I now pronounce by the power vested in me.
You may kiss the bride.
All of the unwanted people should host a little meet and greet in Anaheim California
on the same days as VidCon.
Welcome to the times where trial by internet is the new norm
where it seems to be guilty before proven innocent
Without a doubt the internet mob has it's reeding qualities: catching animal abusers,
exposing Austin Jones, and identifying all those nasty people participating in the ice cream challenge
Want some?
Put that back.
Let's go. Let's go.
Despite this, it also has it’s caveats: businesses being shut down because of fabricated reviews,
the cancelation of someone without hearing their side of the story first, and overall
way too much outrage it can make places like Twitter unbearable.
We can agree that “trial by internet” has its positives and negatives.
What’s rarely talked about though is the aftermath.
Does the punishment given by the internet to the offender work?
Or is it actually just benefiting them in the long run?
To explore this topic, we’ll examine what happened to Tana Mongeau after the failure
of Tana Con and her docu-series with Shane Dawson.
Welcome to Psych IRL. My name is Donna
Can you believe that it's been a year since Tana Con?
And now VidCon just passed a month ago and guess who was invited to VidCon?
That's right Tana Mongeau herself was invited to VidCon.
And do you remember how mad the internet was at this failed Tana Con thing?
So, I got thinking?
Does the full wrath of the internet actually work?
In 2018, Tana released a video about why she wouldn’t be attending VidCon.
In it, she expressed how much of an impact youtube had in her life.
I did not have the best family life. Shocker
I didn't like school. Shocker
So, my number one outlet for anything to make me happy growing up was always youtube.
If i had a bad day or if my family was fighting and I literally needed something...sounds
to drown out the screaming, I would play youtube videos.
And when I made my first youtube video.
I literally have goosebumps.
I sat down with the premise of YouTube saved my life.
Shane Dawson saved my life.
Jenna Marbles saved my life.
Funny people who were unapologetically afraid to be themselves were the people that kept me fighting
They were the people that for the first time in my life gave me inspiration.
Things changed for her when she started creating YouTube videos and increasing in popularity.
Everything was just happening over night.
I was gaining hundreds of thousands of subscribers a month and things were just blowing up before
my eyes and it's like I couldn't even catch my breath.
It was like before I even knew it, I couldn't even go places without meeting my fans.
I was ready to have meet and greets.
As her audience multiplied, she finally had the chance to go to VidCon in 2016.
According to Tana, VidCon promised her a spot as a featured creator.
Vidicon is telling my manager every single day "don't worry we're going to make her a featured creator
There's a super high demand for her.
We see all the tweets.
We know she's really excited.
We're excited to have her. whatever
And so the 2016 VidCon lineup gets announced and I'm tweeting like I'm going to VidCon.
They said I could be a featured creator.
I'm so excited to meet you guys.
Everyone's tweeting me back and the line up gets dropped and I'm not on it and I'm not a featured creator
Despite this setback, she decided to attend nonetheless without being a featured creator.
That’s not a crime.
Anyone can buy a ticket.
This caused massive problems though.
One of the perks of being a featured creator is security.
These creators often stay at separate hotel rooms, they have access to different entrances and exits
not accessible to the public, and it’s to ultimately protect them from being mobbed by their fans
At the time, Tana had a sizable audience and was friends with many other featured creators.
But because she did not have a featured creator pass, she did not have access to these security perks
And I instantly start to get incredibly, extremely, mobbed.
The second I get mobbed people are asking me for photos. They're asking me for signatures
They're taking videos.
Security comes out. They grab me by my arm.
They pull us in this room and they're like, "listen this is a safety hazard. you can't do this".
Though she was promised a badge and her large following was presenting a security risk,
Vidcon staff would not concede into giving her one.
Regardless of the drama in 2016, she still felt loyalty for VidCon and kept the drama to herself
in hopes she’d be featured next year.
Long story short. The same thing happens.
Vidcon 2017 she is promised a featured creator badge
Her face is even plastered all over the place
She promotes the event, then last minute they announce that she will not be featured
Vidcon 2018 they make the same promise, but last minute they decide to ban her from the event altogether
This 3rd incident was what caused her to share her story to her viewers.
