Life as a teen drama YouTuber
Plus: Brands X tragedies. We extend a meme's universe.
The Silence of the Brands
For social media managers for brands, it’s wrong answers only when it comes to posting about unfolding tragic events.
On Monday, a 21-year-old opened fire in a grocery store in Boulder, Colorado, killing 10 people. Families mourned, activists called for gun reform—and social media managers were faced with an impossible decision.
“The absolute worst part of being a Social Media Manager is constantly having to decide whether a mass shooting was ‘bad enough’ to pause content for the day,” Sophie Vershbow tweeted. The sentiment resonated, at least among others in the professional social media space, who quote-tweeted the message with their own experiences. The resounding conclusion: You’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
“What is OK to post one day is tone-deaf the next,” one social media manager, who wished to remain anonymous, told me over Twitter DM. “We can plan and plan and plan but you still have to wake up in the morning and say ‘what happened while I was asleep that might make this post insensitive in a way we don't intend it to be?’”
The rush for brands to say something, anything, no matter their actual relevance to the issue, is best exemplified by Gushers’ post after the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery.
“Gushers wouldn’t be Gushers without the Black community.” It’s a phrase that still rolls around in my mind, and as recently as January was cited as an example of the laughability of “woke capitalism.”
“What a truly weird year to be Black,” writer Sarah Hagi remarked, quote-tweeting the statement again in December.
This bizarre, out-of-character response was something it seems Ryan Morgan, Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream's head of communications, was trying to avoid during the insurrection at the capitol on January 6. Food writer Helen Rosner had called out Jeni’s for saying their new Joe Biden flavor was “really not about politics” during a time when Ben & Jerry’s was calling for Donald Trump’s resignation.
“People aren’t sitting around waiting to hear from us on this,” he tweeted in response. “People know who we are.”
I have to say—with the important caveats that I am white, and that others may think differently—that I agree. I don’t feel I am owed a statement on the 25th Amendment from the makers of Everything Bagel ice cream.
But when it’s a brand that actually operates in the space they’re making a statement about? That’s different. Less than a week before the shooting in Colorado, another gunman went on a rampage at a series of spas and massage parlors, killing eight people, six of whom were Asian. The incident was an especially brutal example of the rise of hate crimes against Asians during the pandemic, and accelerated a larger conversation about racism against the Asian community. With that in mind, beauty and cosmetic company Glossier, which features few Asian models on its website, issued a statement that was subpar.
As YouTuber Hyelim Choi wrote on Instagram, simply “standing with” the Asian community isn’t enough.
“The asian american community, or frankly any community, isn't asking for pity parties, or #thoughtsandprayers,” she wrote in a response post. “We want respect, representation, and a seat at the table we've helped build. we deserve more than a diversity hire and 12 words.” —Kate Lindsay
Q&A: Adam McIntyre
"I've covered Charli D’Amelio, Dixie D’Amelio, the other TikTokkers, and my audience—and I don't blame them—do not care."
By Kate Lindsay
Adam McIntyre’s record for number of videos uploaded to YouTube in a single day currently sits at around 10.
“It wasn't like I was uploading 10 videos and they were a waste, or people weren't watching them, because they were,” the 18-year-old tells me over Zoom from his bedroom in Derry, Ireland. “People were just that interested in the daily updates.”
McIntyre’s 158,000 subscribers come to him for spirited commentary about the dramatic back-and-forths that plague YouTube’s community of creators.
“James Charles EXPOSES Jeffree Star & Shane Dawson Drama…” reads the title of a July 17, 2020 video.
“Morgan Adams SPEAKS UP About Shane Dawson…” reads one from later that month.
“Shane Dawson REALLY MESSED UP…” an August dispatch declares. Each of these has over 100,000 (200,000, in one case) views.
To be fair, the summer of 2020 was a uniquely dramatic time for internet creators. Tati Westbrook’s takedown of Shane Dawson and Jeffree Star tore the internet apart. The neverending fallout from that, plus the pandemic parties influencers were constantly throwing, meant McIntyre needed to log on every day to keep his followers up to date with his chatty and playful commentary.
McIntyre has been on YouTube for over 10 years. He first posted videos of himself singing song covers (although you won’t find those on his channel anymore) before moving to vlogs, rants, and other viral trends in around 2015. In April 2020, he posted his first viral video, about an unhappy experience working with YouTuber Colleen Ballinger. And then over the summer, he dove head-first into the messy world of Shane Dawson, which ended up completely redefining his channel, as well as his career.
“I went to a media college and the course just wasn't working out for me in lockdown,” McIntyre says. “And I sat down one day and I went, ‘I'm working towards the end of this course to get a job in media that I already have.’”
While his professors were flexible on workload and deadlines for his peers who had more traditional jobs in things like retail, they were less understanding when it came to McIntyre's job as a YouTuber. He decided to drop out of school to focus on YouTube full-time. Which, for McIntyre, looks a lot like “all the time.”
