Your overarching point is an excellent one -- that BookTubers should always be alert and attuned to the potential impact (positive and negative) their videos can have. Like you, I believe channels should aim for high standards of substance, context, transparency and good faith in their videos, and this is particularly true for larger channels because of the outsized influence they can have on viewers. Thanks for making this video!
I agree with a lot of what you're saying, but I would add that there needs to be more responsibility on viewers and consumers to question what they see on social media. This goes well beyond just booktube, but I get the sense that people tend to believe anything they see online, especially if someone they know--parasocially!--is tellling them the so-called facts. Someone who has built a large following should absolutely be transparent and hopefully feels some responsibility to be honest, but viewers should ALSO be practicing some media literacy and critical thinking when watching any material. Consumers should question the authenticity of a book review from someone with 1.2+million subscribers who gets sent free boxes of free books every week in the same way they should question articles a news organization owned by a media mogul (looking at you, Washington Post). It's a two-way street. I really appreciated hearing this take from someone who's "creating content" and I hope that other "content creators" take it to heart.
Oh yeah, as consumers we need to practice media literacy and in the case of social media millennials and older generations have a lot of catching up to do in that regard simply because we did not grow up with it. That is a larger topic that I do have some strong opinions on but in this case I wanted to focus on the fact that as creators we can't just push all that responsibility on viewers. The more we practice transparency, communicate our perspective and cite sources where we have them, the easier it is for viewers to then make informed judgements on how far to trust us. This is still largely a relatively new environment and we're all trying to figure it out. I recently made a joke about comics being only for children and non-blind people and got an angry comment saying that they stopped watching because someone who claims comics are only for children clearly doesn't know what they're talking about. That's the kind of miscommunication that happens online and is sometimes unavoidable but I do believe that as creators we have a responsibility to make at least a good faith effort to minimize them on our end. At least in the smaller booktube sphere none of us were trained to be social media influencers and we're figuring it out as we go along but that means we have to step back and reflect on how things change from time to time. If this video leads to such reflection I will call it a success.
Great video! Daniel Greene actually said today he's refraining from touchy topics because of lawsuits... I have a feeling it's tied to that Beagle thing. I watched viking's video and didn't really agree with his framing. It seemed like booktube should just leave the serious stuff to academics. Both serve their purposes and one of the best things that booktube has done is make being a "serious" reader fun. Dovetailing with your Gaiman video... it's just so hard to judge what should be said or not said about any given controversial author. That's not to say nothing should be said and we should just shrug. Idk what the solution is. So I think each booktuber saying what they feel comfortable and compelled to say or not is fine. I'm not expecting everyone to have the same take. But we should expect some accountability from booktubers on here even if our corner of youtube is small in comparison to others.
Yeah, I can get that from Greene. His channel is his livelihood but he's not big enough to have the legal department of a major news outlet that can take on such subjects. In addition he is an author who is trying to sell his books through (major) publishers and that means that getting into legal trouble with other parts of the publishing industry can be the death-knell for his ambitions. That's why I put transparency in my list of things we need to talk about, the larger our channels get the greater the likelihood we collect various conflicts of interests, that's just life. Hell, even I got an e-mail from that guy after putting up my I'm Afraid You've Got Dragons video and I'm basically no one compared to Daniel.
we need like a So You're Becoming a Bigger Booktuber: the Parasocial Talk video somewhere. I agree that there's plenty of streamers and youtube personalities that have figured out (to varying degrees) the parasocial aspect of these spaces. Setting boundaries, understanding how being able to give money or gifts to you affects people, etc. It's a bit that i've struggled with internally on both sides of the coin and we absolutely need to discuss it more. might need to do more research now. great video.
Thanks! I've been thinking about this for a while now and my thoughts will probably evolve further. The main problem is that everyone is figuring this out as we go along because social media is still relatively new. Last year I did research for my definitely still coming video on Brandon Sanderson and read the Oxford Handbook Of Parasocial Experiences, it came out in 2023 and when I read it it had 0 ratings on GR. Before that most work was only published in psychology journals and some fandom studies works touched upon it. Older texts still focus on TV personalities and pop stars in the old model where that direct feedback channel that social media introduced was still missing. It is all still very much early steps in that field but it is worth for creators to keep an eye on it.
