YouTubers are people, too

You would think that as the internet has evolved from strictly text- and avatar-based communication to photos, videos, and more, time would have made it easier for people to recognize other internet-dwellers as human beings. But this is not the case.

Take the reveal of YouTube creator Nikocado Avocado's recent "social experiment" as an example. The online creator hid his long-term weight loss from his millions of subscribers and used it as a way to highlight how so many strangers on the internet began to see him not as a person, but as someone who, in their eyes, needed to lose weight.

But we see this all over social media, not just with YouTube creators who have accumulated impressive followings. Often it seems as though the majority of people on the internet either forget or choose not to acknowledge that other people on the internet are also ... people. (Many accounts on the internet are actually bots, but that's beside the point.)

Comments are left as though the original poster will never see them. Entire videos and podcast episodes are made about people's lives who didn't necessarily consent to being subjects. And then there's the worst of it -- people saying awful things directly to creators as if they're just entities who won't be impacted by their words.

I have personally interacted with internet users who didn't know I was paying attention to their comments. I once replied directly to someone on X (Formerly Twitter) commenting negatively about one of my articles, who then reached out in a DM and apologized. But they said they only said the things they said because they didn't think I would see them.

If you didn't want me to see what you had to say, publicly, why did you say it? Because you saw me as a name on a web page and not a human being.

The online creators you are following are, for the most part, people who don't deserve to be treated like pixels.