Dote - An Example of Selective "Diversity"

hello my dudes my name is Tiffany welcome back to my series internet analysis where I like to research and discuss any topics relevant to social media or the internet or anything today's video topic was highly requested especially on my last video I got quite a few comments of people asking me to do a video on the do't situation in case you don't know I will of course fill you in let's jump right in so do't as i understand it is a shopping app and i guess you can buy clothes from multiple stores in one cart and there are also some like social features follow your favorite creators find where their outfits are from but don't it is most well known probably for their trips they said so many people on trips like they send people to like Fiji they send people to here they send people to here and here and they're like ok here's a bunch of girls you guys could stay together have fun like take pictures like here's your own photographer these trips are all-expense-paid and basically from what girls have said your job is to just go there take as many pictures as possible post pictures post vlogs and videos and ultimately promote the app so to me the rise of do't happened just around the same time as the rise of what I will call the Emma Chamberlain group but I know that they're not all friends anymore whatever especially in the past year or so we have seen an explosion of these like quirky teen vloggers and I think Emma Chamberlain was a big part of that still is but along with her there are dozens of girls who are creating the same kind of content with the same kind of high-energy fun relatable editing style but also if you notice kind of this group of girls you may notice they're quite white and thin very conventionally pretty and they are popular and from what I've seen this group of girls basically ended up being the dope girls main group these trips came to signify a lot of things for creators and for the audience for creators to be able to be a part of this trip is like almost like being a Victoria's Secret Angel but on YouTube and in social media and instead of being a fashion model you just are a model on the beach but seriously it provides amazing opportunities to go on these super beautiful trips to gain followings to make new friends so yeah so pretty much starting like last summer ish we've seen quite a few dope trips usually in kind of tropical locations they've done doed chela last two years and almost every time we've still had this same main group go to almost every big fun trip and then you get a couple of new people thrown in there and notably you get a couple of girls of color thrown in there so looking at this I was like oh this is cool this is fun I noticed something I don't know if it's just me but it looks really white and I was like okay nobody's talking about this I guess it's not like a big deal I made the video that has now 265 K views I post it May 3rd 2018 a year and three days ago like I was on the [ __ ] and this video did not blow up until like four months after I posted it that just goes to show you that people didn't notice at first or I guess they just didn't want to notice you know so initially I think a lot of people did notice how white these groups were mostly these trip groups but I don't think a lot of people have big problems with it until very recently because we finally have started to hear from girls of color who have gone in these Jo trips and expressed how they felt but then came this last Coachella doe cella and claims of segregated housing I'm pretty sure it's Keisha was the first channel to really make a video about this exact topic she included clips from Danielle's vlog at Coachella in the dope house I mean I saw a lack of diversity within the photos within the group within the brand itself I was nearly gonna cry when I watched her video so i watch Daniela Perkins video and she was crying like so awkward and like it I don't like Coachella I don't move it or the ADA so much you don't want to be here I just felt different and at the moment it wasn't like different in a good way when she's a difference it literally hurt my heart like I was like huh start different in terms of an out cost everyone else in this trip was white if nothing wrong growth but like come on mix that ish of like spicing up a little bit Farina was there Keanu was there diamond and Eris so those food girls were in a room by themselves and didn't look like a room I just not era she wouldn't ever so this is like our we're saying I don't know who's staying right that's my bed that's arias and then there's Danielle and the bench just looked so oh my god I'm not even gonna talk about I'm trying to inset some clips for you guys watching I think Ava's vlog we switched room so we have the room connecting to who is it Elliot Aaron summer and Kalani we're all sharing a room now I'm very excited but he should use this opportunity to talk about the lack of diversity on YouTube especially in this teen quirky vlogger kind of sphere but also in don't because don't kind of represents for that age group like the ultimate brand steel sponsorship opportunity this brand just only sees one figure it's beautiful excuse me what about Desai sixteen models out there do better it shouldn't be the same people the same body types being praised so as a lot of girls have explained in their videos on one side of this house at Coachella you find pretty much all of the white girls in various rooms they've got bunk beds like full size bunk beds and the rooms