It's Not Youtube, it's You

How?

I know that if you clicked on this, that’s probably the first word that comes to mind.

“How is my YouTube recommended my fault?”

And to be fair, that is a good question. If the issue with regurgitated YouTube talking points and soulless videos flooding your feed isn’t Big Corporations fault, then who does the fault fall to? Who takes the blame for slop and unimaginative content in this day and age?

I’m here to argue that it’s partially on you, the viewer too. The things we ascribe to the title of “slop” only become such when it gets over-produced and mainstream, and when the uniqueness of the idea becomes bloated under the weight of its success. But that success wouldn’t exist without you, the viewer. That bloating? That burgeoning weight? That comes from views, likes, reposts and conversations floating around about that very idea. And that engagement doesn’t come from the sky, or the bots from our collectively dead internet, no reader, it comes from you.

From you sharing similar content, making it popular, and churning it out once it looses steam. From the idea that the internet must move for the newest shiniest thing first, not unlike men who marry younger to “corner the market”. Which certainly applies, in no small part, to YouTube. Of the commentary YouTubers Doothi criticizes for following the same scripts without much to add in the way of an opinion that reminds me of SSSniperwolf. Of her startling lack of emotions with her extremely quick turnaround rate in production that managed to make her internet famous. To the days in which her greatest crime was being boring and unfunny, even with millions of followers.

But she lasted for a while off that exact model. Off of stealing content, lengthening the runtime to make herself money, and not adding anything valuable in her reactionary content. Only now, that disease has spread onto a wider scale. Into commentary, indie shows, and everything in between.

Nothing feels original because it can’t be; originality doesn’t pay the bills if you aren’t white enough to sell it. And in an era where hobbies make money, it’s expected to sell every part of yourself and others to survive. To take and take and take like the finance bros on Wall Street to barely make a living. To monetize everything so anything sells. And while this is an epidemic we are subject to, it’s also an epidemic we participate in.

As Kay Poyer said in her stack, Fuck Everything Up, “Originality and authenticity are both bullshit qualities that people pretend to crave. We adhere to cycles and we pick at old corpses, we enjoy repetition.” (Poyer 2026) We like the boring shit. We like regurgitating trends, nostalgia, and platforming less than stellar people. It’s a thing everyone has done, will do, and enjoys doing for the sake of watching consistent content.

More plainly, we live in a dog eat dog world that emphasizes an affinity to whiteness over all else. A whiteness that behaves as a disease, infecting and afflicting everything it comes in contact with, dressing it in paler skin and more amenable features to finally become palatable to the masses.

The Racism of it all; The Interlude

So that calls calls something else into question: Which white girls, in recent history, have maintained immense popularity through their controversy & mediocrity? Because for me, the first names that come to mind are Trisha Paytas, Alix Earle, Alex Cooper, Tana Mongeau, and Brooke Schofield. Women who have cult followings that fawn at their feet every time they make the most minor of waves. Even though 3 out of 5 of the women I just named have a heavily recorded history with racism to multiple different groups of people, they maintain stardom regardless.

They still go on brand trips, get millions of views, and stay within the trend cycle long enough to profit from it. Especially in Trisha Paytas’ case. She is notorious for her racism and pro-Israel stance and is still pumping out content the masses are ready to consume without criticism. She is still culturally relevant even when her content is extremely outdated, and the internet at large lets it happen. If anything, the internet at large loves how controversial all these women are; something about that girl-boss mindset that's been warped by the white feminism and Taylor Swift of it all. It is addicting to criticize and observe these paragons of (white) online culture, which in turns sustains their profitability for years to come.

In my unprofessional and black opinion, all of these women are fucking boring. All they bring to the digital landscape is a white re-brand of blackness with podcasts profiting off of black bodies, black humor, and black culture. A poor reenactment of white America’s largest fetish and fear, given platforms they don’t deserve and an immunity typical of our current state of affairs.

But women like Fannita aren’t given second chances. The second the internet deemed that her pride no longer fit a predetermined caricature, she was thrown into internet obscurity without a second word. If anything, they’re skinned, scrapped for parts, and become another white woman’s brand. If I wanted to witness racism disguised as culture, I’d listen to Drake and go to the North side of Chicago.

The point being, I’m already inundated with the glaring reality that my existence is a costume and that my pain is another woman’s profit, so why would I continue to consume it? In a world where every action transforms into profit, why would I keep watching something I can’t stand? And I pose that question to you, the reader as well: If you hate the boring slop that is your YouTube home page, why are you still watching? And more importantly, who exactly are you watching that bores you so much?

Why?

If the problem is watching these creators, then why should you stop watching them?

Because you complain about it all the time. Every day there’s another Tik Tok about how boring YouTube has become, how we’ve lost the art of long-form content, and how everyone is morphing into one another to ride the wave of fame until it collapses in on itself from the weight it bears. Because there’s a new perspective to a stale conversation no one’s really willing to add any words of value to.

And I’m here to tell you that this is an issue you can solve. Not in some kind of call-to-action that fixes every broken part of humanity and our current media landscape, but a respite from the content you claim to hate and love to discuss.

It’s by doing something I’m sure a lot of you hate do to: Watch BIPOC creators. I know, awful and horrendous of me to ask you to diversify your content outside of whiteness and white-adjacent creators, but if you want to watch something you deem ‘of value’ to consume indiscriminately, then go out and find it. Go watch Shanspeare for video essays, NotEvenEmily for her humor, and UpstairsNeighbors for all the current cultural events.

Or fuck it, go back to your roots with texting pranks and gacha videos. Learn how to have fun again and look for people you enjoy watching. Learn how to distance yourself from creators that make slop and stop complaining if you’re watching it anyway. Go to Widlin, Christian Divyne, Ismantu Gwendolyn, or any of the other multitudes of creatives on social media instead of subjecting yourself to a hell of your own creation.

Make a new bed, put your eggs in a couple more baskets, and for the love of any deity you—may or may not—believe in, follow new creators.