Late Night Dispatch: YouTube’s “cyberbullying” debate is self-realization
[A quick note!! Hi! I used to write a newsletter, but I stopped because life got busy. Lately, I haven’t been able to sleep very much. When I can’t sleep, my mind obsesses over “hyperfixations,” a term those in the ADHD community will recognize. So, I blog. I blog because it helps me work out these ideas, and tires me out. I’m going to use this new newsletter, “Late Night Dispatch,” as just that — writing through insomnia. This won’t be a nightly, weekly, or monthly thing. It’ll just be for when I can’t sleep. If you like reading my tweets (lol) or my work (thank you, if you do!!), now I have this. Also note that since none of this is edited and is written in the early hours of the morning, it’ll be incoherent at times. But that’s what late night dispatches are.]
Jake Paul is being cyber bullied.
Or so he says. The aggressor is a YouTuber named Cody Ko — a former backend developer who has built a substantial following on YouTube thanks to his comedic commentary on the community. Ko doesn’t consider himself a bully. Neither do popular commentators like Keemstar, H3H3, ImAlexx, iNabber, or dozens of others known for their biting takes on YouTube culture. But they’re not often the ones being criticized. Paul is, and he’s had enough.
A new cringe-inducing video from Paul confronts Ko while he’s getting a haircut. The video opens with a disclaimer from Paul, who is sitting down in front of a laptop while his mom watches off to the side, cheering him on. Paul, safely stowed away in his Calabasas mansion — a home where he has allegedly bullied many of his own friends — tells his fans, “I fucking hate cyberbullies.” He may not be “YouTube’s hero,” as he declares, but “this guy Cody Ko is a bully,” and Paul hates that more than anything in the world.
“People hiding behind their computers, talking about other people — it’s consumed our generation, it’s consumed our society, and I think it’s largely to do with these negative trolls online…that just spread negativity into the earth,” Paul says in the video.
The irony in Paul calling out cyberbullies isn’t lost on the community. He’s made a living using YouTube as a way to bully his friends, and even his own brother, in the name of content. His issue with Ko, however, does speak to a larger trend on YouTube — the unbelievable boom in channels dedicated to dissecting, discussing, and dunking on news, drama, and even day-to-day details of YouTube’s most popular creators.
Commentary and drama channels exist out of necessity. YouTube culture is incredibly intricate, like a thousand different wires threading around one another. More people are watching top creators all the time. The community needs a self-imposed jury. It needs people who provide witty or crucial insight into the latest story so that others can keep up. Just look at what happened with makeup stylist James Charles and beauty guru Tati Westbrook.
YouTube creators need accountability, and who better to do it than people already on the platform? Jake Paul isn’t the first creator to call out critics like Cody Ko. He won’t be the last, either. This hurts. It’s especially tough when the content people are producing is synonymous with their actual selves. It can feel less like weighted criticism about a video, and more like a deliberate attack on this one person — think of it as the difference between the Chicago Tribune and TMZ.
Phrases like “take down other people,” “make fun of people,” and “bringing us down” are slung around by creators who feel like they’re being attacked by commentary channels. Donna Yatz spoke about this in a series on her own channel, Psych IRL, and tackled the debate over criticism versus bullying. Her general takeaway was that if people are attacking a YouTube creator or their channel because of personal attachments, that’s bullying. If the criticism is about actual content, which can include how a personality presents themselves in a video to sell aforementioned content, that’s commentary.
“Criticism is good and necessary for the platform — bullying isn’t,” Yatz says.
There are a couple of channels that people gradually point to as executing this either well or distastefully. Philip DeFranco’s “The Philip DeFranco Show,” is one of the better received series. He takes news items and industry occurrences, explaining the situation to his viewers and then adding in his opinion at the end. Daniel “Keemstar” Keem hosts DramaAlert. It’s not as clean cut as DeFranco’s, but Keem has a reputation for breaking news stories so he gets away with edgy commentary.
