Internet Drama
Like many, I'm a pretty avid user of Youtube and Twitch. And from time to time, I will inevitably come across some news or video recommendations surrounding content creators implicated in some form of "drama.” Many infamous incidents have occurred the past several years, some trivial like the Jake Paul and KSI feud, and some more deeply rooted in serious issues, such as the fallout of EDP445 because of accusations of pedophilia or the more recent incident surrounding Adrianah Lee and her allegations of sexual assault.
If you haven't heard of any of these, you're likely much better off not knowing.
While it may indeed be an actual interpersonal conflict witnessed through livestreams, videos, Twitter exchanges, or leaked DM's, this type of content suffers from the same fundamental pitfall of all mainstream media—slow news day or not, the numbers still have to come in.
So it's not surprisingly to find at times that the conflict is completely fabricated purely for content's sake by the analysis of their audiences or by other content creators, e.g. r/LivestreamFail or DramaAlert, who thrive on devising clickbait titles, conjuring up conspiracy theories, exaggerating the known evidence, and making outlandish conclusions regarding the intentions and motives of those involved. On the contrary, content creators such as MoistCr1TiKaL, Philip DeFranco, as well as a myriad of other channels simply thrive off of making mostly unbiased, fair overviews of these situations. Regardless, it's become very clear that internet drama is a highly prolific form of content in this day and age.
If you’re merely a quiet spectator, a keyboard warrior in the comments section or Reddit, or are producing any form of biased or unbiased content surrounding the drama, let’s take a step back and consider a few points:
You do not know these people. You never met them. Stop pretending you know them just because you consume their content; someone’s online persona is an extremely poor means of fairly characterizing someone and their intentions. We very well understand that people change when they have to present themselves to an audience.
You have no involvement in the situation at hand. You know nothing about the circumstances, background, and context of what happened. 100% of all evidence is either hearsay or what is already painfully obvious to those involved. You do not bring anything to the table. Your passion and rage-filled comments will do nothing to solve anything.
We cannot conflate criticism with “beef” to artificially produce drama. Just because one content creator criticized another content creator doesn’t mean they have a personal feud. Or maybe they do in reality, and in that case, you wouldn’t be the one to know.
What are you trying to get out of it anyway? Is there really a moral lesson at the end of the conflict? And, as a completely irrelevant, anonymous person on the internet, is it yours for the taking? Surely there are better ways to inform your knowledge about how to conduct yourself in the real world than inserting yourself into the drama of strangers' lives on a whim.
Would you personally like it if people you never met and know nothing about you constantly got involved in your personal affairs constantly? A lot of people like to enjoy it as a reality show, but lest we forget these are real people that we’re talking about, not paid actors. If you wouldn’t wish it upon yourself, don’t perpetuate this toxic behavior.
If you’re a content creator or anyone else implicated in the drama: Leaking DMs, publicizing private information. or discussing people’s personal affairs publicly without consent of the other people involved is wrong. If you are a victim of crime or some form of abuse and are in need of support, going to strangers on the internet should absolutely not be the first source of help that comes to your mind. Go to the authorities. Go to your family. Go to your close friends. In the rare case that those are not effective options for ameliorating your situation, then resort to being a whistleblower, and when you do, always do your best to share your situation from a fair, unbiased perspective and in a professional manner. But let’s be honest, a vast majority of internet drama consists of petty disagreements and misunderstandings; no one's going to be a whistleblower in large-scale, pressing issues for humanity that will make them the next Julian Assange or the next Edward Snowden.
For a while, it didn't really bother me if you consumed this kind of content purely to unwind or entertain yourself, merely enjoying witnessing the spectacle unfold and the absurdity of it all; it seemed rather akin to watching reality television. And perhaps we’ve approached a kind of meta-perspective of the internet such that there's no way to distinguish if the drama is real or not anymore. Within this social-media-industrial complex, there’s no way to discern anymore if those implicated have conspired to fabricate drama merely to milk their viewership down to the last drop, or if we’re witnessing genuine injustice. It could be that if all of it is so absurd to the point where you might come to the conclusion that because everyone’s just playing an inane game of publicity stunts, then there might not be anything wrong with blithely sitting back, eating your popcorn, and enjoying the show for what it is.
I will argue that it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if it’s real anymore because in every circumstance, nearly everyone involved—from those directly involved in the drama, the news coverage surrounding it, and the spectators—are bad actors. Everyone is complicit in proliferating a fundamentally toxic and morally repugnant social atmosphere within our digital space.
It’s not okay that when we consume this type of content—when we subscribe to these content creators and bolster the viewership and popularity of the spectacle—we enable this entire system to be possible solely because of our selfish propensity to laugh at the expense of others.
It’s not okay when we are promoting lowbrow entertainment and outright unethical behavior that only serves to clutter our headspace and squander our collective brainpower on mindless, unproductive garbage.
It’s not okay when we normalize the publicization of personal affairs online when there was no consent of the parties involved, and when doing so is a poor course of action that is only detrimental to making any progress towards solving the situation at hand.
It’s not okay when we entitle ourselves to the belief that it’s okay to publicly discuss others’ personal lives on the internet and make judgments without actually knowing anyone involved.
It’s not okay when the conflict is very real for those involved, when they receive unwanted attention and unwarranted criticism from strangers that drive countless individuals towards depression and suicide.
You don’t have to personally like content creators. They’re not your friends, let alone acquaintances. Just because you disagree with them about certain things or they act in a non-exemplary way does not make them a terrible person or unworthy of your attention. It makes them normal human beings—not robots that pander to your idealistic worldview.
The success of this form of content should serve as an example for our complete lack of self-awareness and empathy when we consume any form of entertainment or media. Let this be a disquieting reminder of how the digital space serves to amplify our most detestable tendencies and traits—our proclivity to gossip, to bask in our own pride, to gravitate towards hatred, hypocrisy, and presumptuousness. This is the result of circumventing the balancing forces that are characteristic of normal social interaction—where our actions and words become subject to judgment and the daunting confrontation by very real people in a very real world.
And as pioneers and explorers of this newfound digital space, we must constantly ground ourselves in the present reality, reminding ourselves of the collective responsibility we have to not hide behind the anonymity of the internet as an excuse to be a terrible human being and forego anything we ever learned about basic decency—to not insert ourselves in the personal lives of strangers that never asked for it, to understand the limitations of our knowledge and our capacity for change, to be kind, patient, and understanding of people that we don’t know, to not do unto others things we would not do to ourselves.
