It's difficult to overstate the impact of Zoe Sugg and Alfie Deyes on YouTube in the mid-to-late 2010s. Sugg was a lifestyle vlogger who went by the username Zoella and posted makeup tutorials, outfit inspiration, and vlogs of her hanging out with friends. And Deyes made a name for himself on his channel playing games with his famous fellow YouTubers and trying out outrageous internet trends. They were the poster children for what it meant to be YouTubers in the early 2010s — making content with their friends, a camera in hand, to bring their fans along through their lives.
The pair's relationship was kept under wraps until one of their friends, fellow British YouTuber Jim Chapman, uploaded a vlog with Sugg and accidentally showed her laptop's
screensaver, which featured a photo of her kissing Deyes. They spent the next decade having two babies and posting videos of themselves raising their kids and building a life together.
But now, they've been gone radio silent. The last time fans got a YouTube video from the couple was their annual Vlogmas series — 10 months ago. The last time Sugg posted on Instagram was in January and Deyes hasn't posted since April.
To the average online consumer, this might mean nothing. But many of their combined 8.56 million YouTube subscribers, especially those who have been following them for over a decade, feel duped. With Vlogmas time approaching and without so much as an announcement about the couple's absence, their followers are left wondering where they've gone.
The saga raises the question: What do influencers owe their fans when they decide to take a step back?
"They should just put out a statement saying goodbye. They owe fans something," one fan wrote in the comments section of a July TikTok video about the couple's disappearance. "To just go completely silent after all these years is so odd. Just say thank you, and we are ending to focus on our family and other opportunities." Another person wrote in that same comments section, "I'm so sorry; they can do whatever they want. But not saying anything for so long is just disrespectful."
USA TODAY reached out to Sugg and Deyes for comment but did not hear back.
Kristi Cook, a drama channel YouTuber who has been posting videos on creators for almost a decade, told USA TODAY that their fans are in part upset because they are still getting promotional emails from Deyes' companies, Good Sunday and Future Self, while they're left in the dark about the two YouTubers themselves "People on TikTok weren't happy with them sending out these newsletters about discounts because they felt like 'I don't want to buy that product if you're not gonna be real with me about whether or not you're going to be online anymore,'" Cook said.
Their disappearance without explanation is wholly uncommon for influencers, especially those who have been making content since the early days of YouTube. Cook explains that while we've seen veteran creators take a hiatus, a creator who built a following within the last decade understands how parasocial their audience has become. "If Alix Earle took a major step back and didn't say anything, I think people would definitely think something happened to her," she said. "I think that these fans are feeling that way about like Zoe and Alfie and they're the only ones that are screaming into the void."\
Influencers who came up in the early days of the creator economy were the ones who set the foundation for how to act online. In the U.S., there was a group of early YouTubers that laid the groundwork, but the platform truly became a cultural phenomenon in the 2010s with stars like Tyler Oakley, Grace Helbig, Mamrie Hart, Hannah Hart, Troye Sivan, Connor Franta and Miranda Sings (Colleen Ballinger) starting to collaborate with an equally young cohort of YouTubers known as the "Brit Crew."
That crew consisted of siblings Zoe and Joe Sugg, Deyes, Jim Chapman, Tanya Burr, Marcus Butler, Casper Lee, Jack and Finn Harries, Niomi Smart and Louise Pentland. They all made content together, often appearing in each other's vlogs.
Creators will occasionally step back from a demanding posting schedule, but they typically announce it. Oakley announced an "indefinite hiatus" to his six million subscribers back in 2020 after posting "every single Tuesday at noon for years and years and years." Avid YouTube fans also saw creators like Lilly Singh, Lucas Cruikshank (of "Fred" fame), Kingsley, Matthew Patrick (MatPat) and Jenna Marbles share that they needed to take a step back, and many returned to the platform years later.
The fans who've stuck around for all this time feel a special connection to their favorite YouTubers and feel that if they are investing a large amount of time and resources (sometimes even in the form of money supporting their businesses), then they should be getting updates on when they can expect to receive a return on that investment in the form of a new video.
"A lot of people were upset on TikTok, and they were venting about missing them and really wanting some clarity on why they had stepped back," Cook explained of Sugg and Deyes. "In theory, they don't owe anyone anything because that's sort of the point of being a creator and having your own business, which means that you could walk away and not tell anyone. But I think fans will get hurt along the way in that."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: YouTubers Zoe Sugg and Alfie Deyes have stopped posting. Fans want a reason
