What if that YouTuber you really like has been faking it all along? 😱
For 7 years, Finn McKenty built his brand on insightful deep dives into musical genres. Now he's saying he has no interest in music and that he did it all for the money. What's really going on?
What if you followed a YouTuber for years, enjoying their insightul, well-crafted video segments, only to find out that they’d been faking their interest the entire time? This is precisely where followers of The Punk Rock MBA find themselves at this moment, as channel founder Finn McKenty is now claiming that he “doesn’t really have any interest in music,” that he was “just doing it for the money,” and that he didn’t dig any deeper than Wikipedia to research his videos.
McKenty disclosed all of these things with a dismissive shrug, effectively giving the impression that his channel was a sham all along — a calculated means to an end for someone who’d applied the cold metrics of marketing to a subject his followers are passionate about. Naturally, feelings of betrayal, anger, and confused head-scratching have percolated online since McKenty made these comments. But is he actually telling the truth about having lied all along? Is there more to the story?
In the bigger picture, what should we expect from the online personalities we follow? How much honesty do they owe us? And is authenticity even possible in a medium that demands we play a role to satisfy the appetites of both audience and algorithm? What happens to people when they start to generate a following?
On the latest episode of
’s Media Studies, James and I dive into the dangers of becoming the persona we project on-camera, the dynamics of parasocial relationships, how internet fame is distinct from and yet the same as fame in previous eras, and more.I’d love to hear what you think!
For some context:
<3 SRK