5. MAIN ANALYSIS
5.4 Discussion
57 engagement as punishment for their inauthenticity and bigotry. First, Star was exposed in a video by his former friend David for making racist and derogatory comments towards mutual friends. The community aimed to hold Star accountable for his actions by cutting off their engagement and support. Although the community is bringing awareness to racism, silencing a powerful individual’s platform does not contribute to fixing the issue. Instead, the community runs the risk of censoring it because they want to erase the YouTuber and their actions from their group. Moreover, Star’s case has shown that cancelling a YouTuber does not necessarily mean that they are gone for good. Before his redeeming collaboration with Dawson on the docuseries, Star had been involved in multiple other feuds and scandals. Similar to Star, Paytas has also proven to be immune to cancellation. Although the community acknowledges Paytas’
past controversies, they forgive her because she is ‘real’. In turn, proving the crucial role authenticity plays in the relationship between the audience and the YouTuber. Arguably, a YouTuber’s authentic narrative is cancel culture’s kryptonite. On the other hand, Dawson has proven that cancel culture can cause bigger repercussions if this narrative unexpectedly collapses, showing that cancel culture causes a battle of authority and power between the YouTuber and their audience.
58 been cancelled again, are starting to boil up a Dramageddon 4. These new developments have further proven cancel culture to be the audience’s tool for social control on the platform – with concerns focusing mostly on social interactions between individual creators. Although this analysis of Dramageddon has proven that cancel culture does not necessarily polarize audiences, but that utilizing cancel culture to gain power over creators still leads to an undemocratic environment on the platform, especially because the audience’s judgement is purely based on emotions, notions, and subjective perceptions. This is because Lombardo’s case resembled social activism, whereas Dramageddon was centered more on drama and shame. However, if YouTubers continue to be reaccepted into the community, cancel culture becomes not so much a demonstration of authority, but more a temporary scolding; much like the implementation of toddler’s time-out. The close relationship that the audience feels, and that the YouTubers create between them, causes the focus of cancel culture to remain on the individual. For example, the opinions of individuals within the community are more valuable than before, and the social interactions and actions of individual creators are magnified. As of now, cancel culture remains a complex and unstable construct. For cancel culture to be effective, the focus of the discussions should be on wanting systematic change for the medium itself. To make this happen, the relationship between the audience and the YouTuber has to become more distant. Unfortunately, connectedness within communities is one of YouTube’s biggest appeals as a platform; it used to be the core of the platform’s brand, which they presented via their old slogan
“Broadcast yourself”. Thus, the chances are that Dramageddon 4 will see the same processes, subjective judgements, and mistakes as the three phases that came prior to its dawning.
59 CONCLUSION
This research has aimed to answer the main research question: how is cancel culture (re)defining the relationship between celebrity and audience on YouTube? This thesis has found that cancel culture is largely a battle for authority and power between the audience and the YouTuber. Before YouTube became institutionalized, the audience and the creator were seen as equals, as anyone could upload videos and grow their platform. The nature of the platform created a sense of community and allowed for virtual communities to form. However, the institutionalization of the platform led to authentic narratives needing to be crafted, rather than letting them come naturally. Now, as Dawson’s and Star’s docuseries stunt has proven, social norms within the beauty community are shaped by product endorsements and sponsorships.
Authenticity is an important value in the relationship between the audience and the YouTuber, to the extent that it exceeds the effectiveness of cancel culture; one can be cancelled for bigotry or sexual misconduct, yet still, stand the chance of being reaccepted into the community if deemed ‘real’ enough. Cancel culture is a double-edged sword, and as a construct is complex and, as it currently stands, inherently flawed. Although cancel culture claims to address some of society's deep-rooted social issues such as racism, homophobia, and sexism, it focuses more on the drama, and the interactions of the individual instead of the social issue itself. In turn, the core of the problem wanes due to the attention being deflected on to the individual. It is furthermore an unstable mechanism because the audience’s judgement is based on emotions, notions, and subjective perceptions, which can all instantly change due to the rapid speed at which new (mis)information spreads on social media. In addition, the audience’s interest in drama over social justice contributes to the precariousness of the phenomenon. That is to say, cancel culture poses a growing risk to the democratic values and organization of society, due to the tense and unstable relationship it stimulates between the audience and the YouTuber.
To answer the main research question, I first performed a sample analysis on Mike Lombardo’s sexual allegations case. Besides the two projected concepts, virtual communities and the YouTube celebrity, this sample analysis has found that the concepts of toxicity and authenticity as social norms, social media activism versus
60 online shaming, and platform surveillance also needed to be explored. Moreover, the Lombardo case demonstrated the polarization of the audience into two discourses: one that blamed the victims and another that blamed Lombardo. The sample analysis proved to be an example of cancel culture that focuses on social injustices rather than
drama.
