YouTuber Fidias' latest YouTube thumbnail courts controversy on social media

A YouTuber known as Fidias recently posted a video about spending 100 hours in the poorest country in the world, Burundi. It seems like the streamer may have had good intentions with the video, but the thumbnail of himself surrounded by young African children with an overly exaggerated facial expression has left many disgruntled.

This has left social media divided, with some opining that it’s exploiting those children, while others refuse to consider it an issue, given the context of the video..

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YouTuber Fidias’ latest video thumbnail was accused of being exploitative

At the time of writing, the thumbnail still exists on the YouTuber’s channel. Fidias is a YouTuber with 774K followers and has done a variety of content, including traveling the world. In this latest video, he spent 100 hours in Burundi, a country in East Africa.

While the YouTuber holds good intentions and has a gofundme page to try and help the people in Burundi, it’s the video’s thumbnail that is bothering viewers.

The thumbnail is done in the style of a typical MrBeast video, where the YouTuber adopts a wild, over-the-top expression, and doesn’t actually do much to promote the actual content. Many just think it’s a typical clickbait thumbnail used to reel people in to watch the video and offers nothing of substance.

The problem isn’t necessarily the video itself. Some people reckon the content creator was only doing it to gain attention and ultimately make money out of the process.

Several users on social media thought it was just a business move, as opposed to an altruistic endeavor. Making money off of a charitable effort seemed fishy to many on Twitter.

Some were utterly shocked to see a creator opt for such a thumbnail. Another reply expressed disgust at the thumbnail's aesthetic, especially the manner in which kids are clamoring after the white man.

A Twitter user would critique the thumbnail itself for being a depiction of the “White Savior” complex, where a white person is shown to be uplifting and saving non-white people. The Twitter user questioned the genre of the image that Fidias used for his thumbnail in particular.

However, it wasn’t all negative on Twitter. Some would argue that Fidias was fulfilling a positive endeavor, and threads like this were just to generate hate on someone or accuse them of clickbaiting others.

One Twitter user would admit that the editing and thumbnail were not necessarily palatable, but the actual content of the video was educational. Others would agree, stating that one shouldn’t judge a book by the cover, or in this case, the thumbnail.

There is no telling if Fidias will change the video thumbnail or not. However, throughout the debacle, the video has garnered an impressive amount of traction and views. In that regard, the content creator has done well.

The video has over 500K views, with the fundraiser having accrued €6,503 out of his €20,000 goal to aid Burundi.