The video had over 3 million views and massive support from the community.
After such a huge response fans joked that she should hold her own convention with the #TanaCon
This joke would soon transform into a reality
when a promoter, GoodTimesLive claimed they could make this happen
This year Tana wanted to make her event at the same time as VidCon
Because being Petty is fun
Due to that fact they had to do this in under 40 days.
What could go wrong?
Spoiler Alert: everything went wrong.
When 20,000 people showed up at this hotel behind me.
(crowd chants) Tana Tana Tana!
Things went really bad really fast.
5 and half hours of standing in the sun for this delicious sunburn.
Almost 5 hours.
Bruh people robbing out here.
Stop stop stop.
You are going to make this worse if you start stealing badges.
I might just do a little What's in my bagsie from TanaCon.
Gucci princess but I can't afford that because I wasted my money on a ticket.
(chants) We want Shane! We want Shane!
Refund! Refund! Refund!
This convention was supposed to be Tana’s version of Vidcon.
It was going to be free or at least cheaper than the original convention
but it ended up being a disaster.
You could even call it the YouTuber’s version of Fyre Fest.
Many YouTubers were promised to be featured at Tana’s event,
but the number of attendees couldn't even enter the venue
You had crowds angry at not being able to enter, people passing out of dehydration,
and people who paid for VIP tickets being ripped off.
We paid $77! for nothing!
Because of such unsafe conditions, TanaCon was shut down within one day.
And as you can see, with good reason the internet was mad.
But when it comes to influencers, does that outrage actually work?
Does it prevent them from committing the act again or does it reward them?
Seeing as Tana is no stranger to controversy,
the internet saw this event as another one of Tana’s disruptions.
Another bad headline to add to the long list of “Everything Wrong with Influencers”.
Of course, it was up to the internet to stop this.
Very much like human parental figures, the internet punishes their kids too.
According to BF Skinner’s learning theory,
“Punishment is something designed to weaken a behavior”.
In this case, that behavior would be Tana’s negligence towards her fans.
Punishment can come in the form of negative or positve
Positive punishment is when a negative stimulus is added to the environment
so that a behavior is discouraged.
This happens when a number of viewers and creators criticize Tana
for her poorly planned event and the effect it had on her fans.
So, that negative stimulus added is criticism.
There was a lot of my fans mad. There was a lot of media saying my fans were mad.
There were a lot of other people's fans. I think there was a lot of that.
You know people making videos about me and then their fans like coming to attack me,
but I also think that I deserved the heat that I got.
I also think that I wouldn't have stepped back from the situation and really been like
wow where did I go wrong?
If it wasn't for that heat I think that it was good for me to get like knocked off of everything
Negative punishment happens when a positive stimulus is removed from the individual.
The internet can often do that with a piece of content they find so offensive
they expose it, and get it demonetized.
In Tana’s case, that didn’t happen.
Because of the pressure though, she was forced to take a break from social media for about a month
which is the longest break I've taken in over 3 years.
If social media is a positive stimulus for her, it being taken away could serve as negative punishment
Now the thing with punishment is that it doesn't always work because it teaches someone what not to do
rather than what to do
and you can see that with other controversies.
Danielle Cohn for example.
People criticize her online yet she continues that cycle of bad behavior.
Now for her I wouldn't say bad in that she could get sued.
I kind of mean scandalous.
Anyway that's beside the point, even though she gets criticized she continues that behavior.
The thing with the internet though is that it reinforces bad behavior through views and attention.
Along with punishment, reinforcement is also another factor that changes behavior.
This time it’s something that strengthens a desired behavior.
That can also be positive or negative.
Positive reinforcement happens when a good stimulus is added to the environment
so the behavior is encouraged.
Though, Tana received criticism she also received attention.
Attention whether bad or good often ends up beneficial for the one receiving it.
In the case of bad attention, one still receives criticism from a large group of people
but at the same time they’re exposed to another group of people
that actually sympathizes with them.
