It's All Satire

Posted by Charles Velazquez in English 3 · Pahomov · B Band on Thursday, November 3, 2016 at 7:37 pm

Satire is defined by dictionary.com as “the use of irony, sarcasm, ridicule, or the like, in exposing,denouncing, or deriding vice, folly, etc.” It is used in shows like Saturday Night Live to make fun of recent events such as presidential debates and celebrities. In mainstream venues like broadcast television, satire is used in a humourous and for the most part in a light hearted way. However, in the Youtube commentary community; people who make videos reacting to other videos and mock and make fun of them using under the umbrella of “satire.” Many YouTube commentary channels are not actually satire, they are just a way for them to get away with bullying and harassing people.

One of the YouTubers who pioneered this fake-satire genre was “Leafyishere”. They have almost 5 million subscribers, and in his channel description it states, “If you don't like satire content, probably not the place for you.”. He made a video called,”THE MOST UPSET FEMINIST GETS 0-100 ANGER TOWARDS ME.” In this video he talked about and watched a video with a person who was talking about all the hate they were getting because of the last video Leafy made on them. The first video he did about her was him making fun of one of the women’s youtube video, talking about her intro and some of the points she made in the video. In the video he said,“So I made a video on her or, or him… she’s trans so I don’t really know which one. Uhhh anyways I made a video on this f****ng creature. Umm *laughter* Okay that was f****ng joke…” In this statement he is blatantly making fun her for being a transexual, comparing her being trans to that of being some “creature.” Since he knew that was an inappropriate comment, he quickly defended himself by saying that it was just a joke, so he doesn’t get backlash for making such poorly taste statement. Since his channel is satire he is basically saying that the statement he just made was “satire”. This seemingly worked for no one made a comment about him making that statement, when it was not satire and just bullying someone over being transgender. So he got off “scot-free” for making that statement. If he were to use actual “satire he could’ve mock her video style or an statement she made that he felt was outlandish, not attack her sexuality.

In another one of Leafy’s videos called, “ANGRY UPSET FEMINIST SAYS SHE WANTS TO KILL ALL WHITE PEOPLE.” Which was about leafy commentating about two high school poetry slam students and how he feels that they were just hating on white men. He says, “Time out, you guys see the one on the left. You know the one with the hat; can someone please explain to me why she is wearing f****ng safety goggles.” He also stated, “I feel like these two annoying f****ng monkeys don’t fully understand…” These two quotes aren’t as harsh as the one in the previous paragraph but shows that his content not satire because he is directly attacking their physical appearance. He is not sarcastically saying this or using irony to prove a point about how what they are saying is foolish. He is just plain out attacking them and just labeling what he is saying as “satire” when it actuality it is not.

A YouTuber named “ColossalIsCrazy” who makes similar content to that of “Leafyishere” actually openly admits to using the word satire as a way to not get hate in the disclaimer of his video. Stating, “Please do not attack/harass anyone I discuss[insult] in this video. I hide behind the shield of satire, but I am also a strong believer in strong criticism...” What this tells me is that the YouTube commentary community are not oblivious to this but still use the word for protection anyway. Collosaliscrazy is not that much of an offender of this because most of his videos are just criticism and not deliberately bashing on somebody. With that said his channel is basically criticizing people which is not satire. So claiming his channel as a satire channel is just called that just in case he needs it for protection against criticism.

If Youtube commentary channels stopped to think about it, they would realize that using satire as a shield does not just involve the misuse of the word “satire”, but it also involves lying to your fans and tampering with the definition of the word satire as well. Many of their fans maybe do not know what the definition of satire is and may get the wrong interpretation of it from their videos.What is needed to prevent this from happening is more YouTubers calling it out to discourage the people doing from using the claim of satire for protection as many such as Idubzzz has. With people doing this they can make the YouTube commentary more respected and honest for their viewers.

Comments (5)

Eleanor Shamble

Ergh, this is part of the reason why I don't frequent youtube anymore. I can't say that those channels aren't using satire, because satire can be really mean spirited depending on the person who's doing it. Satire shouldn't be held up in a light of great intent, it is can be kind of hurtful to whoever's on the receiving end. It's hard for people to know where the line is when doing satire. This didn't expand my thinking much because I knew a bit about it, but I have more facts now. I guess.

Hadleigh Stammers

I really like this 2fer! It expanded my thinking because I had never really thought much about satire on the internet. However, your 2fer really persuaded me that a lot of satire created on platforms such as youtube may often be an excuse to be a bully.

Gabriel Garcia-Leeds

Beautiful, beautiful job on this, Charles. Even though I have no idea who Youtube is, I feel like I have a very good idea on it thanks to your clear explanations. Seriously though, your points were insightful and engaging, and I liked how you took a more confrontational stance with this. I agree with your thesis; if it actually was satire, they would be doing an exaggerated act of the people harassing them, not just verbally attacking them.

Christopher Irwin-Diehl

I argue that these channels are actually using the term correctly. As you said, satire is the use of humor/ridicule/sarcasm in order to expose or denounce vice or folly. That means that the person makes jokes pointed towards someone with the intent of pointing out their shortcomings, immoral actions, ignorance, etc. Under this definition, Colossal does in fact use the word correctly. His disclaimer is there to deter people from doing what you are describing: mindless hate. Now, while Leafy is a prime example of a bad commentaary channel, he still technically uses the term correctly. He just has very poor delivery on the jokes, causing them to seem too real, and insighting real hatred in his audience for the subjects of his videos. For this reason (and others), I'm not a fan of him. Most other commentary channels I know of (Memeulous, ElvistheAlien, HeyWatchYourMouth, Zaptie, BionicPig, gRAFF, Chubbs, MamaMax, & WillNE, to name a few) make content with the same intentions of entertaining their audience and criticizing the flaws in other YouTubers' content. Most of them even make a point to verbally express that they do not hate the subject of almost every one of their videos (when the subject is an indiviudal or group of people).

Luis-Manuel Morales

Ever since the whole Youtube drama thing happened, I haven't bothered to invest much time or thinking into channels that use "satire" or as explained in your essay the "satire shield". However you have definitely expanded my thinking on the issue. Your point at the end hit hard and wrapped up your essay niceley. Now I see that the issue isn't simply the misuse of satire, however how the lack of honesty from youtubers such as those used in the 2fer are creating a fake satire experience for their fans who may not know what real satire is. Really nice work Charles.