I wanted to interview you specifically because you are perhaps one of the hardest-working drama YouTubers out there, sometimes uploading multiple videos a day. How do you keep that up without burning out?
What you're saying about burnout is something that's not talked about within journalist or commentary drama channels, because it's almost expected. You fill the role of letting people know the information that's happening with these people. But whenever it's happening so quickly, it's the responsibility of the creator to know when to take breaks and when to separate work from life.
It's very clear within the community I'm in of creators [that] if we get tired, we're going to take a breather for a second. We have so many videos that you can catch up on. We have hundreds of videos from the past month. You can catch up on them and we'll be back in a second. Since June, I've uploaded at least one video every single day.
Wow—do you ever have to sacrifice your personal life to keep that up?
I have no other friends in person who do online stuff or even keep up to date in the way me or you would. They all work in retail or something, so their hours are strictly nine to five or whatever. But with what we do, it's kind of working around the clock. I don't think [I'm sacrificing] social, in-person events, especially because we're in a pandemic. We've had our lockdown lifted and closed. And so whenever it is lifted, I do prioritize taking a week where I'll do a lot of work and film a bunch of videos. And then for the following week, I have stuff ready to go.
How do you choose what creators to cover?
It has to be a person that I don't need to explain who they are. I've covered Charli D’Amelio, Dixie D’Amelio, the other TikTokkers, and my audience—and I don't blame them—do not care. They don't know who these people are. It's great when your audience knows who it is so you don't have to spend the video explaining who they are and you can get right into it, which is why videos about Trisha [Paytas], Shane, Jeffree, and even Tana [Mongeau] and Gabbie [Hanna], people love [them] because they know these people.
Are there certain YouTubers who your audience likes to hear about most?
Surprisingly, friends of any of the YouTubers I talk about, who are online. I did a video on Garrett [Watts] and Andrew [Siwicki]. People loved it because they wanted to know what they've done from moving on from Shane Dawson. Jordan [Worona], Tana's [now former] manager, people loved it. The videos of people associated with these people can sometimes get way more views because it's almost like people are getting an insight in this person's life a little bit more.
It feels like YouTube has gotten more dramatic in the past year, but that might just be because more people are paying attention. Which do you think it is?
I think [more] people are paying attention because it's getting more and more dramatic. I think there's two different sections when it comes to covering this stuff: the really serious stuff, which I'm categorizing as allegations, sometimes evidence, and the more dramatic side—influencers doing things to get press about them. The main culprits of this are James Charles and Tana Mongeau. The more drama, the better the headline. And they know that. Tana got interviewed by some paparazzi. And they said, “Oh, these drama channels had your name in the thumbnail.” And she was like, “I love these people because they keep my lights on.”
There was some controversy over the summer when it came out that drama YouTuber Sanders Kennedy was actually involved in attempting to launch an official police investigation into Shane Dawson. Do you think drama channels are reporters, or are they observers?
I have a very different opinion of drama commentary channels than a lot of my peers do. Luckily these are people that I would be able to call friends now, but a lot of people in this space on YouTube like to consider themselves reporters or are aspiring journalists or whatever. We're not reporters, in my opinion, or at least my channel. My perspective of covering drama is [that it's] just your own opinion.
I think that what you were talking about with Sanders Kennedy, he basically, in my opinion, went way too far with the Shane Dawson stuff. And this is coming from someone who covers Shane Dawson stuff on the daily. But I cover Shane Dawson's stuff that's public knowledge. We never once tried to open an investigation, were even looking for an open investigation. We were saying our opinions of public information that Shane had put out himself. If you want to be behind the scenes, then you have to be prepared for what has happened to Sanders Kennedy [or like] Katie Joy being sued by Tati Westbrook. There's a line and you don't cross it, in my opinion.
One of the most persistent stories last summer was all the pandemic parties. What was it like covering that while going through the pandemic yourself?
At the start people were getting confused as to why my standpoints were different than theirs on parties. But it was because at that stage, [Ireland’s] Covid situation was so much different than America’s. By the time [American YouTubers] were doing the first lockdown parties, we were out of a lockdown here. We were living life as normal again. And I remember I was getting so beyond frustrated in these videos, because I was like, “This is all you have to do!” It's been going on so long that we're known back in the lockdown and they're still doing the parties. And so my attitude towards it is just like, if you're doing it, you're trash and I'm going to call you out for it. My audience is going to have their opinions of it as well, but I don't try to sugar coat it anymore because it's like, a year has gone by.
What is your relationship like with the creators you cover? Have you ever interacted with them personally?
I'm blocked by Jeffree on every social media. He searched me up on Instagram, Twitter—has me blocked. Tana's been engaged with my Twitter on and off. She never follows me, but she likes my tweets. Gabbie Hannah has commented under a bunch of my videos. My standpoint on Gabbie, I was calling her out in the drama with her and Trisha this summer and I was being quite harsh towards her. It was about her trying to push her music. I hadn't listened to her music and I was getting really frustrated that she was so obsessed with us wanting to listen to her music and I kept saying my videos, "You built your audience off Storytime [videos] so you can't expect them all to listen to your music.”
