What They WON'T TELL YOU About Your Favorite Channels

Hold on, hold on. I know

what

you're thinking, right? Here's MatPat again, sitting on his couch, ready to rant. Who lost millions of dollars this time? Will we have to endure a tirade about bankruptcy? The "shared bankruptcy universe" theory? No, no, don't worry. Today's episode isn't so much about pessimism; It's really about giving voice to the stories no one wants you to hear about some of

your

favorite

YouTubers. Because it's time for someone to talk about these things. It's time for these stories to come to light. Oh! And for the other half of you who weren't thinking, "Oh, MatPat is on the couch ready to rant," but were wondering, "Why is his hair still purple?" I know, I've seen his comments, friends.

They're all leftovers from a charity drive we ran last year to help fund mental research. Don't worry. His brown hair is coming back. Alright. I had my little stint with dyed hair. It was fun, but it's time to get back to normal. I know my place in this universe. Anyway, it's story time. Last year we tried working with this great PR firm. Now, in case you don't know the job of a PR team is basically getting to know a group of people. Have plenty of connections to help you get press coverage. Let's say you're working on an interesting new business or launching a new project.

The amazing PR teams are the ones that are supposed to be responsible for getting you on all the podcasts, making sure you're featured in all the different publications, and booking you on the late night talk show circuit. If you remember, Felix was making the rounds on all the late night talk shows right before the release of Scare PewDiePie. Well, that was YouTube's PR team at work. So here we were last year thinking, you know, there's a lot of negative press going around about creators online *cough cough* (Logan Paul) *cough cough cough* Maybe we could start spreading some awareness about the interesting things we do.

To serve as a positive model of

what

it means to be an online creator. I mean, we do a lot of really cool things here. We have great

channels

that are unique and somewhat educational. We've worked with 300 of the biggest digital creators across multiple platforms. We speak internationally. We have this weird online mystery that we created for our fans to solve and we've literally worked for years shaping the strategy like some of the biggest entertainment companies on the planet. That's not a stretch either, companies like Viacom, Supercell and Lego it's not that much of a stretch to assume that people might be interested in that story, right?

So we started working with this PR team who, again, are some of the best in the business and after trying for months we came up empty-handed. Well, the public relations company summed it up for us in one sentence: Nobody wants positive news. stories about youtubers. Oh yeah. And if we wanted, we could choose to fly across the country and pay to stay in New York City with our own money. And maybe

they

could get us a 45-second segment on Ryan and Kelly's morning show where I could play with some slime. We overlooked that one. But this is a clip of the people who said yes.

Subconsciously, when we squeeze it, it acts... it's just a relief from the pressure. Am I putting all the water in? Oh vsauce3, you deserve so much better than that. But it was that line about there being no positive news about YouTubers that really stuck with me. Stuck to me like some kind of glue-based slime. Sorry, bad joke. Anyway I thought it was funny, related story. Because we have some big

channels

and we work a lot with Google, every year

they

send us a Christmas gift, usually it's whatever their latest big product is, and they hope to get publicity for it.

I literally have ten Chromecasts and I can't say Hello Google within 10 yards of my house without hearing Google: Sorry, I don't understand Yes, I know Google is listening to me (it's always listening) Anyway, this At Christmas we got our gift box from Google, but it came with something a little extra. I'm not talking about a Christmas ribbon you see on the shipping label, it was a little Merry Christmas message to MatPat, Google's mid-level influencer. Merry Christmas, MatPat! You're almost average in Google's eyes! Knowing where I stand in Google's brand hierarchy is really what Christmas is all about...

Now, I admit I was a little put off by this, seriously, I thought for sure it would be like I don't know how to qualify for the tier where they care enough about you to avoid

tell

ing you what they really think of you. So I asked my YouTube contact what it would take to reach that top-tier status. What number do I have to reach and it turns out that? It would be impossible according to the internal systems that Google has in place. There is a team dedicated to top influencers and a separate one that is dedicated to channels that cover gaming and the two will never meet, although by the numbers most people at the gaming level have viewership and subscription numbers that dwarf the other content categories in Paper, at least one player will never actually be on that top tier list.

