Social media stars who need to realize they aren’t famous anymore

Lilly Singh rose to viral YouTube fame with her wildly condescending caricature of bigots in her breakout video “A Geography Class for Racist People.” It’s a stunningly smug four minutes as she chides straw-man dummies of the world with lines like, “India is all the way over here across the ocean, so, unfortunately, you won’t be able to drive your trailer there.” Yes, for this starlet with an estimated net worth of $16 million, the enemy is poor people living in homes on wheels. 

Regardless, the video blew up though, 14 million views and counting, and Singh became the first bisexual woman of color to land a late-night talk show. Which sounds good. But NBC’s A Little Late with Lilly Singh debuted in September 2019 with all 96 episodes pre-recorded in a studio over a three month period. The result was not well-received, particularly from her fellow YouTubers, three of whom released a scathing takedown critique that deemed the whole enterprise a silly and stale cringe-fest. General audiences didn’t embrace Singh’s twist on late night either, rating the show 17% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 1.8 out of 10 on IMDb.

Want to peer deeper into the void? Teen Vogue even used Singh’s own fame-making identity-logic against her, dubbing her trademark schtick as problematic for being “indicative of non-Black people performing Blackness.” Humanities essays aside, cancellation appears imminent, metaphorical, or actual. 

Written by: Nicki