to ask if any of your DC got ripped off at the YouTuber event Hello World?

[BriechonCheese]

My DS(13) went to the HelloWorld event yesterday - which was billed as an "immersive event" run by Alfie Deyes from PointlessBlog. (This is probably a TL:DR so in short - the event was useless, thousands of children were crying. The event organisers are ignoring it. Vastly inflated YouTube stars put in minimal effort for the whole event and the special additions for the VIP ticket were changed in the days immediately before the event. Disabled access also a nightmare).

He saved up his pocket money and birthday money to attend and even paid extra for VIP tickets for him and his friend because his friend has been through a hard time of it. This VIP ticket was supposed to give him access to meeting some of his idols (I can't criticise him for his choice in idols - I liked Take That, East17 and Adam Ricket as a teenager). The day before the event they were told actually VIP holders wouldn't get what they were promised but would be given a tour of the event by one YouTuber and they now had to enter a competition to other meet youtubers.

It as a shambles and from the photos my DH took (he went with him) it seemed to be a room full of teenagers milling around having being told their idols wouldn't be doing formal meet and greets (as in the norm with YouTube events) but walking around ok and off during the day - so basically the whole place was gridlocked with people hoping to see someone famous walking around. The youtubers in fact seemed to all stay behind the scenes and Snapchat from backstage.

None of the children were getting what they were promised (rides, chance to bake with their idols, play games with them and loads of stuff) none of them enjoying it or being able to access the "immersive events", half of them were in tears and the other half were angry. There was a performance which was due to last 2 hours but the performers lasted less than 1hr 30 mins and the big names appeared for about 5 mins.

It turned out to be an arena where children paid to enter in order to queue with other children to buy over priced merchandise.
Lots of children were pushed and shoved by other attendees, security and staff - my DH saw one girl being lifted out of the queue having being pushed against a bench by a surge of people.
Worst of all, the tickets said under 14s would be seated, so my niece who also went and is disabled was excited she could attend and feel safe in a seat. It turns out, from staff, that the under 14s rule was applicable to concerts only and this wasn't mentioned before hand. She is able to stand but is in agony today as a result. Disabled access otherwise was a nightmare and many disabled attendees were excluded from 95% of the events (which ended up mainly being them getting to queue to look at stalls that were sold out or areas where they might see a YouTuber but in reality no one showed up).

Yesterday social media was trending with how awful it was and it has been completely ignored by the organisers and "creators"/youtubers both on the HelloWorld social media pages and on their own personal pages.

Does anyone else have DC who came home disappointed from this event? Is anyone else sick to the backteeth of these YouTuber "creators" putting in absolutely minimal effort to take cash from impressionable children?

Zoella, Alfie Deyes, Sprinkle of Glitter, Mark Ferris, Joe Sugg, Marcus Butler, Tyler Oakley and their little gang of white washed, hyper consumerism based idiots are banned in our house hence forth.

I think it was a poorly phrased article!

I think this might be the first time people like this have come up against intelligent, educated parents who won't let them roll over and say "oh we are just YouTubers" or "I have xyz illness, so I can't".

Again I have every sympathy with anxiety, I a have a diagnosis of GAD, spent many years treating people with various conditions including anxiety. However I wouldn't legally commit myself to providing a service whilst knowing my condion could very likely prevent me from carrying out my duty. This has been going on for years and it's time the grown ups stood up and told these people they can't behave like this anymore.

Stumbled across this thread, it's like a cesspit. I'll be asking teenagers in the family what's going on. I've heard them mention the names of people they follow on YouTube but had no idea of either the extent of their influence or the depths of their cynicism. Poor exploited young fans.

I think part of the problem with the Gleam youtubers is the fact that they are managed by gleam. Louise, for example, has been making more grown up content for over a year and I’ve noticed a difference in the comments on her videos between then and now- they seem more adult now, and it’s pretty easy to pick out which ones are written by the younger generation. Her latest collabs (minus one with Zoe) have been with Mum vloggers and Dan and Phil, who have also been trying to move on from their tween audience - dan especially, although their fan base doesn’t seem that receptive to the idea, to put it mildly. And the only merch type thing Louise brought out recently is a book which is definitely not aimed at kids.

