November 6th was the midterm election for residents of the United States. In the lead up to this event, as one might expect, political ads were everywhere as both parties tried to get out the vote. But there was one channel I subscribed to, JelloApocalypse, that put out their own video.
Just a quick rundown on Jello. He has a pretty laid back channel that produces mostly comedic content related to different kinds of media, like a short parody of kingdom hearts or steven universe. He’s not a small youtuber, and has quite a library of content already released. He has never done any sort of serious political commentary that I have seen before this new video he simply titled “vote”.
It was a video that annoyed me, to the point where I actually unsubscribed. This has become a sort of unofficial policy of mine, as this isn’t the first time a person I subscribed to for apolitical content that suddenly got political. If I watch a channel for non-political stuff and they get political, I unsubscribe as a protest to the direction they are taking. If after a couple months they are still producing the actual content I originally enjoyed(usually they are), I resubscribe and get caught up. No real harm done.
Why do I do this, you may ask. To answer, let’s examine this specific situation. Well, Jello got a lot of backlash for his Vote video which could have been easily avoided if he had stopped the video a little after the minute mark. He was basically saying you should go vote because it’s your civic duty, and there is very little objectionable about that. After saying that, though, he launched into advocating for a particular political party. That’s what annoys people; trying to create a veneer of objectiveness while also being completely partisan. There is no way to do that without turning a portion of your audience against you.
You can watch videos on the subject that go into more depth, but overall the fallout reflected poorly on Jello. He insulted his audience, locked down the comments on the video before eventually removing the video entirely, and also stated he was fine with losing 3k subscribers because they were only “like three dollars of revenue.” Turning your audience into purely monetary units where you don’t care how they feel… that’s an incredibly condescending attitude.
Now, let it be known that I do consume political commentary on a regular basis. The difference is that I search out sources that provide reliable analysis without being blindly partisan. That is also why I took such an issue with Jello specifically; he blatantly misrepresented several issues that I was familiar with, the whole story being far less sensational and one sided as he presented it. Basically, I got a serious dose of condescension from someone who didn’t seem to understand the issues he was talking about, and I know I wasn’t alone judging by the reaction.
Political content is fine, but political content is also by it’s very nature divisive. You can riff on bad movies, video games, and tv shows because in the end the majority of people don’t care that much what some rando online thinks about something they might like. But politics has competing views of how society itself should function, views that can and have actually affected people’s lives. If you are going to challenge those ideas, you need to do two things, at least in my opinion. You need to make sure people know that you don’t think less of them as an audience member simply for having a different political leaning, and you need to let them actually respond to your content without censoring them. People certainly did respond to Jello’s condescension, and Jello decided he didn’t like what he was hearing, thus shutting down the video.
Now, I occasionally put out political content. Heck, this blog is political in nature. But I try not to just advocate for one partisan side blindly. I understand that I’m no political guru, I just have, like, my opinion, man. I welcome conversation, especially if it challenges something I claim. I try hard to attack arguments at their strongest, not their weakest. But most importantly, I don’t view those who disagree with me politically as beneath me. Because they aren’t. They are human beings with different beliefs, and having a conversation with them just might be constructive in furthering understanding.
Feel free to discuss in the comments below. I would love to hear from people who have a different opinion on this issue than I do.