It's time's like these when I think back to Anton Ego's speech in Ratatouille, and how the new is always frightening to those willing to adapt and can out right reject it out of their own self-importance and pompous nature focusing on archaic forms of media and entertainment...okay i'm going off into my own opinions in the latter half of that sentence, but you get the idea. Kyle Smith, a writer for the New York Post wrote up an article all about the front runners of YouTube culture, and basically berates them to no end, because the best way to show how articulate and sensible you are is to make fun of the people lower than you...really classy guy. If you can't be bothered to read it then i'll summarise it for you, in an article called "These self-important YouTube idiots are destroying culture", he talks about several of the biggest YouTube stars there are right now (Focusing mostly on Tyler Oakley) and talks about how stupid it is that these simple and easy to make videos that are heavily repetitive get so many views and have made these "talentless" folks celebrities.
Now on one hand, I agree with him, I don't like Tyler Oakley's videos, I don't find them entertaining, nor Grace Helbig, nor Mamrie Hart. But what I would never do it's criticise them personally or their fans by referring to them as idiots, all that does is make you look like a pretentious dickhead who thinks himself better than other people and an old decrepit man who is out of touch with new media. I understand I may have contradicted myself by insulting him personally, but if he's willing to insult people just because they're providing entertainment, then he should be willing to be insulted himself.
Even down to the title you can smell the pretentiousness "destroying culture" first of all, it's impossible to destroy culture, culture is constantly changing and adapting with the times, what was popular 10 years ago isn't guaranteed to be popular now. But if these YouTube celebrities end up becoming so famous that we stop calling them "YouTube celebrities" and just "celebrities" then that's not destroying culture, that's adapting culture, whether you like it or not is another thing, stop being so melodramatic you mook.
There's also a very narrow-mindedness to this article, singling out these specific YouTubers, now to be fair these are some of the most popular YouTubers and there are hundreds more just like them, but YouTube has a wide range of content creators and this doesn't even come close to representing the full roster. I'd like to see if this article would exist if he exposed himself to other content creators like VSauce or Vlogbrothers or Lindsey Stirling or Screen Junkies, and for the record, that's not me nitpicking the good ones, each one of those people i named have millions and millions of subscribers. I could name dozens more fantastic content creators that have less subscribers, but if we're using quantity of fans to just quality of entertainment then these are the people that I pick to represent the magnificence of YouTube for showing us quality in terms of education and conversations and art and comedy.
I know that Vloggers are the most popular subgenre of YouTubers there is (Minus maybe Let's Players) but hell, just a couple of years ago, television was obsessed with reality TV, it's like watching Jersey Shore and saying all television must be crap and "destroying culture". YouTube is an ever growing platform that gives everyone an opportunity to express their voice and make the content that they want to make. And if that's what the majority of youths today wish to watch and find entertainment out of...then I leave you with this.
-Danny
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