And Caspar Lee has a sister, Theo, who is absolutely lovely. I highly recommend her, although she only posts videos infrequently now. Her last couple have been ads I think, but she’s never encouraged her viewers to go out and buy the products, there’s no mention of it at all really. Just a quick I’ll be filming this on my new phone and this is what is cool about it- barely even a minute and no mention of a link to buy it or anything. She stopped vlogging as much, as she thought she was spending too much time online and it was unhealthy, plus she’s warned about reality vs the perfect lives show on instagram, gives (sensible) advice and is involved with the lily cup project. She’s definitely a good role model and I would’ve expected Caspar to be like her- but maybe fame’s gone to his head a bit?

Certainly seems to have gone to Jim Chapman’s- I used to watch him as he was a bit more grown up than the rest but his favourites videos include numerous products over £1000 so I gave up on him. Do occasionally go back and watch his baking videos- quite entertaining as he usually makes a couple of mistakes, plus uses his wife’s cookbook (youtuber book deals are a whole other issue) but he does seem very devoted to her and proud of her achievements which is sweet.

I do wonder if some of the Gleam youtubers have been told by Gleam that they’re doing this? And as Gleam are in charge of managing and organising any brand deals etc they effectively control the youtubers source of income so maybe some of them felt cornered into doing the event in case Gleam decides not to arrange good deals for them etc? Might explain why Louise was in front of tweens, which is something she genuinely seems to want to move on from, and Zoe was promoted so heavily but barely did anything- because she felt like she had to be there as Gleam told her to? Although she is normally brought into anything Alfie and Joe do.

IMO most of the non-money grabbing youtubers are older, and aimed more at an older audience, although they do still have plenty of younger fans, they don’t tailor their content towards them. And some of them eg Hazel Hayes, Jack Howard, are using YouTube as a platform for other projects. They’re both filmmakers and post videos about films, directors etc as well as their own short films. They’ve also both made projects that aren’t on YouTube, which you do have to pay to watch, and they obviously do promote their shows, but it doesn’t feel anywhere near as money grabbing as you know they’ve worked hard on them to create something they’re proud of- they haven’t just slapped their names on something iyswim. I do think that YouTube culture has got a bit toxic, maybe partly because the youtubers themselves, their management companies, and brands have realised the amount of money to be made from YouTube, which then leads to more money being made etc and it’s all just a circle and spiral downwards.

Hope you get somewhere OP

I'm worried now as we have bought tickets for the Digital Kids show for DS's birthday treat. Is it going to be shit?

This all reminds me of Fyre festival which was an instagram based scam event but on an even bigger scale. Famous instagram stars plugged it and had egg on their faces after it turned into a holiday nightmare. I found that whole thing fascinating too.

Yes OP it was newsbeat yesterday 5.45pm. Second story in I think

Most of gleam have actually left as it was sold to an ad company this summer.

Zoella exclusively uses reward style affiliates as they pay really well for top tier clients. They always redirect to the company with the highest payout even if it's abroad and a local one is available. Just those payouts alone are enough to live very very comfortably on.

Don't forget, a lot of kids got very rich, very quickly and very young. With no guidance from management companies, PR people or the like.
The money is now drying up on YouTube, due to advertisers terrified of being associated with innappropiate content.(see Pewdepie)
The YouTube "stars" are now having to market products directly or turn to live shows to fund their lifestyle. When kids pay a lot money to meet these vain, narcissistic, entitled celebs they are sure to be dissapointed.
Only way to stop it is to stop consuming the content they produce. Maybe some of these kids will see what awful people these YouTubers are.

Zoella and Alfie got to the top using pr and management though, she's been with gleam for along time.

She wasn't hit by the adverts as they are just a small part of her income and as she does kids content with nothing slightly controversial she doesn't get demonised.

These people will be has beens a in a few years turning up on shows like celeb big brother to try and make some money.
It really sickening that people like this with zero talent can make it big and children will aspire to be them

One of my dc flew over to London for an event during the summer, can't even remember what it was called she's still in bed, half term here so can't ask her. She met a youtuber and was mighty happy.
So not all of these events are shit fests.
But this one sounds awful, I had a look at the fb page and hello world are doing their best at damage limitation, and heavily promoting the positives.
I'll be following this now and hope you get a good outcome op and at the very least be refunded. It's not good enough. Why was there no carnival rides as advertised.

