Thursday, August 18, 2016

North Korean Propaganda Via Through YouTube Stars



Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair: YouTube Stars Are Now Being Used for North Korean Propaganda

British vlogger Louis Cole just wants to focus on the positive things about one of the world’s most oppressive nations.

Lots of strange things happen on YouTube. Rashomon-like retellings of the same birthday party, over and over again. People eating candy and calling it entertainment. Casey Couture. But right now, something especially strange is happening on Google’s great video platform, something I never thought I’d see, and yet probably should have seen coming: a popular YouTuber is gallivanting around North Korea. And he’s loving it!

Louis Cole is a 33-year-old vlogger from the U.K. with about 1.8 million subscribers on his FunForLouis YouTube channel. He’s a highly competent travel vlogger, part of a subset of daily YouTubers that also includes Ben Brown: British lads, many of them fans and acolytes of American vlogger Casey Neistat, obsessed with cameras and time-lapses and documenting their coffee habits. Cole’s videos are well-edited and engaging, and the sheer constancy of his travel—he’s forever on the go, it seems—ensures that his frequent videos are rarely dull or un-special, as so much on YouTube is. Cole, like his daily vlogger brethren, is relentlessly positive, projecting a chill-dude, laid-back, good-vibes vibe—sometimes to a pathological degree.

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WNU Editor: The above video reminds me of China circa mid-1980s.

1 comment:

Daniel said...

I can see how that might raise some eyebrows but other than that I'm not sure what harm he is meant to be doing by this. Is the idea that unless all coverage of North Korea includes some form of criticism of its government, something bad will happen?