Some people may say the only videos on YouTuber are influencers doing offensive and privileged shit, but that’s not true — there are also videos of them apologizing for it. Like YouTube breakup videos, YouTube apologies are so ubiquitous that they've pretty much become their own genre, and if Olivia Jade — one of the teens involved in the college admissions fraud scandal — ever wants to continue her YouTube career, she's going to have to make one.
The 19-year-old's mother, Lori Loughlin, is one of many parents accused of bribing their children into college. Loughlin and husband Mossimo Giannulli, specifically, are accused of paying $500,000 to have their daughters photoshopped onto pictures of athletes so they could pose as recruits for the University Of Southern California's crew team, despite having never played the sport. It's unknown how aware the children in the scandal were of the fraud, but if Olivia knowingly posed for the photo, then it's possible she was aware of the fraudulent nature of her admission.
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"I hope she addresses the topic on her YouTube because I feel she might gain some new respect back from people," an anonymous fan told Refinery29 over Twitter DM. And if the history of YouTubers fucking up has taught us anything, she will!
Take one of the most scandalous YouTubers, Logan Paul. In January 2018, he filmed and uploaded a video of a suicide victim in a Japanese forest, and faced a massive backlash. As his brand deals and other opportunities dropped like flies, he uploaded a one minute and 44-second apology video in an attempt to rectify the situation.
This was followed by numerous media appearances where this apology was reiterated, along with a larger video about suicide awareness.
The apology videos often match the personalities of the YouTubers themselves. For instance, Tana Mongeau tends to upload long storytime videos, so when she had to apologize for using a racial slur in 2017, her apology was 22 minutes long.
The most recent viral apology video occurred in summer 2018 when Laura Lee apologized for old racist tweets that were dug up during her feud with Jeffree Star. She spends most of it crying.
So what can we expect from Olivia Jade? The beauty guru and vlogger has never gotten super personal on her channel. While she often does Q&As, she's never addressed backlash, not even the first time she made headlines back in 2018 for saying she only wanted to go to college to party. But now that the FBI is involved, can she continue as usual?
It's totally possible that Olivia will take a break, and then come back with a regular YouTube video that only vaguely thanks fans for their "support" or some variation of before posting content as normal — in fact, for legal reasons, that could be all we're allowed to get! But if the past has taught us anything, posting a YouTube apology video is almost an influencer's rite of passage. Whether anyone will still want to watch? Well, that's a different question.