Jenna Marbles made the right decision, and more creators should do the same

When Jenna Marbles announced she was taking a break from her YouTube channel, she showed the internet what a genuine apology really looks like.

How many “apology videos” have you watched? How many of those that you’ve watched have you actually believed?

YouTube stars and more traditional celebrities have been publicly apologizing for their wrongs for decades. If you’ve seen enough of those videos and statements, though, you might have accidentally become an expert in detecting who’s sincerely sorry and who isn’t.

Any Jenna Marbles fan will tell you that the longtime YouTuber has never been anything but genuine both in-person and online. Which is one of many reasons her video addressing her past problematic content caused so many mixed feelings for those who watched it.

The most important thing to note, of course, is that not once does Jenna try to justify, for example, accusations of using Blackface in a 2011 video. Genuine as always, in 2011, she acknowledges she probably did it for the shock value. But she also admits how very wrong she was for doing it.

With a few reasonable exceptions, Jenna has uploaded a video to her channel almost weekly for nearly 10 years. That’s many, many hours of content to put on the internet — and it would have been the ideal excuse to make when addressing her past problematic content. With so much of you on the internet for all to see, there’s bound to be things you never should have made — right? You get desperate. You jump at any idea, even the bad ones.

But she didn’t use this as an excuse for the videos she pointed out in her message. The whole point of her video? She hurt people. And she’s not going to let herself off the hook for that.

Jenna is the kind of person who will make a 45-minute apology video after buying the wrong kind of fish tank — after returning the tank (and the fish), worrying she wouldn’t be able to take care of them properly after being made aware of her mistake.

So really, if you look far enough into her content and what it says about her, her decision to walk away from YouTube isn’t surprising at all. She wishes to do no harm. Realizing there’s no way she can avoid it — because even though we all pretty much live on the internet these days, it can be a terrible place — she’s made the decision to, unlike many of us, not live online anymore.

For now? Forever? Does it matter?

Her boyfriend and fellow YouTube personality Julien Solomita may have put it best when he said Jenna made the right decision “for her. for her mental health. and for her future.”

“Jenna is the strongest person i know,” he wrote. “But no single person is meant to handle the pressure of pleasing the entire internet week in and week out for a decade.”

Back in 2011, Jenna Marbles very well may have responded to the pressures of content creation by making questionable and ultimately inappropriate choices. And the more her channel and popularity has grown, the harder she’s had to try to keep her audience happy.

She doesn’t like it when people call her “unproblematic.” And it’s very possible that if she were to continue making content as regularly and with as much clear effort as she has been, the pressure would cause harm in one way or another — to her or to someone else.

Sometimes there are signs that it’s time to let go. Time to say goodbye. Many ignore these signs, and that’s often when they get themselves into trouble.

We can all learn something life-changing from Jenna in the aftermath of all this — something more than “oh, right, Blackface is bad” (which it is) and “I shouldn’t use that super offensive word” (which you shouldn’t).

Just look at the example she set just by declaring she was taking a break, or quitting, or whatever her final choice ends up being, whether done intentionally or not.

She didn’t just listen and vow to change. She removed herself from the problematic, maybe even toxic environment that in many ways encouraged her to engage in that equally problematic behavior in the first place.

She did it to avoid causing more harm unintentionally. She did it to make room for others to speak up about the issue (particularly Black voices, for example). But also so she could take the time to decide if YouTube videos are the way she wants to entertain an audience. If she wants to maintain an audience at all.

There are so many YouTube personalities who make mistakes, vow to change, yet remain on the same platform under the same pressures of creation and audience engagement that prompted those mistakes in the first place.

YouTube is not the problem here: The people making and engaging with content on YouTube are. But in many ways, this platform is a reflection of the real world. People still use Blackface and offensive, derogatory, unacceptable language every day. It’s just not always recorded and posted on a channel for all to see.

But if more creators like Jenna — I like to call them “the good ones” — not only speak out against these issues (even in response to their own missteps), but also remove themselves from their chosen platforms, it’s going to become harder and harder for others to get away with the same things in the future.

Jenna made a statement when she decided to walk away that would have spoken volumes even without a video to accompany it. One of the most popular YouTube creators isn’t going to put up with a culture where it’s acceptable for people with an audience to hurt other people and not face consequences.

We can’t let people come back from this kind of backlash unless they genuinely change. Words are not enough. We can’t continue to support creators’ “comebacks” if they haven’t proven they’re in support of the communities they once harmed.

Call people out on their terrible behavior, yes. But only remain loyal to the ones who immediately take action to do something different and maintain that. Don’t believe them when they say they’ll do better until they actually do.

Jenna proved a long time ago that she’s not the same person who made those problematic videos. She was wrong. Knowing what little we know about her, she’ll likely live with that guilt for a very long time. But it’s people like her who also prove that grand gestures of intolerance when it comes to hate really can make a difference.

Best of luck in whatever comes next for you, Jenna. And thank you for using your platform to do good.

Do you think Jenna made the right decision? Should more YouTubers follow her example?