The Internet has been in a bit of a storm the last few days, after actions taken by a YouTube duo known as “The Fine Bros” caused a lot of controversy and lead to a huge backlash against the two of them, costing them thousands of subscribers on their YouTube channel, and according to some, leaving a permanent dent in their reputation that they will have a lot of trouble dealing with in the future.
The problem started when the two decided to trademark certain uses of the word “react”, related to their line of “reaction” videos, a popular YouTube trend. The videos typically show a series of people reacting to a video or something else on their screen, and they were typically further specified through categories like “elders reacting”.
The Fine Bros, despite not being the first to come up with the idea of such videos, wanted to end up being the only ones and they filed for a trademark on certain uses of the word “react”, mostly in the context of such videos. And if that wasn’t bad enough, they also reportedly directly lied to their fans by claiming that they wouldn’t try to take any action against other people making their own “reaction” videos.
In reality, they started a takedown campaign against other producers of similar content, using (or in the opinions of some users, abusing) the YouTube copyright claim system to prevent others from sharing their content. And this seemed to be the tipping point for many, including some of their fans, as the final result was a severe backlash against The Fine Bros, resulting in many people deciding to completely unsubscribe from their channel.
Some even set up live trackers to show how many users the channel was losing in real time, and the trend was actually quite alarming. The channel dropped below its 14 million subscriber mark at one point, indicating that many of the duo’s fans were indeed displeased with the situation and this could actually lead to serious consequences for them.
There has been some discussion on the matter, with some questioning how much those subscriber numbers matter in the grand scheme of things. But according to some, the important thing to remember is that those people were viewers who actively chose to go to the channel and click the “unsubscribe” button, meaning they were most likely active viewers in the first place.
This is different from other types of subscribers, according to those opinions, who tend to be far less active in following the content that they are interested in. In the end, losing active subscribers will hurt the channel a lot more and some have started to doubt the future of The Fine Bros as a whole. There is some speculation that they might have hurt their career beyond any reasonable expectation of recovery at this point, and only time will tell if that’s true.
But there is definitely a noticeable trend of resentment towards the brothers among Internet users right now, and many people seem to be quite disappointed with the way everything was handled. In the end, they decided to retract their application, claiming that they didn’t want to go against the wishes of their users, but the truth is that they still decided to go through with it in the first place, and that’s the worrying point for many people. If they continue to enjoy their popularity, what else could we expect from them?
I’ve been monitoring the situation with a focus on long-term outcome for the Fine Brothers. I agree that they should look into rebranding their channel or pursuing different outlets considering the severe PR crisis. They’ve also been radio silent on social media since this controversy began over a week ago.
their apologies are hollow. they always say “sorry” and then there is a “but” statement without actually owning up to trying to be greedy. they deserve all the mud being thrown at them.