Can’t say I’ve watch the video you’re responding to. I think you have some fair points, particularly the last one. One of the reasons it takes longer to make more informative videos (for me) is because I need as accurate info I can provide. Makes sense to me. Brings to mind all the bad definitions of sword and sorcery before which just treat it as a synonym for fantasy. But I’m called out here! I don’t always share in a video whether I got the book for free. I don’t always review books I do get for free and I don’t read some, either. I have mentioned it before and do sometimes. I guess I should get in the habit of doing so though I like to think where I got a book hasn’t changed what I thought of it.
I watched your version of the Honest Booktuber Tag so I heard your piece on it there. I think this becomes more relevant when your channel is monetized and you have a financial incentive to get as many views on a video as possible. At that point access to potentially highly anticipated books in advance becomes more important and (subconscious) self-censoring can set in. I believe a lot of these things happen subconsciously because we don't necessarily think of what we do in terms of journalism or providing a service, so just thinking about it explicitly can already help. If we can get a larger conversation started on what would be best practices for the points I mentioned and those I forgot, I would feel like this video was a big success.
I totally agree. I think transparency is really important. I am relatively new to the booktube sphere but before this I was entrenched in the minipainting community. The lack of transparency and obvious grift is astounding in that little corner of youtube. It was refreshing to come over to booktube and see that most of the community is authentic and just doing their best. But we can always do better. I look forward to the day that I am doing well enough that I have a conflict of interest 🤣.
As a journalist myself, I thought your video was an interesting one. In many ways, we are journalists trying to get people to understand the genre that we love. This was a great video Raf, I agree with most of your points. My general rule when I make videos is I want to present the most authentic version of myself to my audience and I want to build a community. I hope to earn trust with my subs with my reviews and discussions, this video is a good way to help me with that. I will watch your video about Neil Gaiman, though I probably won't do it until I record my own video about artists who disappoint us, which I am hoping to do next week. I don't want other videos to influence me when I make the video, the only exceptions I've made so far was with Chas' video on the situation and John Scalzi's really good article about not idolizing artists.
Thanks man! I agree that we are journalists of sorts. The problem is that with the slow dismantling of traditional journalism and media structures more and more of the duties of journalists have devolved on us and most of us have not been trained in the things professional journalists are trained in like ethics, standards etc. If we can have a conversation on those things and can build some level of understanding what we have stumbled into by talking about our favourite books on the internet, I would call this video a success. I have not read the Scalzi article yet but will do so. My video on Gaiman is not dealing with the actual details of his actions but on what we as reader and creators can and maybe should do when encountering such situations.
It’s the internet. People expect to be lied to, and general they prefer it. The responsibility lies with the viewers themselves. Consumers of any online content should already know that the standards of journalism are low across the board, and they should already know how to navigate parasocial relationships, and they should spend their own money on whatever they like, even if it’s a nice BookTuber’s patreon. People in all professions and in all communities will say what people want to hear, especially if money is involved. I admire what you’re saying and love you a little bit for saying it, but I’m not sure BookTubers do owe viewers anything.
I partly agree here, viewers do have a responsibility to apply media literacy to online content and there are definitely a lot of people who expect to be lied to on the internet. I don't think people have the responsibility to understand parasocial relationships and how they work on social media as that whole field is still very new and everyone is still figuring it out. The first large academic book on the subject, The Oxford HAndbook On Parasocial Experiences came out last June so expecting viewers of all ages to understand parasociality and handle it responsibly is probably a bit much. I believe that just going "it's on the viewers to be critical, I can do whatever I want" is a morally unacceptable stance for any creator and everyone should make a good faith attempt to make it as easy as possible for their viewers to exercise their critical faculties and be responsible, social media is after all not a one-way street. Obviously I can't make anyone do anything (sometimes not even myself) but for now I believe that the parts of booktube I am somewhat afiliated with have never really thought about these things and some reflection might benefit us all. That being said, once creators do actual news coverage like some larger channels, I do believe they do have responsibilities that are non-negotiable.
