Youth culture and notability

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Youth culture and notability

Opinion pieces such as this one reflect the opinion of their author(s), not necessarily that of The Signpost. – E

Technoblade – real name Alexander – was a Minecraft YouTuber who died in June this year. He was immensely popular, with a YouTube channel boasting over 10 million subscribers – a household name among the Minecraft community. That's no small community; over 170 million people play Minecraft at least once a month – if that was a country it would be the 8th biggest country in the world, with over 15 million people playing the game every single day.^[1] Technoblade was a very big fish in a very big pond.

Now it's fair to say that not all of Technoblade's 10 million subscribers watched every one of his videos. Some of them received as little as 5–6 million views whereas others exceeded 30 million. His live streams consistently attracted over a million viewers – not much compared to his pre-recorded videos but still much more than many television or radio shows that are considered notable enough to have a Wikipedia article.

And yet, Technoblade did not have a Wikipedia article before he died.

Attempts had been made to write an article about him, but these failed for a couple of reasons. One is that they were often fancruft – badly written biased, unsourced twaddle that wasn't worth the bytes of storage it consumed. The other is that Technoblade was not notable, according to our guidelines, until he died.

While he was alive, although he was very well known among that large community of people I outlined, very little was written about him, especially in what we would recognise as reliable sources. Whereas a conventional media show pulling in the numbers of viewers Technoblade did would almost certainly have widespread coverage in newspapers and magazines, the only substantial material you would be able to find about Technoblade in sources independent of the man himself would be in other people's similar content, blogs or discussion forums. He was probably one of the most notable non-notable people alive.

But when he died of cancer, aged just 23, it was big news. Big enough to warrant stories on news websites across the world, from publishers including the BBC and the Evening Standard to name just a couple, alongside just about every technology-focused publication you could think of. Only when he died was there sufficient coverage for us to create a well-sourced Wikipedia article and fulfill our own notability criteria.

Yet it wasn't his death that was notable. Yes, that's what the articles were about, because that's what the news was. But people die of cancer every single day; there wasn't anything special about Technoblade's death. His death was notable and received that level of news coverage because his life was notable. Because he was notable, as a person, when he was alive.

Notable, but not noted. At least, not by us here on Wikipedia.

So ... did we get it wrong? Is our notability guideline so harsh, so clear-cut, so strict, that it prevented us having an article on a subject that we should have had years earlier? Should we be looking at changing it, or perhaps having a different set of criteria for social media stars like Technoblade who had little written about him in our conventional sources until his death?

Personally, I don't think so. I absolutely think there was indeed a failing here. Technoblade was indeed notable while he was alive, but it was not a failure on Wikipedia's part that resulted in his article never materialising. The simple fact is, had sufficient material been written about him in the mainstream press, or indeed in academic papers studying the phenomena of social media, gaming content creation and youth culture, then we would have had an article on him. As it was, there was simply nothing for us to write about, because we needed others to write about him first.

The problem is not our notability guideline. The problem is not that we should have had an article on Technoblade before he died – we shouldn't. The problem is that mainstream media is still largely comprised of television broadcasters and old-fashioned newspapers who happen to have built websites for themselves, and those organisations are very much self-obsessed. Newspapers write about what's on television. Television news shows – particularly at the beginning and end of the day – devote time to telling you what the newspaper headlines say. It's incredibly rare for them to cover anything that's happening on YouTube or Twitch. And it's that failing of conventional media outlets to engage with modern youth culture – their failing, not ours – that meant poor Technoblade only became the subject of a Wikipedia article after his death.

I'll sign off with this final thought. You might think that I'm writing all this as a Technoblade fan and you'd be wrong. I didn't like him at all, I found his content brash and noisy and I couldn't stomach hearing it for more than a few minutes at a time. So I'm not writing this as a Technoblade fan but as a Wikipedia fan; a fan of our original mantra to "make the internet not suck". And on that note I have to say this: if it takes a clearly notable person to die of cancer at a young age to become technically notable, then the internet does very much suck.