look really nice and fun and then on the other side of the house you find kind of these open living areas with couches turned into makeshift beds specifically for all the girls of color clearly this is a huge problem the interesting thing is even before Keisha made her video even like last year a couple of girls of color who had been on these Jo trips had kind of alluded to the fact that there had been things kind of going down there had been a bit of tea going on in these do't trips but they never said anything because they didn't want to seem rude they didn't want to call anybody out they didn't want to make drama I didn't want to be the problematic black girl and I didn't want to be labeled as ungrateful I didn't speak up because I was protecting a company that didn't care about my well-being in the slightest so these girls stayed quiet but now since Keisha has made that video a lot of other people who have gone to these trips are starting to speak out and make their own videos as well as other viewers talking about the lack of diversity on YouTube and other issues involving race and row presentation I thought that I could be representation for black girls all over the world but for me to feel like the token black girl on two trips in a row it's dead I don't want to do it anymore so I'm trying to include as many videos as possible and I'll be linking those videos and channels down below but if I miss anyone in this video please leave it in the comments I want to use this as an opportunity to promote all of these girls all of their perspectives deserve to be heard and this brings me to one of my biggest points of this video is that I am so proud to see these girls speaking out about an issue that's serious a lot of people are scared about talking about anything even vaguely controversial on YouTube so to see these girls who are rather young they're like 17 18 19 there was even a girl who's 12 I think speaking about this and speaking about their experiences and what it is like to be a person of color what it's like to feel everyday casual racism or feel discriminated against I have experienced racism since I was in pre-k the girls didn't want to play with me because of the color of my skin and here to shed light on what it's like to be a woman of color in a white industry it is so cool to see people with large platforms and channels using that for good using that as an opportunity to have an important conversation and it's cool to see smaller channels who may not have that large of a platform but still using the platform that they have that everybody has for good and I have been watching these videos as they've been unfolding over the past like week or so and at first I didn't want to make a video about it because obviously I'm white I have never experienced racism firsthand so it's not like any of this is relevant to my personal opinions or experiences but I think as an ally to people of color it's important that white people speak out about it too if you're silent about issues especially racial issues that makes you complicit so in this video I'm going to use my platform to spread the voices of other girls amplify the voices of people of color you know with my community here anyway the latest person as of right now to post a video about their Coachella experience was Aris I truly believe this was not an intentional thing a lot of the girls our Caucasian are already friends and I'm pretty sure that the people in charge put them in those rooms together because they are friends where they made the mistake was because they know they had to diversify their brand I'm pretty sure that's why all of us girls of color we're on that other side of the house I truly believe this was an act of ignorant he did not know I don't think it was intentional at all this is something that really interests me a couple of these girls have said that they don't think that this housing situation at Coachella was intentional they don't think that dote intentionally wanted to make them feel uncomfortable or unwelcome but I think this housing situation was absolutely intentional the excuse could be oh well this group of girls the white girls were already friends so it makes sense to put them together but they were put together in better rooms in the best rooms and beds of the house the intent is that you cannot rent a house knowing what this trip is knowing exactly how many people are going and who's going you can't rent a house without knowing exactly what the sleeping situation is like how many rooms do you have how many beds do you have so don't knowingly obviously rented this house and decided that it was okay because they had this many rooms and beds over here for this group and then they could try to [ __ ] some little sleeping situation over here for the girls of color they knew what they were doing and there were multiple assumptions made here the first assumption would be oh if you put all the girls of color together they'll be friends they thought we would be friends because of that I don't become friends with people based on their race I become friends with them based on their energy based on their personality based on who they are as a person period the second kind of assumption was that it's okay for whatever reasons to give that group of girls lesser accommodations like imagine if we have seen all these vlogs and we saw Hannah melosh and Ellie and summer McKean put out in these living room couch situations no we just wouldn't see that and is that because oh maybe the girls with the most followings