Zoella is the no.1 most subscribed, British female vlogger on youtube, raking in 12 million subscribers. Zoella’s content ranges from hauls, makeup tutorials and vlogs. It’s pretty harmless content. However, as the years that Zoella has been on youtube went by; the more it became clear that Zoe started to care more about money than the subscribers. Which is okay to an extent, we all like getting money.  I’ll be discussing how Zoella misleads her audience into believing that she had written her own book when in reality she used a ghostwriter. I’ll also add a personal touch as this book did come out when I was a young teen, so I fit the demographic Zoella was aiming to please.

The book ‘Girl Online’ is a coming of age book that is loosely based on Zoella’s experiences. This book initially came off as very personal which personally would make me feel more connected to the characters and the author. When it was revealed that Zoella used a ghostwriter it left a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths if you take in the personal context of the story and how she made a massive deal over how she suddenly always wanted to be a writer; even though she had never mentioned her “Dream” of being a writer. Ghostwriters are actually very common and assist in the writing. However, when Zoella constantly insisted that it was HER OWN work. The revelations that there was a ghostwriter THAT WASN’T EVEN CREDITED PROPERLY made her look incredibly disingenuous.  The publisher; Penguin were the ones to clarify that a ghostwriter was used when the backlash began; however, it was too late Zoella had already shown that she was disingenuous.

 

As you can see in this announcement video for the book; Zoella raves about how she’s always wanted to release a book she wrote herself. Zoella’s audience still supported her through this controversy, which is okay. However, due to this Zoella began exploiting her fans even more because she realised just how much support she still had. Zoella could stab someone and still get support from her subscribers at this point.

Zoella’s book ‘Girl Online’ even though it had a good message became a pawn in Zoella’s quest for views and money. This was the starting point of the manipulation that ensued years later. In my final video, I’ll talk about this controversy to highlight just how far these youtubers will go to exploit their viewer’s trust and mislead them into believing whatever you want them to.