There’s a new class. Class of YouTube.
Order of Photo: Jake, RJ, Will, Miles, Nicola and Ken
PHOTOGRAPHY: Monty McKinnen
CREATIVE: Stephen Crowe
WORDS: Jake Hook
YouTubers are some of the hardest working creatives out there.
With a combined (some of them have multiple channels) audience of around 1.2 million, or the same audience figures as a regular programme on a smaller UK broadcaster, we meet six out and proud YouTubers, who aren’t leaving their careers in the hands of some out of touch station programmer or network exec. YouTube blogging, or vlogging, if not the future is definitely about the now.
It seems the world and their video cameras are up on YouTube making videos. The promise of book deals, crossing over to mainstream media and millions upon millions of fans, or subs as I’m told they’re sometimes referred to, seems tantalisingly easy to achieve. After all where’s the talent in turning on a camera and talking for 10 minutes about anything and everything?
In this new age who is now the sieve. In days past network execs, focus groups and critics used to be the sieve, weeding out the crap ideas, the weak scripts and the wooden presenters. There was a system, and much like the music industry of past, those charged with commissioning had control over what, when and how you watched it.
Now YouTubers have put the schedule in your hands. You are the sieve. You are now the casting couch. Hundreds of thousands if not millions of vloggers are vying for your attention. However, in this new world, just like the old fame formula, only a few will make it, but for how long is anyone’s guess.
In amongst the cat and the Charlie-bit-my-thumb videos there are some gems, some really interesting commentators. Activists, psychologists in the making, social commentators and those who would find a perfect home on QVC, but just how influential are YouTubers and in a world of constant, unrelenting distraction, does it pay to lay it all out online? When every second of your life is bared for all to see, every detail pored over by thousands of viewers, what more is there to say?
Six YouTubers, Miles (combined channel subscribers: 600,000), Will and RJ (combined: 350,000) Nicola (combined channels: 532,000), Ken (41,640) and Jake (73,400) cram into our studio for this month’s cover, cameras are out as they enter the building. It becomes clear that we’ve become material for their vlogs. No doubt within the coming days videos will surface of how we roll and that’s okay. We’re down with being hip.
After our “Save By The Bell” inspired shoot, we get to it. I’m dying to know the why, the how and the how much?
You can read the full interview in the latest issue subscribe here
RJ On why people are so invested in the lifes of YouTubers
"It’s funny you should mention Friends, because when we’re at a YouTube gathering and I meet parents and the parents are “like why are my kids losing their minds over this?” I’m like, “picture Friends but imagine that Phoebe, Ross, Joey - all of them are all real people and everything you see happening is real and better yet, you can actually directly interact with them on twitter or in the comments on videos. How much more excited would you get to watch each episode?”
JAKE on whether YouTubers will kill YouTube
"I don’t think it’s something we need to worry about it’s more about us being adaptive to anything they change, we need to fall into, which they’ve done many times in the last year without telling us".
NICOLA on "the goal" of being a YouTuber
"When you reach a certain goal you’re always making new goals. I don’t really think there’s an end point. There’s always something new to strive for."
KEN: On oversharing as a YouTuber
"So my penis is somewhere on the Internet."
WILL on Haters commenting on every aspect of life
"I wanted to put blinds and curtains up… my comment section was just filth."
MILES on haters
"F**k em"
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