THE YOU TUBER PHENOMENON by ANA LOVATO

The Youtuber Phenomenon They call him Pewdiepie. He’s currently one of the most subscribed to people on Youtube, and the most subscribed to Let’s Play channel (a channel devoted to playing video games while someone makes commentary over it). Now, depending on your position, he’s either someone who brightens your day and makes you laugh, or someone who raises your blood pressure from the mere mention of his name. But that’s not what I want to discuss today (like or don’t like whoever you want, but don’t push others around because they disagree with you…that’s just stupid). Really, he’s just one part of a phenomenon that has taken the internet by storm in recent years. They call him Pewdiepie, but they also call him a Youtuber. In the most basic sense of the word, Youtuber is slang for someone who creates videos and then uploads them onto Youtube. But there are certain connotations to the word. Namely, it’s that Youtubers are consistently generating content on a regular basis (I mean most people wouldn’t consider someone who uploads only two or three videos in the span of ten years a Youtuber, let’s put it that way). But what interests me the most is not what these people do, but what they represent. It’s hard to deny that there hasn’t been a major shift in our culture over the last few decades. Just looking back at the 1990s, you can see a world of difference in how we handle ourselves. Technology is leaps and bounds above what I had when I was growing up. It’s amazing, terrifying, and brilliant, all at the same time. One of our major cultural shifts over the years has been in how we determine what is and what isn’t a job, and how we work these jobs. If you look back at the generation before mine, people were often molded into specific roles. The old cliché goes that the husband works and the wife stays at home, which has fast become little more than an old stereotype often played off on in sitcoms and the like. But more so than that, we had the notion that you go to work a nine to five job, go home, eat dinner, sleep, and then do it all over again the next day until the weekend. It was very structured and repetitive like that, which is what a lot of people wanted (and still want). Things are different today. Many people, instead of working one full-time job, take on two part-time ones to make ends meet. The economy has shifted, and our perceptions have shifted along with it. Still others will work out of their homes, freelancing stuff out for people and companies on a job-by-job basis. We can no longer adhere to the nine to five, full-time employment idea because there just simply aren’t enough full-time jobs out there anymore. This is where things like Youtubers come in. They are proof that even as the world economy is in dire straits, there are still ways for people to live a fulfilling and successful life for themselves, doing something that they truly enjoy. They’re not necessarily the easy way, but life isn’t easy right? Life is full of struggle and joy, success and failure, happiness and sadness. Life is a journey, and no journey was ever said to be easy.