when something bad happens
and generally we are like yeah but let's
focus on the real important stuff and
you know I agree I mean for example this
all drama is very ridiculous when
compared with the fact that Alabama just
passed a bill that effectively bans
women's right
bans abortion. It is ridiculous compared to
the fact that we have as little as 12
years to make it up to the environment
or else we'll destroy this freaking
planet. Yet brushing off one thing for
another really doesn't help because at
the end of the day this whole drama really
teaches us something about who we are as
people and about our culture which I
think are particularly useful in
understanding why then we don't care or
we don't engage with bigger problems at
a societal level. Woody Allen has been
accused of sexual abuse for decades by
his own stepdaughter by her brother
Rowan Farrow by their mother Mia Farrow. He
himself has married his stepdaughter
who he used to introduce as his child
bride. Yet we don't cancel Woody Allen
we're pretty fine with it why? because
he's a good director? We should admit
that cancel culture is not as democratic
as we champion it to be. What is the
difference between for example someone
like Jeffree Star who has been called
out in this in the past for his racist
comments but has managed to still be the
second top subscribed beauty youtuber
and has seen a redemption arc given to
him on a silver platter by Shane Dawson
in one of his own documentaries
and someone like for example Anita
Sarkeesian that has faced an incredible
amount of hate for critiquing the
female image in video games. Now we
didn't have a name for
cancel culture back then but this is
basically what has been done to her Anita
Sarkeesian. What's the difference? the
difference is the subject that is being
criticized. How acceptably negative is
the subject you want to talk about?
Commentary channels whose methods I've
already criticized in a previous video
have an history of mainly talking about the
Paul brothers which
pretty much everyone loves to hate some
random internet weirdo that everyone
likes to ridicule or youtubers who have already lost
consensus like Zoella. The point is these
are easy targets. You'll never see one of
them make a video about PewDiePie for
example despite his position his
powerful position as the top subscribed
youtuber you would think that would
require some kind of commentary of some
sort even more so considering he's had
his fair share of controversies but
PewDiePie is not an acceptable subject
to attack. Anita back in the day despite
whether you agreed with her comments or
with her analysis you can't deny that
this girl has faced an immense amount of
negativity and harassment simply because
she wasn't particularly likeable and
because she dares speak of a theme that
she shouldn't have put under a
microscope. Some of her arguments had
merits anyone can see that. Sociologists
and media scholars have been talking
about the same things that Anita
was talking about in her videos in their
journal articles and partly if any of us
me included can make videos today
talking about themes like masculinity and
femininity is also partly thanks to what
Anita did. So holding a person
accountable to me it seems is highly
dependent on their popularity on the
perception that they give out and
subsequent narratives that they
construct around their character sometimes on their gender and definitely on the
quality of their apology. So it seems to
me like cancel culture is very much
personal rather than a universal moral
ground that we can all stand on. As
Garrel says it's a plebiscite not an
official ruling in which the terms and
conditions are often a hazy and
obviously once you have a controversy of
these proportions like the one that is
still going down with James Charles
Tati Westbrook Jeffrey Star you have
any sort of YouTube commentator talking
about it. PewDiePie himself has made a few videos
about it. The one that I'm talking about
right now is the initial one that he did
where he defended James Charles and
called is behavior an oopsie.
Now a lot of people were surprised that
PewDiePie was defending James Charles. I
wasn't. Keep in mind that when this video
was published is when not only Tati but
many other alleged victims came forward
to say that James Charles had at the
least inappropriate behavior with them.
So it makes complete sense for me that
someone like PewDiePie would defend
James Charles and call sexual
harassment an oopsie. He needs to
downplay negative behavior of others
otherwise how can he justifies his own?
In the same video he criticizes Tati
for talking about James Charles in a
public manner instead of trying to fix
the whole problem in private stating
that that's what he would have done and
that he would have never been that
public about an issue. Really? Because I
remember a whole deal with this Alinity girl that let's remember it all
started because he called her a twitch it definitely escalated because she
infamously decided to copystrike him and
ended with PewDiePie making several
videos about it and about her
especially which obviously resulted in
this girl receiving all sort of hate and
harassment from PewDiePie's fans from the
old classic kill yourself
twitch dot to the creative hashtag
#deportalinity. So when he's the one
being offended about something or
someone he can lash out in public but
when it's someone else then he pretends
that that person needs to be more mature.
