Beyond cancel culture : Digital vigilantism toward YouTube shamelebrity Trisha Paytas

This Master’s thesis offers an insight of the negotiations of drama and commentary channels on YouTube in relation to two scandals of long-time YouTuber Trisha Paytas. It combines celebrity studies and surveillance studies to gain a deeper understanding of how YouTubers use modes of digital vigilantism to re-establish order after a scandal has occurred. More specifically, this research examines how Trisha Paytas uses shamelebrity practices to gain notoriety and how the drama and commentary community react towards this type behavior. It shows that maintaining order online is a dynamic and interactive process that revolves around discussions and investigations in order to expose and police bad behavior within the YouTube community. A comparative thematic analysis was conducting on two of the last scandals which occurred. The responses differed depending of the severity of the nature of the scandal as well as shared similarities.