The YouTube Revolution Happened While I Was Sleeping
4 min read
These days, I’ve been spending my county retirement immersed in coffee shop culture and wondering a lot about the future. For those that don’t know, I retired from my civil service job in August of this year. At 36 I decided that the rest of my life was going to be dedicated to pursuing all of the things that I placed on the back burner that deserved to be pursued with all of my heart. These are the things that people tell themselves, “someday I’ll do that” and never do. I basically quit my job and told myself that I would never allow myself to say this again. Sounds like an inspired beginning, right? The funny part is that here I am (in the future)…in a coffee shop and wondering if this is what I thought I would “someday” do, but never had the chance to do. Now in some odd way this brings me to YouTube.
It isn’t that I have been wasting my days doing nothing. As a filmmaker, I’m chasing my film career back down and sort of relearning how to market me, my cause and my business instead of slaving away shuffling papers and being yelled at by the patrons of the county because they don’t have medical insurance. Anyway in doing this, I rediscovered YouTube. You see, YouTube is now the king of video media and pushing the latest (sometimes raw), but cutting edge content to the world wide web. This isn’t news. What is surprising is that it has become its own super culture where, in theory, anyone who can manage to go viral can become a superstar.
So we have everything from Numa Numa to Lonelygirl15 and everything in between. Everything in between…that’s me. Me? As I sip on my coffee, I realized that if I wanted to make something of myself that I needed to figure out how to go viral. Hell, if Numa Numa kid can go viral, hell if Star Wars Kid can go viral, then surely I could. I should since I would have much more polished content. You would think…wouldn’t you?
You see, what I quickly discovered after doing tons of grass roots marketing attempts to make a dent in the internet market is that going viral takes a machine. And everything that looked like it “accidentally” went viral didn’t. Numa Numa kid has a publicist, so does Fred. None of these guys are accidents. And if they started out as accidents, they continue to find audiences because there is a team of people behind them keeping them in the public eye. So as I take another sip of coffee why is this disheartening? It’s disheartening because I quit my job for this.
Now please don’t feel sorry for me. I’m making ends me just fine. I am working. I am using my skills. I am getting paid. But getting paid and finding internet notoriety are two different things. And I’m wondering if I really need the notoriety? I personally don’t. But I am feeling like the validation that I was looking for with my work is getting lost in a sea of screaming morons and dancing buffoons that ALL have publicist and agents and etc and I – I don’t. They are thriving and I’m sitting in a coffee shop, sipping on coffee wondering what kind of trick someone is playing on us. Because certainly it was quite a trick to get us all to participate in the possibility that if you upload, they will come, right? But will they? Should they?
I have dabbled in YouTube for years. And somewhere out there someone is taking this seriously and using their marketing machine to back kids in Nebraska that make videos with voice pitch modulation. Back to Fred, he has over one million subscribers to his channel. My biggest video to date boasts a humble 420 views after being online for 4 years. This bothers me. It bothers me because I’m fearing that my newest opus Kill Floor is doomed to suffer the same lack of enthusiasm unless I can figure out how to catch up to the revolution. Unless I can figure out to get more people to watch – I will boast the same meager numbers over and over again.
As I’m sitting here, typing this article, and realizing that my coffee tastes cold. And my thoughts are immersed in the world of YouTube. And I’m wondering about my future. Do I have a shot? Should I have a shot? I don’t know. I won’t go so far as to say that I’m deserving of a shot at internet fame and fortune. Because I’m not. The kid with the mega marketing machine behind him deserves every subscriber. Because he’s figured it out. He’s on the front of the wave as the rest of us watch (sometimes enviously). Maybe I should be ashamed of this, but I’m not. My goal is to learn from this. Even as I sit in this coffee shop – between clueless viewers of YouTube content around me. I feel like Numa Numa is sitting on my right and Fred to my left – and you dear reader get let in on the secret too. Nothing is an accident.
