Making Money Out of Defamation & Slander: the End of an Era?

you may or may not already know a
charming character called Anna Scanlon currently has an ongoing court case with the fabulous Charles Marlow formerly known as vegan cheetah and she made a video in support of her case that was titled there is money to be made in online bullying harassment and defamation the question we have to ask in 2017 is is there even any truth to that anymore there seems to be less and less money in the game play the clip no will add in the clip why is this not a gossip channel anymore and I really want to kind of explain exactly why I moved away from the older format there are several reasons why I'm no longer doing the gossip and the the drama like news format and and why I'm doing what I'm doing now but videos of mine have been demonetized I'm not getting the same amount of ad revenue that I used to get maybe six months ago so that means like the amount of money that I get per ad is much lower as well advertisers companies corporations do not want to place their ads on videos that are slightly triggering I will leave your dudes I will send them to your father your job like even just triggering in the slightest way when I'm making content that the advertisers don't want to spend money on or place their ads on I can't make money I think last month I made 500 bucks on this channel I made about $500 which it's it's not nothing but compared to what I have made before it's like a fraction of what I was making I was connected in a strange way to the rise of two different drama channels Charles Marlow vegan cheetah and also Joe vegan Kim - Joe vegan and I think I was really linked in a very powerful way to the fall and destruction of another drama channel of durianrider I've said for a long time there's kind of this weird mix of motives on YouTube for why do people make videos anyway why do people try to turn what's obviously a pastime and a form of social networking into a career if you think about that word social networking it's really well-suited to political activism because a large part of what you want to do with sincere political activism is find people you can cooperate with find people you can do fundraising with find people you go to City Hall with you know find people you can share your life with in a meaningful way and of course social network I friends and girlfriends I mean it's it's not just me I would never have met my girlfriend without without YouTube without social networking in this in this sense you know hey Nia met several of her boyfriends and girlfriends through social media a natural vegan met her boyfriend or I don't know if they're married now her husband through through being on YouTube you know for a lot of us it's a meaningful part of our lives in many different ways and we have whatever mix of motives in terms of political aspirations and personal aspirations and the good things social networking to break your life but my motivations exclude money you know if I were here on YouTube for money I would be insane if I dropped out of my university program in order to pursue YouTube as a way of making money that would be insane and for most of this channels history I've been enrolled as a university student I'm currently kind of both a university student and a university professor slightly weird situation here but and people said to me I mean people like Jason said to me when I first thought though like oh why would she drop out of you know your job why are you worried about having career why don't you just become a full-time you know social media activist personality and I had the maturity a detachment to say that's that's crazy so I mean look there were people were victims of this phenomenon in different ways like Charles Charles Marlow is now facing I believe while he's in court with heinous Gamlen thank you shout out to Anna haven't talked to her for a while but you know I used to back when Anna was a normal youtuber know one part of the scene we used to we used to chat you know he dropped out of his university degree was enrolled in a college program in in journalism and he moved to Los Angeles to chase all the good things that micro Fame could bring into his life which indeed money sex fame power you know maybe revenge maybe a few other motivations tacked on there and you know in a very real sense I think he's a victim of he's a victim of his own success because that success is so modest that it might as well be a failure I mean you know he was successful enough to feel like he was famous he was successful enough to be getting more emails in a day than he could possibly answer he was probably successful enough to have more women offering to sleep with him that he could possibly sleep with and for a lot of guys that does go to their heads but there was no way he could pay his rent definitely not in the Greater Los Angeles area there was no way this could really be a career and for this guy in particular believe me I'm I'm not someone who uncritically praises getting a college diploma on the contrary we're constantly you know lamenting how terrible the college system is in both United States Canada it's a big topic of conversation than this relationship it's a major theme in my life but nevertheless for Charles Marlow specifically if you know about his criminal background his career background and his prospects of the future it would have been a really serious asset for him to step up go to college get a college degree get on track for some kind of career in his life and he sacrificed