A takedown piece in The Guardian last Friday about the massively popular U.K lifestyle vlogger Zoe Sugg has ignited a firestorm within the YouTube community, and illuminated a seemingly growing animosity between ‘old media’ (print journalists, more specifically) and the vanguards of the digital age.
The Guardian’s piece, titled Zoe Sugg: The Vlogger Blamed For Declining Teenage Literacy, refers to a recent study in the U.K. that concluded that the enormous popularity of Sugg’s novels — a series dubbed Girl Online — is resulting in regressing reading levels for children. Girl Online, which had the biggest first-week sales in British history upon its debut in November 2014, per The Guardian, is not as challenging as other popular books read by kids — including the Harry Potter series and The Hobbit, according to the study. Therefore, says education and social research professor Keith Topping, Sugg is responsible for a “striking” decline in children’s reading levels.
If saddling a 26-year-old vlogger with declining national literacy levels sounds like a bit of a stretch, The Guardian column also serves to disparage the vlogging medium as a whole. Columnist Zoe Williams calls it “the endpoint of narcissism, a stage of self-enthrallment so complete that there is nothing too trivial to share.”
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Williams also begrudges the commercial aspects of the industry. “When every video comes complete with links to the clothes she’s wearing and where [Sugg] bought her curtains,” she writes, “it is impossible to tell where the advert ends and the selling begins.”
Sugg, whose YouTube moniker is Zoella, and who also launched a digital book club last year encouraging young adults to read books beyond her own, responded with a tweetstorm over the weekend. “It’s refreshing to see how many people roll their eyes at some of the things the mainstream media write! I’m almost used to it now,” she wrote. “When you’re doing well at something, there will always be people that will try and tear you down at any opportunity. Just keep going!”
And the YouTube community promptly came to Sugg’s defense. Check out some of their supportive messages below.
I had a little nap and woke up to see the media trashing @Zoella for writing successful books and minding her own business. Standard.
— Louise (@LouisePentland) February 26, 2017
Just need to let it be known that @Zoella is one of the most hardworking, inspiring, and intelligent women I’ve ever known.
— Colleen Ballinger🎗 (@ColleenB123) February 26, 2017
Counterpoint: Despite Massive Readership Zoe Sugg and Jeff Kinney Mysteriously Blamed for Declining Literacy. https://t.co/KVl9mCxDRM — Hank Green (@hankgreen) February 26, 2017
Many also drew comparisons between The Guardian’s story and an article in The Wall Street Journal on Valentine’s Day, which reported that Felix ‘PewDiePie’ Kjellberg, YouTube’s most subscribed star, had made anti-Semitic jokes in nine videos since last August, precipitating his discharge from Maker Studios as well as the cancellation of his YouTube Red series, Scare PewDiePie. Kjellberg responded to that controversy with a video that assailed the “old-school media,” which he said “does not like internet personalities because they’re scared of us.”
Check out similar sentiments from Sugg’s manager, Dominic Smales, and fellow creator Josh Zerker, below:
The ‘older’ people working for legacy media have to accept that the world is different now to avoid totally losing touch with a generation. — Dominic Smales (@domsmales) February 26, 2017
‘Traditional media’ throwing its toys out the pram again. First @pewdiepie and now @Zoella – They’re losing touch with our generation. — Josh Zerker (@ZerkaaHD) February 26, 2017
