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| Tyler Oakley, Alfie Deyes, Tanya Burr, Jim Chapman, and Joe Sugg |
I asked a few of my friends recently about if they were fans
of YouTube, and all of them said yes, but only one person I asked, someone who
is about to enter their senior year of college, mentioned the concept of
YouTubers. Everyone else was aware
of Susan Boyle, of funny cat videos, of Gangnam Style and the Harlem Shake.
But the concept of the YouTuber, which has been celebrated amongst
anyone under the age of about 24, is somewhat alien.
YouTubers are essentially people who make YouTube videos
regularly (Urban Dictionary said it’s also people who follow YouTube, so use
the term at your own risk, though Urban Dictionary is not what you’d call the
most reliable source of information). If names like PewDiePie, smosh, Jenna Marbles, and
Shane Dawson are names you’ve never heard of, this is probably a new concept
for you as well.
The amount of fandom and publicity that YouTubers elicit are
staggering. According to VidStats,
PewDiePie, a Swedish video game commentator, has had 2.29 billion video views
(take that, Iron Man 3), and the
money that YouTubers make is also incredible-according to Celebrity Net Worth,
Jenna Marbles, a profanely hilarious comedian on YouTube, has made in excess of
$4 million on her channel, which puts her in the same ranking as a network
television star.
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| Zoe Sugg, Alfie Deyes, Tyler Oakley, Jim Chapman, Joe Sugg and Tanya Burr |
In trying to find my channels on YouTube, though, I stumbled
across a certain group of YouTubers that I now tune into every week as reliably
as I do a television show: the British YouTubers. Personalities like Tanya Burr, Jim Chapman, Alfie Deyes,
Marcus Butler, Jack & Finn Harries, Troye Sivan, Caspar Lee, and Zoe & Joe Sugg each put out a
video every week, oftentimes with a simple concept such as “The Three Minute
Makeup Challenge” or “The Accent Challenge” and have you giggling for five
minutes about the silliness that ensues (P.S. for anyone that is stumbling across my blog for a first time because a Jacksgap google search brought you here, I'm aware that Caspar and Troye are South African, but they make enough videos with the Brits to qualify with the group).
It’s hard to pinpoint the appeal of these channels, though
it’s clearly there, and these personalities have clearly got “It” whatever it
is (if you don’t believe me, check out the hoards of screaming girls that
followed some of these chaps at VidCon, and you’d swear that Justin Bieber had
just walked in). Part of the
appeal to perhaps my fellow Gen Y-ers and our younger Gen Z-siblings is that
these videos are largely how we communicate. I can have friends that I legitimately haven’t seen or
talked to for days or weeks that I have communicated with through Twitter,
Snapchat, Facebook, texting, or some sort of online chat. While people clearly don’t know the
personalities on the YouTube channel personally, the consistency with which you interact
with them, and the way they approach their channels makes you feel as if you’re
talking with a pal because you're communicating with them in the same way. Someone like
Jim Chapman, for example, regularly greets you with a “hello best friends” when
he begins his videos or Alfie Deyes starts with a two-handed wave and a
“what’s up guys?” This sort of
familiarity mimics in a large part the way that Gen Y and Z communicates with
their friends and family.
The channels also copy the successful format of reality
television, which has become a mainstay of culture in the past decade, with us
getting a voyeuristic view into the lives of burgeoning celebrities in their
early twenties. The personalities
frequently jump to the other one's channel, partially in hopes of piggy-backing
off of the fans of the other channels, but increasingly, because they know that
it will create buzz about their shows in a way that a guest star on a television
series will-Tanya Burr (a beauty guru who recreates the cosmetic likenesses of
celebrities, and even if you’ve never worn makeup in your life you’ll be
amazed) and Tyler Oakley (an American YouTuber who seems to collaborate and flirt with
everyone on the site) did a “What is That” blindfold challenge this past
Friday, and not only was it hilarious (Ms. Burr’s fear of a golfball covered in
honey being particularly funny), it also caused Tanya Burr to be a trending
topic on Twitter on Friday.
The biggest difference between reality television and the
British YouTubers (and YouTubers as a whole), though is that reality television
frequently thrives off of the humiliation and destruction of others, whereas
YouTubers, because of the appeal of watching their channels, really succeed with kindness toward their audience and fans. Watch a show like Real
Housewives or Keeping Up with the
Kardashians, and you’re seeing terrible, oftentimes destructive
behavior-fights between couples, family members, and horrible insults are
thrown around with utter abandon.
The YouTubers, though, don’t thrive on this negativity, which is both
stunning in an era that tends to favor the pessimistic and deeply
hopeful. Yes, these YouTubers on
their vlogs occasionally drink a bit or play a prank, but it’s always in a
good-natured and loving way. Even
the insults are said with admiration and good humor (I’ll include a video of
Daily Grace below dissecting the British YouTubers with her hilarious “I can’t
even” humor). It’s lovely to think
that this, and not people throwing around slaps and drinks, is what younger
people are starting to gear toward.
The other difference between reality television and
YouTubers is the way that YouTubers are masters of the social media world. Not only do the likes of Zoe Sugg, a
kewpie doll-faced beauty maven, have a YouTube-she also have her own public Instagram,
Vine, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr and Pheed accounts for her fans to
follow, pushing her brand into different markets. YouTubers make their money off of video views (yes, you can
make money on YouTube, but you’re going to have to be hitting millions of hits
to make a living off of it, so that funny video of your dog on a trampoline is
probably not a good substitute for a Roth IRA), and so any way that they can get traffic from a
social media site over to YouTube is revenue and an increased way to get
fans. These YouTubers also use
these sites frequently-Marcus Butler, an aspiring actor who posts idiosyncratic
rants about movie theaters or makeup routines, has tweeted ten times in the
past 24 hours, most of them back-and-forth with his fellow YouTubers. These are not the once a week tweeters
(like, say, me) who only tweet when the DSCC gets a strong candidate or when
someone idiotically thinks that Ben Affleck would make a good Batman (I’m still
not convinced that this isn't a horrible joke, and probably won’t believe
until the Oscars nominate it for Visual Effects and I’m forced to watch it for
an OVP project).
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| Finn and Jack Harries |
I’m going to close out with saying that everyone should try
at least one of these YouTube channels, if only to be aware when your friends
from college or younger siblings start going on and on about whether or not
Jack or Finn is the cuter one and you think they’re talking about one Direction,
and also because this is starting to become a genuine mainstay of
entertainment, and I for one don’t like being ignorant about such things (my
most frequent excuse for getting on a smart phone in the middle of a
conversation is when someone brings something up that I don’t know about, and I say
it bugs me not to know stuff).
Where these people head in the future, when their chief fandom starts to
grow up, is anyone’s guess.
Already, some have started to move into more traditional forms of
entertainment-Marcus Butler and Tyler Oakley have been guest judges on a
singing competition for NBC, Joe Sugg recently interviewed Simon Cowell for Skype, so they may be aware that more traditional forms of fame are reliable. However, for now, they seem to have the only hip-and-new thing that the entertainment industry is always striving for clearly in check.
Oh, and as promised, the hilarious Daily Grace, with her
take on the British YouTubers:
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