Abuse of fame on YouTube and the fan/creator relationship
Following recent allegations of sexual abuse against prominent YouTube personalities, Matt Tidby examines the imbalance of power which makes healthy fan/creator relationships impossible. TW: sexual assault
YouTube culture has been doing a lot of growing up recently. There are formalised conventions, here and in the US, cutting edge creator spaces and even some baffled mainstream press coverage. There are even overtly self-congratulatory documentary series fronted by luminous manchildren.
In recent days, allegations have come to light that prominent YouTube musician and vlogger Tom Milsom, 22, was involved in a sexually abusive relationship with Olga, a fan, whom he met at VidCon in 2010 when she was 14. Now 18, she posted a series of posts on her blog about the extent of the alleged abuse, to which Milsom has not publicly responded. Coming so soon after Mike Lombardo was jailed on charges of child abuse images, and a matter of months after allegations of sexual assault against a fan by Chameleon Circuit’s Ed Blann, the YouTube community has been forced to recognise that it is not exempt from the dangerous power relations that other media industries have fallen so prone to in the past.
When a victim of sexual assault speaks out publicly against their abuser, they need the absolute support and trust of their community. Thankfully, many members of the YouTube community immediately spoke out against Milsom — Vlogbrothers John and Hank Green demonstrated a zero tolerance policy which should be the envy of major corporations the world over, swiftly removing Milsom from their label DFTBA Records, whilst Liam Dryden further confirmed that he had been removed from the list of attendees at Summer in the City 2014. However, there were a minority of voices that sought to attack Olga for speaking out, slating her testimony and protesting the innocence of a man they held in high regard.
Victim blaming is an insidious and harmful denigration of our basic common good; nobody should ever be apportioned blame for something they did not consent to, or were in no position to stop. Using power to coerce and abuse those who trust you is the ultimate betrayal of that trust; such behaviour should not be blithely accepted or rationalised, but rigorously exposed and uniformly condemned.
Part of the problem may be that fan-creator relationships, or rather the concept of the internet fangirl, remains an inherently comic idea to many. The trope of the hyper-enthusiastic, culturally saturated fan, slashing this and OTPing that, talking about sex online while at a safe distance from their actual bodies, is familiar to us all. But these interactions are genuine, and driven by honest admiration, so when conventions and meet-ups make IRL interaction possible, an intrinsic power relation already exists between the meeter and meetee. Personally, I do not believe that people who meet as the famous and the fan can form a healthy relationship; the power invested in the daily interaction between star and admirer is far too potent and corruptive for an equal, balanced relationship to form in its light.
That familiar and insidious model of influential young men abusing the idolatry flowing from their fan cultures has not, beyond these individuals, become endemic on YouTube. But these recent instances have sadly given rise to a number of blog posts in which teenagers question whether it is worthwhile or safe to admire anyone at all online. Beyond the sordid failings of a corruptive minority, the young adults of YouTube can do a tremendous amount of good by teaching their younger audiences about relationships and the world; Thomas Ridgewell’s (TomSka) recent video ‘The Sex Talk’ spoke at length about the fluidity of gender and the cast-iron rules of consent, whilst Lex Croucher (tyrannosauruslexxx) regularly cuts through the shit thrown at women on the internet. These are positive representations that demonstrate that YouTube culture can be an incredibly helpful, supportive place for teenagers to learn, make friends and have positive role models.
Olga eventually had to close her Tumblr ‘Ask’ box, as she was inundated with messages of support, but also by other victims, themselves looking for support.
If you need advice, or to talk to someone, try here:
Originally published at abstractmag.com on March 12, 2014.
