Onlangs werd Trenton Woodley, de frontman van Hands Like Houses, op Last.fm gevraagd naar zijn mening over YouTubers op Vans Warped Tour. Hij besloot dit onderwerp aan te snijden op zijn blog en liet in een lange post merken het niet bepaald een goed idee te vinden. Lees hieronder een fragment van wat hij schreef en hier de volledige post.

haha here we go. my feelings are complex. this is in response to a question i received on ask.fm – asking ‘how do you feel about Youtubers on Warped?’

objectively, i understand why they were invited on the tour in the first place. in principle, they theoretically represented the demographic Warped is targeted at, and music was a defining aspect (more so for some of them than others) of that culture. but i felt like on the tour itself, their meet and greets (for which people literally queued HOURS) took away from what the festival was about – music, the bands creating it, and the fans of that music.

that said, i feel strongly about young people with little to no life experience being put on a pedestal. the youtubers and lot of bands included – these are bunch of people in their mid-late teens, given a platform, and expected to handle the attention they’re getting when most of them don’t even know what that attention actually means. i’m not just talking about inappropriate behaviour via social media, as has happened with bands and youtubers all too often lately. what sickens me is the emotional significance and responsibility the fans have dumped on these perceived ‘celebrities’. i saw this first hand – as some of you may have seen, coops posted a somewhat provocative image on instagram challenging the youtubers’ presence on warped… middle finger up. pretty standard rock music fare.

but the vitriol and sheer brutality of the bullying directed his way by fans who claim to have been ‘saved’ by their mere presence and existence – it was heartbreaking. they viciously leapt to the YTers’ defence because the fans themselves felt slighted by someone simply disagreeing with the YTers being on the tour. coops’ caption was simply ’that we are looking up to the wrong people’ – these kids aren’t role models. hell, I myself am not a freaking role model – i’m just a dude with generally level-headed opinions based on being observant, respectful and I regularly challenge myself in what I believe and how it relates to people around me.