all that for this little bit of fleeting Fame and even less money and now that the money is draining out of the game you know things are gonna change send me to two contrasting examples this I mean you know I'm responding to the fact that Anna Scanlon had this video which was quite well titled she said there is money to be made in you know cyber bullying harassment and defamation and I agree with her in the past that's a problem I've addressed many times this channel so look we got to talk about the implications of fact the people are making a career out of defamation you used to call it what slander or slander as a contact sport this is like taking slander or trying to turn it into a way to make money but I mean in some ways at the opposite end of the political spectrum here I'm vegan YouTube you had someone like privileged vegan her channel name is called a privileged vegan her name's marine she's also a victim of the same thing she dropped out of her master's degree she dropped out of university in order to chase this fantasy of being a full time a full time YouTube activist what am I gonna say a full time YouTube personality you know to chase this little bit of money and this bit of microphone I see her as a victim of it all so one we don't know nervous well I've talked to marine I mean back in the day we talked you guys know I've had some videos kind of back and forth her Kaitlin shoemaker who I don't know at all you and I both kind of sat there and watch this video and like horror you know one eyebrow raised all the way up when she was explaining her decision to drop out of college again again a master's degree in our case MA in physical therapy something like that to do YouTube full-time you know my response is the loan lines of huh you know so those are channels that are in no way involved in in drama or defamation not to my knowledge I don't know I know in their spare time I mean the fame some people but not to know it's you know they're not in that innocent category but nevertheless this is the problem look I'm not an optimist the money is leaving the game and I mean a large part of the energy the rambunctious energy that was here and vegan YouTube two three years ago let's just say two years ago was the fact that people like freelee and durianrider weren't just making money themselves they were preaching to the audience they were actively saying you also can make my doing this they would send say anybody can make money and it seems that you specifically women so they were they were reaching out their audience and really selling this almost like a pyramid scheme or like some kinds of cults but it was really amping people up and getting people highly motivated to come online and make pretty terrible videos there was a lot of that there was a lot of energy that energy is draining out of the scene the money is draining out of the scene the money motivation is disappearing from the scene but do I think that's gonna make you know the digital demi-monde a vegan discourse better and better it's hard for me to be optimistic because the remaining motives are Fame power sex again maybe some others like revenge just mad less you know there is there's just pure straight-up malice people who do things on the internet just out of hatred and rancor and anger this is plenty all right - yeah yeah yeah yeah and you know just to some extent I don't you know I can't hate on that stuff I mean you know anyone compared to the other hobbies people have in life compared to watching American football or baseball if your hobby is just to come on YouTube and talk about your feelings it's probably overall a pretty positive hobby I think it's a positive oddly compared to paying a paying a therapist to listen to you talk about your feelings you know you can come on YouTube and talk to whoever wants to listen you know so that's that's kind of a beautiful thing to come back to the not so beautiful part so I mentioned earlier I had this weird interaction at a crucial juncture in their career with both vegan cheetah Charles Marlow and Joe vegan you know Joe vegan he he used to just have a down-to-earth normal channel talking about his life talking about his feelings and then he did a couple of videos in which he did impersonation of me that was the turning point for his channel he started doing impersonations me and the crowd went wild he was suddenly way more popular and then he started doing impersonations of other channels and his his his content took on a whole new direction to go a whole new form because of that money motivation and again I'm not gonna hate on him for it I think a lot of people respond that way you could look at my channel at any point where I had an oddly like a hit video where I had a video that got some tens of thousands of views my first I think my first video about Game of Thrones you know I had like one viewable game thrones that was you know inexplicably really popular so obviously if I was interested chasing views I could have taken on a new direction then like okay I'm gonna I've got a mind of this audience about a capitalise on this while I've got you know a hundred thousand people here looking at me interested in Game of Thrones I understand how people respond to that and obviously money is the fundamental motive because of what you care about is coming on and talking about your life and keeping it real just did I care about that I do once in a while I come on and talk about Game of Thrones I did it's just once in a while I'm not gonna try to commercialize on that on that potential