Lately I've been noticing some famous youtubers make some interesting comments about the political events happening. I mean, them making comments is nothing new, but given how complicated things are at the moment, when they've come out embracing nuance, they've almost always been confronted aggressively.
David Pakman recently made his intentions of interviewing Andy Ngo known, and got criticized by Antifa supporters who believe Andy got what he deserved. Truly a perfect portrayal of being unaware of part of your audience.
To be completely fair, it's impossible to not attract some fringe elements. But it seems more reasonable to look at it from a percentages point of view. If you believe you talk about love and tolerance, but the majority of your audience spouses values that contradict what you claim to be about, then surely there's a problem you've failed to recognize.
In the case of Pakman in particular, I don't see he has this issue. Most of his audience is one that embraces nuance. And, even though he is on the left of most issues, he's been very vocal about not embracing socialism or marxism. This cannot be said about other lefty youtubers, and the audience they've amassed shows this perfectly.
Another head scratcher was seeing Tim Pool somewhat shocked he had so many on the right, so many Trump supporters follow him. Tim has been very vocal against the far left, and his videos dunking on SJWs and other fringe ideas have worked wonderfully to attract all the MAGA's looking for a good strawman to be killed online.
Curiously enough Tim is on the left as well, but you would never guess as much from seeing the comment section.
Which leads me to the point of this short post, or the questions, to be more correct.
How Important is it to know your audience? Should you cultivate it? Should you just do you and let things flow? What is a reasonable way to grow?
I'm very much divided in my answers.
MenO
Excellent review @meno and I think that knowing audience is very important if we want to be heard!
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That's a tough question to answer because you want to find balance and the question is where is that balance? And that balance is different for each creator and at a different place and encompassing different things for each creator. The easy part of that question to answer for me is that I strongly believe you have to be true to yourself, and within topic. So a gaming channel that never speaks of politics never has to speak about these things to their audience. But when certain topics within the niche present themselves, they can still be true to themselves, giving unique perspectives and such. Someone who more openly speaks about their stance should remain open minded but true to their beliefs and not change to appeal to each single viewer. This goes for creators who never speak politics too. They will have opinions on other things. Keep and open mind, show understanding to others' viewpoints, all while staying true to yourself.
I follow a few creators who tend to get political. I noticed many who engage in the comments with their audience, even big creators, have more respectful viewers. They show the example and promote respect on their channel. You can vent, have an outlet, comllain about the other side, but do so respectfully. I had to unsubscribe from Tim Pool because he does not promote respect from his audience or even "please do so respectfully" like some people I follow do. No matter what my viewpoint was, I was not matched with opposition respectfully. I was disrespected in the comment section and torn to shreds and made to feel lesser. So I left. I will not tolerate being treated as such by anyone. On other channels, even if we have opposing views, we can debate, consider each other's viewpoints non-confrontationally and everyone is respectful with each other. The pattern truly is that the creator garners respect in some way and promotes it in some way. Those creators seem to know their audience a lot better than those who let them run rampage at anyone they feel like attacking. Perhaps then that is the key, engagement with the audience and promoting respect in some way.
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I'll let things flow, stay true to myself instead of pandering to crowds
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I'll let things flow, stay
True to myself instead of
Pandering to crowds
- bsfmalaysia
I'm a bot. I detect haiku.
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I very much enjoy @davidpakman's posts. I came from the right; so it's refreshing to hear a sensible voice from the left.
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I've always considered myself a liberal, but if someone starts talking about Marxism and equality of outcomes they lose me. I know they mean well, but they don't seem to understand that only through violence such things could be achieved.
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