Celebrities & Corporate Content Are Taking Over

I love my dudes my name is Tiffany welcome back to my series Internet analysis where I like to research and discuss topics related to social issues and media today my question is why does YouTube seem to favor content from celebrities and corporations now this is gonna be a very interesting one okay you got to watch the whole thing so in this video we're going to explore what YouTube is supposed to be from the perspective of viewers and creators what direction YouTube seems to be going in and why we're seeing so many more celebrities creating YouTube videos alright I don't usually do this but there is serious T regarding celebrities on YouTube so I very much recommend that you at least watch until this point we have to watch the whole rest of the video because it's a build-up you know YouTube is about authenticity it is the place where any average person can film videos in their bedroom and blow up in popularity in a few months if you're lucky corporate content on the other hand is not necessarily bad but I think corporate has a negative connotation I just imagine a group of mostly old white men in suits in a board meeting discussing a focus group of what content appeals to kids these days but really that is not entirely fair because yes some of the greatest content ever is technically produced by corporate entities but corporate doesn't feel like YouTube so let's talk about YouTube broadcast yourself that's the slogan or at least it used to be YouTube was created as a video sharing website nowhere else online could a person upload a video to share with the public or friends and family soon enough a few early youtubers were born that is people who begin to post regularly on the platform rather than just being users they were creators we had Smosh Fred Ryan Higa in the early days no one could have predicted the trajectory of YouTube or its creators it was simply full of amateur low or no budget content made by individuals or friends then the YouTube Partner Program was launched in December 2007 and the top YouTube creators began earning ad revenue so looking at this chart of the top youtubers from early 2008 we have Smosh at the top with about 250,000 subscribers and then most of the other channels in the top 10 are around a hundred thousand subscribers naturally as money starts rolling in youtubers begin to treat this as a legitimate job and very often they will incorporate that is they will register as a business maybe an LLC or another corporation mostly for tax purposes and also a lot of youtubers will start to upgrade you know get better equipment but also add people to their team be it videographers writers producers editors to help them improve their quality and manage their workload and honestly it's amazing to see a youtuber go from filming in their bedroom to being a business owner with multiple employees it's like the ultimate YouTube success story so in this video I'm going to refer back to this specific idea a lot and that is what is authentic YouTube and what is corporate YouTube most channels are not corporations molding youtubers but rather they are youtubers evolving growing upgrading and even if a youtuber technically owns their corporation I wouldn't consider their content to be corporate it's higher quality it may be higher budget but it still retains that authentic YouTube feel let's talk about traditional media versus YouTube so there's a lot of high quality content on YouTube that a lot of people think would be worthy of you know becoming a show on Netflix and occasionally youtubers do get the opportunity to create a proper TV show and obviously the YouTube community celebrates this it's very exciting when one of us one of our creators gets given this chance unfortunately most people probably not a lot of us because we love YouTube but most people still think that online media especially YouTube is lesser than traditional media even if it's all digital media the platform matters YouTube is an open platform more or less almost anyone can post but to be able to get a show on Netflix or another streaming service you have to be chosen there's prestige in that there's a level of approve you're deemed worthy to create this more formal traditional media which gives you a lot more respect and legitimacy in the industry and yet when youtubers are given opportunities outside of the platform sometimes it doesn't go well let's take grace helbig and her show on e for example I love grace I've been watching her for years but I didn't watch this show and I don't think that a lot of people did because it was kind of quickly cancelled so why aren't these YouTube turn TV shows successful well first a creator would need to successfully bring their audience over to watch the show which can be tough to do but more so I think the problem is that something is different the content feels over produced and the voice of your creator may not sound like their voice anymore because maybe they have a whole team of writers behind them the set is elaborate and unfamiliar it's not the recognizable rooms that you're used to seeing and sometimes the content itself feels restrained like you can almost tell that the person is kind of holding themselves back or acting different or speaking differently than they usually would on YouTube so rather than this content flowing directly from the beautiful brain of your favorite content creator straight to you it had to go through a writing and editing and approval process so it just feels corporate now that's a more extreme example but even when a youtuber just gets an editor viewers can usually tell I mean obviously a different person will edit differently even if they are trying to mimic that creators style but sometimes even those small differences in editing can be very off-putting or maybe just the thought of someone else Ken Burns in or adding sound rocks to your favorite creators videos just