Question 6 - Identify a form of digital culture (e.g. leet speak, memes, Youtube unboxing videos, glitch art, cyberbullying) that also has a distinct local or regional characteristic. Trace its history and using notable artefact(s), explain how this digital culture may be of significance to designers.
Aloha! I hope your day has been as beautiful as you are and.. ok I’m just gonna to jump right into it.
So, there’s a term for people who make videos on Youtube and it’s called, YouTubers! And yes, that is the topic of discussion for today.
You might be wondering, what are YouTubers? But the chances are low because almost everyone who is familiar with YouTube knows what YouTubers are. Well anyway, If you type ‘YouTubers’ in the search bar of google images, this is the first image that appears.
You may or may not recognise these iconic faces but they are YouTubers. First of all, ‘YouTuber’ is not even a word that is present in dictionaries. The fact that it is known globally says a lot about their importance and sensitivity in the YouTube community. YouTubers are not only content creators on Youtube, they also create communities. Most of them do not aim to make fans and become celebrities but instead, they see their viewers as a broader community of people with similar ideas and interests and values. They try to connect with them as if the YouTuber themselves, are part of the community. Just like Jim Chapman (a YouTuber) put it, “The moment I start getting too big for my boots and begin separating myself from my audience will be the moment they feel alienated. I think that is the uniqueness and the beauty of my relationship with my audience: I wasn’t cast by a big production company; they picked me.” (Siede, 2014).
So yeah, basically they are the people who make videos on YouTube. YouTubers make all sorts of videos that the viewers find entertaining such as gaming videos, which comes second on the most viewed category with 14.8% of all uploads to YouTube be video games related (Patel, 2014). One of the most popular gaming channel is called ‘PewDiePie’. They are also known as the channel who surpassed YouTube’s own channel to become the most subscribed channel on YouTube with over 41 million subscribers.
With gaming being known as a male-dominating category on YouTube, a female-dominating category would be Beauty such as makeup, nail art, workouts etc.(Blattberg, 2015). One of the most popular YouTube channel on How To’s (tutorials or DIYs) and Beauty is Yuya. Although I can’t quite understand her because she speaks Spanish, but she has almost 13 million subscribers so that definitely put her name in lights. And also she is gorgeous.
Coming in second, but is still known as one of the most influential women in the world, especially in Britain, is Zoella (Gavin, 2015). Her subscribers are reaching 10 million in no time.
There are also many many other YouTubers on this endless list but i’m not going to go into the details, it’ll take forever. Some other popular categories on YouTube are Prank videos, Music Covers, Entertainment and celebrities, Rants, Vlogging and so on.
Vlogging is what I’ll be focusing on but this blog post is getting too long. I’ll end it here for now, goodbye my friends.
References:
Blattberg, E. (2015) “The demographics of YouTube, in 5 charts”. Available at: http://digiday.com/platforms/demographics-youtube-5-charts/ (Accessed: 10 January 2016).
Gavin, G. (2015) “Zoella is one of the most influential women in the world”. Available at: http://www.spin1038.com/page/1.32.68/19558/1/ (Accessed: 10 January 2016).
Patel, S. (2014) “Why Video Games and YouTube Are a Perfect Match”. Available at: http://www.thevideoink.com/features/special-issue-tag/video-games-youtube-perfect-match/#.VpJvvZN95E4 (Accessed: 10 January 2016).
Siede, C. (2014) ”YouTube stars create communities, not fans”. Available at: http://www.avclub.com/article/youtube-stars-create-communities-not-fans-205939 (Accessed: 6 January 2016).
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