Today we live in a world defined by the “Internet celebrity” contrary to the decades of well-established actors that graced the silver screen and brought us outside of our contemporary reality and into a world of endless possibility. These celebrities aren’t portraying superheroes conquering evil or passionate lovers separated by the forces that be, rather the content that they give us is purely a genuine portrayal of their life. What I’m describing is the “Vlogger” or someone who creates video blogs, which is a step forward in media with the help of the digital age from the once prominent and regionally distributed written blogs. My subject of observation is YouTuber Casey Neistat, New York filmmaker and Vlogger since 2015. As I will go on to explain, the creation of the YouTube Vlogger teaches us that any individual has the ability to use this platform to produce content about their life in a fashion more intimate than older forms of digital media. This content connects with a large viewership due to its genuine representation of instances experienced within our own lives and the relationship developed by the viewer through this platform enables Vloggers to become societal influencers redefining our contemporary culture.
What is unique about the Vlogging experience is that it wasn’t made available to the public until the advent of the Digital Age and the creation of websites like YouTube and Vimeo. Sure, people had home videos of their family trips or childhood birthdays but those videos spend a majority of their lives on the shelves in basements collecting dust instead of views. This is an entirely new form of self-expression that enables amateur filmmakers to become documentarians presenting their lives and the world around them through these digital platforms. Casey Neistat started out as an amateur filmmaker and found success with his down-to-Earth personality that attracted millions of YouTube fanatics.
The two videos in particular I want to break down depict one of the most intimate experiences two individuals can share in this life, the highs and lows of a romantic relationship. In the first video, titled “My Girlfriend Candice”, Casey narrates the story of their past relationship while we follow him as he is working to re-ignite the spark that they once cherished prior to their most recent breakup. From the outset until the end you, the viewer, can feel very connected with the story because he displays every facet of them getting back together, from the “I miss you texts” to a drunken sexual encounter and finally the grand gesture that puts him back into a quasi-relationship with her. They cap the video off by making a big trip down to Florida together and the viewer can then leave on a good note because they are content with their vicarious relationship with Casey and Candice reassuring them these things can work and that I’m not alone in my struggles.
Fast-forward to three years later and they are both in the Vlog titled “She’s Not My Girlfriend Anymore” recapping the video of how they got back together and the RV trip. In this video it’s as if we’re 10 seasons into our favorite show and the main characters are now reminiscing about how far they’ve come. He begins by pointing up to the top right of the screen adding a link for any new viewers that will take them back to the video of their reunion getting back together giving new fans or people who happened to find themselves on the page the ability to relive all of their experiences and be caught up within 10 minutes. The short duration of these videos and the unique content that it provides is an attractive feature of documentary or Vlogging in the digital age because we now have access to so much entertainment with the click of a mouse.
This is a screenshot I took of the comments section of the second video, in which an individual asks why his wife opens up a bag of cookies a certain way portraying the intimacy of Casey’s viewership. This is another aspect of the digital platform of YouTube that allows their audience to actually interact with their favorite personalities and an example of the vested personal interest that viewers develop for these Vloggers as they start to think of them in the sense of a friend, someone they can reach out to because they feel as if they have developed a strong relationship with them.
With over nine million subscribers, Casey Neistat obviously has an influence over a wide variety of viewers depicting a wide array of different backgrounds and Casey knows this. We’ve discussed the ability for technology to influence the way we interact but what about its ability to influence our actions? Casey made a video ahead of the 2016 Presidential Election in which he talks about who he is voting for and why and about halfway through the video he says, “The top 20 YouTubers reach over a billion views every single week, every seven days. We have the power to activate a demographic, an electorate, that isn’t typically very active. That is young people” (Casey Neistat). It isn’t an unknown secret that we have very poor turnout in our state and nationwide elections, actually one of the lowest out of all developed democratic nations, and I commend Casey for using his platform to convey the importance of performing our civic duty. We are living in a society that is becoming more and more overwhelmed with the consumer culture and although he isn’t innocent from using product placement or doing what marketers would consider promotional content he does try to engage the morality and aspirations of his viewership by using his videos to promote action and personal fulfillment.
In comparison to the structure of something like CNN or a show on ABC or a major motion picture where everything is set up to be as perfect as possible, the life of Vloggers is actually kind of reassuring in some ways because it shows imperfection that we all feel at points within our own lives and without these platforms individuals would still feel the need to live up to the impossible depictions of our superstar celebrities. They are the counter culture celebrity that listens to their viewership and interacts with them through messaging or as in many of Casey’s videos featuring them in his weekly Vlogs. For his viewers, Casey fills many emotional pitfalls because his videos make him a mentor and a friend for those who watch.