feels wrong it's just not the YouTube we know and love you know you want your favorite creators themselves to suffer looking at their own face for hours on end recently Cody Komeito that's cringe video with Noel and the editor went way too hard and everyone freaked and I'll be honest the edits were a bit too much like tone it down please yeah these are dirty Cody and a while are funny enough on their own but the main point is that YouTube is very intimate we get to know a creator and their voice and their style and their editing so when things change it's usually not welcomed with open arms there's also a bit of the relatability element so like we do relate to seeing someone in their room or their apartment and we just don't relate as much to a full set or a whole production of course it can still be entertaining but it doesn't feel like YouTube next I want to transition to the topic of spill there has been a lot of discussion about this recently so spill is a drama channel that produces really high quality well researched animated videos this whole scandal is a lot so I definitely recommend watching videos from DeAngelo Wallis or peti page if you want to get all the information but here is a quick summary basically viewers were impressed with spills content and their incredibly consistent upload schedule and they were wondering how is it possible to make such good videos so frequently the viewers also had the impression that spill was just the anonymous account of some girl who really likes animation and YouTube drama so spill had told its viewers that it was just a passion project created by a few friends who is spill spill started out as a two-person passion project we both love YouTube news and drama who doesn't but it turns out spill was created by a media company called aw edy Corp that had been around for years before spill was created so rather than being what the audience thought spill was it turned out to be a character created by a company and run by a whole team of people and then the company began expanding to other genres with other new characters to some this isn't a big deal if you like this channel in its videos why should any of this matter but to others it does matter first because of the dishonesty some viewers felt betrayed because spill lied mostly by omission about its origin and its structure they only address the situation once people started digging but also this is worrying some youtubers who see it I was kind of a glimpse into a dystopian near future of the platform DeAngelo put it really well why are companies pretending to be people two words manufactured authenticity basically people like people more than they like companies so companies have started trying to act like people think about how fast food brands interact with Twitter I think this pill scandal also highlights how as a community we've become so suspicious of certain types of content such as the apparent industry plan to Vann girl by the way a couple of you asked me to cover that I feel like so many people have made videos on it and they've done it justice so I don't have much to say but anyway we want to know is this youtuber a person or were they molded to be the perfect youtuber by a team of people we want to be able to tell very clearly if something is organic and real or if it's been orchestrated produced or master-planned I don't really care to get into the nitty-gritty of the whole spill situation but if we're thinking about content as a binary either independent or corporate I would definitely consider spill to fall under corporate content and that doesn't necessarily mean it's bad I mean they clearly make good videos and it does fit in well on YouTube I basically see spill on a similar level as BuzzFeed and those other media giants that create an impossible amount of content every day across every possible genre I mean it is corporate content people are literally working 9:00 to 5:00 creating this but it can still be good contents and I do think it does have a place on YouTube however another big part of this issue is competition this team of people can create much higher quality content much more frequently than an individual content creator could so other drama channels for example can't really compete with spill and I think that is one of the major problems that youtubers have with corporate content YouTube was supposed to be a platform for independent creators and obviously there's enough competition amongst all of us so it sucks to also have to compete with these media giants now obviously this is all fair game because any person or even any company has all the same rights to upload videos on YouTube but creators can feel threatened because we kind of already feel like we're always fighting against issues like D monetization and we're trying to please the algorithm somehow and remain relevant and probably most importantly it really feels like independent content creators are being prioritized less and less on YouTube that being said though I still think there's a huge distinction between companies like BuzzFeed or Spill who are creating content for YouTube versus mainstream content that gets posted to YouTube as just part of their distribution Jimmy Fallon Jimmy Kimmel late-night show clips are all over YouTube and I'll admit I never really seek them out but they're always a my recommended and I will watch them occasionally my favorites are last week tonight with John Oliver they're really good but clearly YouTube promotes the [ __ ] out of these very traditional very mainstream shows suddenly valuable space on the homepage and trending tab that could have gone to youtubers was now going to TV shows with built-in audiences and millions of dollars then there were the last three YouTube rewind hosted by the rock Stephen Colbert and Will Smith the fact that YouTube was pushing these Hollywood actors and TV stars as the face of their site came off a little tone deaf why does