RIP Technoblade.

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1 August 2022 (all comments)

Eyewitness Wikimedian, Vinnytsia, Ukraine

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I don't think anything needs changing on our end. There are always new sources of information sprouting on- and off-line. Many of these new sources can be reliable, may be reliable. If there weren't any sources, well-established sources and new sources alike, taking the time to cover the popular YouTubers reliably before their deaths, then we just have to wait for the sources to appear posthumously. If anything, it may just be a catch-up before the media in general writes about popular YouTubers like any of the artistic professionals (musicians, actors, etc) are being currently written about. – robertsky (talk) 03:12, 1 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This has been a concern of mine for a while. There exists practically no press coverage for Youtube (online video?) specifically, and this is a really weird situation. I believe online video is largely seen as a competitor of big money such as print news and television. There also exists no motivation for Youtube community members to set up traditional-esque sources, as the platform is set up in a lot of contrary ways. Lastly, online video is free and unusually accessible. It has no use for reviews, because users will decide whether a channel catches their interest by watching ten seconds of it. Even fanfiction has a higher bar of consumer entry than that. I agree that we on Wikipedia can't really solve this problem... ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 11:18, 1 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

In addition to the natural reasons for there not to be immense news coverage of well-doing Youtubers laid out above by Maple (i.e. the meaninglessness of a written review of a 20 minute video you can click through), I'll also note that there are thousands of Youtube channels around the world, most run by comparative nobodies with shoestring budgets (if any). TV and traditional media is much more limited and thus able to be understood by someone with a broad view of the broadcast/writing landscape. A reviewer can, if they want, probably read through a summary of all of the primetime shows currently running on a major network or the major networks and get a sense for each of them, and then actually watch what they think may be of interest. It would be incredibly difficult to do the same for YouTube. Also, TV shows tend to cast people of some previous note or have money thrown at them, which always attracts interest ("who is Netflix funding now?..."). TV shows also have dramatic twists and plotlines. It's way easier to turn that into semi-interesting writing than a review of a letsplay where the streamer cracks some jokes about his dog and then gets stuck at the same checkpoint for 10 minutes. The landscape is further muddied by the fact that one can artificially inflate likes and subscribers. I think YouTube Daily would have about the same quality as those cheaper news articles where "CEO Xman gets BLASTED on Twitter" (by 10 real people and 300 bots). -Indy beetle (talk) 12:04, 1 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Youtube channels do receive coverage after particularly notable videos (viral videos, I suppose). You're right that when it comes to specific video game Youtubers, there are indeed a lot of successful independent Minecraft Youtubers. I don't know what traditional coverage we might see of Technoblade vs Grian vs GeorgeNotFound vs MumboJumbo vs IBXToyCat; all very distinct people who do fairly similar things. All extremely successful and, I suppose, notable. But still, a good writer could easily cover these individual people and their creative output. There doesn't seem to be motivation to do this at all unless there's a scandal or an unfortunately young death. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 12:39, 1 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the comments. It's good to know others share similar concerns and we all generally agree. I think User:Maplestrip's observation that the nature of freely-available video as a medium doesn't lend itself to being widely reviewed/documented - as well as being seen as a competitor for traditional media - is particularly pertinent. Waggers TALK 15:43, 1 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

