Is YouTube still the path to traditional stardom?

I was a freshman in high school when I first started to actually watch YouTube videos in my free time.I only started watching YouTube videos because of being a bored teenager who was procrastinating homework. These videos that I personally watched ranged from makeup videos to music videos. I don’t know why YouTube is so addicting but it is, just like the rest of social media. Once you’re on YouTube you’re stuck and sucked into all the different videos. On YouTube theres always something you can watch. Any video you would ever want to see from diys, birthing videos, animal encounters, and ghost encounters. YouTube is one of the biggest social media platforms today. When I first started watching YouTube most people were doing it as a hobby and now today many people have YouTube as their full-times jobs.

YouTube was started on February 14, 2005 by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim who were all employees of Paypal. According to jeffbullas.com, “ YouTube was initially funded by bonuses received following the eBay buy-out of PayPal.The founding trio didn’t come up with the YouTube concept straight away. YouTube began as a video dating site called “Tune In Hook Up,” said to be influenced by HotorNot. The three ultimately decided not to go that route. The inspiration for YouTube as we know it today is credited to two different events. The first was Karim’s inability to find footage online of Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction,” and the second when Hurley and Chen were unable to share video footage of a dinner party due to e-mail attachment limitations.The domain name YouTube.com was registered on Valentine’s Day in 2005. The domain name caused a huge misunderstanding for Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment. Its company domain, “utube.com,” was overwhelmed with traffic from people that tried to spell the video site’s name phonetically.The first video on YouTube is of one of the co-founders Jawed Karim talking about elephant’s trunks titled “Me at the Zoo” which was shot at the San Diego Zoo. This video has received over 4.8 million views.

Google paid $1.65 billion for YouTube in November 2006. Google’s auto speech recognition technology translates 51 languages including captions. The average YouTube user visits the site 14 times per month. Together, we spend 2.9 billion hours on YouTube in a month. 70% of YouTube traffic comes from outside the U.S. YouTube is localized in 25 countries across 43 languages.”

The most watched music video on YouTube is Justin Bieber’s “Baby” which currently has over 1 billion views.

Justin Bieber was born on March 1, 1994 in Canada. “Justin Bieber’s road to fame started towards the end of 2007, when he placed second in a local singing competition covering Ne-Yo’s “So Sick.” His mother Pattie Mallette, then uploaded the video to YouTube for their friends and family to watch and this began Justin’s rise to fame. Pattie Mallette continued to upload various cover songs and performances to Justin’s YouTube channel and his popularity slowly grew, gaining new fans and subscribers by the day. Luckily for Justin Bieber, his videos fell upon the right set of eye by accident. Former So So Def marketing executive Scooter Braun randomly stumbled upon one of Justin’s videos, and was impressed. Braun tracked down Justin’s school, and later got in contact with his mother. Eventually, she agreed to allow Justin to fly to Atlanta to record demos. Bieber was soon signed to Raymond Braun Media Group (RBMG), a joint venture between Braun and Usher. Usher then sought assistance in finding a label home for the artist from then manager Chris Hicks, who helped engineer an audition with his contact L.A. Reid of The Island Def Jam Music Group. Reid signed Bieber to Island Records in October 2008.”

While his career was taking off, propelling him to superstardom, offstage he continued acting like an eighth grader. He was an international icon and a role model, but like most teens, he was still very much figuring things out. Unlike other teens though his crazy teen years were caught on camera and used as for late night talk shows and tabloid covers. We all make mistakes during our teenage years but unfortunately for Justin, millions of people saw his. Today Justin Bieber is one of the most famous celebrities in the world. Justin currently has 67 million Instagram followers and 81 million Twitter followers.

Justin Bieber became famous because of his talent of singing and playing the guitar. Most famous YouTubers today are famous because of their subscribers and views. Not to bash anyone but today YouTube can get you famous for doing pranks or making food and drinks which we all do, so why aren’t we all famous yet? I think it’s because were not all good video editors and most of us normal people are fine without thousands or even millions of people watching our every move.

“Inside YouTube’s fame factory” by Sarah Kessler explains it all. She starts by saying “The rise of YouTube as a distribution channel is creating a new genre of fame that looks less like Tom Cruise than it does John and Hank Green — a shift that baffles just about everybody older than 18, including Hank Green.” Which I can completely agree with not every famous YouTuber is a runway model which is a good changed from the traditional people who would be famous. I think this reflects our current generation and how not everything is based on appearance necessarily. Personality is the key to getting famous on YouTube since your viewers do not personally know you in real life.

Kessler also talks about VidCon which is a convention for YouTubers and their subscribers to come to. Hank Green says “ “I don’t know what I’m doing. I have no idea. I don’t think that any of us know what we’re doing. There is a wave, and it’s made of technological things and sociological things, and it’s individual people making individual decisions about how they’re going to spend their individual time. And we are riding it. And that’s impressive. But it is not as impressive as understanding the wave.” This shows why him and his brother John created VidCon to help executives from entertainment companies, talent agencies and YouTube all come to VidCon to learn what they don't know about how technology and social media are advancing everyday.