YouTube promote this mainstream TV content so much because it makes money these shows bring in billions of views it does feel strange though why is YouTube recommending this so often how do late-night shows end up on the front page of YouTube or constantly trending there are so many independent content creators struggling to get eyes on their content trying so hard to be blessed by the algorithm and yet YouTube just keeps promoting mainstream TV shows speaking of here's a clip from the David Pakman show he is a political commentator and in this clip he's talking about the recommendation and views of mainstream outlets like CNN Fox versus independent YouTube commentators and the views and recommendations that they get on May 1st those numbers crashed and they went from between 1 and 3 percent to between 0.03 percent and half a percent so you should obviously change something in their algorithm because suddenly these independent political channels are all getting away smaller slice of the news views meanwhile recommendations and views for mainstream news are going up previously I estimated that we had lost about 2 million views per month from this algorithm recommending our videos more and more infrequently not to mention news and politics channels already struggle with so much D monetization because a lot of the topics that they cover are considered controversial so I do wonder when CNN covers those same topics are they getting demonetised anyway for independent small channels a loss of millions of views per month is devastating and that can prevent a channel from being able to continue making videos but ultimately if YouTube is going to do this I don't know what we can do that's completely within their right to do this I just think it is a perversion of their original existence which was independent content now just the same old legacy corporate content that people get through cable subscriptions this is the decision that is anti independent pro corporate so why does YouTube favor mainstream media news / independent media it could again be the legitimacy factor obviously mainstream networks are considered to be the most legitimate news sources we have though of course each network has their own slant and bias and they have owners that they may not want to piss off so maybe it's in their best interest to maintain the status quo but that is for another video mostly I think a lot of it is because mainstream media is considered to already be ad friendly they've basically been pre-approved because obviously they run commercials on their actual TV shows I'm sure that these networks already have relationships with the advertisers independent YouTube political commentators though are probably not considered by most to be legitimate though I personally find them and I like that they are open about their bias and they discuss topics that typically aren't covered by mainstream networks even though mainstream networks have nearly unlimited resources and 24-hour news cycles you'd think they'd have the time so what would be YouTube's justification for this I don't know YouTube could say maybe they're trying to cut down on fake news content which would imply that the independent creators are sharing the fake news and that mainstream news could never perpetuate fake news or misleading things or wildly incorrect things but I don't think YouTube has addressed this situation at all they don't usually address anything to be honest the thing is though the same thing could be argued for all mainstream versus independent content on YouTube bottom line youtubers want to keep their advertisers happy which means keeping content ad friendly mainstream content is generally seen as safe and because of a few bad apples advertisers may see independent media as more risky unless those creators happen to be very family-friendly anyway this is just another example of YouTube promoting mainstream content over independent content at a YouTube presentation put on for advertisers top creators were nowhere to be found instead there was the YouTube the company wants advertisers to see ariana grande on VEVO series from Kevin Hart and Demi Lovato clips from The Tonight Show featuring Jimmy Fallon youtubers are also facing competition from another mainstream media facet finally we get to talk about celebrities creating YouTube content I don't know if you've noticed but there are tons of celebrity channels popping up every day and even though I watched like zero traditional celebrity content it is all over my recommended it's funny because youtubers aren't generally well respected in the industry but suddenly we're seeing celebrities who want to be youtubers of course in addition to the acting and other work that they still do you're on my blog bla bla my question is why I mean that's the big question of this video here are my theories first celebrities YouTube is just another arm of social media and influence I think it's wise to get as many followers on as many different platforms as possible also they've surely noticed that online creators especially youtubers have much stronger connections with their followers and therefore more influence than most celebrities do with their fans so yeah you may follow a celebrity you like on Instagram because you think they're attractive and you like their show but you feel like you know your favorite youtuber you have spent hours listening to and watching them celebrities want in on that connection it is valuable you're probably much more likely to buy something that is sponsored by one of your favorite youtubers rather than a random product that a celebrity promotes on Instagram so of course celebrities may want in on this adsense coin or brand deal money but the main weird thing about celebrity youtube channels is that they just don't feel like authentic YouTube channels they want to be but they're usually like too high quality too scripted so I'm gonna bring you straight into