EDGELORDS
Edgelords — people who post offensive things online for attention — had always existed on message boards like 4chan. But YouTube brought them out of the shadows and turned provocation into a viable career path. On YouTube, there were few rules and no lawyers looking over creators’ shoulders — which is precisely why millions of young people went there, to find the kind of stuff they couldn’t get on TV. The platform’s algorithms promoted engaging videos, with little regard for what made them engaging, and showered ad revenue on the most successful channels. And as all kinds of boundary-pushers raced to fill this void, it became harder to tell who had an actual ideology and who was just feeding the machines what they wanted.
–Kevin Roose writing about Pewdiepie in the New York Times Magazine
another eye opens 