Hey Guys and Welcome To My Essay: How YouTube Has Changed The Relationship Between Fan and Celebrity18/6/2018 Video Essay Starting in 2012, and reaching its peak in 2014, a barrage of scandals rocked the YouTube community. One after another, YouTube celebrities were being accused of emotionally and sexually abusing viewers, particularly young fans. The situation raised questions about the relationship between fan and creator, as well as the responsibility held by said creators in a community comprised mostly of teenage girls. The first scandal to come to light was musician and vlogger Mike Lombardo who was arrested in 2012 for child pornography charges after encouraging young fans ‘to send him explicit photos and videos of themselves masturbating.’ (Romana, Jaworski and Votta, 2014) and in 2014, just as more allegations were coming to light about other YouTubers, he was sentenced to five years in prison for receiving child pornography (The Smoking Gun, 2014). After that more and more young girls came out with accusations of abuse about YouTubers. The whole saga raised many questions about the accessibility of YouTubers to their fans: If a fan is so able to communicate directly with someone they admire then surely there is a risk of a ‘celebrity’ abusing this power. I’ve created a video essay to go along with this essay that explores these themes in more context, a link to which is available below (1). Following on from other successful audience research such as in Hunting the Dark Knight (Brooker, 2012), I created an online survey to get an idea of people’s relationships to YouTubers (2). Of my respondents, 79% answered yes to whether they watched YouTubers, and an additional 11% responded that they used to, but don’t any more. 71% of the respondents identified as female. The age of those who responded yes averaged out to 22, the youngest respondent was 9, definitely raising questions about the accessibility of YouTube to younger people and how YouTubers can take advantage of this. A large number said they simply watched for entertainment or information, but others gave more involved responses. Some interesting answers I received included: ‘Watching them can be a relaxing break from reality’ and ‘Because sometimes living vicariously through YTers [sic] is much more exciting than my real life’ (3). These responses imply that some fans use YouTube as an escape from reality. Other responses that indicated fans like to keep ‘up to date’ with the lives of these YouTubers also implying an assumed relationship between themselves and the YouTuber. I also asked whether people felt closer to YouTubers than other, more traditional celebrities. 58% said they felt closer to YouTubers than traditional celebrities. When asked why, I received a variety of answers including people feeling like YouTubers disclose more of their personal lives, that they are more accessible to fans and that they seem more willing to be their ‘true’ selves on camera than traditional celebrities (A full list of responses is available below (4)). A lot of people I asked commented on the accessibility of YouTubers and the fact that they are easy to contact. They hold meet-ups and attend conventions such as VidCon, a US convention set up by John and Hank Green, also known as the Vlogbrothers, in 2010. VidCon provided a place for creators and fans to meet, perform and network. It also apparently provided a place for older YouTubers to prey on younger fans. Tom Milsom, a formerly popular British musician and YouTuber, met a fourteen-year-old fan at Vidcon and invited her backstage. A year later, they started dating. In 2014, after the relationship had ended, she came out with allegations of abuse relating to her relationship with Milsom. She called him out on the abusive nature of the relationship as well as being manipulative and taking advantage of her. She published a post on her Tumblr detailing these allegations (her original blog has since been deleted, one blog dedicated to documenting the posts calling out abuse in the community still has the original posts archived and unedited) (,.reblogging posts............, 2014). The accusations against Milsom inspired more people to come out with their own stories of abuse within the YouTube community. The majority of statements came from fans who had been manipulated or abused by a YouTuber they had once looked up to. Which raises the point that even without the knowledge that a lot of these fans were underage, these YouTubers held a position of power over the fan in question, and as such they were surely more able to coerce the fan to do things that they may have found uncomfortable. The girl who brought the Tom Milsom accusations to light referred to this in a separate post; ‘the inherent imbalance of power, due not only to age but a creator/viewer relationship, should be an immediate red flag for everyone’ (,.reblogging posts............, 2014). I think one of the issues, and what made it so easy for the YouTubers perpetrating this abuse, was the idolisation of celebrity, specifically YouTubers. In my research I found that many people felt closer to YouTubers than traditional celebrities, this was partly due to the apparent openness of YouTubers and the fact that they supposedly allow the viewer to see more of their lives. However, this ‘worship’ is dangerous. In his article for Celebrity Studies, Daniel R. Smith discusses the use of the phrase ‘Imagining others more complexly’ within the Youtube community, a phrase coined by author and vlogger John Green: ‘As such, certain YouTubers utilise the discourses surrounding [Imagining Others More Complexly] as a form of position-taking, in Bourdieu’s sense, to promote a vision of the YouTube celebrity field as a democratic and egalitarian as well as seeing YouTube celebrity as ‘not celebrity like’ (in a sense which