call out

I’ve tried to avoid giving my energy to this situation, because it seems like the worst sort of unproductive drama. I’ll catch a scrap of actual news, and caring about anything other than the end of the world seems absurd. The horrors around us feel too close, too real, like the apocalypse is already happening and I’m in a crumbling castle complaining about the jesters fighting each other. My only cope is that it’s not very human to worry about things proportional to the objective severity – we complain about what is close to our hearts. And despite all my attempted self awareness of being parasocial, the sphere of creators this intersects with still has my heart. 

If you don’t know what’s been going on with Ethan Klein these past few months, this post may not make sense, but the broad strokes are this – there is a very rich and successful YouTuber whose personal beef with another creator has festered into scattershot malice against anyone who critiques him, and obsessive, manic behavior on his podcast and IG. The person in the video below is the original “enemy” of Ethan’s, and he’s explaining why other youtubers with a similar sized following haven’t called out the behavior. 

My gut reaction is – it feels like the worst, most uncomfortable Christmas dinner. The drunk uncle is loud and completely obnoxious, and is antagonizing a few of the younger cousins. They start lashing out, and it’s just constant screaming and arguing. The other adults at the table are just looking down and quietly trying to eat and pretend that nothing’s happening, though they might exchange silent, curious looks now and then. 

There’s a couple issues with that analogy, though. First of all, even though there is an implied association between content creators within a niche, they aren’t responsible for anyone else’s behavior. They shouldn’t be expected to curate that implied space, so only people who “behave” are a part of it. Comparing it to the dynamic of a family just doesn’t hold water at all. And even then, you as the audience member wouldn’t be sitting at the table anyway – at best you would just hear the arguing through an open window. If it was making you uncomfortable you could just….walk away. 

So why do I still resonate with what Hasan says here? Why do I still have some vague sense of ick around how much Cody benefited from silence? Especially when I don’t have a clear idea of what should have been done differently? It was honestly a 10,000 IQ move on danny’s part to unfollow everyone, because what a fucking minefield guilt by association has become. I always feel bad for him when I remember the IG story he posted the night after I saw him at VIDCON, when he went to H3’s (Ethan’s podcast) live show – he said it was his “Super Bowl”. At what point does it become impossible to trust. 

I usually try to bring my essays to some satisfying conclusion, but I think I’ll let it mirror the subject this time. The uncomfortable and confusing feelings will run their course, and we’ll move on to a new day. Not everything can be analyzed like it’s a karmic lesson from the universe. Sometimes it’s just mess.