the mad, mad world

So in july 2013, i was feeling extremely lonely and pretty much on the verge of depression (which i’m not gonna get too deep into), but i found this world of youtubers and they made me feel less alone. My life has revolved around youtubers (zoe, alfie, joe, marcus, jacksgap, troye, tyler, etc etc) for the past year and few months and it has been an escape for me. These youtubers brought happiness to my life that i never experienced before.

Over this period of time, i’ve seen them grow huge. When i subscribed to zoella, she had over a million subscribers and now she has 6 almost 7 million! New youtubers have emerged who i also feel the same connection to, like gabby and niomi. Youtubers are a source of positivity to me that so many people just don’t understand.

Now, it’s becoming more evident that youtube is not the happy sunshine and rainbows world that i envision in my head. I am petrified by the negative comments that attack the people i love. It has stopped me from commenting on videos because i know i will be criticized for anything i say. I just don’t see the point in hate comments and useless stupidity. The rumours that gabby replaced louise, the attack on alfie because he used the term “OCD” playfully, the absolutely made up shit that attract enough attention to become the top comments, they’re all so incredibly horrible and infuriating. Expressing opinions is totally fine, but putting down others and starting useless drama is never okay.

People are not perfect. I understand people’s decision to be upset with alfie when he said he was OCD when he is actually not (i was disappointed in him too). Nevertheless, this is not an opportunity to verbally attack them. They are humans too, they are not gods or miracle workers, they are simply people and they make mistakes. I’m sure nobody would appreciate having every single one of their flaws pointed out, especially criticized by a huge amount of people.

The fact that alfie, gabby, zoe, pewdiepie and i’m sure many others have had to publicly speak and address this problem is absolutely ridiculous. It should be human nature to not spread lies, or to not bully others, but the comments obviously say otherwise. All this drama is shocking because just a year ago, youtube felt like a completely different world, where positivity was spread more than negativity. Remember that they did not start youtube thinking they’d become the “online celebrities” that some people dub them as. They wanted a space to create, a space to connect, a space to spread their joy with others. Now it just seems like they do this to satisfy the millions of people that watch them, but they can never satisfy all of us at once. They are not receiving the same joy that they try so hard to bring to us.

I am not trying to shame anyone who has ever commented hate about a youtuber, because then i’m basically doing the same thing to those people. I’m just saying it shouldn’t be as big of an issue as it has become. There is not much greatness that comes from negativity, so what’s the point of doing it? It won’t affect you, it won’t affect the video, but it will affect the person it’s directed at. I highly doubt that youtuber has done something so wrong that hate is justified.

As weird as it may seem, i feel closer to some youtubers than i feel to some people. They are the reason i’m not as sad as i was over a year ago. They make me smile and they have the power to make me cry too. It hurts me to see them upset when they shouldn’t even feel the need to tell us they’re upset, let alone show it, in the first place!