Lately I've been noticing some famous youtubers make some interesting comments about the political events happening. I mean, them making comments is nothing new, but given how complicated things are at the moment, when they've come out embracing nuance, they've almost always been confronted aggressively.
David Pakman recently made his intentions of interviewing Andy Ngo known, and got criticized by Antifa supporters who believe Andy got what he deserved. Truly a perfect portrayal of being unaware of part of your audience.
To be completely fair, it's impossible to not attract some fringe elements. But it seems more reasonable to look at it from a percentages point of view. If you believe you talk about love and tolerance, but the majority of your audience spouses values that contradict what you claim to be about, then surely there's a problem you've failed to recognize.
In the case of Pakman in particular, I don't see he has this issue. Most of his audience is one that embraces nuance. And, even though he is on the left of most issues, he's been very vocal about not embracing socialism or marxism. This cannot be said about other lefty youtubers, and the audience they've amassed shows this perfectly.
Another head scratcher was seeing Tim Pool somewhat shocked he had so many on the right, so many Trump supporters follow him. Tim has been very vocal against the far left, and his videos dunking on SJWs and other fringe ideas have worked wonderfully to attract all the MAGA's looking for a good strawman to be killed online.
Curiously enough Tim is on the left as well, but you would never guess as much from seeing the comment section.
Which leads me to the point of this short post, or the questions, to be more correct.
How Important is it to know your audience? Should you cultivate it? Should you just do you and let things flow? What is a reasonable way to grow?
I'm very much divided in my answers.
MenO