Can someone explain what affiliate links are and how youtubers make money out of it, as opposed to advertising?

Hoping that posters on this thread that are knowledgeable about this could enlighten.

It's just a custom link someone provides to a shopping site and they earn commission on all sales.

Like MN was posting an ASOS link the other day and 10% of any purchases users make through the link mn would receive. It can be very lucrative.

A very well considered article on this subject can be found

here

@skustew if you watch the videos but don't click on link and then Google the products do they still get £'s?

They won't get affiliate money if you do that, but they will still get the ad money. Also if a product has paid to be in the video they will get that regardless and the view count will go up meaning their worth to get more native advertising is still high. It's important to not watch them at all quite frankly.

People like zoella are part of YouTube premium adverts so can get up to $10 per 1000 views when most only get $1-2.

Edgar - No.
Once you click on the link it embeds a cookie (some for up to 30 days) so if you make a purchase on that site (for instance ASOS or Amazon) they will get a small commission. Usually pence but there are deals to be done with the big names.

For instance one of the websites I used to manage used skimlinks. They posted frequent articles about eBay. They would post links about funny listings or even to ridiculous products. If someone went to google and searched for the product themselves they would not have a cookie installed. If you click the link (which most people do) and then went on to buy something from eBay (anything not just the product mentioned) without resetting your cookie settings or clicking another eBay affiliate link on another site, then they would get affiliate commission.

I have no issue with sites using affiliate links as long as they are labelled legally and ethically. For years most bloggers didn't give a shit about labelling them.

I have no issue with these people earning money from what they do, I do however think the methods they choose to use need examining. This particular event was missold and fraudulent.

I have no issue with sites using affiliate links as long as they are labelled legally and ethically. For years most bloggers didn't give a shit about labelling them.

What's funny is zoella is actually putting MN to shame by actually disclosing affiliate links correctly. Although this is only a recent thing for her and for years has been placing them with disclosing.

Sku someone I know (I run a small marketing business) knows someone who works at StyleHaul that said some of the gleam lot had a cpm of $12.

Agree with the upthread post re effect of youtubing on children of "professional vloggers" (quit their day jobs)....what's scary is the amount of youtubing families who'd like to play with the big boys and girls and be represented by Gleam features......Mrs Meldrum springs to mind......she's recently had a trial and been featured in a couple of Louise Pentland vlogs

Thanks Sku and Brie it's ludicrous really. I always think how can you give an honest review and opinion when you are effectively being paid to endorse the product. That is primarily the reason why I sometimes watch the videos but it's just shill. I had hoped things would be a little clearer with the introduction of new sponsored post guidelines but no.
It's quite a dark and seedy world when you actually think about it and it's children who are being duped the most.
That event you went to though
I really hope this helps to open people's eyes but I won't hold my breath.

EdgarAllanPO that would be Summer in the City. DD has been twice and really enjoyed it both times. It has been going for a few years and is much better organised than the HelloWorld fiasco that everyone has complained about.

Yes Lonicera she is up now and confirmed that's what she went to .
She met the orion sound and seepeekay.
She might be trolling me as I wanted to write cpk but she says that's not how it's written she got a book signed for her little sister, which I thought was sweet.

But OP i hope you get your money back, it sounds like there wasn't really anything to the show and they just thought they could charge the earth and not Actually give anyone anything for it.

Im too old for all this and my kids are too young for these vloggers, (sky lander dad and dan DTM another story). I have had to do a bit of "its not real life" when I've had the "i want to be a vlogger when i grow up", which really riles me. Its hard with kids as the adverts are hidden to kids, on TV they know that this is an advert. On TV content has rules and regulations, but we don't really have that for youtube. Its essentially the same as them sitting there watching QVC.

As someone who suffers with chronic anxiety, i get Zoella. However, i wouldn't sign myself up to do something i couldn't deliver on and certainly one that would disappoint that many people if i couldnt do it. The whole youtube thing feeds into someones anxiety, putting yourself out there if your not emotionally strong enough to take the beating is not going to end well. Actually it sounds like the best thing she could do is come off youtube, don't agree to do these things if it is making her worse and take some time out to find herself. If she's been savvy she will be ok financially (although some of these figures are truly eye watering)