Grace Helbig is a popular YouTuber with over 3 million subscribers. Before her current channel in which she now uses, she used to be part of a channel called MyDamnChannel. Grace would post three videos a week all of original content. Filmed and edited by her and then uploaded to the channel in which it became property of the company MyDamnChannel. She gained a massive following of over 1 million subscribers for her hard work, but in the end, owned nothing of it. The fan base was used by the company to create a profit through advertisements.
Grace eventually decided to leave MyDamnChannel and be the full owner of her own content. But she was not allowed to own any of her videos or get any of the income they made from advertisements. She essentially had to start from the ground up again. Because she had a big following to begin with she quickly gained a dedicated fanbase on her new channel, but all the years of past content that she herself created, were no longer part of her channel as they technically were not hers.
This is just another example of how capitalism works in todays society. A companies main goal is to make money. MyDamnChannel was still uploading old videos of Grace after she left in hopes to keep creating a profit. Her old channel has since become a new one, simply using the subscribers she gained to again make a profit for themselves.
(See channel here. Notice the link is still "dailygrace")
My Damn Channel in the end owned the information and distributed it and gained full property rights. It's good to see that she is doing well again and this time on her own terms, surpassing MyDamnChannels spin off channel in subscribers (even though she originally got them.)
It's just fascinating to see how the world is so consumed with making a profit that ideas and information can so easily be owned to "help" creativity spread.
You can check out Grace Helbigs new channel here:
Interesting post! I actually use to watch her videos and vlogs but I stopped watching before she left My Damn Channel. I’m glad she was able to successful surpass her subscribers because she deserves to own and deserves the credit for her videos. This really connects to Wednesday’s class because we talked about 2 important parts. The first being who owns and controls the commodity and the second being what are the relations of production that goes into the production of informational commodity. Right now she owns and controls everything so it is good that she is getting credit for her hard work.
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