the most popular girl maybe they get the best room no that is not the way that you should do a trip even if that were their strategy that would be so rude I mean it's obvious enough as a YouTube creator in a context with other creators kind of what the hierarchy is it's like natural for people to compare their follower counts and act like that has anything to do with how worthy you are of attention but the girls of color have huge followings as well so even if that were a valid reason which it's not that's not the reason the thing is if you know you don't have enough rooms or real beds for all the girls and it comes down to it you have to make decisions on who goes where if it were just based on making sure everybody was in a room with their friends why don't you put all the white girls that big click into a big open space like the living room then they could all be together or maybe make sure everyone has at least one friend or one person that they know in their room and then they'll have an opportunity to meet the other girls that they don't know yet that actually would have been better because it would have prevented a lot of the click enos that was also another problem especially for the girls of color who felt completely left out I mean any of us can relate to being in a kind of situation where we like barely know anybody and then you've got this big clique or best friends having a wonderful time and you're just like sick I'll wait till you know I can introduce myself or maybe someone will talk to me it's a terrible feeling and that's not even with the race element or the unequal housing situation element anyway back to my original point on this long tangent was it don't intention to do this I don't think their intention was let's be racist cuz we hate people of color let's make them feel uncomfortable no I don't think they're diabolical but all of these choices that they made had thought behind it and they were okay with that this oversight is just unacceptable and it is so disrespectful and you would have to be literally blindly ignorant to not be able to acknowledge what happened in this situation anyway continuing on in all these videos that are coming out from the different girls who have gone to these trips they almost all have the same stories on every trip if women of color were invited they were treated differently on these trips they have photographers who are there again for the purpose taking as many pictures as possible so that the girls can post on social media yada yada no one else wanted to take pictures of me no one would even talk to me no one is taking pictures of you on a trip that's four pictures you're gonna feel very uncomfortable I already wasn't being talked to by the majority of the people on the trips so when no one wanted to take pictures of me I just felt like an outcast so they put together a shoot for girls who weren't getting photographed on beach so I go to this photo shoot right so me and these girls just get clumped into a group and we get a few group shots and then the photographer goes down the line and just goes like this he doesn't give us any direction he just takes the pictures so at least I get some pictures right so at the end of the trip we were sent folders on all the photos that we got right the photos that we're taking on the beach they weren't even edited they were literally discarded and no one even gave them to us so even that shoe on the beach it didn't even matter it's not about getting pictures in Fiji it's about feeling unwelcome it's about feeling uncomfortable it's about feeling like an outcast and again if this was a trip where it was like we're all dope girls we're all friends then everyone should be on an equal playing field everybody should be able to get in as many pictures as possible the photographer should be giving time and attention to get bomb-ass pictures of all the girls not just you know these ones not only that but if you're not getting pictures taken you're not getting posted on doats Instagram which again is another opportunity for promotion to be able to grow your followers so doats whole Instagram would be all of these girls so many pictures of them and then once in a while they'd throw in a picture of one of the girls of color every once in a while like one of the black girls is in a picture with like five other white girls and it's like yeah equality like no the company had hundreds of photos to choose from with the other girls in them and I'm sure it didn't matter that me and my roommate had about five of us because they can just sprinkle them in when they need diversity on their Instagram other than that just in general the girls have said that they just felt like literally the token black girl I don't want to support photographers that refer to us as black girls instead of getting to know our names we were dancing and one goes ooh let me get the black girls on film dancing they know everybody else's name but they don't know our name these girls of color felt like on mine or even in a situation that was supposed to be a fun inclusive amazing trip they felt uncomfortable they felt unwanted and again so much of that is due to the organization of do't of this company who sent them on this trip by the way Eris seems to be the only girl of color who's spoken out who felt like she wasn't put in a bad position she didn't have anything really super bad to say about her experiences personally I already knew a lot of people that were going to be there so I felt comfortable I was like okay this is cool