People form relationships with fictional characters, and one-directional relationships have been around for as long as there has been fiction. So at least since prehistoric times. If today’s social media users are unable to handle parasocial relationships responsibly, then my ND mind is somewhat surprised about that. Maybe it’s just me. If you invests emotional energy in a character who doesn’t exist or doesn’t know that you exist, you cannot expect to have that energy reciprocated. Boundaries of course are important, but this is not exclusive to parasocial relationships; boundaries are a necessary part of all relationships, especially where the power dynamic is a particular way. But unequal relationships are not toxic by definition. Any content creator, celebrity, teacher, parent, expert etc who abuses a power dynamic is of course doing wrong; again, not specifically a parasociality issue. Social media has put the phenomenon into focus, but it’s not new.
Moin, zum Wachsen mal wieder ein Kommentar von mir: Nö, ich schaue mir booktube nur zum Vergnügen an, bin was Literatur betrifft, reine Hedonistin. Ich betrachte die Beiträge von booktubern (m/w/d) als "Meinungen", und Meinungen müssen nicht belegt werden. Ich schau mir die Leute//Videos an. Wenn sie über Bücher, die ich auch kenne, eine Meinung vertreten, die ich nachvollziehen kann oder sogar teilen, dann vertraue ich ihnen. Wenn sie "Stuss" erzählen (meiner Meinung nach), vertraue ich ihnen nicht. Im Zweifel, bzw. wenn man als Leserin (m/w/d) gerade startet, muss man eben ausprobieren und Bücher auch mal SELBER LESEN um vergleichen zu können. Um meine Meinung über "Dune" zu ändern, nützt es nichts, mir Berge von Sekundärliteratur um die Ohren zu hauen. Das macht den Schreibstil nicht besser. (Tolkien mochte Dune auch nicht...) Außerdem findet man heute für jede Meinung einen Beleg und den Gegenbeleg auch.
Danke! Ich versteh genau was du meinst, ich kenn das von mir und Musikreviews. Mein Problem ist eher, dass immer mehr Booktube eben nicht einfach nur Reviews ist, sondern eben Dinge wie "Fantasy News", die sogenannten "Deep Dives" etc. und da sieht es meiner Meinung nach eben anders aus. Ich erwarte nicht zu jedem Video eine mehrseitige Bibliografie oder so, aber manchmal darüber nachdenken, dass die Dinge die wir hier so von uns geben von (in manchen Fällen) hunderten oder tausenden Leuten gehört werden, kann ja nicht schaden.
If you are looking for that parasexual experience, then maybe you can start an Only Fans channel 🤣 Personally, I enjoy the analytical aspects and discussions with the authors mostly, so stuff that you and AP do that may not discuss an individual work but a broader idea or an interview/discussion will get my attention. Most of the channels in our little community are not given to professional reviews and that's fine, that's an entirely different skill level and people expressing opinions as reviews tend to drop off my radar. I think too that if you are given or request an ARC, you then have an obligation (more so if you ask for one) to provide more than just an opinion, but I think that review should be submitted to the author or publisher, not just published on youtube, because that is a dialogue between you and them, not you and us. Monetizing your channel is a whole different ball of wax that might be worth a video on it's own. I think you have to be up front right at the beginning when you accept money from strangers because people form expectations about what they are entitled to. Cheers!
@@RafBlutaxt Talk to Philip about that, if he can get away with just shirtless videos of him cooking bacon, you should do fine. (This is, in fact not true, I don't know what he has on his only fans) (This is also not true, it's a bit of an 'in' joke) 🤣
Your overarching point is an excellent one -- that BookTubers should always be alert and attuned to the potential impact (positive and negative) their videos can have. Like you, I believe channels should aim for high standards of substance, context, transparency and good faith in their videos, and this is particularly true for larger channels because of the outsized influence they can have on viewers. Thanks for making this video!
