YouTube as a Political Platform
Anna T. Do
University of Pennsylvania
The American internet personality Mark Fischbach heads a YouTube video game channel called Markiplier, for which he is known for his sensationalized commentary, which involves profanity, and thrilling humor. He created his channel in 2012 and has since accumulated 11 billion video views and 24 million YouTube subscribers. This internet fame grants Fischbach great leverage in pushing his opinions upon his viewership, which comprises primarily of children, teenagers, and young adults. Though most of his videos are gaming videos, which are typically void of his personal political perspectives, he regularly publishes “vlogs”—video blogs—that tend to feature more intimate, less exaggerated speech. These discrete videos, though harboring a separate mood from the rest of his videos, are just as, if not more influential than, the rest of his videos, especially due to his serious tone. One particular video of discussion by Fischbach is his video titled “My Thoughts on Gun Control” (2018), published in response to the Stoneman Douglas shooting in February of 2018, in which a gunman used a semi-automatic rifle at a high school, killing 17 people and injuring 17 others. In publishing this video on his YouTube channel, he has exposed and pushed his strong political opinion on a popular platform to a large audience using his fame gained from having published unrelated content.
YouTube is a popular platform in that it is an online video sharing service used frequently by many of those who have access to the internet. Because YouTube has become a common aspect of everyday American life due to the booming Information Age, YouTube has become a common aspect of today’s culture. John D. Storey (2009) in his book Cultural Theory and Popular Culture defines popular culture one way as “the culture which originates from ‘the people’” (p. 10) due to its public nature. YouTube is also for the people; YouTube is in fact the second most visited website in the world (“The top 500 sites on the web”, 2019). Because YouTube is so often frequented by people of all ages and backgrounds, it can be easy to spread one’s opinions and likings to strangers—especially if they themselves are well-known, in which case the spread of such information is practically done on its own. Those popular on the YouTube platform—what Storey considers “widely favoured or well liked by many people” (p. 6)—are inherently part of popular culture. Mark Fischbach’s “Markiplier” personality as a popular culture icon enables him to easily voice his opinions to his masses, the younger generation, which can be easily persuaded by their idols.
In Fischbach’s video “My Thoughts on Gun Control” (2018), he begins by stating his support for the protestors of school violence and shootings, citing this as something he “needed to say” despite his usual stance of not making comments on controversial events because of their involvement of political or religious contention. He verbally recognizes an interpersonal connection between himself and some of his fans who are part of such protest. His video taping style is also an aspect of his effort to build intimacy; there is no editing of the video whatsoever, and unlike the usual format of him being his own separate section of the screen while playing a game, his upper body takes up the entire screen, as if he were having a direct conversation with his audience. In Christian Lorentzen’s article “Like This or Die” (2019), he describes this relationship between the screen and the viewers as part of a “mass quasi-intimacy” that has been sprung out of the age of the internet (par. 29). Lorentzen says this “love is still false” and that there is no honest bond because a popular online video such as Fischbach’s can have its intentions hidden behind a screen—it “pretends to have an actual opinion” (par. 27). When one earns $27,700 to $442,700 a month making videos like Fischbach (“Markiplier's YouTube Stats”, 2019), it’s easy publishing a video for the sake of gaining more views and thus gaining more money. In this specific video, Fischbach and his internet identity as “Markiplier” appear one and the same. Though his opinion about school shootings and gun control are real, his intimacy between him and his viewers may not be due to the external factor of money, and the line between moral justice and personal gain are further blurred.
Fischbach continues in “My Thoughts on Gun Control” by describing his background in relevance to gun violence: his father was a member of the National Rifle Association, and Fischbach himself had grown up handling firearms respectfully. However, he takes a firm stance on the issue of gun control by stating, “Assault rifles exist solely to kill people.” His advocacy for the banning of assault rifles is inherently a political stance because gun control has been a hugely debated issue in politics, especially following the Stoneman Douglas shooting. Fischbach’s public announcement indirectly makes use of the slogan “personal is political”; by outlining his familiarity with guns, he bridges his personal experience with his politics about gun control—and inevitably bridges his politics with his audience. Additionally, this rare existence of a political statement, which contrasts the style and content of his other, gaming-related videos, draws attention to itself. Unlike his usual videos having colorfully saturated and humorous image thumbnails and stimulating, capitalized titles, “My Thoughts on Gun Control” has a different light. Ironically, a video of this nature, which does not fit his mold, tends to draw more attention than the rest of his videos. This combination of his serious tone and a lack of visual effects becomes widely influential to his viewer base when coupled with politics. Political influence on people, whether intentional or unintentional, is natural and arguably unavoidable in today’s age of prolific media; popular YouTube channels such as Fischbach’s are able to disseminate personal and political sentiments effectively through a large audience by way of online videos.
References
Fischbach, M. (2018, February 22). My Thoughts on Gun Control. Retrieved from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34rkx7DdpHY.
Markiplier's YouTube Stats (Summary Profile). (n.d.). Retrieved October 8, 2019, from
https://socialblade.com/youtube/user/markipliergame.
