Asians Used to Rule YouTube?
While old traditional media produce tons of television shows and movies, the Asian/American community rarely see any Asian/American representation in main stream media. However, once YouTube.com has launch in 2007, it has become an important platform Asian/American seeking stardom. One channel particularly rose to fame in a short amount of time. With a Youtube channel called, NigaHiga, Ryan Higa has become one of the most prominent Asian American YouTube celebrity, even till today.
Other filmmakers such as Wong Fu production, who produce film during their college year has found that YouTube have a huge impact on how their short films could be shared. With hits such as “Strangers again”, “Yellow Fever”, and “Just A Nice Guy”, Wong Fu production quickly gain fame through the popular video sharing site. Other figure that make their name through YouTube are comedian/filmmaker Kevin Wu aka “KevJumba”, singer David Choi, filmmaker Freddie Wong, and beauty guru Michelle Phan and many more.
To these YouTube celebrity, social media are a great place for them to gain exposure. During that time, the New Media are giving opportunity to people of different race and created a space where they could be seen as themselves and not their race. People would never complain as to why all these famous YouTubers are asian, they are liked simply because they are funny and talented. The beginning of YouTube could be seen as a private sphere for these Asian American to speak out against the lack of representation on mainstream media. But that all started to change when YouTuber could get monetary incentive of the advertisement that is place in front of their video.
Once people realized that they could make money by uploading video to the platform, the increase of creators are noticeable, the number of user and viewer are also increased each day. This is when we see a shift in the presence of Asian YouTuber. New genre such as gaming took Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg aka “PewDiePie” to the top. Vloging also becomes a huge genre with channel such as Shaytards, RomanAtwoodVlogs and CaseyNeistat. Mainstream Musician begins to upload their music video to their own vevo channel gaining millions of subscribers.
From then on YouTube have become a public sphere with a world wide audience waiting to share the next viral video. Political issues are one of the topic that are heavily discussed on the platform with people in the comment section waiting for voice their opinion and argue their point. The issue of race is still a heavily discussed topic within the Asian YouTuber community. Networks such as the YOMYOMF (“You Offended Me You Offended My Family”) was created to make sure that Asian/American still have a place on youtube. Even though YouTube has changed from when Asian used to rule it, we can still see some Asian face on the platform that is still going strong. Such people/channel are iisuperwomenii, blogliates, Anna Akana, Domics, JustKiddingFilms and so much more.
