This week, Matt Pat from the game theorists made a video that is both longer and better than this one, which he talked some about the negative ways that YouTube and YouTubers have been portrayed in the media.

I want to talk about this.

Let's start here.

I have, ah, complex understanding of the content and culture and platform of YouTube.

Parts where I spend my time are amazing because they're marble races and knives being made out of bismuth crystals and social commentary about the darkness and mouth feel and careful explanations of ingenious technology.

But when there are big stories about YouTube and what we could consider, like the mainstream press slogan Paller ads being shown on terrorist recruitment videos or things that are worse than those things.

And when that happens, it's bad for YouTube creators because advertisers air like who?

I don't know about this, and they cut their spending or they remove it completely.

And then YouTube overreacts and starts to strengthen its demonetisation algorithms.

And so if you make anything even a little bit controversial, you might have your video gnomic money at all.

On the finger of blame has been pointed in many different directions.

And this is a YouTube for overreacting.

Where is it ad buyers who are maybe freaking out?

But also maybe using this is a tactic to force you to do things that they want YouTube to do.

Or is the journalists who never covered this platform in a positive way but are always writing this inflammatory stuff?

Matt, that's the D A.

Points the finger in all of these directions.

But it is true that no one wants to write like positive stories about YouTuber.

But I have also noticed that the National News also never writes positive stories about Montana Place where I live.

People won't know very much about it.

They don't have a complex understanding of this place.

And so when we make the national news, it's either because some state senator wanted to legalize drunk driving or because somebody, somewhere wanted to sell us to Canada.

People who read The New York Times in The Wall Street Journal.

They don't have a complex understanding of YouTube, the way that they also don't have a complex understanding of Montana, just not part of their culture.

And the same goes for most ad buyers like they tend to be the ones who were reading the Wall Street Journal.

Not watching Matt Pat videos, though that might be changing a former career of mine.

I wrote news stories for a living, and I never thought about whether the story was positive or negative.

I thought about whether it was interesting.

If your audience doesn't know very much about a thing, they're not interested in nuanced takes or thoughts about how it's being successful in growing.

They're interested and when it's threatening or scary or dangerous.

And that goes double for when the thing they don't understand very well is also really big and important.

And they know that.

But they also don't understand it.

And yes, it's also likely that some journalists don't think that YouTubers should have the amount of power that they have.

And so they don't mind taking us down some notches if you're looking for communities that are big and important, but people don't understand them very well, so they're usually covered in negative and not nuanced ways in the mainstream media.

Bigger concerns the new tubers who are, by and large, actually really powerful force and culture, even if they don't want to recognize it and instead sort of hide from that as they engage in these sort of victimhood narrative.

So John, here comes the True True Train.

What this really comes down to is publications are creating content for a disproportionately powerful audience that is unfamiliar and made uneasy by a massive new cultural force that no one truly understands.

Look, I love you, tube.

I love it, but it also makes me uneasy to the fact that it's a platform without gatekeepers is what makes it so interesting.

But that also creates real problem.

It is scary tohave.

Someone have a huge amount of power over young people with no oversight.

It is bad to be monetizing terrorist recruitment videos or having bad actors stick disturbing violent content in the middle of a kid's show.

This community has done a lots of great things, but also as a culture, I don't think we've figured out quite what to make of it.

And that might be why advertisers are hesitant to interact with it and also why I want journalists to be covering it Ultimately, and Matt Pat's very good video, it feels a little bit like We don't know where to place the blame, and maybe that's because there isn't a super good place.

Maybe that's because the idea of a mainstream media in a world where beauty pie is getting more views than any cable news show that exists is wild.

There either is not a mainstream media anymore, or YouTube is part of it.

John, I'll see you on Tuesday.