Thank you very much!
I agree with a lot of what you're saying, but I would add that there needs to be more responsibility on viewers and consumers to question what they see on social media. This goes well beyond just booktube, but I get the sense that people tend to believe anything they see online, especially if someone they know--parasocially!--is tellling them the so-called facts. Someone who has built a large following should absolutely be transparent and hopefully feels some responsibility to be honest, but viewers should ALSO be practicing some media literacy and critical thinking when watching any material. Consumers should question the authenticity of a book review from someone with 1.2+million subscribers who gets sent free boxes of free books every week in the same way they should question articles a news organization owned by a media mogul (looking at you, Washington Post). It's a two-way street.
I really appreciated hearing this take from someone who's "creating content" and I hope that other "content creators" take it to heart.
Oh yeah, as consumers we need to practice media literacy and in the case of social media millennials and older generations have a lot of catching up to do in that regard simply because we did not grow up with it. That is a larger topic that I do have some strong opinions on but in this case I wanted to focus on the fact that as creators we can't just push all that responsibility on viewers. The more we practice transparency, communicate our perspective and cite sources where we have them, the easier it is for viewers to then make informed judgements on how far to trust us. This is still largely a relatively new environment and we're all trying to figure it out. I recently made a joke about comics being only for children and non-blind people and got an angry comment saying that they stopped watching because someone who claims comics are only for children clearly doesn't know what they're talking about. That's the kind of miscommunication that happens online and is sometimes unavoidable but I do believe that as creators we have a responsibility to make at least a good faith effort to minimize them on our end. At least in the smaller booktube sphere none of us were trained to be social media influencers and we're figuring it out as we go along but that means we have to step back and reflect on how things change from time to time. If this video leads to such reflection I will call it a success.
Great video!
Daniel Greene actually said today he's refraining from touchy topics because of lawsuits... I have a feeling it's tied to that Beagle thing.
I watched viking's video and didn't really agree with his framing. It seemed like booktube should just leave the serious stuff to academics. Both serve their purposes and one of the best things that booktube has done is make being a "serious" reader fun.
Dovetailing with your Gaiman video... it's just so hard to judge what should be said or not said about any given controversial author. That's not to say nothing should be said and we should just shrug. Idk what the solution is. So I think each booktuber saying what they feel comfortable and compelled to say or not is fine. I'm not expecting everyone to have the same take.
But we should expect some accountability from booktubers on here even if our corner of youtube is small in comparison to others.
Yeah, I can get that from Greene. His channel is his livelihood but he's not big enough to have the legal department of a major news outlet that can take on such subjects. In addition he is an author who is trying to sell his books through (major) publishers and that means that getting into legal trouble with other parts of the publishing industry can be the death-knell for his ambitions. That's why I put transparency in my list of things we need to talk about, the larger our channels get the greater the likelihood we collect various conflicts of interests, that's just life. Hell, even I got an e-mail from that guy after putting up my I'm Afraid You've Got Dragons video and I'm basically no one compared to Daniel.
we need like a So You're Becoming a Bigger Booktuber: the Parasocial Talk video somewhere.
I agree that there's plenty of streamers and youtube personalities that have figured out (to varying degrees) the parasocial aspect of these spaces. Setting boundaries, understanding how being able to give money or gifts to you affects people, etc.
It's a bit that i've struggled with internally on both sides of the coin and we absolutely need to discuss it more.
might need to do more research now.
great video.
Thanks! I've been thinking about this for a while now and my thoughts will probably evolve further. The main problem is that everyone is figuring this out as we go along because social media is still relatively new. Last year I did research for my definitely still coming video on Brandon Sanderson and read the Oxford Handbook Of Parasocial Experiences, it came out in 2023 and when I read it it had 0 ratings on GR. Before that most work was only published in psychology journals and some fandom studies works touched upon it. Older texts still focus on TV personalities and pop stars in the old model where that direct feedback channel that social media introduced was still missing. It is all still very much early steps in that field but it is worth for creators to keep an eye on it.
