Our Fave Shady Moments from the YouTube Honesty Hour Panel at Summer in the City 2017

The YouTube Honesty Hour panel was held on Sunday on the Main Stage at Summer in the City 2017. It was hosted by Liam Dryden, and featured Tom Ridgewell, Jamie Jo, Gabbie Hanna, Alex Wassabi, Aaron Burriss, and Kyle Hatch.

This panel was highly anticipated, as we all wanted to find out some truths about YouTube. It gave the YouTubers a chance to speak more candidly about the industry, as well as to answer any of our burning YouTube-related questions. As the panel went on, we learnt a considerable amount of info about what life is like as a YouTuber. If you didn’t manage to catch the panel, here are our fave shady moments…

The panel began with Liam asking the creators if they thought it was getting harder to know everyone in the YouTube community. Everyone seemed to agree that it’s become really difficult, especially at conventions.

“I gave up,” Alex said in response to Liam’s question. He then told us his “technique” for finding out who people are: introducing a friend to someone he doesn’t recognise, so that the person will have to introduce themselves to his friend, and all the mysteries are solved. (So if Alex ever introduces a friend to us, we’ll know he has absolutely no clue who we are!)

Liam suggested that it now doesn’t matter who creators are – people might not even know their name but will still request a photo as long as they are wearing a creator pass. Tom agreed, saying that he doesn’t even wear his name tag anymore.

Alex vented his frustration at larger YouTubers who seem to copy smaller YouTubers’ ideas and get away with it. However, Liam mentioned that he’s witnessed an occasion where a smaller YouTuber has attempted to copy a really popular video idea and it backfired completely and flopped.

One of our favourite questions was “What was the most awkward fan encounter you’ve ever had?” We were stunned by Jamie‘s response – she told the audience that she was once at a convention when a man approached her, used a pair of scissors to cut off a piece of her hair, sniffed it, then ran off. That’s actually crazy!

There was a discussion about relationships on YouTube. “I like it,” Alex said. He’s well known for his online relationship with Lauren Riihimaki, so he had plenty to say on the matter – he told the audience that his relationship with Lauren isn’t fake and that making videos with her kind of just “became a thing”. Tom said that “once the audience are in on the relationship, they’re the third wheel”. He also mentioned that audiences need to appreciate what they’ve been given, which we think is very true.

Another question that was asked was, “If you could ‘fix’ one thing about YouTube, what would it be?” Jamie said that she would change how the trending page works and that the option to “un-trend yourself” would be appreciated.

There was a brief discussion about YouTubers who base their channels around insulting others. There was a joint agreement that building a channel on hate isn’t very successful. Tom said that YouTubers who hate on others will only end up being hated on themselves.

We enjoyed this panel, but after all that shade, we’re gonna go get some sunlight.

Photos by Anna Holling.