YouTube & Gender

Just from the title I bet a lot of you will have dismissed this post to be just some other rant about feminism. But please keep reading- this is going to be different. 

 One of the special things about YouTube is the fact that content is user generated. This means that no matter who you are, where you’re from, what religion, gender or race you are, as long as you have internet access you can be a content creator. It’s a completely equal platform; no-one gets an automatic head start because of their social situation.

 So why is then that men are more successful than women on YouTube? Don’t judge, hear me out. I’m not saying this in a disapproving or angry way, more just in a ‘this is a thing’ way. Men do better. I’m not saying that there aren’t any successful women on YouTube, look at JennaMarbles, DailyGrace and Hannah from My Drunk Kitchen, but there are just more men.

 My main theory as to why this happens is because most of the people who subscribe and watch videos are young girls and they’re more likely to subscribe to guys- I, myself, am probably subscribed to more men than women. But I don’t have a problem with that, I love all the people I’m subscribed to. I just think this topic is really interesting and I’m not having a go at anybody.

 But this here is what makes me angry. My friend Bing’s recent Future Bing video showed him and all his YouTube friends all hanging out together. And that’s awesome, I love it when YouTubers all get together! They kept saying in the video that ‘the whole of YouTube’ was in Bing’s house and I couldn’t help notice that they were all male. So then this happened: 

Seriously, Bing?! Harsh. What exactly is ‘that person’ anyway?

 A thing that I find quite frustrating is when a woman makes a comment along the lines of gender and a man takes this as a personal attack. We don’t hate you! In fact, Bing, I fucking love you, I think you’re amazing. And the same goes to everyone else in that video: Jack, Tom, Khyan, Tim, Jamie, Matt – seriously, you’re all awesome. I have no problem with you all being successful YouTubers, you’re talented and you all deserve it. So Bing, please know that I wasn’t attacking you so don’t get all defensive. I was actually hoping for it to spark an interesting discussion and I know you’re good at them, but not when you dismiss what I said with a rude comment like that.

 So, I’d really like to just have an open discussion. Why do you think men are more successful on YouTube? Or do you think that it’s actually pretty equal? And what do you think about how men and women react to comments made about gender?

Let’s not be mean and attack each other, let’s have an interesting open debate.

Hannah