One factor that is rarely mentioned in this conversation is that Drama helps Youtubers - a lot. Videos about 'Youtube in crisis' gets a whole lot of views, much

One factor that is rarely mentioned in this conversation is that Drama helps Youtubers - a lot. Videos about 'Youtube in crisis' gets a whole lot of views, much more than the usual standard-fare videos. This doesn't only apply to the YouTuber being targeted. For example, assume there is some controversy over some gamer on YouTube. YouTube Channels dedicated to talking about Internet culture, like h3h3productions or PhillipDeFranco, take the opportunity to make a video titled "YouTube is Dying" with a lot of question marks in the thumbnail. They do this because videos about meta-controversies get more views than specific things. So the video gets more views, and other YouTube channels talk about the 'controversy' in order to get views themselves. Then the gamer may make a video titled "Response to YouTube controversy" which gets way more views than his average video, because it's a meta topic that everyone's talking about. And the cycle continues. TL;DR: Controversies help content creators get more views.