Phase 2

The 3 main groups who are discussing the possibility of becoming a gaming youtuber are extremely different in the way each of them sees this topic. They all seem to be discussing different things about it, whether it be how successful someone can get as a gaming content creator, all the way to just how hard it is becoming and maintaining a career in this field. However, there are certain disparities between each group, and in some cases within a group. These groups, which include the general media, content creators, and their fans, all seem to be voicing their opinions about gaming on YouTube. This makes it extremely difficult to find the reality of this career, so what I have found through my research is the true discourse going on between and among these groups, allowing the general public to be able to acknowledge what is really going on and find a solution to any problems that emerge. The specific problem I will be focusing on is the disparity between the creators and the general media. The media likes to talk strictly about money. They produce articles ranking the highest paid content creators or focusing in one a specific youtuber’s success story. They don’t like to talk about what is currently going on in the YouTube gaming community. All the problems revolving the demonetization of videos, the work it takes, and even the money required to start a channel are unheard of when focusing on the general media. However, these problems are all anyone hears about from the creators. They explain how hard it is to stay on top as a creator because of the fast-moving nature of what is popular on YouTube. They explain the difficulties of figuring out exactly what kind of content is monetized and what is not, and how even if they think it should be monetized, sometimes it still isn’t. Still, YouTube itself remains silent about these issues. They don’t feel the pressure from the media to make any changes because the media only likes to talk about the success. The only group I have yet to mention is the fan bases of all the gaming youtubers. Of course, we will not hear from the entire demographic, as some are too young to understand the difficulties the creators are going through. The rest, however, seem split. On one side, the fans feel for the youtubers; they understand the conflict they are dealing with, so they generally talk about the same things as the content creators. They support them in what they do and do their best to help, including sharing videos and liking/commenting on them. On the other side, there seems to be a number of fans that only look at the numbers to determine their success, very similar to the general media. This is observed by the creators who see their fan base and how they lose some fans just because they only care about their current success. The discrepancies about this topic between the general media and the youtubers have created a large disparity, causing an unresolved issue which is yet to be solved.