Picture yourself back in your freshman year of high school. What did you do on the weekends? Did you sneak into parties, hang out at the mall, or look for trouble? Well, when I was a freshman and a sophomore in high school, I did YouTube videos with my friends.
This is the time when I first really started cosplaying. My friends got into an anime called Hetalia. It is basically about "What if the countries of the world were people?" Each episode is about five minutes where they go through some historical events and other shenanigans. Its a comedy and may not always be suitable for younger viewers.
Anyway, my friends and I started cosplaying some characters from them. Then we eventually started doing skits based on the show. Doing video skits and CMVs (Cosplay Music Videos) for this show was very popular at the time, so we thought we could do it as well.
When we first started, it was a lot of fun. We had a lot of inspiration to do a video each week. Then we did a CMV and it was discovered by some classmates of ours. Needless to say, we were made fun of. It was so bad that one of my friends went home crying. I even said to a kid that I was forced to do this video (which was not true, but I was embarrassed and did not know what else to say). We could have stopped doing them right there.
However, we did not. We made a new channel, and had a new name: Random Thoughts Productions. the quality of our videos improved. We stopped doing video skits each week and took more time with the videos. We did skits now and again, but they were more elaborate.
When we went to conventions, people recognized us! We even did a game show panel once. At the height of our popularity we had over 2,000 subscribers. It may not seem like a lot, but for a focused market, that is pretty big. Our most popular CMV, Thriller, has over 25,000 views.
Over time, we just fell out of the fandom. We moved on to other things, and we ran out of motivation to do videos. We are all still close though.
I often look back at these times, and I have only fond memories of it. There was a time where we were "celebrities" at conventions, and it kept us out of trouble. I was shy and rarely talked about our channel to other people that had no idea what Hetalia is. I now embrace my past, and I miss that time. The channel is still up, but if you do not know what Hetalia is, I am not sure how much enjoyment you will get out of the videos except seeing young Ashley butcher a English accent.
When I did YouTube will forever be one of my favorite memories growing up, and my friends are a big reason for that. I love them to death, and I will never regret doing those videos.