I was just in Tennessee with my girls and it was great so maybe she did have a better experience because she was kind of let into that clique that group the main group and I'm glad that she hadn't experienced more than negative things that a lot of the other girls did so it's valid for her to say her opinion in her experience and that she generally hasn't had a bad time she's lucky but a lot of those other girls of color were not that lucky next I want to get into why a lot of these girls did not speak out until now again some of them went on trips as long ago as like last summer and there's a common thread of them not wanting to speak out for certain reasons the first thing would be they just didn't want to seem dramatic they didn't want to make it seem like they had a problem with the other girls so they just decided to stay silent also they were grateful for the opportunity to go in a fully paid for trip and they didn't want to seem ungrateful and the last thing is they were scared about speaking out against this company and the way that they were treated because they liked this company they wanted to be able to potentially work with them again they could potentially be blacklisted from the company if they come out and basically say hey don't situation is a bit racist or at the least they discriminate against girls of color or only use them when it's convenient for them as like a bit of diversity there are other viewers who have not been doped girls but as I said like this age group like teenage girls because this company has positioned itself as this dreamy elite kind of Club a lot of girls and small creators they want to they wanted to be a part of this someday like I don't want to make a video that's negative about this brand and have them not want to work with me maybe in like three years but same time I would I want to work with the brand that's like this I don't know so even though they did see these diversity issues and felt a little bit uncomfortable about it they were scared to speak out about it because it would ruin their chances of ever possibly being a dope girl themselves but I'm really glad now that people are putting that away and that they don't respect the company enough to want to work with them anyway but they would rather take this opportunity and talk about the situation we're far in but we're gonna keep going let's talk about doats lack of diversity i don't follow any of these girls specifically but they pop up on my explorer page a lot so I'd go and I'd be lurking and I go to doats page and you definitely used to see a lot of the same their clear favorite girls from their main doats quad and again a lot of them the vast majority of them are white and all the same very thin photogenic type of girls as I mentioned before the girls of color were occasionally featured it was as if you know every six pictures we got to throw in one picture with a black girl or with an Asian girl that we invited on a trip you can tell just by visually looking at their feed that they just throw in a little bit of color by the way another huge huge lack of diversity is their lack of size inclusivity truly only very very thin girls it reminds me of brandy melville I don't know if brandy is still like this on their Instagram but clearly their clothes one size fits tiny it's like to be a dope girl or to be a brandy melville model or whatever you have to fit this very specific mold and that is a thin mold and mostly white mold so do't came out with a response and here's the screenshot there is no excuse for anyone in our community to feel excluded or undervalued we're devastated to hear that girls on one of our trips one of your trips any of your trips that involve the girls of color to be honest felt that they were treated differently because of their race we did not and would never intentionally group girls together based on any racial characteristics that's not true you literally did so that's their apology from their founder which clearly people did not accept as enough then they have the audacity to start posting these pictures to their feet saying this is what don't looks like and I had to laugh because the Doge feat has never looked like that in all the times that I've looked at their page seeing the girls that they were promoting seen the pictures from the trips that they've taken it's never looks like this these are never before seen never before posted pictures with yes very diverse groups of girls also I don't know for sure because they don't have screenshots of their old feet but it looks like they've gone through and deleted like a ton of their pictures because there's nothing from like any of the recent trips or Coachella or anything but in deleting all of the basically overwhelming whiteness from their feed it makes their feed over all over the past year or so look pretty diapers but that's not the way it's always been this is being altered as we speak as damage control for their company for their image it's a serious accusation for people to think that your company is racist or promotes segregation or discrimination in any way against the girls that you invite to your trips for token diversity Mike where did the pictures of Emma Chamberlain or Hannah melosh or Ellie go cuz there used to be thousands of them and by the way I'm gonna talk about those girls and how they've responded to this situation later in the video but anyway who is this diverse group of dope girls a youtuber named nur meat made a video about her experience being invited on a dope trip basically