After doing TanaCon I was expecting because of how much it failed, every company ever
to be like oh my god get away from me.
You're Tana from TanaCon.
but so many companies saw that it did draw in a lot of people.
It was just like the planning went wrong.
What if it were done right?
So, I ended up getting a lot of offers to do another TanaCon.
Oh so its almost like this was like a prototype.
Like why don't we try and make this something better?
If you think about the controversial figures of YouTube today,
you’ll find that many of them are still quite popular.
Many had fears that this was another stunt from Tana to gain attention, enabling her bad behavior
This thought was further perpetuated by the fact that Shane Dawson wanted to do a documentary
with Tana and her disastrous convention.
Because Shane was a major feature for a lot of fans attending this convention
he also felt some responsibility for the catastrophic nature of it.
I told people come see me and they got nothing.
This 3 part docuseries he would make, explores what happened at the event, the promoters side,
and Tana’s side.
During the interview, Shane did have some critical words
but also there were some things he could have questioned a little bit more.
Some critics say, Shane’s approach was a little too soft.
From their perspective, this was negative reinforcement.
A negative stimulus was being removed therefore reinforcing Tana’s bad behavior.
Some said his bias from working together with Tana in the past, clouded his judgement.
And instead of punishment, she got reinforcement
From what we've seen online, she hasn't really done anything major.
She's been involved in some drama or scandals, but it's nothing more than that.
They're things that get drama channels talking like her split with her ex, or her twitter beef with Bella Throne
and their break up, marriage to Jake Paul.
So, they're all drama related events but its nothing to be concerned about.
To me, it was really interesting seeing that Shane Dawson documentary
because it was putting another perspective into punishing and reinforcing someone's behavior.
It went more on the hmm gentler side?
Though that gentle kind of criticism wasn't very satisfying to see, who knows it might have worked
I mean Tana could have created a TanaCon 2 and I assure you that it'd bring in lots of money
I know a lot of influencers would be attending just to catch the drama.
So, I guarantee you that it would make a lot of money, but she didn't.
That's a surprising thing that happened.
And maybe it's the fact that disappointing someone that you look up to
was a little bit more embarrassing, shameful, and regretful
than disappointing people that are criticizing you and you have no idea who they are.
And maybe that's the thing that motivated Tana to change.
At night when I go to sleep,
Like what really hurts me about TanaCon is that
I put the people that love and supported me at risk.
You know? or someone who believed in my idea at risk.
That to me is what made TanaCon.
something that really stepped me back.
I will say though there is a possibility that this is just a business move.
Viacom owns MTV and vidcon.
As you know Tana is currently working with MTV
and when VidCon asked Tana to come to VidCon, it is kind of awkward if she said no.
So, who knows. Only Tana knows if she's actually changed
Up until now I've really hated talking about this or bringing this subject up.
TanaCon is one of those things that once everything was figured out really just wanted to erase.
And I've spend the last 9 months figuring out how I could grow from it and move on.
and how to become a better person and doing all of that off of the internet
because I felt like for a while coming on and being like
"look I've grown" is not what you do in a situation like that
and while it was the worse thing ever. and I wish that I could just erase it,
I'm very grateful for the person it has made me right now.
Let's look on the bright side.
At the end of the day, she didn't give anyone a sunburn this year.
The internet often uses punishment to discourage the actions of bad players.
At the same time though, they encourage them and reinforce those behaviors by giving them attention
We rarely reinforce good behavior on this site.
OG creators like Jenna Marbles or Ryan Higa, who have a small rap sheet,
don’t get discussed as regularly by many.
The benefits of controversy seems to outweigh its short term pitfalls.
It’s one big mixed message.
“We hate your guts”.
But also here’s a fat stack of cash.
That deal is pretty enticing if you ask me.
What do you think?
Did that internet outrage actually work to help change Tana's behavior.
Did that criticism actually work or... nah?
There's definitely a huge number of times where internet outrage didn't work.
I'm talking about false accusations that I'm not going to bring up because it's going to
start fights in the comments.
Yup.
I will see you guys next time.
Stay psyched.