The moral of these two stories is this: first, don't read shipping labels too carefully if you value an inflated sense of ego, and two, more important moral: Youtuber is a dirty word. But YouTube player is even worse. Here's why bring all this up. Everyone is currently saying that we are on the verge of Adpocalypse 2: Revenge of the Hello Buttons. Major advertisers are pulling or pausing their YouTube ads due to the negative press circulating about the platform and of course when the money starts to evaporate then YouTube has to OVERRESPOND to show how seriously they are taking all of this news. accusations to regain everyone's trust, which in turn leaves a lot of channels and creators dealing with the consequences.

Dealing with demonetisation and everything. the insecurity about the platform that comes with it. Good creators who are doing good work ultimately suffer the consequences because of these few bad actors, as they call them. It happened with Adpocalypse 1. It happened with Logan Paul and now we're about to have it happen again. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why I've always hated group projects. One person always has to ruin it for everyone else. But, jokes aside. someone who analyzes data and does everything possible to spot trends. There is a common theme in all of these Adpocali Bad Press.

Every time this happens, it's a channel, a video. A fraction of a fraction of a fraction of this platform's user base Being held up in the press as the poster child for all of YouTube One scare and the advertisers run for the hills, grab their pitchforks Spoiler alert, advertisers! Here there are billions of views on millions of videos on hundreds of thousands of channels every day and

your

ads, if your ad agency is doing it right, won't run on those bad actor videos in obscure parts of YouTube, if It's like that. It's not us and it's not YouTube's fault.

These are the people who buy your ad placements. Instead, your ads should support a thriving creative ecosystem that's full of people who are driving entertainment forward, connecting with audiences in ways traditional entertainment has never been able to before, and people who are making the world a better place and me totally. Get it. You probably think I'm exaggerating Making the world a better place what kind of self-aggrandizing idiot was sitting here on his little Easter egg-colored couch. The thing is, I get it because you've never been exposed to all the wonderful things and more. The most important thing is that the great people who are here make it possible and at that point it's time for me to step in and start acting as the PR firm and try to shine a little light on them.

Cue the assembly...reach the first milestone! (Yes!) The 2018 project for Awesome is here! I can't believe this is Awesome's 12th project. We made £60,000 (honestly) for charity. Over the past year, digitally native creators like YouTubers and Twitch streamers have raised nearly $20 million for charity, and honestly, it's probably a lot more. If you add up smaller channels and other donations, this was just the total I was able to put together from the names and channels my followers sent me on Twitter over the course of a couple of days and a bit of research on my own, but To Put that number into perspective, it's enough to buy an entire island in the Florida Keys.

No joke $20 million Enough to buy 20 orcas, five blimps or a bathroom on the International Space Station It's more than ultra-rich celebrities like Angelina Jolie Beyoncé and the Obamas donate to charity. The only people who publicly give more than this are literally billionaires, like Oprah, Bill Gates, and JK Rowling. And the best thing about online creators donating $20 million is the variety of creators and communities that are coming together to make it happen. Highlights include the H-bomber raising more than $340,000 in a charity stream to support Mermaids, a UK organization that supports transgender people. children; Noah J raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for St.

Jude's; you have Markiplier and jacksepticeye, who are absolutely prolific charitable givers who have turned their communities into literal armies of goodwill by donating almost $2 million in the last year alone. Mark had a livestream that raised five hundred thousand dollars just a few days ago, which set a new all-time benchmark for him and they are competing with companies like the yogscast jingle jam, which in 2018 alone raised $3.3 million of dollars and has raised over fourteen million dollars since 2011. These numbers are crazy. And these are just some of the biggest names that overlap with the people who watch this channel.

What about Guardian Con or Games Done Quick? Events like Zelda Con, which raised nearly $5 million combined in the last year for charities like Doctors Without Borders and Child's Play. Rooster Teeth raised $1.5 million and Minecrafters led by PrestonPlayz raised another $500,000 for Game Pink, which supports breast cancer patients through gaming. h3h3 raised over $200,000 through a celebrity podcast. Mr. Beast donated twenty thousand dollars worth of clothing to homeless shelters and made a lot of really expensive products available for a dollar or less in his little pop-up store, which was really cool. And this is all just in the US!

