Over the years since it’s conception, youtube has become a large corporation, pulling in millions of US dollars annually. Because of this, YouTube has now morphed into a corporation that promotes money making as many other corporations do. In the past, “Let’s Play” channels ruled the links of youtube, creating major players such as PewDiePie and The Yogscast, but in recent years, this trend has come to a stop. This is mainly because of the youtube algorithm that supports specific length videos that do not follow a continuous series. These videos are promoted because they gain the most views, thus birthing the era of YouTube drama channels.
Youtube drama channels have been circling Youtube since it started. What Youtubers like is content. And of course, Youtubers ran out of content too, and guess what is their option to gain more subscribers and popularity since their channels are downgrading? Dramas and controversies. Dramas create more dramas, which then causes ‘Youtubers’ that are thirsty for drama, flooded with clicks and money. And this cycle continues until Youtube is finished. Lately, Youtube has been drowning in dramas this past few years, such as Jake Paul’s suicide forest video, James Charles and Tati, Pewdiepie saying the N-word on a streaming site, and many more. Some of the dramas are probably real, or is it just a trick to generate attention and views for the viewers? The existence of this ‘Youtube drama’ causes viewers to promote the cancel culture towards Youtubers that are full of dramas and controversies
Dramas on youtube leads to what we now call the call-out culture or cancel culture. Taking advantage of the mob mentality, cancel culture spreads like a wildfire. An influential figure, per say a Youtuber with a lot of subscribers, can use their audience to turn on another person. People who weren’t originally involved with both parties can get dragged into it as well, more often than not out of curiosity. Even if the discourse started as a personal quarrel, it may escalate to an even larger scale. One might even risk losing their career to the dispute. Once the drama begins, every little thing that a person does, did, and said in the past can be used against them, even if it is no longer relevant to the discourse itself.