This week included an application to produce our own YouTube apology video. YouTube apologies are becoming their own genre of content, designed to emotionally manipulate viewers. At the beginning of this year the YouTube star, Logan Paul, posted a video unlike most of the other content published to his channel; lacking intro music, graphics and sound effects, it was just a dimly lit, talking head, webcam video. He appears red-eyed and starts with “I had a severe and continuous lapse in my judgement.” The video titled “So Sorry” is among YouTube’s most viral videos in 2018. It’s racked up more than 54 million views and four million comments. There are also hundreds of videos on YouTube reacting to the apology. And there are plenty more dismissing it, describing it as disingenuous and inauthentic and considering him as nothing more than a YouTuber who finally flew too close to the sun. Some have referred to it as the “first viral apology video,” a visual example of a modern celebrity fall from grace, played out in real time. The video was recorded after he received immense criticism for filming a dead body in the Aokigahara Forest, which is a notorious spot in Japan for people to commit suicide. The question then is was this authentic, or was this yet another performance, cloaked in PR-enforced sincerity?
We proposed to produce an apology video using the myriad of techniques YouTubers use when delivering their own apologies. Ranging from the sigh at the beginning, deliberately not looking into the lens of the camera to express a false sense of vulnerability, filming themselves turning the camera off to reinforce the idea that the video was completely unedited and spontaneously crying midway through. The apology will be entirely generic and the incident will never be truly described, only spoken around. The film would be shown on a monitor on a stand, similar to one that might be found at a conference or in a school, suggesting that this is an education into YouTube apologies, a how to guide. Hopefully we get it but if not it’s a fairly simple, low budget thing to produce.
