Today I came across a story on Jezebel about a growing list of YouTuber's that have been implicated in child porn, sexual assualts, statuory rapes, consent issues and grooming of young fans.
See http://jezebel.com/... for a background.
For those of you TL;DR: Let me try to summarize.
Youtube, (yes that Youtube) in addition to having random videos, allows people to have channels. In recent years, certain personalities have been able to market their own particular brand of videos, merchandise, music, commentary etc on a personalized channel.
Two brothers Hank and John Green created a channel called VlogBrothers. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/... for history). The channel is a collection of general fandom and nerdiness. Think Harry Potter rock bands (yes, they exist). They have create a sort of loosely knit brand and following where they support and promote other Youtubers that have like interests. They also created a record label called DFTBA.
These Youtubers were a collection of young men (and women) who had a sort of nice guy next door nerd vibe about the. They would post videos, attend conferences, chat with fans online and were generally more "accessible" than your average rock star.
Two years ago, one of the signed artist named Mike Lombardo’s was arrested on charges of child pornography. He had been sending and requesting nude pictures from underage fans. Lombardo was recently sentenced to five years in prison. He was also kicked off the label.
In March of this year, the community was rocked by an additional scandal when it came to light that another one of the artist Tom Milsom had engaged in an emotionally manipulative and sexually inappropriate relationship with a 15 year old when he was 21. He was also kicked off the label and DFTBA instituted a zero tolerance policy.
The next day accusations started flying about another musician on the label, Alex Day. Alex is a great example of what not to do when facing these kinds of accusations. After initially denying, he than admitted only to turn around and recant.
As these stories started coming out, more and more women and men took to the internet to post stories about how the above musicians and some additional ones had been using the YouTube platform and other means to lure naive underage girls into sexual compromising situations.
The most recent story to come out was against Sam Pepper who filmed himself sexually assaulting women and posting it on YouTube. After an outpour of outrage, YouTube banned him from the channel.
For an excellent summary of the above...
see http://knowyourmeme.com/...
For a list of all the artist being accused:
See http://unpleasantmyles.tumblr.com/...
All of the above is horrifying but if there is a silver lining to any of this: It was the response of the community to the accusations. See below
First let's start with Hank and John Green. Both of the Green's were horrified when they learned about what had been going at their label.
You can see Hank's response here. http://edwardspoonhands.com/...
John is here: http://fishingboatproceeds.tumblr.com/...
Understand that both Hank and John know these artists and consider them friends. In addition to address the allegations in a public way, they took a stand and adopted a zero tolerance policy for the record label. Offending artist were taken off.
Then they went a step further... Instead of quietly brushing the issue aside, they addressed it front on.
They made a video about consent. https://www.youtube.com/... (Please watch)
They opened up a dialogue and promised to further discuss the issue. Remember that their target audience is young teens to young adults. They donated money to RAINN. They partnered with organizations that deal with this issue.
Next up is the Liam Dryder. Liam is in NO WAY connected to any of the allegations but he did happen to know many of the artists accused.
He wrote one of the best entries in a blog about our responsibilities as a bystander that I have seen in a long time.
http://liamdryden.tumblr.com/...
Finally there is Laci Green. Laci is known for discussing sexual manners in a frank fashion. She is also one of the reasons that Sam Pepper was banned from YouTube.
Her open letter http://lacigreen.tumblr.com/... (co signed by some well known YouTuber's and the Greens from above)
See her video: https://www.youtube.com/...
What is so heartening about this whole sordid mess is the dialogue. There are the fans that will support these losers until the cows come home but there is a greater set of fans who embraced and supported the women and men who came forward.
What is refreshingly missing is: the discussions about how drunk someone was or what they were wearing or prior sexual activity. There is a universal agreement that this behavior is wrong and that we need to redefine the term "consent".
It was a long day of reading through this mess but at the end of it, I feel somewhat heartened that a community faced it's demons and started having the right conversation to address this problem.
5:46 PM PT: Edit Note: Sam Pepper has not been banned from YouTube.