Gary Vaynerchuk has been an internet celebrity for so long that it’s hard to know what era terminology to use to describe him. One of YouTube’s early stars, he made videos first for his father’s wine business and then for media and technology companies; later he started his own media company. He’s been a self-help guru, he’s published books on how fans can “crush it” in their own business, and something more extreme too, taking on an almost TV evangelist-esque persona like “Gary Vee.” Recently, non-replaceable tokens, or NFTs, proved to be a natural fit for him: he re-entered the zeitgeist last year with his own NFT projects, urging his young audience to join the club or else they would join the club. the “losers” end up. “He spends so much time judging.
But in response, something interesting appeared: videos of young adults complaining looking into their own cameras and explaining why they thought Vaynerchuk’s content was dangerous. A curly-haired, baby-faced man named Nick Green denounced Vaynerchuk’s business advice, with exhortations like “be wary” and “do it.” Georgie Taylor, blonde and British and posting under the screen name münecat, made a video calling Vaynerchuk “the youth pastor of capitalism”, citing his tendency to blow up his entrepreneurial origin story (being taken in a family business) into an epic personal mythology. and highlights how his emphasis on positivity can hold a strange cruelty towards anyone struggling with challenges beyond their individual control.
Importantly, these commentators were not professional journalists, concerned experts, or onlookers from outside the YouTube world. They and their audiences come from the same demographics Vaynerchuk targets: young and more involved with internet video and social media than traditional commentary. In other words, YouTube has spawned its own media critics. Taylor, for instance, peering through cat-eye glasses and holding a beer in hand, provides an in-depth video nearly an hour long and structured as neatly as a “Dateline” exposé. She collects video footage of Vaynerchuk’s own production, accusing him of feeding on youngsters, selling Gen-Z and millennials a dream of wealth, while using their attention to line his own pockets.
In recent years, this kind of commentary — internet video characters parsing the output of other more popular internet video characters — has become its own little ecosystem. The commentators often appear on each other’s channels, discussing the absurdities of influencers and social media culture. Their seriousness varies, but generally they try to be funny; even scathing takedowns like Taylor’s are laced with jokes. Their commentary has become one of YouTube’s most popular genres, appearing in trending videos such as Jimmy Fallon clips and James Corden’s “Carpool Karaoke.”
There is perhaps an encouraging inevitability to all this: Even in a world without gatekeepers and limited moderation, a certain knack will show. YouTube even has its equivalents of tabloids and trade publications, about lustful online drama or niche interests. But it’s mostly the commentary YouTubers that have in some cases become as popular as the stars they respond to, leading to strange conflicts between fame and critical integrity — plus literal run-ins in the influencer-ridden Los Angeles studios. . In 2019, crass influencer Jake Paul posted a video titled “confronting internet bully cody ko,” in which he tracked down Cody Kolodziejzyk, a YouTube commentary who often talked about his work. Visibly furious and complaining that everyone could be so full of hatred instead of spreading positivity, Paul captured himself ambushing his critic — in a video he would make money for revenue.
Kolodziejzyk and his comedy partner, Noel Miller, became popular on YouTube with a series called “That’s Cringe,” which mocked not only Paul but other internet celebrities as well. However, fans of Kolodziejzyk and Miller noticed that as the two rose to prominence, they became more and more immersed in the world of the media they criticized. Soon the subjects of their ridicule began to appear on Kolodziejzyk and Miller’s own channel, creating hit videos by performing gestures of reconciliation with the comedians. Fans were concerned about a conflict of interest that would prompt Kolodziejzyk and Miller to take the plunge — a nice mirror to concerns about access-based reporting in traditional journalism.
For example, on a May 2021 episode of Kolodziejzyk and Miller, they responded to Gary Vee’s particularly outrageous TikTok, in which he urged a participant in one of his self-help seminars to generate gratitude by imagining family members being shot in the face. Howling with laughter, Kolodziejzyk and Miller exchanged escalating riffs on the theme (“Imagine your family being swallowed by 10,000 grasshoppers!”); a clip of the conversation became one of their most popular posts on TikTok. But soon Gary Vee caught wind of herself and asked to be on the podcast. Appearing in a T-shirt that demanded “ONLY POSITIVE VIBES,” he echoed lines at Miller’s request (“I want you to imagine swallowing a bag of nails!”), while the hosts laughed gullibly.
Kolodziejzyk and Miller and others like them — YouTubers like Drew Gooden and Danny Gonzalez — don’t just educate you about internet ephemera; they also reveal the shady online courses, money-making conventions, and the NFT hype that some of the internet’s influential celebrities have endured. (Celebrities whose audiences, it must be said, are mostly teenagers.) are not media critics, but they have not hesitated to rate the content they discuss. They cover an arena that is influential among young people, but is sometimes ignored by the traditional media. Consciously or not, they have started teaching their… audience media criticism, along with the lesson that not every popular figure “What’s up, guys?” in a camera has their interests in mind.
As entertainers in a landscape of their own making, these commentators are free to define their craft; it’s hard to begrudge those who have become friendlier to internet celebrities, even if their blunt style makes them less attractive. But whether or not the future of criticism on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram belongs to these comedians, they’ve already highlighted how desperate a generation is — people who’ve heard “What’s up, guys?” since kindergarten and now have credit cards and bank accounts – needs critical coverage of what it sees. The question is whether such criticism can thrive in a world without structure, where values need not be articulated and cheerfulness can always be traded under the banner of positive vibes.
Source Photos: Screenshots from YouTube
Adlan Jackson is a freelance writer from Kingston, Jamaica. He last wrote about the band Beach House for the magazine’s Music Issue.