@@RafBlutaxt interesting. I might loook into that Oxford handbook to see what it says
Can’t say I’ve watch the video you’re responding to. I think you have some fair points, particularly the last one. One of the reasons it takes longer to make more informative videos (for me) is because I need as accurate info I can provide. Makes sense to me. Brings to mind all the bad definitions of sword and sorcery before which just treat it as a synonym for fantasy.
But I’m called out here! I don’t always share in a video whether I got the book for free. I don’t always review books I do get for free and I don’t read some, either. I have mentioned it before and do sometimes. I guess I should get in the habit of doing so though I like to think where I got a book hasn’t changed what I thought of it.
I watched your version of the Honest Booktuber Tag so I heard your piece on it there. I think this becomes more relevant when your channel is monetized and you have a financial incentive to get as many views on a video as possible. At that point access to potentially highly anticipated books in advance becomes more important and (subconscious) self-censoring can set in. I believe a lot of these things happen subconsciously because we don't necessarily think of what we do in terms of journalism or providing a service, so just thinking about it explicitly can already help. If we can get a larger conversation started on what would be best practices for the points I mentioned and those I forgot, I would feel like this video was a big success.
I totally agree. I think transparency is really important. I am relatively new to the booktube sphere but before this I was entrenched in the minipainting community. The lack of transparency and obvious grift is astounding in that little corner of youtube. It was refreshing to come over to booktube and see that most of the community is authentic and just doing their best. But we can always do better. I look forward to the day that I am doing well enough that I have a conflict of interest 🤣.
Haha, don't we all look forward to that point?
thanks Raf you da man!
❤
As a journalist myself, I thought your video was an interesting one. In many ways, we are journalists trying to get people to understand the genre that we love.
This was a great video Raf, I agree with most of your points. My general rule when I make videos is I want to present the most authentic version of myself to my audience and I want to build a community. I hope to earn trust with my subs with my reviews and discussions, this video is a good way to help me with that.
I will watch your video about Neil Gaiman, though I probably won't do it until I record my own video about artists who disappoint us, which I am hoping to do next week. I don't want other videos to influence me when I make the video, the only exceptions I've made so far was with Chas' video on the situation and John Scalzi's really good article about not idolizing artists.
Thanks man! I agree that we are journalists of sorts. The problem is that with the slow dismantling of traditional journalism and media structures more and more of the duties of journalists have devolved on us and most of us have not been trained in the things professional journalists are trained in like ethics, standards etc. If we can have a conversation on those things and can build some level of understanding what we have stumbled into by talking about our favourite books on the internet, I would call this video a success. I have not read the Scalzi article yet but will do so. My video on Gaiman is not dealing with the actual details of his actions but on what we as reader and creators can and maybe should do when encountering such situations.
It’s the internet. People expect to be lied to, and general they prefer it.
The responsibility lies with the viewers themselves. Consumers of any online content should already know that the standards of journalism are low across the board, and they should already know how to navigate parasocial relationships, and they should spend their own money on whatever they like, even if it’s a nice BookTuber’s patreon.
People in all professions and in all communities will say what people want to hear, especially if money is involved. I admire what you’re saying and love you a little bit for saying it, but I’m not sure BookTubers do owe viewers anything.
I partly agree here, viewers do have a responsibility to apply media literacy to online content and there are definitely a lot of people who expect to be lied to on the internet. I don't think people have the responsibility to understand parasocial relationships and how they work on social media as that whole field is still very new and everyone is still figuring it out. The first large academic book on the subject, The Oxford HAndbook On Parasocial Experiences came out last June so expecting viewers of all ages to understand parasociality and handle it responsibly is probably a bit much. I believe that just going "it's on the viewers to be critical, I can do whatever I want" is a morally unacceptable stance for any creator and everyone should make a good faith attempt to make it as easy as possible for their viewers to exercise their critical faculties and be responsible, social media is after all not a one-way street. Obviously I can't make anyone do anything (sometimes not even myself) but for now I believe that the parts of booktube I am somewhat afiliated with have never really thought about these things and some reflection might benefit us all. That being said, once creators do actual news coverage like some larger channels, I do believe they do have responsibilities that are non-negotiable.
