YouTube culture has evolved into a phenomenon that puts content creators on pedestals, so similar to those of famous musicians and actors we all know and love. The personalities on YouTube are broad and among those are comedians, regular families, and travel vloggers that film their experiences; others include gamers and drama channels...the list goes on. The point is that there is now a widespread amount of YouTubers who profit off their thousands or even millions of views on their video content, and all the power to them for finding a way to market themselves in a way that is relatable to their specific audience.
I’m writing this in light of two recent events that happened in the YouTube sphere. Although I really don’t want to get into my personal opinion on the events in this article, one could just observe the backlash or the tremendous amount of support and understanding after the “Death to all Jews” video that PewDiePie (Felix Kjellberg) reacted to. As a consequence to Felix’s actions, his YouTube Red exclusive show was canceled because of the offensive content from that video.
In the past twelve years that YouTube has been up and running, the popularity and progression of reactions to video content have shifted a bit. Subscribers watch these videos of vloggers who have lively personalities and many YouTubers have developed a huge and devoted following on other social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram. It’s interesting to see this dynamic because, especially vloggers and gamers, don’t particularly showcase any talent like famous musicians and actors. It’s interesting that the way these content creators have garnered a following just for following their passions or interests. The near celebrity reaction over these YouTubers has led to even mainstream news outlets reporting on their content and situations.
Many YouTubers are aware of their large following and have used their platform to promote awareness for mental health, LGBT+ positivity, charities, and more. Although they don’t have to, it is inspiring to many young people including myself that even though YouTubers are earning thousands of dollars on any one video that they make, they are still humble or down to earth. Others, I can’t be so sure. I don’t want to particularly single out any YouTuber because the person that I am thinking of googles himself and goes after those who talks bad about them so I will refrain. But I hope I am getting my point across of the primadonna YouTubers creating content because they like the attention and hurting others versus those who are spreading positivity and fun.
Famous YouTubers have generated a new era of content creation and the number of small YouTube channels who create content about their passions are plentiful. The accessibility to YouTube is a great way to express and share thoughts and creativity.
All in all, I do admire the way that YouTubers have been able to garner such support over the years by devoting themselves to creating content that interests them. The way that YouTubers market themselves and create online personas so that they can attract thousands of views and hundreds of thousands of subscribers and essentially work on YouTube as a full-time job is pretty admirable too. It can lead to being a very powerful influence on viewers which can arguably be even more impactful than famous musicians and actors, especially because YouTubers make content so often and communicate with their fans on a personal level on social media.
The following video by YouTuber Jon Cozart aka Paint features a bunch of other content creators collaborating on a song about YouTube culture.
