Just to clear up what spurred this blog post on and why I felt I needed to say something even though I cannot make a video right now. Over the last week on YouTube it has became apparent that Sam Pepper has sexually assaulted girls in his videos - which include forcing them to kiss him, pinching their bums and restraining them with a lasso. And in the last few days it has came out that he has also did this off camera in a more serious way. Sam has not said anything about these situations and has tried to cover up his actions saying they were either pranks and/or "social experiments". This year on YouTube similar situations like this have been exposed, and most of these YouTubers don't upload anymore. We can see a pattern in these cases of male YouTubers sexually abusing females, they use their power on YouTube to manipulate fans into doing something they don't want to be doing, usually these fans are a lot younger than them. Sam has brought something new to this pattern and that is showing this abuse in videos, by pressuring females into doing things they are clearly uncomfortable doing but because they have a camera in their face they feel pressured. But as this has came to our attention we can see more than Sam have been making these types of videos.
As we have heard from these instances of sexual abuse on YouTube, some of it starts out at gathering and conventions, which are meant to bring us together and we are meant to have a great time there. But for some people they left feeling abused and unconfortable. I feel events like this bring the community together, and for the future of YouTube will be vital. I am a small creator and I have never been to a YouTube gathering - so I can't comment on my own experiences; but with all these situations about the people abusing the YouTube platform in this way this year has shocked me. It might even make people stop going to gatherings through fear, and might as a whole put people off YouTube for good.
The people with vile intentions bring a bad name to YouTube. I feel the larger media outside of the YouTube community only really take an interest when something goes wrong; and I don't want this community known for the bad and this year especially, it feels YouTube hasn't had the best light shed onto the platform. And I can see why it has had such a negative image portrayed onto the platform. We should be working to make it a better place for everyone and show people with that behaviour that it is not acceptable. And to show YouTube is a place where we can all upload our videos weather that be a short film that took months and months to create; or just filming your cat at the spur of the moment because it got it's head stuck in a cardboard box.
The YouTube community are taking a stand, and bigger YouTubers are making more and more videos about this and trying to prevent this happening and to make viewers aware of what is going on. And hopefully these creators will not stop doing this.
As a community I hope we can put a stop to this behaviour, and the only way we can do this is to really come together and show creators like that are not welcome. YouTube as a platform is growing, and changing. If we stick together and help each other out YouTube will become somewhere nice again - somewhere we can all upload videos to share them like it was meant when the site was created, but on a bigger scale. If we do this the community will be stronger, and thank us for it.
I am not a good blog writer but I hope my opinions on the situation were portrayed correctly. Below I have left a few links of blogs and videos that I feel are what we need in situations like these. If you bothered reading all this and agree with anything I have said please share the link to this blog post. We need to show the world that we are not backing down and we need to show everyone what our opinions are or the whole community could be put under this negative bracket, which we know is not true.
Links:
Laci Green's video on Sam Pepper: Sam Pepper Exposed
Laci Green's open letter to Sam Pepper: An Open Letter To Sam Pepper
Vlogbrothers (Hank Green): Sexual Abuse, Consent and Culture
Charlieissocoollike (Charlie McDonnel): Sex & Consent
Jack & Dean's music video on Consent: Consent
A blog post on everything that has went on: http://unpleasantmyles.tumblr.com/post/79455706244/tom-milsom-hexachordal-heres-the-post-olga
My Links:
YouTube: www.youtube.com/lifeisyourinstrument
Twitter: @Clairetweetsyou https://twitter.com/ClaireTweetsYou
Tumblr: http://lifeisyourinstrument.tumblr.com/
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