my home and show you how to do red carpet makeup on a drugstore budget this concealers nine dollars to me it's priceless until they get super famous most youtubers have no budget they don't have expensive equipment they make their videos entirely by themselves but the vast majority of celebrities on YouTube have full production teams from the start and to be honest most of them are making super generic content it's like popular person plus popular topic equals popular YouTube video if you're trying to follow a formula it just won't feel real the essence of YouTube is getting to know a person because they put so much of themselves into every video so again like when youtubers have proper TV shows celebrity YouTube channels can have a lot of the same downsides it feels overproduced it doesn't feel natural authentic YouTube is usually more gritty it can be slightly lower-quality but that's kind of what we love like we like seeing people do their a little like me editing cut-ins okay but on that note I want to give credit to one person in particular and that is Jack Black because I've heard a lot of people say that he's their favorite celebrity youtuber and I think that he's doing it right because he's not trying to act like a youtuber he's just being a youtuber you got Viking beer Jack Black in a freaking PewDiePie chair talking about ninja and doing the but can you do this meanwhile megalovania plays what is this this is a freaking fever dream compared to most of the other mainstream celebrities coming over to YouTube but this was a total breath of fresh air there was no big production team just Jack Black and someone holding an iPhone what a legend anyway to be honest celebrities on YouTube didn't really interest me either way until I found out this piping hot tea and yes this is so spicy that I literally had to use the term tea to describe it I don't know why something that would be spicy would be T because T sound spicy white people I mean right now unless we're talking about chai China's kind of spicy spicy tea all right why are celebrities making YouTube channels and why is YouTube promoting celebrity content so heavily oh because YouTube has been paying celebrities to make content excuse me I didn't know this this is all the way back from 2011 Google ready to spend a hundred million dollars to get celebrities building YouTube channels to get the celebs on board Google is offering up to five million dollars per channel the money would cover salaries and production costs Google would make the money back through premium advertising so again they are investing in these celebrities they're paying them a lump sum that's their salary in their production budget but really quickly I just want to be very clear right now that not all celebrities on YouTube have been paid by Google I don't think there's any public information about who exactly has been paid because kind of foil this whole plan so to be clear any clips of celebrity youtubers that I put in this video I am not trying to imply that they have been paid to be on YouTube other than Adsense obviously okay but yes that article was from 2011 YouTube has been trying to get celebrities on this platform for a long time to be real a lot of people start YouTube channels with the hopes that maybe someday they'll get big enough to earn some money from it you know ad revenue so okay I don't fault celebrities for wanting to maybe join in on this but holy [ __ ] I never considered that someone would be paid just to start their channel so naive of me so now when I see these highly produced celebrity YouTube channels I'm like huh did you really have a passion for YouTube and you just wanted to connect with your fans or did Google pay you and pay for your production just wondering just seems a lot less genuine this definitely does not feel like authentic YouTube I'm gonna ask again why YouTube is clearly courting celebrities YouTube home of the nobodies who become internet somebodies for some reason YouTube also wants to be home of celebrities who get to be like real and connect with people I guess it is not clear to me why YouTube would want to get mainstream celebrities on the platform other than the obvious if they get views YouTube makes money it would be one thing to you know recommend these videos promote these videos but it's a whole other thing to literally actively recruit them and pay them to make channels I just can't get over it the present and future of YouTube more and more celebrities I want to introduce you guys to a guy named Derek Derek Blasberg I think is how you pronounce it he is the head of the fashion section of YouTube he's tasked with cultivating relationships with brands and high-profile people in the industry so that they will use the platform more often more effectively and build audiences there I first noticed this guy because he was commenting on Emma chamber - Instagram pictures and I was like who is this and then it all clicked he must be the guy who's responsible in some way for EMA Chamberlain's whole collaboration with Louis Vuitton and all of the fashion shows that she's been going to so yes for everyone who was like wow good for Emma but how did she end up working with a company like Louis Vuitton probably Derek speaking of money YouTube and Blasberg for the record would not comment on whether it compensated individuals brands or creators for their efforts or simply picked up the tab for content production there was actually a big party where like huge celebrities and YouTube stars mingled to celebrate the launch of YouTube's new fashion vertical YouTube tries to get fashionable YouTube executives began to realize that some of its fashion and beauty creators were starting to attract large audiences this would lead to a number of opportunities including commercial partnerships with luxury brands we thought if it's already happening organically imagine what could happen if we really started to work on this