Gronk and his team in Germany raised more than eight hundred thousand dollars last year. And that's just the one they sent me. I'm sure there are tons more and yes, all of these great ones are getting a lot of attention, but what about the real work ones? That's what mid-range creators do. Leon Hart donates Pokémon paraphernalia, DattoDoesDestiny is in drag, Cowbelly TV apparently told gucci gang 1 million times to raise $20,000 for Red Nose Day. I didn't double check his count, but the $20,000 is totally legit. Others that caught my attention on Twitter were people like Super Carlin Brothers raising money for Lumos, Serato is raising money for Doctors Without Borders, Vinesauce, Egoraptor, Defunctland and Disney Dan, Chuggaaconroy, Protonjon, Mini Ladd, Colleen Ballinger, Kati Morton. , Elton Castee and many others, all raising money for children's hospitals, animal welfare and rehabilitation, suicide prevention, the list is huge.

I can't even go through it. Thousands showed up. Here's a list that I'm going to go over on the screen right now. There are simply so many! Even the people the media hates the most on this platform, Logan Paul, donated $1 million to suicide prevention as part of his apology tour. Jake Paul personally went to help victims of Hurricane Harvey. He volunteered on Thanksgiving to prepare meals and says he donated two hundred thousand of his personal dollars to charity. Sure, for both types. It may be image rehabilitation, but charity is charity. There are no bad donations. Even the guy the media hates the most on this platform: Félix.

Pewdiepie has been raising money even before he was the number one channel on YouTube, back in 2012. He won this online contest called King of the Web. And for those of you who are too young to remember the king of the web. It was a really interesting time for YouTubers, huh? It probably deserves a video for another day. Anyway, because he is so popular, he proclaims himself King of the Web and donates his ten thousand dollars in cash earned to the World Wildlife Fund.Between his work for WWF, (World Wildlife Fund, not the World Wrestling Federation), St.

Jude's, Charity:Water and Save the Children, he raised up to $1 million in 2015. His cringema campaigns since then alongside other players have earned him They have earned millions. more and then more impressively and most recently when some of his fans became too aggressive in supporting him in his battle against the Indian channel T-Series for the number one most subscribed channel on YouTube... He raised $250,000 for fight and save. working children in that country. That really shows some of that and to prove it I did the math and all the creators that you submitted and all the Youtubers that you submitted, about 12 million of that $20 million total from last year that we calculated was being donated. through gaming channels.

You know, those YouTube scum that have been isolated from the true top-tier influencers on the platform. They are the ones leading the charge and let me hide this a little bit to say that the last thing to do when donating to charity is As a competition it is not about how much you give and I would never want to apply that. I just want to point out that the group that is often considered the worst on the platform is the group that is most actively giving back and, you know, what? It's not just about giving back in dollars either.

Over the past five years, social media influencers have granted 391 Make-A-Wish requests. That number increases to more than 400 if you add the wishes that children made to simply go to VidCon and be present at the events regardless of gender. You find yourself as a YouTuber if you are doing charity streams or raising money for good causes. You are setting a precedent that, in fact, I think is more important than all of this. There are literally hundreds of millions of people, especially young people, who watch YouTube every day and take a cue from what creators do - we're called influencers for a reason, and if creators on the platform are setting the standard for giving back , be grateful for what you have and recognize that you should use your platform forever.

They are setting a standard for the people who come after them. Well, James Charles or Markiplier will be on the platform forever, as popular as they are. No, one day they will end their YouTube career and move on to do something else. But the millions of people who followed them, watched them, and were inspired by them will be out in the world and will take the attitude of giving back to them, whether online or in the real world. That kind of reward impact. It is literally impossible to calculate. I know it's a cringeworthy meme at this point, but honestly when I look at my fellow creators online, I'm really really proud of this community, just like Gabby Hanna and YouTube rewind and all that is just explicit forms. that online creators are doing well in the world, but there's also an implicit layer to all of this.

We get tons of emails, comments, letters, impressions and stories from our fans saying that we've helped them with their depression, their anxiety, people who are going through hard times in some other way just by creating a channel, making our videos, creating a community to which they belong. That by doing so we have saved lives and that is not an exaggeration. I will never forget this day at VidCon Europe where, after giving a speech, a loyal theorist came up to me and told me the story of how she physically didn't speak. her for years and that one day she found our GT live streams and that literally gave her the courage to find her voice again.

