YouTube stardom incentivized sociopathic attention-grabbing that later triggered cancellations

Evidence

The largest problem among the new generation of online stars, however, was cancellation. Just like with Gavin McInnes and Paris Hilton, many YouTubers grabbed audience attention through the kind of outrageous behavior that often drifted into pure sociopathy. Top YouTuber PewDiePie’s 2017 stunt of paying two men in India to hold up a sign reading “Death to all Jews” cost him a partnership with Disney. PewDiePie was no longer “provocative and irreverent” but “inappropriate.” — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 561

Categorization

• SEED: The shift in a single adjective — from ‘provocative and irreverent’ to ‘inappropriate’ — is a compact case study in how the Overton window for acceptable transgression moved between platforms/labels, worth an essay on the agency of journalism in redrawing it.