During the lockdown, we killed our time watching YouTube videos. With views catapulting and subscriptions skyrocketing, YouTubers earned their coveted silver and gold play buttons while reeking fat paychecks from Google AdSense.
The opportunity to earn extra attracted many to start their own channels and scramble to create their own videos. Teachers also created content for the video-sharing platforms. Some converted their lessons into videos. Some made the answer keys to assessments in our Virtual In-Service Training as the subject of their videos.
Some videos are helpful, like video tutorials on how to activate our DepEd-issued SIM and how to reset our overused printers. But some are mere click baits, like the release of 13th-month pay that could have been stated in one or two sentences but made into a five-minute-long video.
But creating only work-related and educational videos will not give teacher-YouTubers the x number of views in an x amount of time for them to get monetized and receive ad revenue from Google. The competition is fierce. It is an uphill climb against established YouTubers, celebrities, and even media networks. Work-related videos reach only a fraction of teachers, while educational videos rarely attract students. Teacher-YouTubers have to diversify their content.
Recently, I came across a teacher-YouTuber who has been uploading stories about people who are in impoverished situations. He uploaded a series of videos about siblings “abandoned” by their parents. The titles of the videos resemble the titles of videos on the YouTube channel of a front-runner senatorial candidate. They are click baits– intriguing, suspenseful, and often misleading. He inundated his YouTube channel with images of people living in dire conditions. These miserable images are called poverty porn.
Wikipedia defines poverty porn as any type of media, be it written, photographed or filmed, which exploits the poor’s condition in order to generate sympathy for selling newspapers, increasing charitable donations, or support for a cause. This definition needs to be expanded to include other forms of media; television, cinema, and the internet. Poverty porn brings good TV ratings. Poverty porn may not be a box-office hit, but again and again, become the subject of award-winning films. It can generate hits for websites and views for YouTubers. Hits and views draw advertisements, which in return provide revenue.
The internet, most specifically social media, pose additional dangers— what one posted online can stay in perpetuity and anyone can easily retrieve them in the future. The production of these poverty porns might inadvertently collect private data that may cause unforeseen harm to the subjects of the videos especially the minors. The traditional media often blur the faces of minors, a practice not observed by YouTube content creators.
The publication of stories of people in impoverished conditions on YouTube draws sympathy from viewers. Donations flow from subscribers who were moved by the images. Then there will be another content for posting, this time highlighting the generosity of the viewers.
Questions arise after the extro of these YouTube videos. Are the subjects of the videos entitled to a fraction of ad revenue from Google? Are the subjects exploited? And lastly, why are teachers even making videos about poor people?
Pinoy Pedestrian 