[Then] I made a video and I was like, “You know what, I'm going to sit down and I'm going to listen to her music.” And I listened to her music and I really liked it in that video. And I was honest. I said, “I liked this. I liked the production. I liked the whatever.” And she commented a huge paragraph under that [saying] that she was so appreciative. And then I made another video because she made the song for Trisha, “Call Me Crazy.” And she commented under that one. James Charles blocked me on stuff. He doesn't really like my videos, it seems. It's either [I’m] blocked or they love it.
Are there any YouTubers who you personally enjoy and like to watch?
I've watched most, if not all, the YouTubers I talk about now. People love to hold that against anyone in the drama space, anyone in the commentary space, journalists. Even my friends who are journalists, people will be like, “Oh, you just wrote an article exposing Jeffree Star. Here's a tweet [saying] that you supported him in 2015.” The top of the top drama channels, and I'm not talking about me, I'm talking about the ones who have been here and the journalists that have been here, these are people who were fans of these people and that's why they have the extensive knowledge of them that they do.
I like Emma Chamberlain. However, if I have to call her out, I have to call her out. I've done that like three times within the past couple months. I have her phone case but I still call her out. I have a big issue with drama channels becoming friends with the people because they become biased. It's very obvious. And I've had to stop watching some drama channels myself. There's no such thing as a payroll. There's no PR list. There is no such thing as Jeffree Star being in control of a drama channel. It's literally just someone's shifting their opinions because they think they're friends with this person. And that's the biggest thing that I try to avoid these days, because I just think it can make your videos not genuine at all.
You seem to have cultivated a close relationship with your followers. How did you go about establishing that?
I call them the “Besties.” First of all, I didn't come up with it. Besties has been Twitter slang. It all originated from I think a Kim Kardashian meme, or something. It was funny and I said it once in a video, but then I realized that, “Wow, this is actually a really good term because not only is it so general, it's nice and it doesn't have to have any labels behind it.”
I never once was like, Okay, by this date, we're going to be like this. I was just so excited that people wanted to watch my videos because I didn't think that they were anything more than me just like giving my opinions. And so I just engaged in the community. I always spend a couple of hours a night going through comment sections and stuff like that. I genuinely appreciate any person who watches. So I do want to make that always very clear, which is why I did want to give [them] some sort of name. I hate the word “fan,” because I don't feel like me giving my opinions on something holds me to any [higher] standard than anyone else. It was just something fun and people liked it. So I kept it up.
Do your IRL friends ever get involved or engage with your videos?
I think it's very separate. I have a lot of friends who are like, “I watched your video. I don't know what you're talking about, but I just wanted to be supportive.” I don't really talk to my friends about YouTube drama, because as you said earlier, it seems like [I’m doing] this 24/7, which it does from an outsider's point of view. But let me tell you, I come up with my videos, I film them [and then] I'm like, “Okay, that's it.” I don't think about these people other than that, because otherwise that would be 24 hours in my day. Like when I go out with my friends, I'm not talking about it. So they never bring it up. I normally just talk YouTube with my family. So my parents have gone from not knowing who any of these people are to knowing every single detail.
What does making a typical video entail for you?
My videos used to be a lot more complex. A lot of editing, a lot of prep and stuff like that. And I remember I did a week where I did videos in different styles: I did three videos in a row that were super edited, super clean cut, I wasn't making mistakes in them. Then I did three videos that were unedited or like just a bit more raw. And I was like, “Okay, here's six videos. Which ones do you prefer?” And it was overwhelmingly the more longer relaxed, not so jump-cutty videos. And so nowadays my style of filming videos would be: I have my equipment set up. I know what I'm gonna talk about. I already kind of know a baseline of where I want to go with the video, how I want to end the video. I load up any videos I want to show on my iPad instead of putting them on the screen because my biggest thing whenever I'm watching drama channels is I get very bored whenever things are put up on the screen. I just feel like it's very much so a disconnect. If I can hold up a thing, I feel like it's more of a sleepover.
You’re covering all this American drama from Ireland. Would you ever move to Los Angeles or somewhere that’s closer to the action?
I do like being disconnected from it. Whenever I leave my house and I walk to the shop, no one cares about any of these YouTubers I talk about. No one cares about me. I love that aspect of it. However, within the foreseeable future, I do see basing myself for a while out in New York. I have a lot of really close friends I've made at different publications and we definitely want to look into living together. I would say there's my limit. I used to be a lot more interested in going to America, but kind of as time went on, I said, “No.”
Rememe
We made these, for some reason.
Sometimes a meme is not just a post, but a challenge. We see your “Madagascar penguins sexual activity matrix” and raise you “extended animated penguin universe sexual activity matrix.”
The Fine Print
Thank you Adam McIntyre. ICYMI: Our first edition, in which we explain what this newsletter is (and is not) and Sesali Bowen interviews Mistress Marley. Find us on Twitter and Instagram. Like and subscribe. And remember: Your quadrant of the matrix does not define you.