YouTube Fans be CRAZY (Q2)

Due to the original post being over 800 words, I figured it made sense to split this into multiple parts each featuring a different celebrity. 

2. Compare and contrast the relationship of celebrities with their fans in two different creative communities. Which one is relatively more healthy in their connections?

Upon reading this, the first "celebrities" that came to mind were actually YouTubers. People who have, by sitting alone in a room making videos, amassed millions of devoted fans. Top names that come to mind include Pewdiepie, NigaHiga, and JennaMarbles. These online "influencers" gain revenue from YouTube's AdSense displaying advertisements on their videos, as well as via sponsors or affiliate links.

YouTubers tend to have a main content channel, featuring anything from comedy skits to gaming streams to makeup tutorials, but many also have a vlogging channel, which is supposed to feature less edited, more casual glimpses into their lives. YouTubers can use vlogs to reach out to their audience on a personal level, making themselves seem like relatable human beings. Without the barriers of production companies or recording studios, YouTubers can come off as more genuine in their connection with their fans, with popular YouTubers sometimes holding informal "meet and greet"s to interact with their fans in real life.

On the surface level, YouTubers seem to have a pretty "healthy" relationship with the fans, but this cannot be said for all YouTubers, since the spectrum of content is so wide across each channel. The less regulated fan interactions of YouTubers can also end up being a source of concern, as evident on the 10th of June 2016, when popular YouTube singer Christina Grimmie was fatally shot by an obsessive fan during a signing event in Orlando, causing shockwaves across the YouTube community. Some speculate that stricter security checks by the venue management might have prevented the issue, with the former general manager Kirk Colvin issuing a statement that after he and his team were replaced on the 1st of June, he believed that "the replacements hired were completely inexperienced and ill prepared to manage the Plaza". The lax security concerns are indicative of a perception that YouTubers are not "real" celebrities, and thus do not need the same level of protection.

All in all, it's hard to generalise the types of interactions they have with their fans. YouTube is a diverse platform for all sorts of content, and thus attracts fans of all creeds. I intend on delving further into this topic by picking one or more specific YouTubers to examine.

References:


Lange, P. (2007). Publicly Private and Privately Public: Social Networking on YouTube. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, [online] 13(1), pp.361-380. Available at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00400.x/full.


 Resnikoff, P. (2016). Security Team Fired Right Before Christina Grimmie Shot. [online] Digital Music News. Available at: https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2016/06/14/security-team-shooting-christina-grimmie/ [Accessed 1 Jul. 2017].