However, VidCon is not all about learning you can also meet some of your favorite YouTube celebrities. Kessler says “the word is “YouTubers,” by the way, not “YouTube celebrities” or “YouTube stars” So sorry I mean you can meet some of your favorite YouTubers (thats the official term) and get their autograph and maybe even a picture if you’re lucky and the line isn’t too crowded.

Kessler then goes on to talk about who people are there to see “Some kids are here to see beauty vloggers like Michelle Phan who has 6.7 million subscribers, and who posts tutorials about makeup and life advice on her channel. Another, typically older, crowd prefers the Jon Stewart-esque commentary of Philip DeFranco who has 3.3 million subscribers and the news-based comedy channel he created called SourceFed that has 1.4 million subscribers. Others enjoy following daily updates from a family of six that goes by the name “Shaytards” who have 2.4 million subscribers. The Fine Brothers have 9.3 million subscribers, who mostly direct rather than star in videos on their channel, attract an audience that is half comprised of people older than 25, though you’d never guess it here. Other corners of YouTube, like the extremely popular video game YouTubers, aren’t even represented at VidCon, where teenage girls running after cute boy YouTubers are the most visible force.”

VidCon is just one of many YouTube conventions. There is also BeautyCon which is more for the beauty side of YouTube. There’s Playlist live which is also like VidCon but more of a meet and greet type of affair. Playlist live is an annual convention held in Orlando, Flordia and Washington D.C. Playlist Live was created by AKT Enterprises, which is an Orlando-based entertainment merchandising company that also created District Lines, along with a handful of other brands. BeautyCon is defined as “the world’s premiere fashion, beauty & lifestyle destination for fans, brands, and creators. We talk about what matters; culture, trending news, fashion + beauty, your favorite content creators, and important issues. Our mission is to bring fans, brands and creators together in one place. BeautyCon isn’t just about beauty, BeautyCon is about connecting you to heartbeat of the internet.” BeatyCon travels to New York City, Los Angeles,California and Dallas, Texas.

YouTube has fostered the creation of stars by showing that anyone could become a YouTuber. YouTubers often create a connection with their audience, which also helps with their views and popularity. Vlogging started out as a format with a person talking into a webcam and directly to the viewer, often close to the camera and filming in their bedroom.It created a sense of intimacy, and one that many YouTube stars have tried to maintain even as they got better cameras and editing kit. But it even extends to how many of them address their audiences. Now vlogging on YouTube is the YouTube filming their everyday lives which gives a feeling of personal connection since you are watching their personal lives and seeing what they do outside of the YouTube world.

Theguardian.com says “ To summarise, then: to their fans, YouTube stars feel more authentic and relatable than many traditional celebrities, and that’s something that is intrinsic to the videos they publish. The fact that this may annoy or baffle non-fans — parents in particular — is part of the appeal. It may also be a pitfall in waiting, though, for any YouTubers whose fans perceive them to be drifting away from that authentic, relatable status. Staying relatable when you’re earning a high six- or even seven-figure annual income is one challenge, albeit hardly unfamiliar from the traditional entertainment world. But there are other trends that could change the relationship some YouTubers have with their audiences. Many are working more with brands to sponsor their videos, for example. The risk is less that fans think they’ve sold out — many YouTubers are refreshingly upfront about their reasons for taking the cash — and more that some may end up making bad branded videos that turn their viewers off.” They key to staying successful and keeping your viewers is to stay humble and not change once you start making a 6 figure income from YouTube because remember your viewers are the reason you are successful.

Here in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania we are famous for our cheesesteaks and the liberty bell but in the YouTube world Philadelphia is home to one of the top YouTubers, Jesse Wellens and Jeana Smith, PrankvsPrank, PVP for short they have 9 million subscribers. They also have a vlogging channel called BFvsGF where they record their daily lives this channel has 8 million subscribers. It all started when in 2007, the two began to play pranks on each other, and post videos of them on websites, eventually forming a channel on YouTube. Jesse had filmed Jeana attempting the cinnamon challenge and posted a video on the Internet, starting the serial pranking of each other and posting these videos online.

Here is one prank they did on a fellow YouTuber, Lilly Singh also known on YouTube as Superwoman. Her channel is mostly motivational talks, skits, and challenges with other YouTubers.

As we can see YouTube is not the traditional way to stardom anymore but it has because a different way of getting famous. YouTubers are stars but not the tradional acting stars. But YouTube is also a platform for people to get their message out which then connect the rest of us. Without YouTube I would not be writing this article and many YouTubers lives would be completely different. YouTube has completely changed from when it first started until now and is still continuing to change. YouTube has changed the world.

Citations

Dredge, Stuart. “Why Are YouTube Stars so Popular?” The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 03 Feb. 2016. Web. 05 May 2016.

“50 Awesome YouTube Facts and Figures — Jeffbullas’s Blog.” Jeffbullass Blog 50 Awesome YouTube Facts and Figures Comments. N.p., 09 May 2011. Web. 05 May 2016.

Kessler, Sarah. “Inside YouTube’s Fame Factory.” Fast Company. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 May 2016.