Why Internetainers deserve our respect

It started February 14, 2005.

The launch of YouTube was a monumental milestone on the timeline of Internet culture. What began as a way for family members to exchange home videos exponentially grew into a platform for creative individuals to display original content worldwide. Regardless of how YouTube claimed its fame, the one important key factor is YouTube has been and always will be meant for sharing.

My journey with YouTube began around 2008, back when YouTube had a front page feature and customizable backgrounds on channels were still a thing. I never had a MySpace so I wasn't enthralled with the music emphasis that YouTube was most popular for around the time, so I took it upon myself to browse the site for prank videos and "epic" fails. Somehow amidst my video searching I stumbled upon the bizarre world of vloggers, people who would broadcast their everyday life, occasionally edit the footage and plaster it on the web for the world to watch.

I was immediately hooked.

For anyone who has never watched a vlog, it's really not as creepy as it sounds. Getting to experience life through someone else's eyes was something I thought T.V could never genuinely capture. Sure there is reality T.V, but #spoiler, most shows are primarily scripted. I grew tired of the fake and bored with the eighth grade, so anyone else's life on the Internet was guaranteed to be a thousand times more interesting than mine.

Eight years later I am still mesmerized in this online world of Internetainers. It's not just the flourishing content they make, but it's also the community that has kept me interested. Unlike T.V, YouTubers have an interactive relationship with their viewers. This is the problem I feel T.V cannot fix. Internetainers break the fourth wall and reach out to their supporters by exposing deeply personal issues within society and their own lives. YouTube builds a foundation for friendship while the media believe they are comparatively constructing this bond through T.V. What they don't understand is sharing constitutes a mutually beneficial relationship. With T.V, the viewer cannot interact with the talent. There is no community and there is no commitment. T.V cannot establish this relationship no matter how hard they try, and that is okay. What's not okay is the constant disrespectful backlash these successful individuals are receiving from the media on a daily basis.

Source: Variety.com

I couldn't talk about YouTube without bringing up Felix Kjellberg, otherwise known to his almost 43 million subscribers, (yes, you read that right,) as PewDiePie. PewDiePie is the most subscribed YouTuber on YouTube, however, whenever brought up by the media, the Swedish gamer is talked about with such distaste.

Variety magazine is known for their beautiful cover portraits, so when PewDiePie was announced to be on the front, everyone was expecting the same flawless headshot that is commonly seen worldwide. The photo above was the photo they printed: a crossed out talent peeking into the public eye. This also isn't Variety's first offense with the Internetainer. Back in 2013, Variety's co-editor-in-chief, Andrew Wallenstein, referred to the star as a "gibberish-spouting clown who's bringing Western civilization to a screeching halt."

If Variety's repeated acts of contemptuousness wasn't enough, let's flash back to 2015 when Felix was nominated for a Teen Choice Award. The young adult screen actress, Bella Thorne, presented his award, yet took it upon herself to mock the pronunciation of his name, saying, "Felix something, something, something, you know what? Be here if you want to hear the rest of your name." Even if this was scripted and the actress wasn't using her own words, it still goes to show the disrespect media has for hardworking Internetainers who deserve recognition. (If you want more information on the media's controversy with PewDiePie, click here for an amazing video from the YouTube channel Game Theorists.)

Source: pop-buzz.com

PewDiePie isn't the only YouTuber who has been ridiculed by the media. The T.V network E! recently partnered with YouTube star Grace Helbig, giving her a comedy talk show called The Grace Helbig Show. After various members of the YouTube community were nominated for awards in the upcoming Teen Choice Awards, a reporter at E! Online wrote an article about the so called "nobodies." Immediately after the article received publicity, E! Online tweeted what they must have thought to be a clever "it's none of my business" meme about Grace Helbig. Various other YouTubers tweeted back in support of their community, but some, like Tyler Oakley, received targeted backlash of their own from the online news distributor, mocking their efforts to defend their friend; and the worst part is, almost every YouTuber has a story just like this.

Source: Superfame.com

Source: Superfame.com

T.V fulfills different needs than YouTube. Because of this, I don't see why the media refuses to show respect for Internetainers. They're essentially doing the same job but for two different audiences, and if anything, YouTubers are working twice as hard at it. YouTube will never be T.V and T.V will never be YouTube, and I think this is why they work. Both are great for their intended audiences but I think the media needs to take some time to watch eleven years worth of videos before they try and diss something they don't understand.