A really interesting topic. In one sense, notability is a heuristic to determine what the most important topics for us to write about are i.e. the topics that have had the most impact on human history. In this sense we are really failing with new media, as it doesn't gather coverage from the mainstream press or other reliable sources. We fail with the converse, too: news media is a bubble, where a "story" gathers more coverage because it is a "story" already. In the UK, for instance, there's an extraordinary focus on the inside baseball of Westminster, largely because every Westminster journalist is angling for a future job as a politician and every politician is angling for a future job as a journalist. That lets us down on a lot of areas. You don't really see significant coverage of the bread and butter of our society: what is the daily experience of a plumber, a waitress, a receptionist, a factory worker? What information about how their job works is really important to document for future historians? What systemic issues do they face? This matters a lot more than a politician eating a sandwich.
But in another sense, notability is a heuristic to determine what we can actually write about. In this sense, Technoblade shouldn't have been notable pre-death, as there's not much we could say beyond simple primary source claims: "Technoblade is a YouTuber who makes videos on these topics... and has these YouTube and streaming statistics..." YouTubers, Twitch streamers and the like are magnets for manufactured drama, viral clips taken out of context, and other BLP-violating nonsense that makes the rounds on social media platforms. We should be nowhere near the business of studiously documenting "apology videos" and the drama behind each one. And yet, surely we are doing readers a disservice in some way by giving them no information about a very large cultural phenomenon that will be remembered more than a quickly cancelled TV sitcom? — Bilorv (talk) 22:23, 1 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

As an encyclopedia, we will always be limited to what reliable secondary sources cover. In a way, we do get to pick what these sources are, which can give us a lot of editorial leeway. We could cite more online videos if we could determine "experts in the field," for example. But really, I think the only proper solution to this issue is if actual journalists or academics with editorial oversight cover these subjects. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 10:15, 2 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
To be fair, that's not a characteristic of any encyclopaedia, it's a characteristic of Wikipedia. For example I don't know what Encyclopaedia Britannica's internal policies are but I doubt their information-gathering is limited to secondary sources. We don't allow original research; other encyclopaedias might employ researchers whose very job it is to produce original research for inclusion in their publication.

Of course we do have sister projects where original research is actively encouraged (Wikinews, Wikiversity, Wikivoyage) and in some cases it may be appropriate for those to be used as sources for Wikipedia content. Perhaps that's where a solution lies for "notable" topics that aren't covered in conventional sources. Waggers TALK 10:48, 2 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Original research is actually largely disallowed on Wikinews as well. I'm not familiar with the policies of the other two. I've personally always approved of Wikinews as a reliable source, but I don't think it's currently well-suited for solving this issue. Young journalists and open-minded publications can indeed be the solution here though. This is how a lot of sources in webcomics came to be, for example. But most people with an interest in online video are more likely to become independent online video creators. The Youtube channel Super Bunnyhop might be an interesting example: a video game journalist with a journalism degree spending his entire career as an independent video creator. Jim Sterling might be a similar example, but they have way more traditional writing credits outside of their independent video work. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 11:19, 2 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I guess we might get to a point where we start identifying particular YouTube (or other platform) channels that we deem to be reliable in the same way as some traditional media publications are reliable and others aren't. It's arguably much harder to discern which is which with video though, especially as many video creators use pseudonyms so it's harder to establish their credentials. Waggers TALK 12:41, 2 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This is some disgusting coverage, Waggers. When we treat Wikipedia articles like political tools to praise or condemn, they stop being objective articles. Anyone is welcome to be a fan of any thing and I can understand the joy of reading an encyclopedia article about same. Those of us who write the encyclopedia cannot see our ease of editing to be a special pass to abuse wiki in order to indulge our fandom. And yet, this sort of behavior and from an admin, no less, is becoming more and more common. It's quite a shame to see what could have been a noble project forever compromised by the crooked timber of humanity. I condemn all concerned. Chris Troutman (talk) 15:32, 2 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
There are several reasons I don't understand this comment, Chris troutman, but the first to third are that Waggers comments: that our notability guideline was correct here; that it was correct that Technoblade did not have an article prior to death; and that Waggers is not a fan of Technoblade. — Bilorv (talk) 18:04, 2 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure how I mis-read what was written but I've stricken my comments. Good golly, I fucked up. Chris Troutman (talk) 19:09, 2 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I had GPT-3 react to this article in the role of the late Technoblade:

I'm not sure what to say. I'm touched that someone would write such kind words about me, and I'm honored that my life was notable enough to warrant an article on Wikipedia. I'm sorry that it took my death for that to happen, but I'm glad that my life meant something to someone. Thank you for the kind words.