People form relationships with fictional characters, and one-directional relationships have been around for as long as there has been fiction. So at least since prehistoric times. If today’s social media users are unable to handle parasocial relationships responsibly, then my ND mind is somewhat surprised about that. Maybe it’s just me. If you invests emotional energy in a character who doesn’t exist or doesn’t know that you exist, you cannot expect to have that energy reciprocated.
Boundaries of course are important, but this is not exclusive to parasocial relationships; boundaries are a necessary part of all relationships, especially where the power dynamic is a particular way. But unequal relationships are not toxic by definition. Any content creator, celebrity, teacher, parent, expert etc who abuses a power dynamic is of course doing wrong; again, not specifically a parasociality issue.
Social media has put the phenomenon into focus, but it’s not new.
Moin, zum Wachsen mal wieder ein Kommentar von mir: Nö, ich schaue mir booktube nur zum Vergnügen an, bin was Literatur betrifft, reine Hedonistin. Ich betrachte die Beiträge von booktubern (m/w/d) als "Meinungen", und Meinungen müssen nicht belegt werden. Ich schau mir die Leute//Videos an. Wenn sie über Bücher, die ich auch kenne, eine Meinung vertreten, die ich nachvollziehen kann oder sogar teilen, dann vertraue ich ihnen. Wenn sie "Stuss" erzählen (meiner Meinung nach), vertraue ich ihnen nicht. Im Zweifel, bzw. wenn man als Leserin (m/w/d) gerade startet, muss man eben ausprobieren und Bücher auch mal SELBER LESEN um vergleichen zu können. Um meine Meinung über "Dune" zu ändern, nützt es nichts, mir Berge von Sekundärliteratur um die Ohren zu hauen. Das macht den Schreibstil nicht besser. (Tolkien mochte Dune auch nicht...)
Außerdem findet man heute für jede Meinung einen Beleg und den Gegenbeleg auch.
Danke! Ich versteh genau was du meinst, ich kenn das von mir und Musikreviews. Mein Problem ist eher, dass immer mehr Booktube eben nicht einfach nur Reviews ist, sondern eben Dinge wie "Fantasy News", die sogenannten "Deep Dives" etc. und da sieht es meiner Meinung nach eben anders aus. Ich erwarte nicht zu jedem Video eine mehrseitige Bibliografie oder so, aber manchmal darüber nachdenken, dass die Dinge die wir hier so von uns geben von (in manchen Fällen) hunderten oder tausenden Leuten gehört werden, kann ja nicht schaden.
Do you have Nystagmus?
I might have some of it but mostly I'm just blind and can't focus the camera.
@@RafBlutaxt Yes I saw that in a later video! Just curious, my son has it and has similar eye movements.
If you are looking for that parasexual experience, then maybe you can start an Only Fans channel 🤣
Personally, I enjoy the analytical aspects and discussions with the authors mostly, so stuff that you and AP do that may not discuss an individual work but a broader idea or an interview/discussion will get my attention.
Most of the channels in our little community are not given to professional reviews and that's fine, that's an entirely different skill level and people expressing opinions as reviews tend to drop off my radar.
I think too that if you are given or request an ARC, you then have an obligation (more so if you ask for one) to provide more than just an opinion, but I think that review should be submitted to the author or publisher, not just published on youtube, because that is a dialogue between you and them, not you and us.
Monetizing your channel is a whole different ball of wax that might be worth a video on it's own. I think you have to be up front right at the beginning when you accept money from strangers because people form expectations about what they are entitled to.
Cheers!
An OF might solve my constant money problems, I should think about that...
@@RafBlutaxt Talk to Philip about that, if he can get away with just shirtless videos of him cooking bacon, you should do fine.
(This is, in fact not true, I don't know what he has on his only fans)
(This is also not true, it's a bit of an 'in' joke)
🤣