So despite PewDiePie's numerous oopsies
this is going to become my favorite word he never got called out by commentary
channels. Well after seeing the way in
which ImAlexx and Inabber made a
complete 180 on their whole ideas and
branding in the debate with Alfie Deyes
it becomes pretty clear. It's very easy
to pause your integrity until you reach
a million subscribers and then starting
to hang out with the same famous
youtubers that you were previously
criticizing and so you decide to
not call them out anymore and use the
excuse of the fact that you've grown and
realized you were putting negativity out
there. It's incredible how this growth
that I hear about all the time always
happens either when there is a matching
growth in subscribers happening at the
same time or when someone made an oopsie.
But why don't we call out the fact that
these people were aware of their
problematic behavior and still decided
to engage with it because it brought
them where they are now. If commentary channels weren't as
negative someone like Iamalexx
wouldn't have become as popular as he is
now. Shane Dawson may not have known what blackface really meant back in 2013-14
or even 2015 but people did comment even
back then on how racist his skits were. He
was informed on it. But then how would've
Shane Dawson become the famous youtuber
with dark humor if we didn't keep going
on that road. So then one of the main
problems which I have with cancel
culture we usually say cancel culture
is bad and that's it but one of the main
problems which which I'm seeing with
cancel culture is that is highly
selective and when it does call out a
relevant negative behavior it is simply
transformed into a digestible hashtag that
gets forgotten as soon as the next
scandal hits. So we dwell on the drama
but we don't actually enforce any change.
This highlights even more how
all of this despite James Charles
Jeffrey star and Tati Westbrook how
much we as the audience are actually the
main players on this this. This is
mostly on us. We are the ones that give
to youtubers and to any other sort of
what we consider a celebrity such an
amount of power and importance and then
we gloat when we experience their
downfall. For more on this you can actually
check my older video on toxic fandoms
and the delusional fangirl there are
some relevant points about this that I
won't make again in this video. I've
literally seen so many people that are
not even interested not just in the
beauty community but on YouTube in
general they don't watch youtubers
actually watched hours and hours and
hours of videos to try to figure this
out and I get it science has proven that being mad at
something or someone actually help us in
disengaging from looking inwards at our own
problems. So drama can channel that
energy away from whatever it is that is
stressing you and at the same time infuse
you with a sense of control as well as
giving you a sense of superiority. It has
been proven that people that engage in
these sort of online discourses and I
don't mean just the ones that watch the
videos but actually comment on Twitter on
social media trash other people are
quick to judgements are more likely to
have a low self esteem. And this is just
a very depressing reminder that our
society is generally pretty sad and that
evolves into making us pretty petty
people. But I did feel like there was
something more because it does seem like a lot of people are actually enjoying
not just seeing but deeply participating
in this whole drama and tea and whatever
Researchers have called this feeling of
positivity at someone else's misfortunes
with the German word schadenfreude.
But it's not just the Germans the
Japanese have a saying: the misfortunes
of others
taste like honey. The French speak of
joie maligne the joy of others people
suffering in Danish it is skadefryd in Hebrew simcha la-ed
in Russian zloradstvo. For
the ancient Greeks it was epichairekakia
literally epi, over, chairo, rejoice, kakia, disgrace. And even my own ancestors, the
Romans two millennia ago were already
talking of malevolentia. But going
back to perhaps the most used and common
term for this weird feeling that we all
feel as humans schadenfreude a 2015
German study exploring this in the
implications of this word found out
that football fans smiled more broadly
and quickly when the rival team missed
a penalty rather than when their own
team scored. So the point is not as much
as that we empathize with what Tati had
to say but rather that we smiled pretty
broadly and quickly at the fact that
James Charles was being destroyed. So yes schadenfreude pretty much describes
who we are today as humans let that sink
in because it made me have an existential
crisis. Think about it it's in the way we
do politics it's how we treat
celebrities it is in the fail videos
that we love so much and it's definitely
in YouTube culture that did help
creating cancel culture as well and
that my friends it really is depressing
and if you don't find that depressing you're the fucking problem.
So that's all for today. Enjoy the rest of your day after this very positive video but joking aside apart from the fact that
this whole situation reminded me of a black mirror episode I think it was hated in
the nation let me check
yep
it was. Go watch that episode of black
mirror if you haven't. I don't know what
do you think about this whole situation
and how people responded to it. Let me
know in the comments below and as usual
if you enjoyed this video and would like
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button I'll see you next time Thanks bye