I know this video is getting long but stay with me the last thing I want to talk about is something that makes it super clear that YouTube is prioritizing celebrities and that is its recent failed new verification badge check mark situation prior to this any channel that passed a hundred thousand subscribers and was verified to not be a spam account would be given this verified a check mark in addition to the hundred thousand subscriber plaque which is like a nice perk of hitting an exciting milestone and it is meaningful especially to mid tier channels for a number of reasons by the way I don't know what's considered small medium or large in terms of YouTube subscribers anymore so whatever but that check mark makes you feel legit and for a lot of us on YouTube this is the only place where we can get a check mark because I'm not gonna be verified on Twitter and I'm not gonna be verified on Instagram but anyway practically it's also helpful because it can help other viewers find your channel if they happen to see your comment in a comment section it can help youtubers find other youtubers in their comments so people make friends I've made some YouTube friends this way so YouTube came out suddenly and it was like oh by the way we're changing our perfect Haitian rules and we're gonna take checkmarks away from people who no longer fit these new requirements sorry they wanted to get rid of the checkmark because they said it's confusing it's not and they wanted to replace it with this disgusting grey highlighter why who approved this so among all the new requirements here are a few basically the risk of being impersonated you must submit news sources that referenced you and you must be widely recognized outside of YouTube why should a youtuber need to be well-known outside of the platform where they are most well-known in order to be verified on their main platform riddle me this many youtubers are huge but not mentioned often in mainstream news because they are unproblematic faves and they don't have any controversy or scandals in order to be in the mainstream media because we know that the mainstream media is not out there posting anything positive about youtubers but anyway these new eligibility requirements clearly favored celebrity YouTube channels risk of being impersonated yep featured in mainstream news yep widely known outside of YouTube yep they should have included not well-known on YouTube because that's true for most celebrity youtubers - and my salty yes YouTube is officially taking the you out of youtube and changing it to celeb tube Corp tube so yeah people were pissed about this pips it was popping off on Twitter and luckily YouTube caved to the criticism and decided to walk back the whole thing and say that everybody who has a checkmark will keep it and they may mess with the eligibility stuff in the future but anyway they're not gonna be taking anybody's checkmark away which is great but what the hell were you thinking in the first place creators often get really mad with YouTube because it seems like they tend to make changes for inexplicable reasons that not only don't benefit creators but usually harm creators like this is YouTube dammit like we the creators are YouTube right now YouTube creators are one part of YouTube but they're definitely not the main priority by far so those new failed eligibility requirements definitely signaled the direction that YouTube was slash is heading in it was a strong signal that they want more celebrity content and celebrity content will be protected rewarded lifted up it would be distinct from other peasant content from youtubers the thing is YouTube is repositioning itself and honestly it has been four years in a media landscape which is currently dominated by like online streaming services honestly everybody's trying to get in on it YouTube has original content YouTube read YouTube is I think one of the biggest online platforms for music and music videos they have YouTube music and YouTube is diversifying but strangely none of that includes putting any additional effort or help into actual youtubers strange choice YouTube is always telling us that like we created YouTube and that YouTube would be nothing without us and it's like they don't care about us but they know that we have no alternative so we have to stay and they can do whatever they want so clearly all of this is very disheartening and and disappointing to youtubers that aren't late-night host or mainstream celebrities again this is the only platform we have and we are constantly facing issues like algorithm changes indie monetization and yada yada yada YouTube is allowed to diversify you know it's cool that you want to invite celebrities to the platform but we're just asking like can you just throw us a frickin bone here cannot say that without thinking of Austin Powers anyway Wow long video I really hope you guys enjoyed it hope you learned something new if you enjoyed it please subscribe for more Internet analysis videos you guys can follow me on Instagram for some mediocre pics you can follow me on Twitter for some political tweets I'm always popping off there and again stay tuned for more content you never know what I'm gonna cover next I never know what I'm gonna cover next and YouTube please keep blessing me you been really nice to me with the algorithm lately and it would suck if you suddenly decided to hate me because I exposed you just a little bit okay okay thanks bye [Music]

Channel: tiffanyferg

Views: 554,834

Rating: 4.9608173 out of 5

Keywords: Tiffany Ferguson, tiffanyferg, internet analysis, commentary, video essay, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, celebrity youtubers, celebrities on youtube, David Pakman, corporate, Spill, Spill drama, Spill is not a person, Derek Blasberg, tea, media studies, Will Smith, Jack Black

Id: Aws7Wr6fEso

Length: 30min 23sec (1823 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 27 2019