Photo: NicoleArbour/YouTubeNow don’t get it twisted: YouTube loves a good video rant. Take superstar Jenna Marbles, for instance, who has an entire video playlist dedicated to her not-so-friendly thoughts on annoying neighbors, apps, and marriage. Marbles and other big YouTube names like Superwoman, Kingsley, and Glozell have taken their support straight to the bank. A funny, opinionated contrarian can certainly translate into YouTube gold and massive audiences.
But when Arbour posted a Marbles-style video rant about overweight people on Thursday, the online community didn’t laugh along quite so readily.
“Fat-shaming is not a thing,” Arbour says early in the video. “Fat people made that up.”
From there, Arbour proceeds to toss out practically every bad joke and stereotype you’ve ever heard about overweight people. Notably, she also disabled the likes and comments on the video.
The YouTube community backlash began in earnest, starting with a response video from singer-songwriter Meghan Tonjes, urging Arbour to consider the people who live inside those bodies she’s mercilessly mocking.
“It’s not necessarily the video,” Tonjes explains in her vlog. “It’s just the mindset I find really upsetting, even if it’s done for, like, satire or comedy, which this just isn’t. I find it really harmful.”YouTube star Grace Helbig even weighed in, in a rare response vlog:
“To me, it looks like you’re using a controversial, personal subject to leverage subscribers and attention in a really negative way, which really bums me out because comedy can really be amazingly powerful and positive,” Helbig says.Indeed, Arbour’s channel attracted a controversy-fueled subscriber boost since the video’s release and its subsequent responses. But in reply to community concerns, YouTube briefly suspended Arbour’s account on Sunday. Shut out of YouTube, Arbour took to Twitter to defend her “satire” and decry the online video giant’s “censorship.”
Wow, I’m the first comedian in the history of @YouTube to be #censored There are graphic videos about murder and torture, but satire is