That was refreshing to hear. Rest in peace. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 21:10, 2 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Technoblade was indeed notable while he was alive ... there was simply nothing for us to write about, because we needed others to write about him first.
This is posed as a paradox—to be "notable" as some intrinsic value while not being notable in the eyes of the press—but is it? Our GNG threshold is not some immutable line common to all compendiums of knowledge—it's just the one we choose to observe. Plenty of encyclopedias are written from first-hand analysis/experience and primary sources. Very often the New York Times will write an obituary about a luminary in her field and only then will there be any real biographic documentation by which we can write an article, but that doesn't somehow imply that the subject's work has not been appreciated or remarked upon by many prior to the obit. If we're all on the same page that wiki-notability is not the same as importance, which is in the eye of the beholder, then why mention Wikipedia at all in this lamentation if the issue/"failing" is with the vicissitudes of the press and of social history? I think it only aids in the public perception that if a topic isn't explained on the first page of a Google search (i.e., via Wikipedia) it doesn't exist or isn't important when the truth is the opposite, that all the good and interesting stuff is buried below the surface level in the search, if only the public (or the press or whichever witch we're hunting) can appreciate it. czar 12:30, 3 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
You're absolutely right of course. I've been editing Wikipedia for long enough to remember when the emphasis was on consensus instead of verifiability - i.e. if we as a community agreed that a topic was notable or a statement was factual and worthy of inclusion, then that was enough to include it. In theory that's still our policy - consensus and a sprinkling of WP:IAR outrank. Perhaps the problem is that the blunt instrument of GNG has become elevated to a hard-and-fast policy in many of our minds and actually we have more room to manoeuvre than I've given us credit for, at least in theory.

I'm certainly guilty of operating on the basis that every new article needs to adhere rigidly to GNG and every statement needs to be referenced to a reliable source, and actually our policies don't say that at all. Waggers TALK 12:44, 3 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think this report was very well written, summing up a topic that was kind of hard to put into words. I was the person who created the current Technoblade page on the mainspace today, but the last time I checked only 7 of the 53 sources used on the page were reliable sources discussing him from before his passing! Even when first publishing the page, the best sources I could find were from after his passing. I would not have re-created the page if I thought that the person in question (Alexander/Technoblade) was not notable enough, but it certainly is interesting to see how, while having so many notable achievements and fans in his life, the first major time he entered the media's attention was after his passing. Thank you again for writing this 😁 Johnson524 (Talk!) 18:40, 7 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Well said. It is definitely true that there are plenty of YouTubers without articles who are much more significant than older-medium creators with articles. Most that do only have articles on account of some major controversy that attracts the media's attention (Dream comes to mind). The only way I can see this changing in the short term is if YouTube switches from being a platform to a publisher therefore making videos published sources. We all know that isn't going to happen. YttriumShrew (talk) 21:51, 10 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This was definitely a great read and something I think more people should be talking about (even outside of Wikipedia). This would be 100% a great YouTube video in itself, and I will definitely add it to the list of things I want to talk about for my channel. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 02:37, 15 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It is so cool to see the people acknowledge what Technoblade meant to the minecraft community, although its sad that a lot of it is after his death. He meant so much to so many people, both his viewers and his friends. RIP Technoblade RIP Alexander Fuck cancer.2601:647:300:9:8DEB:5B10:4324:4333 (talk) 05:27, 16 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I see. Nearly two months prior to this, Kevin Samuels also didn't have an article about him in Wikipedia until his death, despite being "notable" elsewhere for controversial statements exactly because of mostly non-existent independent mainstream coverage about him. I agree with the premise of this article that MSM are the problem at hand - which prevents someone like Technoblade from ever getting a Wikipedia article until death. I wish MSM recognizes online culture a little bit more. RIP Technoblade. MarioJump83 (talk) 02:55, 25 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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