Why Don't YouTuber Apologies Ever Work?

The information age dawned in 1947. Since then, the world has felt its consequences greatly. There’s been the infringement of personal privacy, and the slow transition from human being to virtual stock for selling, and the fragmentation of the media by the means of echo-chamber radicalization, but the cruelest degradation to society that humanity has seen yet comes in the form of an overly complacent YouTuber.

Now that YouTubers have been adding to the flow of the internet for two decades, their transition into businesspeople is developing quickly. The average YouTuber was never completely devoid of creativity, but might soon require a paid media trainer to sustain their channels. Cancel culture often overcompensates for past laxness with entertainers, but there’s no such thing as a perfect YouTuber. Try as the creatives might, there isn’t exactly a way to win YouTube-- at least not with a flawless record. The fabled apology video is inevitable, sooner or later. What’s worse: it never actually solves anything. All apology videos do is mark the demise of a career. 

It’s the thought that counts, right? That’s the reasonable way to approach an apology. But if the consumer (because that’s what you are, if you’re watching a YouTube video) applies the logic it uses with the rest of humanity, YouTube’s entire premise gets muddy. I mentioned earlier that YouTubers have begun transitioning out of the creative business and into the business business. In other words, the YouTubers don’t see you as a human being. They see you as a click, a way of crawling toward being known. It’s a ruthless business. I have moderate pity for YouTubers-- like old circus performers. What choices did you have to make to end up in this spot? But there isn’t a need to apply empathy where there isn’t any humanity to base it on. YouTubers aren’t anybody’s friends. They’re YouTubers. It’s their job to play nice, until it isn’t.

I’d like to call Sebastian Bails to the stand. This particular content creator has held reign over a relatively successful “child-friendly” YouTube channel since 2014. I’ve brought him up today as a prime example of the art of Infamy Fishing, which is a term I just made up. It’s exactly what it sounds like: a creator does something awful for everybody to gawk at, and once pressed about it publicly, releases a sub-standard apology video in order to simultaneously duck whatever criticisms are being shot towards them and cash in a fat paycheck from the two videos now plastered all over the internet. Morally questionable as it might be, this is a sound way of doing business. I can only assume Sebastian Bails generates hundreds of thousands of dollars each year like this, killing and reviving his channel until it resembles only a grotesque version of YouTube entertainment. All of his videos are just elaborate, lucrative ragebait.

This is why YouTuber apologies don’t work. The disconnect between a content creator and its audience grows more inaccessible with each Sebastian Bails typeface that exploits it. It doesn’t matter which lens you use to beg forgiveness; we humans are hard-pressed to empathize with white-teethed business models. Now leave me alone so I can watch Mr. Beast make more small children cry on camera.