there was like a contest for doats to invite smaller influencers or doats users on this trip to Texas which okay it's no Fiji but we'll take it which also clearly is another marketing strategy they know that their community would die to be a dope girl and would love to be invited on an all-expense-paid trip so clearly that's gonna generate more people joining the app and entering the contest they hosted our trip to give smaller influencers a voice and they hired professional photographers we were so excited to be you know considered for this opportunity to really advance our growth and showcase that you know like people who are not necessarily famous and popular can also have a voice like you star somewhere and you grow they never posted any of our photos like her photos were cute guys it seems like as if we weren't popular enough to actually get onto their Instagram like you know yeah they took us along for the trip so we could experience with dope girl for a day but then they didn't actually want to post any photos of us because we didn't represent their brand correctly or whatnot that was a perfect opportunity for them to take into their hands especially since they hosted the campaign they had the idea of giving smaller influencers a voice and they didn't even like go through with it so I don't even understand that to be honest it's just wack don't did not post anything from that Texas trip to their feed until now and again these girls expected to get a little bit of promotion again they were excited to go on the trip they were grateful to be chosen but to go and have all these pictures taken of you and then the brand doesn't even post one it's just kind of confusing right like why aren't these girls who won this contest or whatever why aren't they good enough for your feed don't hey they're good enough now now that you have to prove that you apparently support some kind of inclusion and diversity it's so gross that they are literally weaponizing these girls who went on a trip months ago and heard nothing suddenly now they get to be the face of doats diversity it's like mm-hmm as Kiana said diversity is not throwing one black girl among a whole bunch of white ones and being like hey we're diverse they decided that this meant that they would have a diversity trip where they take a huge group of girls of color and take them to New York cuz that's diversity right sorry but that's not how it works you can't just send a whole bunch of minority somewhere and call yourself diverse when I went on that New York trip it was all girls of color majority black girls and there was one girl who was Asian I believe it still looks segregated that way just because there weren't any white people on that trip and it wasn't like a blended situation it still looks segregated it's not about using the few girls that you've included to make yourselves look better to make your company look more inclusive no so continuing on how are the main white dope girls responding to this I seen some people kind of get mad at these girls and assumed that they must be racist in some way for not speaking out against this or something and I'm definitely not gonna say that any of these girls are racist I don't like to throw out that accusation blindly these girls were not the ones in charge of creating these trips and organizing the rooms and all of that but anyway a couple of them have put out tweets about the situation Ellie said in regards to what happened at Coachella my heart truly breaks I'm sorry for not speaking up or being more aware of how others were feeling this has been a huge learning lesson for all and I hope change will be made hannah melash said to those of you wondering about the Coachella situation I'm talking to everyone involved if you know me you know I would never want anyone to feel left out or uncomfortable ever it hurts to know that some people felt this way and that's not right here's the thing I always feel conflicted about when people feel obligated to address the situation and they come out with a tweet or a video because it never quite feels right and I don't know if there's a right way that they could have addressed this but at least mentioning racism or segregation or any of those terms discrimination these tweets are completely absent of that it just says Coachella situation sorry if you felt uncomfortable again it's not on these girls shoulders to fix the situation it wasn't their fault again it's kind of a bit of a controversial thing to talk about anything even related to race suddenly is controversial somehow so I get why they're trying to kind of take a safe path plus they might have contracts with dote I'm sure they do to where they're not allowed to say anything like Superbad about the company but I don't know just guessing anyway these girls are not the problem but I would say what they are guilty of is clique eNOS and kind of sticking with themselves which is natural most people do it if you're in a group of people that you know you're gonna stick with them if they're your close friends you're gonna stick with them but as somebody pointed out they're ignorant of the situation not really realizing what was going on as this tweet says don't girls saying oh my god I didn't realize what was happening yes honey that's how privilege works it's true it's true I'm white I have white privilege I have to actively remind myself to be considerate of how other people might be feeling because their experiences are different than mine when it comes down to racism a lot of white people do not