Ever seen a “diss track” on YouTube? A music video that features a YouTuber or YouTubers insulting another YouTuber over a beat. Have you checked out the view count to some of these? Some popular diss tracks amass over 100,000,000 views on the platform. It’s crazy how popular these videos are. What if I told you that it was almost all for money and the “beef” was exaggerated?
Let’s first look no further than the Paul brothers. Jake and Logan Paul. Logan Paul was a popular “Vine star” who moved to the YouTube platform a few years ago. His younger brother Jake followed suit. One day, Jake decided to upload a diss track that was almost universally hated by anyone that wasn’t a “Jake Pauler” (what Jake calls his fans). Yet, it was extremely popular in terms of view count. Jake made a lot of money from this video.
Not long after, Logan Paul uploaded a music video, taking aim at his brother. All of the sudden, these two YouTubers and brothers have “beef”. Jake releases another diss, this time responding to his brother. And this went back and forth. YouTube’s newer algorithm rewarded the brothers, and autoplaying videos would simply go back and forth like the diss tracks. Hundreds and thousands of dollars made.
It continued. And then it stopped. With a joint YouTube video that had the two brothers “teaming up”. Until it then “went wrong” at the end of a video. The thing is, these diss tracks were portrayed as real. And by doing so, younger fans bought into it. So essentially what has happened is that Jake and Logan have spoke to each-other and manufactured drama in order to drive viewers to their channels. This concept is not new to the media industry. It happens in television, radio and basically any other platform. The big difference though is just how easy it is to consume these “feuds”. Video to video, thanks to YouTube.
Just something to think about.
