Amber Frank
Staff Writer
The world of YouTube is no longer just a place where you search for videos of cute kittens or Charlie biting his brother’s finger. It has blossomed into a community of content makers and viewers.
Videos on YouTube span from editorials from beauty gurus, commentaries from “vloggers” (video bloggers), comedy sketches and much more.
“YouTubers” (what these video producers have been dubbed) create videos for their subscribers once a week, in some cases every day. Most YouTubers are everyday people who simply started talking to a camera, never realizing that they would connect with people from all over the world. They never predicted that this would turn into a job or that they would accumulate millions of subscribers.
Felix Arvid, better known as “PewDiePie” in the YouTube world, has 31,789,794 subscribers with his channel growing every minute. He is a Swedish video game commentator whose channel grew from 3.5 million subscribers to 19 million in 2013. Jenna Mourey (aka Jenna Marbles) is another popular YouTuber who has a jaw-dropping amount of subscribers as well. Her 14,175,686 subscribers tune in every Wednesday to get in a laugh during a stress-filled week. That’s the beauty of this community. These people on the screen are just like us and are easy to connect to. They share their stories and life with all of us by videotaping their day, doing fun challenges and tags or just venting to the viewers. They are just being real with their subscribers that range from all ages and people appreciate that.
Another interesting aspect of this world is that the creators connect with one another due to being a part of YouTube. They make friends from across the country, even the world, through the internet. A popular collaborative channel on YouTube, Our2ndLife, includes six men ranging from 16 to 22 who met each other through YouTube and have built an incredibly successful channel. They have become brothers because of this community and it’s crazy to think it is all because of a website.
Another huge event that came from this society is Vidcon. This occasion includes meet-and-greets and panels covering various topics. It is mostly about the opportunity for viewers to meet the people they watch through a computer screen daily. In June of 2014, they held a three day convention in Anaheim, California where over 18,000 people attended to meet all these youtubers even if it was for a total of five seconds. This was their fifth annual convention and it has grown immensely over the years.
YouTube is on top right now and is only getting more successful. They took over the Teen Choice Awards this year winning in many categories. They are aslo beginning to produce miniseries, similar to T.V. shows and content that the world is starting to fall in love with. People even question that it is becoming bigger than television! Could that be possible? We’ll have to wait and find out what the future of the YouTube community holds.
