Angela Dong, Period 7, 12/4/23

Modern Mythology 2024

Angela Dong
Period 7
12/4/2023

Socio-Political Consciousness

    A month ago, a big controversy came onto the internet, resulting in debates about the values of privacy, to what counts as actual content, to what extent could a big Youtuber be protected even if they did everything wrong, and how big companies can do anything they want. For some background context, here enters SSSniperwolf (real name Alia Shelesh): a Youtuber who makes a living now by ‘reacting’ to other people’s content. She is famous for her gaming videos, which was exposed that she didn’t even do, and her content videos, which I will dive into later. Most of her fans are young and don’t know anything yet, or simps (men who like women usually because of their looks). She has been embroiled in many different controversies over the past few years.

    While Alia’s gaming videos turned out to be a huge joke, there was an even huger punchline with her ‘reaction’ videos. When she saw that reacting to other people’s videos gave her a lot of views (plus money) and that she could just do nothing, make a couple of gasps and repeat what the video said, her video formats instantly changed. Every video now that she makes is just her reacting to other people’s video while doing virtually nothing. To be fair, she is not the first who has done this, but she is the biggest, and she is the one who has disregarded all her allegations while pretending that she is an angel. The videos that she reacts to, she cuts off anything regarding their original creator and doesn’t give any credit to them, not even if the original creator reaches out to her. I have no respect for anyone who is famous mostly because of their looks. Then here comes Jacksfilm: a Youtuber known for parody and comedy videos, but is also widely known for his dislike of content creators who ‘react’ to other videos. He has criticized Alia and other content creators like xqc for their lazy videos and livestreams, and often encouraged original creators to copyright strike these big content creator’s videos, while also informing people on the internet about these people.

    Alia got fed up with Jack’s attempt to inform the original owners of her ‘reacting’  to their videos, which then got copyright striked, causing her to lose money. But instead of being an 31 year old adult and talking things out with Jack, or, you know, actually doing enough commentary and crediting the original creators, she decided it was a great idea to physically go to Jack’s house, order food to lure him out, and posted his house on instagram for everyone to see with a caption saying that she just wanted to talk. Jack, who was livestreaming at the time, was horrified, which is justifiable since he just got doxxed and his location was spread to millions of people. When word of this was spread, everyone was waiting for Alia’s downfall. Maybe Youtubers have been banned and demonetized (not getting money) for less, like swearing, accidentally showing something not safe for kids, etc so everyone was waiting to see what Youtube would do about this situation. I thought that Youtube would just only demonetize her and make her change her ways, since they just had a show of strength by banning other youtubers who I believed had less reasons to be banned than Alia. Boy was I wrong. Youtube just demonetized some of Alia’s videos and did virtually nothing about the whole fiasco. Alia just got a slap on the wrist, just got told to let it blow over, wrote a shitty apology on chatGPT, and that was it.

    Maybe I had a bit too many expectations towards Youtube. I had no reason to believe that they would act in the interest of us normal people on the internet. Maybe all the time that I spent scrolling youtube had made me unconsciously think that Youtube was a great app and company that did no wrong, despite all the different things that they did, like removing the dislike button, adding five ads in an 8 minute video. All the benefits that Youtube allowed me and internet culture only seeing different trending every day led me to forget about all the atrocities that every company and every person did because they weren’t punished as they should, allowing them to stay the way they have been. An influencer could do anything they want to do, and if they make enough money then everything can blow over for them once they wait for enough time, even ruining an entire family or a man’s life. There will always be fans to support them and their bad actions (notable people include Ted Bundy’s fangirls), blowing away their past because they are beautiful/handsome. In the end, regular people get screwed over whenever they try to criticize or do something for the community. Maybe I’m more biased on Jack’s side in this case because I despise doxxing, grown adults acting like kids, and companies and famous people screwing the regular folks, but I feel like I’m on the perfectly right side of this case. But maybe I’m wrong, and I just don’t have all the information given to us. However, following all of this when it was starting, I feel like my perception of big corporations and influencers have taken a huge hit. Companies and famous people won't and shouldn’t matter that much. And we people should stand up for ourselves when these people decide they will only stand for themselves.