The former has never been called a bully; the latter has multiple times. That’s partially because DeFranco doesn’t ever insult someone personally — Keem will from time-to-time. Same with H3H3’s Ethan Klein, who has no problem ripping into a YouTube creator. He sometimes nails the criticism he’s going for, using a creator to talk about a disturbing trend on YouTube. Sometimes, his jokes don’t land, and people question whether he went too far.
Trying to find that balance is still something YouTube commentators are figuring out. But it’s clear that younger YouTubers are trying to replicate what Keem, Klein, and DeFranco have started. Commentary channels — or channels pivoting to commentary — saw a boom between 2016 and today. Not at all coincidental, that’s around the same time that YouTube started appearing in mainstream news as people dove into what was really going on behind the biggest platform in the world. YouTube creators didn’t like the way many mainstream outlets talked about a world they already knew better than anyone.
Experimentation proved that people really, really wanted to watch YouTube creators talk about other. Early commentators found a way to monetize a service that people needed. YouTube drama was becoming a commodity — even the company used the ongoing fight between Jake and Logan Paul in 2017 to sell this idea of increased engagement to advertisers in its annual Rewind video. Jake and Logan Paul’s drama didn’t just result in more than a billion views for them alone, but commentary and news channels found something to report on. People arrived in droves. Simple economics took over: there was a demand for commentary, and more than a few creators wanted to try their hand at it.
Now commentary channels are everywhere. Those creators who have become constant talking points consider it bullying. Jake Paul’s video was just the most ostentatious. It got people talking. He’s even changed his Twitter name to “END CYBER BULLYING 2019.” Most ironically, he’s started a new channel with his brother dedicated to providing internet commentary of his own. What’s a little hypocrisy when drama sells?
And it does sell. It always has. YouTube creators like Shane Dawson used to put celebrities like Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga in the thumbnail and jokingly provide commentary as a way of generating views. That’s what’s happening now, but the central focus is creators themselves. It’s all a matter of perception. Jake Paul can take criticism from TMZ or the New York Times because it’s an understood form of commentary. It’s existed for decades. He understands why traditional media wants to talk about him — he understands his own celebrity.
He doesn’t get YouTubers talking about other YouTubers. To him, those lines aren’t as clear. These are people who should be his colleagues, not his critics. It becomes bullying. He can’t wrap his head around it.
It is the perfect example of where YouTube culture is, and where it is heading. YouTube’s second generation celebrity has arrived. They’re the generation who grew up watching the first YouTube celebrities — it’s Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson and Gus Johnson coming up after idolizing Felix “PewDiePie” Kjellberg and Smosh’s Anthony Padilla. They’re an understood celebrity, even if YouTube still doesn’t resemble Hollywood.
And there’s a reason it doesn’t resemble Hollywood — it’s the same reason why commentary channels are exploding in popularity. YouTube as a culture never prioritized celebrity. That’s why Hollywood exists. YouTube was the everyman. YouTube was the high school kid playing games or doing cool DIY crafts. YouTube was us. Something changed around 2016. Now YouTubers were appearing in movies and Will Smith was vlogging.
As more traditional celebrities mingled with top YouTubers, the more the community judged. They still adore people like Liza Koshy, David Dobrik, and even the Paul brothers, but now they’re celebrities with Disney shows and Nickelodeon deals. It’s why high schoolers getting ready for school or hanging out with friends is suddenly a booming trend on YouTube. The general public just wants to be represented. Commentators make YouTube feel like a place for “us” again, and not just a platform to watch “them.”
Unfortunately for Jake Paul, Cody Ko isn’t a cyberbully — and he’s not going anywhere. If anything, more channels will arrive. There is no clear cut solution to a problem Paul, and other YouTube creators, have spotted. There is only time. YouTube is 14-years-old. It’s a messy teenager trying to figure things out. The more its creators mature, the better commentary and criticism will become. They just need some time and space to do so…and maybe not be bombarded while getting a haircut.