Second, I explored the concepts in the theoretical framework, which emphasized and defined other researcher’s viewpoints. The first section of this chapter explored social media activism and online shaming and found that these concepts are fragile constructs that require morally pure minds in techno-utopian environments to be implemented responsibly. However, online communities are not driven by ecological rationality, but rather by emotion and phatic conversations, which shows that they are not stable enough to determine and authorize punishments because it would pose a serious risk to the democratic values of modern societies. Moving on, section 4.2 showed that social media platforms play a big part in the type of content that users are presented with. They also stimulate the rapid spread of personal data that others can distribute at will. Ultimately, this changes the relationship dynamic between interpersonal relations, power, and institutional practices. In turn, it influences the way people perceive and interact with each other. In section 4.3 I explored toxicity and authenticity as norms on social media. I found that both concepts are expected on social media; anyone can expect to come across hateful comments, and everyone is expected to be authentically themselves. These norms are shaped by media such as advertising companies and promotional campaigns, which is also the case on YouTube.
Nowadays, YouTuber’s main revenue stream comes from product endorsements, so it is crucial that their audience believes and trusts them enough. Furthermore, section 4.4 discussed the formation of VCoPs on social media platforms such as YouTube. I found that YouTube welcomes VCoPs as it needs them to work properly. Moreover, VCoPs on YouTube value individual voices more so than before, which leads to an increase in attempts to get attention, sympathy, and retribution. VCoPs create a connected environment of people going down the same path, which could either lead to being peer-pressured into bad behaviour or provide a place to discuss and express emotions.
Finally, section 4.5 explored the concept of the YouTube celebrity. I discovered that the
61 institutionalization of YouTube is caused by professionally generated content, monetization, and product placements. Rather than breaking down the roots of the platform, institutionalization promotes maintaining a connected relationship between the audience and the YouTuber. Moreover, the IOMC ideology theory suggests that the audience believes to be close friends with the creators and understand them behind the celebrity façade.
Third and final, I carried out an analysis on the three phases of Dramageddon.
The first phase showed that the audience’s relationship with the YouTubers shifted once the creators showed signs of inauthenticity. Subsequently, the audience’s relationship grew with Jeffree Star as he appeared more trustworthy and transparent. Yet, the foundation of the audience’s judgement proved to be unstable because it mainly relies on trust and subjective perception. This instability was demonstrated when opinions on Manny Gutierrez shifted once again, and the community had to apologize for ‘jumping on the bandwagon’. The second phase of Dramageddon demonstrated that the rapid spread of new insights on social media leads to fast judgements that are not always justified. James Charles was first made out to be the perpetrator in the scandal, then the community found him to be innocent, and the instigators of the scandal were subsequently perceived to be guilty. Moreover, the community apologizes for the abuse that Charles endured, but individuals shift the responsibility of the abuse on “others”
within the community. In addition, this phase exemplified that cancel culture is not about tackling issues such as racism, but more about controlling individual creators who display ‘bad’ behaviour. However, putting all the blame for cancel culture’s flaws on the audience is unfair because social media platforms and YouTube’s institutionalization both proliferate the cancellation process. Finally, the third phase uncovered Star to be the common thread throughout Dramageddon, and the community responded to this by boycotting engagement with his brand. However, this did not assure the permanent ostracization of the creator, as he was uncancelled again after he built his authentic narrative back up. On the other hand, Shane Dawson’s cancellation has proven that the repercussions of cancel culture are greater if the break-in authentic narrative happens suddenly. The discussion at the end illustrates the possibility of Dramageddon continuing the same way as it has done since there is no evidence of a learning curve
62 coming from the audience, which means that the hope is on a systematic change for YouTube as a medium.
For future research, I suggest looking at the social media and video content platform TikTok. TikTok is a new app that has taken anyone with mobile technology by storm. Based on personal experience, the app functions as a more intense and magnified version of YouTube. For example, individual opinion has even greater value, the relationship between the creators and the audience is even closer, and the algorithm categorizes its users into communities, practically forcing them to form.
Building on the findings of this research, this app poses an interesting case study for further exploring cancel culture. It will hopefully propose a fully saturated picture of its complexities and perhaps uncover more positives and stabilities. As it stands today, cancel culture is shaping up to be a rather precarious identity in an online world run by a generation that is still rapidly evolving. Although cancel culture is more about the sensation of drama and individual opinion rather than a fundamental force for social justice and change, social media itself as an integral part of society holds the power to fuel innovation, restructuring, and reorganization. As Marshall McLuhan (1964) once stated: “In a culture like ours, long accustomed to splitting and dividing all things as a means of control, it is sometimes a bit of a shock to be reminded that, in operational and practical fact, the medium is the message” (McLuhan 1964, p.1).
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