Disney vloggers accused of exploiting and monetizing Hurricane Ian disaster

There is, at least on a surface level, some public service being achieved by a news organization reporting from the scene of a natural disaster. There is absolutely no service in a vlogger driving 10 minutes to hunker down in a Disney hotel, brag about buying the last soggy sandwich, and make suggestive posts about damage that hasn’t happened.

Defending low ethics with whataboutism isn’t a valid argument.

what·a·bout·ism

the technique or practice of responding to an accusation or difficult question by making a counteraccusation or raising a different issue.

that’s not what’s happening here at all…

There is absolutely no service in a vlogger driving 10 minutes to hunker down in a Disney hotel…

There’s not. But is there any service in Jim Contore dragging a crew into the middle of a hurricane and getting smacked with a tree branch?

Jim Cantore is what-about-ism! He's not in the category of reputable journalism.

Critical thinking is not just deciphering between legitimate and ethical reporting and a YouTuber, it's also acknowledging that there is legitimate and ethical reporting at all. As soon as someone says "the media" they've lost me. It's all media, but it's not all the same. Tie-dye shirts have many colors, and shirts are available in many colors. But not all shirts are tie-dye.

I generally enjoy what some people consider garbage on YouTube. I like my entertainment mindless so watching someone walk around WDW is actually pretty cool to me. I actually respect people who can turn stuff like that in YouTube into a career. Good for them.

I’ll even go a step further and say that I’ve stayed in hotels ahead of winter storms to avoid cleanup and driving from my house so I can even take it at face value if someone said they are more comfortable at a Disney hotel than at home fitting a hurricane

But even to me this went too far. I just can’t get comfortable with anyone exploiting others losses and especially the reports of buying supplies from a Disney property when they had access to their own supplies. That’s inexcusable to me.

I hope the vloggers who did these things can take a look inside and figure out what they did wrong

Claiming that I don’t understand the difference between a YouTuber’s vlog and journalism is peak Coasterbuzz.

I am simply comparing their tactics for getting views. They are similar in that tantalize with a well written headline and purposefully selected photo, different in that only one has a code of ethics they follow.

But you wouldn't compare the "tactics" unless you were trying to make a point that they're the same. You're trying to have it both ways, presumably to validate the YouTubers we're criticizing. If that's not your intent, please, spell it out.

On a semirelated note, my brother works for Google and I constantly tease him that we’ve taken the best engineering minds of our generation and set them on the species critical task of getting more clicks.

Jeff:

presumably to validate the YouTubers we're criticizing

Maybe I am validating the YouTubers. I don't know. I don't really have an opinion on them other than what was described in the article. It's just not a huge leap of logic for me to get from what they're doing to Lester Holt leaving the NBC Nightly News studio in New York City to get blown around by the hurricane on live TV.

ApolloAndy:

taken the best engineering minds of our generation and set them on the species critical task of getting more clicks.

I highly recommend the book Addiction by Design, which explains why slots have taken over the floor of every casino. As a post-read exercise, it is interesting to ask how that is different from the vast majority of "big tech" "innovations" over the past 10-20 years.

Though I suppose that's better than the folks who are figuring out ways to consume as much electricity as a small to medium nation-state for nothing other than a pyramid scheme. Semi-relatedly, I've been mired in a crisis of conscience about my day job for a while now.

eightdotthree:

...to Lester Holt leaving the NBC Nightly News studio in New York City to get blown around by the hurricane on live TV

Can he tell you about the plane crash with a gleam in his eye?

The clicks problem with the Internet is the thing that no one wanted to believe in its ascendence: nothing is free. Old media had a cost associated with it, and it was paid for by a combination of advertising and subscription revenue (for physical newspapers, magazines, cable, etc.) from the consumer. The dotcom boom was unconcerned with this, deferring profitablity to the future while making the old stuff obsolete. Then the bills piled up and so much of it went away.

Streaming services have solved the problem to an extent, as we're in an unprecedented era of really good TV. But local journalism has been on life support for years. Worse, they're now forced to compete with these clowns who have no professional training and they're both incentivized not to focus on quality, but "engagement." Worse, critical thinking is now considered elite and snobbish, so people don't care about the difference. And here we are.

Optimistic me thinks we might be entering a new cycle, as the Veritasiums and Mark Robers of the world break out and achieve insane success. I never expected edutainment to have that day, but the Internet as equalizer, lowering the barrier of entry, is working at least in this respect. But what do you do about professional journalism? All that nonsense about "citizen journalism" clearly did not work out. The New York Times as a well-founded newsroom is an anomoly, and has no local counterpart.

I rank the Vloggers running around the parks about as annoying as the strollers. But, I suspect they are both here to stay.

Lots of journalists went to the gulf to report on Katrina. Good thing, because had they not been on the ground, the stories of the massive failures in land use, disaster preparation, emergency response and extended aid at the city, state, and federal levels might not have had such a huge spotlight. We saw all those pictures and videos because the reporters and camera teams were already there. After the storm, most news media couldn't access the parts of the country they needed to get to to write these stories. There is a public good from actual journalism to be in disaster areas.

I don't think (though I could be wrong) there have been any YouTube accounts - many who have far higher viewership than network news - that have had such an impact. And that's speaking to an actual journalism based, as objective as a human can be, channel. Those folks certainly don't do it for the clicks because honest, factual accounts don't generate clicks. Then you have the exploitative channels who already have an agenda and a plot and a story to tell, regardless of the veracity of the story.

A good way to think of it: if nobody ever watched hurricane footage again, some news agencies would still be there because it is a noteworthy event that should be reported on so people are aware of things outside their own backyard. YouTubers and news entertainment would drop it like a rock and move on to the next that generates the clicks, because it is no longer profitable. These things are not the same.

I recently read an article about Tokyo Disney to ban vlogging in the parks. Wonder if that will eventually happen in Florida and California? I don't know, but seems Disney welcomes these YouTubers as free advertisement.

I doubt it. They almost universally bitch and moan about everything. Only a few have any relationship with the parks.

Even worse, I presume that it just makes it more difficult for someone who actually wants to establish some kind of working relationship with the parks. The environment would make it uncomfortable to even ask, and ever more unlikely that the park would offer any kind of positive response.

And of course the inevitable negative response is just as likely to devolve into just another "Disney can do nothing right" superfan blogger anyway. The park has no incentive to even give any YouTube producer the time of day, and the consequence of ignoring them is practically nil anyway.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Yeah, I just feel bad for guests who planned and saved their hard earned money to enjoy a vacation (some only get a chance to go once in life) only to have the experience ruined by some obnoxious vlogger.

Fafolguy:

Lots of journalists went to the gulf to report on Katrina. Good thing, because had they not been on the ground, the stories of the massive failures in land use, disaster preparation, emergency response and extended aid at the city, state, and federal levels might not have had such a huge spotlight.

That's a good point. Without the media we might have thought that Brownie really was doing a heck of a job.