But given the ongoing tensions between Buzzfeed and YouTubers, Hughes was convinced the company owed her something, even something as small as a quick Google search to see who else had done that exact introvert/Netflix gag in the past. The trope has appeared in Buzzfeed videos going back several years. The idea is not a particularly original one it doesn't even appear that Hughes was the first to have it. Both that video, and Hughes' "How to Be an Introvert," involve a woman spending the weekend under her comforter with Netflix. In fact, as Buzzfeed Motion Pictures grew both more powerful and more prolific, it seemed obvious that it posed an existential threat to the creators who paved the way for it.Ĭue Akilah Hughes and her 119,000 YouTube fans, who last week noticed Buzzfeed's "Perfect Weekend for an Introvert" had cleared half a million views in its first day online. Despite Buzzfeed's lip service to independent creators - both at the corporate level and in its giddy coverage of viral stars - people like Dunn had long worried the company didn't actually have their best interests at heart. Just last month, Buzzfeed fired two of its top stars, Ashley and Jenny Lorenzo, for working on a side project in the uproar that followed, BMP was forced to remind staff that - no matter how independent they'd been before - they and all their work now belonged to corporate.įor some YouTubers, who pioneered and advocated a new model of decentralized, participatory media, Buzzfeed's declaration wasn't merely HR-speak: It confirmed creeping anxieties that they'd harbored for several years. Among other things, BMP required that its talent work on no other projects while employed there, and that they sign over the rights to their name and likeness. Meanwhile, in-house creators like Dunn conceded that the company "helped pay bills yes," but also exploited young creators through unusually restrictive contracts. (Buzzfeed has also hired paid consultants from those communities.) Popular minority vloggers, like the trans YouTube star Kat Blaque and the duo Kam and Chambers, complained that the company regularly brought talent in to "consult" or "guest star," but never actually paid for it.
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The company has also provided one-off guest-starring gigs, paid residencies and full-time jobs to up-and-coming performers, like the comedians Brittany Ashley and Gaby Dunn.īut the relationship between Buzzfeed Motion Pictures and some of its online stars has began to curdle at the edges in recent months, soured by creative and contractual disagreements. That sort of platform has been a boon to many performers, who might have labored in obscurity for years on their own: Buzzfeed Motion Pictures can claim to have launched the careers of the Try Guys, Ashley Perez and Matt Bellassai, among others. The department averages upwards of 75 clips per week across their various color-coded channels, and monthly views long ago surpassed 1 billion. But because it has a four-acre lot on Sunset Boulevard, an industry-leading data team and a staff of 200 video producers - many of them former YouTubers - Buzzfeed Motion Pictures churns out viral videos at an almost industrial scale. The division operates like many small-time indie producers do, churning out short, low-budget, zeitgeisty videos with titles like "If Disney Princes Were Real" (60 million views) and "Men Watch Porn With Porn Stars" (almost 21 million). Since launching in August 2014 - right on the heels of a $50 million venture capital investment - BMP has become both a patron to online creators and a powerhouse for online video content. On the very day Hughes's petition went viral, in fact, Kam and Chambers spotted a still from one of their videos, shared - without permission - on Buzzfeed's Snapchat. Lopez Kenji-Alt, the James Beard Award-winning food writer who accused the video department's food vertical of lifting his halal chicken recipe Creature, an all-lady comedy troupe that has actually filmed a tongue-in-cheek paean to Buzzfeed and Bria Kam and Chrissy Chambers, two of YouTube's most popular LGBT vloggers, who say the site regularly repackages their material in its listicles. Other creators apparently agree: Hughes is compiling lists of artists, comedians and other creatives who feel - rightly or wrongly - that their ideas have been vacuumed up by Buzzfeed. "This is a deliberate initiative on BuzzFeed's behalf to undermine the hard work of independent comedians, creators, and innovators."
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"BuzzFeed has been caught repeatedly stealing ideas, jokes, bits, gags, and therefore money from prominent YouTube creators," Hughes wrote, in a popular petition addressed to the site's advertisers and signed, as of this writing, more than 5,500 times.