so I saw that happen with Joe vegan and it was a really weird time in my life I remember trying to explain to my Chinese teacher Chinese language teacher in Kunming hey you know I have a successful YouTube channel but there's this other YouTube channel with a guy who wears a bald cap wears a fake wig and pretends to be me and does an impersonation of me and his channel is actually more popular than mine it's more popular for people to go watch him making fun of me than to watch me showing my own thing and now all of this for people who are just joining the vegan scene online people are just getting into the demi-monde it's all disappeared there's like no trace of that on YouTube anymore that was a big thing for a while there and I mean likewise Charles Marlow I think the only sense you can get it how much is his channel changed in the time I knew him at the time he and I were friends you can click I'll give it below this video and click on the playlist for my conversations with Charles there was a time when his channel was keeping it real there was a time when he was trying in a major way to be friends and colleagues with privileged vegan when he was talking that social justice warrior talk when he was identifying with intersectional politics and you know I've seen him go through all kinds of different phases but he used to have a sincere down-to-earth channel and then he had a period where he was kind of joking around in a harmless way there's a period when he was just making fun of durianrider for during Ryder bragged about saving the lives of snails that he would you know pick up snails he saw snail on the road and Charles just kind of made fun of that in a harmless way I remember there was this period where it was all fun and games was all harmless but then you see he started chasing that money the most elusive part of the game he started trying to capitalize on his micro fame and I remember he he boasted to me the first time he ever really made money out of YouTube the first month he ever made money was because of my channel the month when he was covering the conflict him and durianrider that was the first time he made over $3,000 in a month out of YouTube and that was a big deal to him he came to me and he said Wow he said to me I still have the email probably said look I really have to thank you said I made $3,500 a month this month for the first time and he said I'm aware in a major way the kind of magic that's happening for my channel now for the growth of vegan cheetah was that now it's called Charles Marlow that you know this growth is because of you and because of what you went through in this conflict with very minor you know I was a boy well you know whatever but that was you know that was really the turning point for him too he had this brief opportunity world other people were paying attention and because of his coverage of in his response to what was happening with me and shake fight with my story and then at first he tried to capitalize on that in a kind of harmless way joking around and also just reporting like he reported on the breakup between freelee and durianrider before anyone else reported on it before I knew before I do they broken up I knew they were staying in separate hotels and I was like hey because I was interested I was like okay you stay at separate hotels huh but he started covering that and then he moved on and on but for him that really rapidly became a downward spiral where I mean look if you think about the word drama it's not drama if it's not real if you're not keeping it real what you're doing on YouTube is not drama anymore right like if you just make up stories it hooks it's just slander and defamation and fiction it's not drama it whoo and that was the decisive step he took he took a step from reporting the news to inventing and making up the news and now his story ends with him broke penniless no source of income no career no education having dropped out of college having moved into an apartment in LA he can't afford the rent on and in court getting his ass kicked in court by Hannah Scanlon and anyone who knows the inside outs of that case knows that this is not something where both sides are half right it's not like well their story and the truth is halfway in between this is gonna be the world's most one-sided court case because all the facts are on Anniston side she's 100% right he's on a percent wrong and the only question is how much pity is the judge gonna take on him and given that he's an ex-convict with a long criminal record I doubt there's gonna be a whole lot of pity left for him so that's it all these people are victims of the game in different ways Charles Marlow someone like Jovi and someone like marine a privileged vegan and you know of course all the little people all the little people who you know paid their money and flew to Chiangmai you know subscribe to this ridiculous diet but I don't know you want to pop in a comment my girlfriend's just here eating her eating her fabulous tofu breakfast I'd like to think if there's one thing I am optimistic about it's that the vegan movement is stronger than all this the same way that the vegan movement is bigger than and deeper than and stronger than any one book like the skinny [ __ ] book that was a fad that came in when it's bigger and stronger than how not to die by Michael Greger different books come and go different fashions come and go but veganism for me this is a movement it's not just about today or tomorrow it's about the next 300 years it's it's a millennium making struggle