see their privilege and they do not see the problem because they have never experienced the problem so what I assume is these girls were just guilty of being ignorant to the situations of others and yeah they probably weren't too open to trying to get new friends because they already had a group of friends on these trips I think so far Hannah and Ellie and maybe some of the other girls I haven't seen their post they've said that they do not want to work with the company anymore they won't so that's good but again they did benefit from this situation they hugely benefited collectively from being part of this main don't click not to mention like the actual benefits of going on all these trips but again they were very privileged to be able to be on these trips and not realize what was going on with the other girls the girls of color I hope in future situations where these girls are in other scenarios with other girls or creators I hope that they take this as a lesson to learn to not be so clicky again it's natural to hang out with your friends but like go out of your way to meet some new people if you see people kind of hanging out by themselves say hello invite them in befriend them take some cute pics together not for the sake of diversity but because friendship and I don't know coz dote is not the only company or app or whatever that is guilty of allowing this kind of situation to take place it happens all the time sometimes it's based on race sometimes it's based on follower count you know every time I've gone to VidCon and somehow got my way into one of those like exclusive parties so many people in there will only talk to you after they ask how many followers you have and decide that that number is worth spending a moment with you people are truly that brutal and as for doats future please stop with these [ __ ] disingenuous diversity posts it's so so cringy and actually disrespectful stop using these girls to prove anything you need to prove yourself with your actions not some Instagram posts that you're posting now that it's convenient and necessary to save your ass a good thing is doats followers and past dope girls have told them many many many ways that they can improve if you go on any of their posts now people are commenting endlessly suggestions on how dote can do better companies need to realize that different any different things in order to do that they need a diverse team so they need a woman of color on the team who is like you know what maybe we should hire photographers who know how to edit black girls or maybe we should hire black photographers or maybe we should hire a black hair stylist someone who knows how to do curly hair and straight hair but most of the time companies don't have someone diverse on their team so they don't know how to do diversity we gave them points on how to change their company we literally said to them you need girls of different colors you need girls have different follower counts you need girls of different sizes please the people who follow don't on Instagram or use their app are far from being all white or all thin and don't need to respect them and listen to them all equally I hope that somehow they learn and not just for the sake of damage control or for good PR getting a pat on the back for inviting more diverse girls I don't know well now everything that they post you have to kind of doubt their intentions because they clearly have now self-preserving necessity to try to clean this up and make the situation better okay I'm exhausted and I can hear my heaters now starting so that's good timing I hope you guys enjoyed this video again please check out the other girls videos they are all so well-spoken and again I am so proud of them for using their platforms and their voices to talk about serious issues I love love to see youtubers break out of you know the usual mold when it's important and when you need to and these are the most valuable kind of videos that we can hear and the followers and the viewers of these girls can gain so much from hearing people that they idolize or look up to talk about these issues okay I'm tired thank you guys for watching if you'd like to follow me on instagram for some mediocre pics hit me up and stay tuned for a future internet analysis video okay thanks bye

Channel: tiffanyferg

Views: 2,101,009

Rating: 4.9262881 out of 5

Keywords: tiffanyferg, internet, analysis, commentary, Dote, Dote racism, Dotechella, Vereena Dote, Itskeisha dote, segregation, Coachella, diversity, this is what dote looks like, POC, girls of color, Eris, Kianna Naomi, Dote racist

Id: iNPWohmJPyk

Length: 30min 22sec (1822 seconds)

Published: Wed May 15 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Effilnuc1]

It's worth mentioning the disparity between Tiffany's view count (2+ mill) and the directly affected creators view count:

As of 03/03

vereena: 946,523 views

nina: 157,272 views

ItzKeisha: 447,026 views

Daniella Perkins: 1,127,526 views

Annie Long: 762,938 views

red luna journal: 16,815 views

My suggestion to any white content creator that does read this, collab with a non-white creator, on any topic (doesn't have to be about race, because if I were non-white I'd be sick of repeating myself) make a 2 part video and each publish one part. It's not going to destroy white supremacy but we can't just acknowledge that we have privilege, we have to find ways of using it to benefit others.

[u/ThatGuyWeLike87]

How a company participated in racism at best without any self-awareness, but it seems unlikely.