Didn’t realize that most of these types of channels are white men.
Had to think long and hard before I could recall one that wasn’t (Jeremy Fielding).
What does this mean? How are you seeing these videos if you don’t visit YouTube?
Crash Course was started by middle aged white guys (Hank and John Green as an offshoot of their Vlogbrothers channel). But they’ve had several hosts who weren’t white men: Anna Akana, Jabril Ashe, Taylor Behnke, Deboki Chakravarti, Lily Gladstone, Emily Graslie, Adriene Hill, Andre Meadows, Evelyn Ngugi, Carrie Anne Philbin, Jay Smooth, Shini Somara, and Nicole Sweeney.
I should add that I think there’s definitely different treatment of content creators based on their gender (and I’m sure race, too, but I haven’t seen it directly).
Given any edutainment video from a male creator, comments are almost always at least somewhat relevant to the content of the video, or random tangents. Videos from female creators are guaranteed to contain a host of comments about the creator’s appearance, how attractive she is, etc. etc. Tibees is an example.
I don’t think it’s at all that surprising. What is required to start up a channel like this and build an audience?
- Plenty of space. Either a big garage, a warehouse, workshop or in some cases a big outdoor area.
- An advanced degree or a lot of experience in a trade. You can be self-taught but that raises the degree of difficulty.
- A fair bit of tech. Usually a few high-quality cameras, lights and microphones. These aren’t shot on iPhones usually. Plus the software and skills to do the post-processing and editing.
- A lot of discretionary income. Partly for all the above, but depending on the subject matter, also for the on camera objects/activities. For example, you may see a lot of tear-down videos or refurbishment videos which requires the host to be regularly buying new tools, gadgets or whatever.
That right there is a recipe for a middle-aged white guy. Black men (ignoring the male/female diversity question) make up just 10-12% of the male population, so always keep in mind that a 50-50 split in representation would not be “balanced” based simply on demographics. Black men stereotypically will tend to be more urban, tend to be less involved in the big trades, and will tend to have fewer college degrees. And of course the economics are against them in this endeavor.
So yeah, it should surprise no one that this kind of thing is highly self-selecting. But, the algorithm is definitely going to be a major factor here too. It may not see race, but it definitely will pick up on biases in the general viewing population and reinforce them. That said, in this case I think the paucity of content creators has a lot more to do with it than the prejudice of the viewers or the AI.
Emily Graslie has done a video on this issue.
I watch a fair number of the craft/diy/maker’s stuff on YT. I think your point is fair, but …
My wife is a quilter. I’ve been to a lot of the shops with her. Once, I asked a shop worker if they get many men in the shop/craft. Her answer stuck with me: not many, but the ones who are quilters are among the best.
I feel similarly about some of the women whose YT channels I watch.
In addition to the other points people have made about what it takes to start a YouTube channel, I would add that you have to have the confidence to think that anyone will be interested in what you have to say.
The best such channels, no matter who is hosting them, will bring more humility and curiosity, and sort of find out the answers to questions with you as they go, even though they may be experts. (Smarter Every Day is a good example of this, I think.) But there are a lot of bad examples out there, that definitely smack of mansplaining, or Dunning-Kruger issues, where people think a lot more of their expertise than they should. Because of the effects of privilege, there are probably more white male people who have that level of confidence that people will want to watch them and hear what they have to say. Women and minorities are more prone to impostor syndrome, and might be more likely to doubt that anyone will be interested, or that they should be presenting based on their expertise.
ETA: I’d like more suggestions of non-white and female science related channels. I’d love to get the YouTube algorithm looking for more of the same…
I don’t do a lot of recreational YouTube. I sometimes search up an advice vid for some specific need and that’s about it.
It may be a result of my small data footprint, but their algorithm is amazingly monotone for lack of a better word. e.g. I looked up a how-to for replacing the screen on a particular model of laptop. The suggestions for my next 10 visits were, yep, other vids changing laptop screens. Mostly for the same brand of laptop.
I suppose there may be people who simply sit there watching cat-playing-with-string videos for hours, and who are perfectly served by a “feed” of nothing but cat+string vids. But color me unimpressed with their algorithm.
As applied to the OP: IMO the deep and narrow rut you’re seeing may be partly real, but an (unquantifiable) bunch of it is simply YT’s artificial stupidity level of feeding you more of (exactly) the same as you’ve already seen.
It would be very interesting to see the difference if there was a magic search term one could enter into any/every search system that said “Ignore 100% of what you think you know about me and just answer the question asked with ZERO personalized biases.”
That might be very revealing to a lot of people. And will never happen until required by law.
huh? how can you do that? A voice doesn’t have any ethnic tell-tales does it?
English is my first language and I certainly can’t tell ethnicity from voice alone.
I sometimes make a point of doing a search in an incognito window, just so the results don’t color subsequent results.
Vi Hart is one of the better math channels out there, and I don’t know her precise age, but I’m pretty sure that she’s less than middle-aged. And while she has appeared in videos in the flesh, most of her content is her drawings, wherein she represents herself as a triangle with arms, legs, and a face. Possibly to avoid the inevitable comments about her appearance.
Not for every voice, 100% of the time, no. But generally, yes, there are differences between the voices of Black and White Americans that can be easily distinguished. Linguist John McWhorter had an episode about that on his podcast Lexicon Valley.
So a white person and a black person, with the same accent and vocabulary can be ethnically identified reliably without seeing them? Such a possibility has never even occurred to me.
I’ve noticed that there are a lot of POC who make Reaction videos, where they are watching an 80s movie or listening to an old pop song for the first time. But though Sci-comm has a load of women, it is still primarily White people.
So then you are also saying that no one has ever been discriminated against on the phone for “sounding Black”? Black people being denied housing and job interviews from talking on the phone totally isn’t a thing that happens right?
How on earth did you leap to that from what I wrote? It is entirely possible for someone to assume that someone is black based on their voice alone and discrimination in some cases will of course follow.
What I’ve never considered is that two ethnically different people with pretty much identical accents, vocabulary and speech patterns, can reliably be told apart. I’m not in a position to say it can’t happen, just that such a thing has never crossed my mind, I certainly can’t do it. I listen to a lot of talk radio and remain completely oblivious to the ethnicity of people unless a specific accent or other cue (name etc.) is present.
Even then of course that is no guarantee. Many people (me among them) assumed that the great Barbadian Cricket commentator Tony Cozier was Black.
Both those links are reactions by black people to white and black people complaining, or at least feeling it necessary to point out to their face, that they don’t sound black! So obviously you can’t tell anything for sure. But what you can tell is that people are going to bitch about the way you talk the same way they make disgusting comments about the way women look and dress and act, which is understandably enough to put many people off making videos.
Very true. Maybe it is just the way I was brought up but such comments are unthinkable to me.
About 5 years ago I had an interview over the phone with a consulting company who, based on my rather obvious regional accent, said they’d be interested in taking it further but only if I would consider elocution lessons.
I picked my jaw up off the floor and checked it wasn’t still Dickensian times then called the recrutiment company and told them to relay the following message back to the company…word for word…“you can stick your fucking job up your arse you poncy twats”
I suspect they translated that into somehting more palatable but it felt very good to say it out loud.