implies irrational of damaging worship)’ (Smith, 2016). A common thread I have found when reading, or listening to the accounts of the victims of this abuse, is the thought that they should have felt lucky: a person they idolised, a person many others idolised, had chosen them and they should enjoy the attention from the celebrity while they can. The term ‘parasocial’ refers to a one-sided relationship, usually between the viewer and the image (Turner, 2004), ‘Parasocial relationships arise when individuals are repeatedly exposed to a media persona, and the individuals develop a sense of intimacy, perceived friendship, and identification with the celebrity (Chung and Cho, 2017). YouTubers are unique in the media in that their relationships with fans don’t appear, at least on the surface, to be one-sided. YouTubers build a strong relationship with their fans through their videos. They speak directly to the audience looking straight down the camera lens, usually in their bedroom which is regarded as a relatively private place, they create videos with their friends and family and welcome the viewer into their lives. An illusion of intimacy (Schickel, 2000) is created by the YouTuber to draw the viewer in and keep them there. The ‘creator/audience divide’ (Neafcy, 2014) is not always apparent, and the YouTuber likes to keep it that way, ‘Key to a vlogger's success is the trust they build with their audience.’ (Harvey, 2013). A word often used when describing YouTubers and their fans is ‘community’, a phrase that ‘conjures an image of people rather than institutions’ (Thumim, 2015). This is important to note; a viewer is part of the same community as the creator, and so could be taken as a friend. This idea of a community, also comes from the fans themselves becoming creators. With a platform like YouTube, it is easy for anyone with a computer and internet connection to start their own channel and maybe become ‘internet famous’. With a few exceptions, YouTubers generally began as ‘regular’ people. The fame that comes with being a ‘traditional’ celebrity is generally thought of as almost magical, ‘traditional’ celebrities have an almost other-ness that seems unattainable to the general public, ‘those who consume and invest in celebrity tend to describe it as an innate ‘natural’ quality which is possessed only by some extraordinary individuals’ (Turner, 2004). YouTube celebrities appear more like ‘real people’ who have stumbled across fame: ‘Being ordinary, authentic or ‘real’ is a dominant rhetorical device of fame that has increasingly found its logical point of reference in the onscreen and online antics of extraordinary and ordinary people supposedly just being themselves’ (Redmond, 2006). A part of this is the lack of management, at least on the surface, of YouTubers. While it is common knowledge that someone like Kim Kardashian has a team of publicists, managers and stylists who construct the image we see in public, a YouTuber is regarded as their own force. In Understanding Celebrity Turner discusses Princess Diana and the way in which her media presence was constructed, and her death breaking down this management, making the event far more real to the public, which explains the mass outpouring of grief afterwards (2004). For a YouTuber, it is implied that the scripting, filming, editing, styling even, is all their own, and though many do have publicists and agents, they still do the work on the actual videos themselves. And many YouTubers have dabbled in the world of ‘traditional’ media. Zoe Sugg (also known as Zoella) featured on the celebrity edition of The Great British Bake Off, Grace Helbig had her own talk show on E! called The Grace Helbig Show featuring high-profile guests such as Hilary Duff and Dwayne Johnson, as well as her YouTube counterparts, and Flula Borg featured in the film Pitch Perfect 2. There are many more examples: Netflix series, DVDs, online films, radio shows, reality shows, etc. But YouTubers, no matter how famous they may get in the ‘traditional’ world of media, always return to YouTube, as if they do not want to turn their backs on what got them there in the first place. ‘To be a fan...is to attempt to live vicariously, through the perceived lives of the famous’ (Jenson, 1992), this is a part of the appeal of a YouTuber. It is easy for a fan to live vicariously through them considering the openness of their lives. Popular tropes like ‘home tours’, ‘what’s in my bag?’ and ‘get ready with me’ videos give the viewer an insight into their lives, viewers are shown parts of their lives that generally, only friends or family would see. Viewers are talked to in a personal way, usually in a personal space, the YouTuber is directly addressing them in a way traditional celebrities don’t. It is an idea that harks back to MTV’s Cribs, a show that let the ‘ordinary’ person into the extraordinary world of a celebrity. The difference being, the lives of those shown in Cribs is that of the ‘other’ of the successful, ‘“Cribs” presents these celebrities and their households as exemplars of “making it.”’ (Smith and Beal, 2007). However, while the celebrities shown on Cribs generally displayed top-of-the-line products and decor that the viewer could only image affording, YouTubers appear more down-to-Earth in their choices, showing off more achievable goals in Primark hauls, or products from other low cost high-street stores. YouTubers also let fans in on aspects of their lives that ‘traditional’ celebrities prefer to keep quiet. Rose Ellen Dix and Rosie Spaughton (also known as Rose and Rosie) filmed their engagement (Dix, 2014) and wedding (Dix, 2015) and uploaded them to YouTube, letting fans in on what would otherwise be a personal day. Charles Trippy (also known as CTFxC) uploaded footage of himself undergoing brain surgery (Trippy, 2013). Quoted in Vlogumentary (Testa, 2016), Trippy explains this decision: ‘we had a responsibility to those people who had become our family, even though we had never met before…bringing that camera with you is like bringing all these friends with you. they’re rooting you on, they’re supporting you’ (Testa, 2016). And these are not outliers, many YouTubers record and upload private days like weddings, births, even memorial services, as with Caleb Bratayley, the son in a family of vloggers who passed away in 2015. A video featuring clips of him from only days before he died was uploaded posthumously, as well as his memorial service which was streamed live on Periscope and Facebook (Parkinson, 2015). In the past, a popular video for YouTubers was ‘Draw My Life’ in which they would tell the story of their life through narration and drawings. It was through this that YouTubers revealed private parts of their history, yet again, letting the fan see even deeper into their life. It’s also not unusual for a YouTuber to introduce their family into vlogs. Louise Pentland (also known as Sprinkleofglitter), for example, is well known for her daughter’s appearances in videos, as well as the countless family vloggers like the ‘Shaytards’ and the Saccone-Jolys who introduce the world to their families through daily vlogs. Viewers watch relationships develop, children grow up, the mundanes and the ups and downs of family life. All these things give the fan an insight into the lives of those they admire, almost as if the YouTuber is letting them in on a personal level. A surrogate relationship is built between the fan and the celebrity: ‘fame culture offers ‘ordinary’ and ‘extraordinary’ people the chance of a heightened level of intimacy’ (Redmond, 2006). ‘Opportunities for interactions with celebrities in the past were rare and carefully controlled by celebrities for publicity and promotion purposes. However, social media have changed this one-sided relationship to a more interactive and reciprocal one.’ (Chung and Cho, 2017). Anyone can tweet at, or comment on an Instagram post of celebrities, both in the world of traditional media and the new, emerging talent coming from social media itself. And the difference is, YouTubers reply. Grace Helbig’s videos of ‘commenting on comments’ which take fans interactions with her and replies directly. Of the people I surveyed who said they watched YouTubers, 100% of them said they followed YouTubers on some form of social media. 33% said that they had attempted to talk directly to YouTubers through social media or YouTube (2). Popular YouTuber Zoe Sugg (also known as Zoella), currently as 7.97 million Twitter followers (Twitter.com, n.d) and 10.8 million on Instagram (Instagram.com, n.d.). She posts on both regularly and uses them as platforms to not only promote herself, and as a means of communicating directly to fans, but also as way of posting not-so-subtle advertisements for her own brand (Twitter.com, n.d) and others (Instagram.com, 2017). This accessibility of YouTubers could be seen in two lights, positive and negative. On the positive side, it’s a whole new world of fan interaction, fans are more able to directly talk to those they admire and idolise. But on the other hand, it also gives the celebrity easier access to the fan. Through the connections YouTubers create with their viewers, they create a bond with the viewer through methods discussed above. ‘These new media environments have narrowed the distance between audiences and celebrities and have altered the role of audiences from that or mere spectators or admirers to “friends” of celebrities’ (Chung and Cho, 2017), YouTube celebrities especially are often viewed as ‘friends’ of the viewer, and talked to as such. It would appear then, that this is what made the abuse perpetrated by select YouTubers so easy, fans would already see themselves as friends, but still idolised the celebrity, which is a dangerous combination. It should be noted though that celebrities taking advantage of their fans is in no way a new occurrence and is not a phenomenon that came with YouTube celebrities. In 2012, after his death, abuse allegations against TV personality Jimmy Savile began. Leading to Operation Yewtree, an investigation launched which considered the allegations of sexual abuse by Jimmy Savile as well as other TV and radio personalities (Grierson, 2015). In Hammer of the Gods, Stephen Davis accounts fourteen-year-old Lori Maddox’s encounters with Jimmy Page, quoting her as saying ‘Of course I really liked him, but I was afraid of him. I was only fourteen, and this was a much older man.’ (Davis, 2008). Celebrities abusing their power over fans is not a new phenomenon, but the relationships created by these YouTubers between themselves and fans, whether real or not, gave them an added power over their fans, if someone already thinks of you as friend, while still idolising you, it would not be difficult to abuse that power. There is a definite power imbalance within the relationship, and it is something that should be considered when thinking about relationships between fan and celebrity. Lauren Rochford, 2017 Final year university project. Appendix
(1) Video Essay - https://youtu.be/96y4oJhmZE4 (2) Link to Spreadsheet containing all data acquired in research survey (3) A full list of responses given to the question ‘Why do you watch YouTubers?’
Answers to the same question, from people who responded that they used to watch YouTubers but don’t any more
A full list of the reasons people gave to why they feel closer to YouTubers than traditional celebrities
The following responses came from participants who acknowledged that they once watched YouTubers but do not anymore, but who still felt that they felt closer to YouTubers than traditional celebrities
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