Many people come to YouTube to find communities that are like them when they feel like the rest of the world. and the way advertising portrays them in our friendly media simply does not reflect them. They don't feel represented. YouTube is home to communities that until very recently were considered unsafe for advertisers: LGBTQ+ communities, communities that represent specific interest groups or skin colors that advertisers simply don't care about, people who couldn't find a reflection of themselves. themselves in a media world. that had been sterilized in the name of brand safety have found it here, in digital video, so the creators who lift up those communities and give them a home are doing an incredible amount of good for millions and millions of people simply by exists, simply by creating videos, no monetary donation required, but that's not a story worth

tell

ing, is it?

Not worthy of press. I don't suppose not. I don't know, I guess I'm confused. I mean, I totally understand that I don't want to endorse child predators or a platform that supports child predators. No problem, but as far as I know, I didn't see any brands pulling their ads from the Oscars, even though they were also a platform where Bohemian Rhapsody, a movie directed by an accused child predator, was getting a ton of awards Or when, Just a few years earlier, Hacksaw Ridge was nominated for a bunch of Oscars despite being directed by someone who had made multiple sexist and racist comments just a few years ago.

Speaking of Oscar nominees, by the way, Johnny Depp. He is a popular boy. He seems to get a lot of love from brands despite being accused of abuse by his ex-wife Kim Kardashian, love her! I totally think his family is brilliant! No wonder, I really think they are brilliant, brands are scrambling to work with her and the press is eager to cover her everywhere. But if we're all so concerned about brand safety and bad behavior from YouTubers, shouldn't we also avoid Kim Kardashian and her family? Since her entire success was based on a sex tape that Kim had to explicitly approve in order to be "leaked" to the public.

Look it up friends. She actually had to sign it for it to be made public or you know. They could also mention her unwillingness to reveal brand offerings on Instagram, which she was accused of and then warned about by the FTC, and yet she still does it. Hmm. But no, the real problem is the online creators that exist in the world. You know what's not a problem? Football. Football is huge for advertisers Even though it is the sport that is known to cause brain damage in players Some of those players tend to physically abuse both animals and their loved ones Oh, and the biggest team in the country It's owned by a guy who just got arrested for soliciting prostitutes at a spa associated with human trafficking.

Where are the gallows now, friends? Massive removal of NFL ads until things change! Clean the platform! Clean up the NFL! Oh wait, that's not happening. Even here on YouTube There seems to be a double standard that I can't understand. You know, take for example the song This is America. Amazing song by Childish Gambino aka Lando Calrissian aka Donald Glover who will always be Troy. Barnes to me But call it what you want, you guys seem more than happy to advertise yourself in that music video even though there are multiple scenes of gun violence, let alone themes of racism in America throughout the song.

I mean, I get it, it's an amazing piece of art. But if you're so worried about the brand insecurity of YouTubers or, God forbid, gamers, maybe this song shouldn't be the right place for your brand either. With so much good stuff happening here on the platform, it's almost as if this isn't the real reason advertisers are leaving. Like there's a double standard between how traditional celebrities are treated and how online celebrities, online influencers are treated, and you see, that's the real problem here. Advertise however you want but don't be hypocritical about it. If you don't want to advertise what we're doing: just don't do it!

But be honest about why you're doing it, don't lump us in with child predators or brand safety issues or nasty content just to fulfill a false narrative to justify your own self-imposed hypocrisy, we're doing good work here Positive Work here. We are implementing social change. It's something our audience of millions understands, and when we do things that hold us to unrealistic standards and hold YouTube as a platform to unrealistic standards, we all suffer. We all get a little softer. We all lose a little bit about what makes this digital ecosystem special and it's a shame that even though millions of us understand it, you can't also appreciate it because I think it's a huge missed opportunity for advertising.

But hey, that's just... not a theory. It's an opinion, my opinion. Thanks for watching. Shoot, I'm done ranting! I'm sorry. I didn't mean for it to end as a rant, but it kind of did. Youtubers are great!