YouTube was created by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawad Karim in 2005, and since then it has completely changed the internet and videos as we see them. Ever wanted to know how to cut a beer bottle to make a fancy glass quickly and easily? YouTube can help you with that. In fact, as we all know YouTube now can and will help you with a ton of random things you never knew you needed help with or wanted to know about. You can find anything on the video site, and it's created a movement to the tier of Google in revolutionizing our lives with technology.
My personal favorite thing about YouTube is watching vlogs, or video blogs. These existed as a medium of self-expression before YouTube, but YouTube may as well have invented the term with the amount of vloggers it hosts today. Whenever I wish to procrastinate on something or relax, my automatic inclination is to get on YouTube and get a vlog going. I've wasted very valuable homework hours on YouTube videos, as I'm sure several people have over the course of their educations. There's something about vlogs and watching other peoples' lives that could be considered to be very odd and creepy to some, but to people like me, I enjoy stepping into someone else's life for a few minutes. It's nice not to think about my own life, it's nice to laugh and share moments with people in the vlog. My favorite vloggers are a channel with approximately 8,495,515 followers. BF vs GF, also known as Jesse and Jeana (based in Philadelphia, SAN), put out daily vlogs on their YouTube channel that gives viewers a collection of snippets that amount to around eight minutes per video.
The amount of work that goes into making a video and getting it out every single day is monumental, as they are very efficient at editing their videos to make them interesting and fun visually. Jesse even goes so far as to occasionally fly his drone to create amazing birds eye view shots of the places he is vlogging from. They also do collaborative works with other YouTubers. Hear about the snowboarding and skiing through New York City through most recent winter storm, Storm Jonas? That was filmed by Jesse and posted onto CaseyNeistat's YouTube channel. Here's the video just in case you haven't seen it yet: Snowboarding With The NYPD.
Another great YouTube pass-time is watching let's plays. "Let's Plays" are videos where you watch someone playing a game, and you typically see the person and the game screen at the same time, and they commentate upon the game. It's wildly fun with people like Markiplier, PewDiePie (whom is also the most subscribed YouTuber with over forty-one million subscribers), and Rooster Teeth. These videos also help promote not as well known games into becoming very popular, since these more well known people are playing them. Those are my favorites, but everyone has different tastes, and there is a let's player channel out there for everyone. I promise.
How To Tutorials, amazing things. I typically use them most when I want to figure out a new hairstyle that a gif set on Facebook runs too fast for me to understand the steps for. There's also make up tutorials, Photoshop and other soft wares, dance, food, and so much more. Pretty much, if you thought about it, it's most likely already on YouTube, waiting for you to type it in and stumble upon it.
So, as you can see YouTube is superb for a surplus of reasons. It's a true trooper for when you're bored and need anything at all to do that isn't what you should be doing. You can find anything you want to watch almost immediately. Just be wary of the "dark side". YouTube turns nine on February 14th, by they way. So happy early birthday, YouTube!
