The next session at the Social Media & Society conference in Glasgow starts with Areyana Proctor, whose focus is on racialised misogyny in the digital Manosphere: misogynoir. This is also a branding and monetisation strategy in digital content creation which is deliberately embraced by some influencers in the Manosphere.
Platform moderation is a specific risk faced by content creators, and misogyny towards women of colour is seen as a lower-risk approach, and an engagement tactic. Areyana explored this through a content analysis of some of this content, focussing on the YouTube channels of content creators with various racial identities. She examined popular videos from these channels which specifically targetted Black women.
One such channel linked directly to contemporary fitness culture, and engaged in highly formulaic layout; another presented its influencer as a more sophisticated, wise voice; while a non-Black influencer leant more directly on white supremacist language. All of these are overlapping misogynoir with white supremacist rhetoric in their attitudes towards Black women.
They rely on perverted forms of authenticity and honesty in how they attack such women; this is a branding strategy within the creator economy, and is itself operationalised to peddle commercial products while avoiding any algorithmic repercussions that might arise from problematic content through obfuscation.
This commodifies misogynoir, and also enables YouTube to profit from audience attention to such content even if it ostensibly violates its community standards. YouTube is not a neutral service in all this, then, and takes action only in the most extreme cases.
