Half-Baked

I love YouTube. It is the only ‘social media’ app I will never delete. I watch it while I’m getting ready, on the train, in the bath, on the toilet, cleaning the house. There’s almost always a constant stream of YouTube in my life. My favourite creators are both my friends and producers of my favourite shows. Their videos are episodes I look forward to tuning into after a long day at work. But something feels amiss in recent years. Everything feels a bit too polished.

I have seen this shift in some of my favourite YouTubers. Their content hasn’t changed – they are still making the kinds of videos I love to watch, vlogs and chatty advice videos and the sort – but they have. They talk different, more serious and considered. They use buzzwords and affiliate links. Their backgrounds have become less colourful and more trendy, understated. They use ring lights and talk about buying new camera lenses. All in all, their content feels a lot less playful and a lot more polished. Like someone has given their old videos a good scrub and accidentally washed out the essence.

You could put this down to them simply growing up, but I think it is more than that – there are teenagers on YouTube using tiny microphones and sitting in beige bedrooms. Instead, I think this push towards professionalism and perfection is emblematic of two things: the commercialisation of YouTube and the pressure from society to have a marketable identity.

YouTube used to be a place where people uploaded crappy 240p videos to share with their family. Now it is how many people make their money. It has adverts and analytics, both designed to increase revenue, and it’s rare to watch a video that doesn’t mention a sponsorship or paid partnership. Creators are encouraged to care about their subscriber count and how well their videos rank. They ask their viewers to ‘like, comment, and share’, knowing that their lifestyle depends on it. And they are burnt out. Their videos look better and their clothes and homes are nicer, but their content often lacks soul.

I don’t think the creators can be blamed for this. Even I feel the pressure to adopt a marketable identity, and I am not a public figure. It seems like, more than ever, there is a push to put yourself into a box. You can be anything, but you can’t be everything; you should be one thing, and that one thing should make you money. YouTubers are urged to pick a lane and stay in it. There is no sense of play anymore, no ‘figuring it out as you go’.

It is rare I find a channel that gives me the same feeling as old YouTube does. Fewer people are willing to be messy and authentic on a platform that seems to reward homogeneity, and I don’t blame them. I keep watching though, 1. because it’s fascinating to watch cultural shifts play out in real time through these creators, 2. because I like these people and I respect their efforts, and 3. I am hopeful that one day we will all collectively agree to give less of a shit about algorithms and YouTube will become the fun, chaotic place it once was again.

Feature photo: Christian Wiediger.