Emerging from our generation’s popular attraction to digital media and entertainment is a common yet deviant new form of life narrative. Tilted “vlogging” as in video-blogging, it is used by many personalities on the platform YouTube, where they have gained a major following from displaying their personal lives through a camera and sharing it to an online audience. For some of these “YouTube creators,” their viewers can be limited to a specific group of people, due to factors such as language barriers, cultural differences, or even age demographics. However, the more popular creators have built up a wide-spread global audience that has reached influence on a vast number of people, thus allowing for the manifestation of online trends.
Popular creators like Jenna Marbles, Lilly Singh, and Shane Dawson, all with over 11 million subscribers, have been producing content to their channels as a form of narrative for multiple years, and in that time have all evolved and adapted to the “viral trends” gaining agency on the platform. A popular example of one of these trends is commonly known as the “reaction video” in which the person films themselves reacting and giving their own commentary to a popular video or news story. This trend has recently evolved into creators on YouTube reacting to each other or even reacting to other people’s reactions of themselves as done by Lilly Singh.
This brings up the question of whether the content within digital entertainment is still being produced as original work or if these video trends are creating a strict YouTube culture that is preventing the rise of new personalities from gaining audience on the platform (I.e. restricting the voices of unheard narratives). With so many people now using the platform, intending to obtain a widespread following, it leaves difficulty for original content to be created, making me question whether the title “online creator” is deemed appropriate.
Viral trends on the platform have become so significant that in 2011, YouTube itself started creating an annual video production titled “YouTube Rewind”. This video collaboration displays the platform’s most famous creators and features the year’s most recognized trends. While watching the evolution of these videos from year to year, I noticed that this production started as a small scale look back on the most viewed videos from that year, but over time as the position of YouTube personalities has gained a global significance, the video has been deemed more of an “appreciation” for internet culture.
In the article Youth, Trauma and Memorialization, Douglas’ discussion of her interpretation of selfies as a form of witnessing expresses that they’re “now a central method for not only self-representation but also cultural engagement” (7). This idea relates to the emergence of video blogging because not only does it bring to light a new form of life narrative, but with YouTube’s ever-increasing global popularity, can create connections amongst different communities and open up discussions to broaden social lenses.
Works Cited:
Douglas, Kate. Youth, Trauma and Memorialization: The Selfie as Witnessing. Memory Studies. SagePub, 2017, Flinders University, Australia.
Singh, Lilly. IISuperwomanII Reacts to ‘Teens React to IISuperwomanII’ (ft. Parents). YouTube. July 25, 2015.
YouTube Spotlight. YouTube Rewind 2011. YouTube. December 20, 2011.
YouTube Spotlight. YouTube Rewind: The Ultimate 2016 Challenge | #YouTubeRewind. YouTube. December 7, 2016.
