Online Labor & Gender Roles On YouTube
In today’s generation, labor takes on an entirely new meaning. Working is no longer constricted to the office or the factory. Labor can take place anywhere. In fact, we are working constantly, whether we realize it or not. Keeping up with social media accounts such as Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook is work. Pybus illustrates that, “media, in newly convergent forms, have radically reconfigured the contours of work”(2011, p. 17). We constantly post, comment on, like, and retweet, multiple times a day, whether it be for our own pleasures, or just to keep up with the trends around us, we are still participating in it. When we write a review on a restaurant or movie, when we blog about a topic in the news, when we tweet about a celebrity’s new album, we are working. However, we do not get paid for this labor. We freely put our ideas out onto the Internet for any corporation to see, use, and sell as their own.
Advent users of social media are continuously broadcasting their own ideas to their profile pages, fan pages, or blogs, and they are not getting much in return for the work that they put into these sites. Pybus expands on this idea by stating, “In addition to the corporate mining and selling of user- generated content, this would include the tastes, preferences, and general cultural content constructed therein.” (2011, p. 4). Some corporations may not know what is popular or trending, and therefore they take to the preferences of young teens. These young teens are then doing the work for them.
Martens gives an example of unpaid for labor done by teens; teens who thought they were just participating in online culture. Martens explains, “Teens review books on sites such as Amazon.com and weRead.com, and their affective labor as reviewers serves as peer-to-peer marketing, much as one friend recommending a book to another” (2011, p. 57). What does this mean for the users who are not getting paid? Should something be done about it? How does one reach out to these companies and demand to be paid for their work? How does one get paid for a job that they did not apply for, rather they just started doing for their own pleasure? The fact of this culture is that it is participatory. No one was hired to post these things on the Internet. No one had to send in an application in order to create a blog or a twitter account. If a user is unsatisfied with the way the Internet labor works, that user can “quit” their “job”.
When I am on summer or winter break from school, I work as a hostess in a restaurant near my hometown. The restaurant is called Scala Del Nonna. Although the food and atmosphere is almost always incredible, sometimes the restaurant gets bad reviews on Yelp. I took it upon myself one day to create an account on Yelp and write a glowing review for the restaurant. I thought it could not hurt, and it might even attract more customers. I made sure to include certain details about specific entrees to order and I even named some of the servers who I thought are dedicated and hard working. A week after I posted the review, I noticed more people ordering the entrée that I noted in the review, a couple people even asked for the waiter that I said good things about. I took time out of my day to write this review, fully aware of the fact that this is a labor that I will not be paid for. I did not get a raise, or any special treatment at the restaurant. I simply did it because I felt it was necessary. People who put time and effort into online sites need to remember that no one is forcing them to do so, and that they can stop at any given time. Without a fan base, it is very hard to get paid for posting ideas on the Internet.
One example of a person, who was paid for the labor they performed on the Internet, is YouTube star, Jenna Mourey. Jenna Mourey, or better known as Jenna Marbles, became an Internet sensation from posting comedic videos of herself online. What is controversial about Mourey’s fame is that, she is one of the very few female YouTubers who has become successful. Gender plays a significant role on YouTube. Males run the majority of popular channels. The few female channels that are popular feature a female who embodies all that it means to be stereotypically “feminine”. In the Wotanis and McMillian article, they explain, “Banet-Weiser (2011) found that the young performers “are judged and gain value according to how well the girls producing [the videos] fit normative standards of femininity” (288– 289).” (2014, p. 4). This finding leads one to conclude that males attract their audience with their humor, whereas females must rely to their looks to gain a fan base.
The article then proceeds to compare Mourey to another YouTube star, Ryan Higa. Higa is a male YouTuber, and the size of his fan base is comparable to that of Mourey’s. A study done in the article proved that, “Mourey receives more critical/hostile comments than Higa” (Wotanis & McMillian, 2014, p. 9). Mourey, being female, received more comments about her body, appearance, and sexuality. Some of Mourey’s viewers are less interested in her personality, and more interested in her body and appearance.
These differences between a male’s audience and a female’s audience leads one to question why these gender roles exist on YouTube, and online in general. I believe that post femininity has influenced females to rely on their appearance to reach their goals. A post feminist, in my eyes, is a woman who glorifies her beauty and her body to make herself feel powerful and strong. If women, such as Jenna Marbles, paid less attention to their appearance and more attention to the content of their videos, perhaps their comments would be less critical of their looks and have more focus on their humor.
One of my favorite apps is Vine. There are a lot of talented and humorous people who become extremely popular and well known on Vine. I have tried to make a few vines myself, but none have really gone anywhere. However, one vine I made got more attention than I was expecting, and numerous people “liked” it, commented on it, and re-vined it. Most of the comments were nice but some were not. Some examples of the content of the comments were, “She is funny, but her roots look awful” or, “She’s funny, for a girl”. I can relate to how Mourey must feel when she reads the comments on her videos. The constant pressure to please someone with your looks can very easily overpower the desire to please someone with your personality, and that is why, in my opinion, post femininity exists. This is why women on the Internet broadcast their bodies as more important than their personalities.
Coté, M. & Pybus, J. (2011). Learning to Immaterial Labour 2.0: Facebook and Social Networks. Cognitive Capitalism, Education and Digital Labor. 1, 1-32.
Martens, M. (2011). Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies. Transmedia teens: Affect, immaterial labor, and user-generated content. 17, 49-68.
McMillan, L. & Wotanis, L. (2014). Performing Gender on YouTube. How Jenna Marbles negotiates a hostile online environment. 14, 912-928.