Lorentzen, C. (2019, March 19). Like This or Die. Harpers. Retrieved from
https://harpers.org/archive/2019/04/like-this-or-die/.
Storey, J. (2009). What is popular culture? Cultural Theory and Popular Culture.
The top 500 sites on the web. (n.d.). Retrieved October 8, 2019, from
https://www.alexa.com/topsites.
Anna, I really appreciate your thoughtful commentary about how Youtube as a platform seamlessly enables people to spread political messages and the conflicting motivations that it maintains. It is interesting to consider videos like Fischbach’s in the context of the articles we read about the functions of celebrity activism. Cole, Radley, and Falisse’s article in The Guardian notes how “celebrity causes...tend to de-politicise activism..in favour of a simple, catch all, solution”. Fischbach’s video is relatively short, only slightly longer than 5 minutes, but he manages to highlight at least some of the nuance of the issue of gun control efforts.
ReplyDeleteBut, my biggest criticism for his video would be the lack of an action for his viewers to take. Perhaps the video was more for personal catharsis on Fischbach’s behalf, but if his goal was truly to garner support for an assault rifle ban, he could have linked ways to get involved or mentioned them in his video. The lack of an activist message seems to push back against the positives of celebrity activism that the Kutoresky piece mentions. Gun control in the US right now is a profoundly political issue, and Fischbach seems to tiptoe around the partisanship that it involves.
I’m also curious about your claim that the deviation from his normal video style would attract more attention. I initially would have thought this would be true as well -- I know when my favorite YouTubers post something dramatically different, I tend to pay attention. But this video only received a 1.3 million views, in contrast to the more than 20 million his videos typically garner. This plays into the idea of “Shut up and ___” like we discussed in class, where Fischbach’s parasocial relationship with his fans may have not been enough to overcome the brand he currently maintains. It also raises the question of how microcelebrities and traditional celebrities engage with activist issues differently (if they do).
Overall, I really appreciate your post and think it raises really fascinating questions about what happens when Youtuber’s deviate from their channel’s intended theme. Great analysis!
-Tamara Wurman
Great blog post Anna! I thought that your in-depth analysis of Mark Fischbach’s video “My Thoughts on Gun Control” and how YouTube can be seen as a political platform was well-informed and excellently written. The fact that a YouTube gamer has the ability to talk about something personal, such as politics, and reach millions of viewers is so interesting. I feel as though if there is something so extremely wrong with society, such as school shootings, and somebody has the influence and power to talk about it, they not only should, but should feel the need to. Twitter and Facebook have widely been viewed as political social media platforms where people share their direct opinions, while YouTube was more of a place where influential and popular YouTubers put on a show. Therefore, when one of them gets personal about politics and real-world issues it can definitely turn some heads. If YouTube truly is “the culture which originates from ‘the people” (Storey, 2009 [P.10]), then its creators, specifically daily lifestyle vloggers, should be able to talk about regular everyday issues with their subscribers and share their opinions. I feel as though people who have these types of platforms should feel obligated to speak out when such atrocities occur. People’s political views are known now more than ever, due to social media use and political polarization. YouTube, as well as other social media platforms, are both a powerful tool and weapon when it comes to discussing politics. Overall, your post was very interesting, and I enjoyed reading it.
ReplyDeleteStorey, J. (2009). What is popular culture? Cultural Theory and Popular Culture.
- Drew Schwartz
Anna, I have really enjoyed reading your post on the political potential of YouTube. I think you have done a great analysis of Mark Fischbach as an influencer who uses the platform to promote a political goal. I especially like how you have very specific examples such as the visual effects and their contrast with his other videos. You mentioned in your blog post that YouTube is part of the popular culture because it is from and liked by the people, which I really agree. Just like other popular culture artifacts, I think YouTube and YouTubers’ impact on more formal matters such as politics has always been underacknowledged. This is because they are labeled to be part of the culture industry that features mass production and is “under monopoly,” which produces identical goods (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1944).
ReplyDeleteBesides these stereotypes against the cultural industry and YouTube, I think it would also be interesting to look at the technical aspects of YouTube that significantly contribute to its underestimated political potential. This connects to Walter Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, in which he states that mechanical reproduction fundamentally changes the “distribution” of an artwork, by “put[ting] the copy of the original into situations which would be out of reach for the original itself” (1936, p.50). In this case, the artwork is the medium that promotes gun control, which is specifically a video by a famous YouTuber. With every single repost of this YouTube video to other platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, sharing brings more attention to the political discourse on gun control, which would never reach the same magnitude without this technical aspect of YouTube and, broadly speaking, mechanical reproduction.
References
Benjamin, W. (2006). The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. In J. Morra & M. Smith (Eds.), Visual Culture: Experiences in visual culture (pp. 48-70). Taylor & Francis.
Adorno, T. and Horkheimer, M. (1944). Dialectic of Enlightenment.
-Yanfan (Vivian) Wang