{"id":33806,"date":"2021-04-01T01:31:08","date_gmt":"2021-04-01T06:31:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=33806"},"modified":"2021-04-01T01:31:08","modified_gmt":"2021-04-01T06:31:08","slug":"i-dont-understand-youtube-fame-but-im-drawn-toward-it-anyway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=33806","title":{"rendered":"I don\u2019t understand YouTube fame, but I\u2019m drawn toward it anyway"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Katie and Cullen seemed like perfectly normal people when I met them six years ago.<\/p>\n

They lived in an upscale neighborhood of a Birmingham suburb. She had been a child psychologist. He had been a software developer. But they had both left their secure, high-paying jobs. Why? They had become YouTube stars \u2014 and they were making enough money that they didn\u2019t need jobs anymore.<\/p>\n

I had a freelance photo assignment in March 2015 from a magazine to shoot pictures of the family for a cover story. They had nearly 100,000 subscribers on YouTube at the time and their popularity was rapidly growing. The story was all about their unlikely success.<\/p>\n

They seemed like genuinely nice people. There was no air of pretentiousness about them. They didn\u2019t even really seem that impressed with their sudden fame. I liked them.<\/p>\n

But when I watched their YouTube channel \u2014 and read the comments from their adoring fans \u2014 I was absolutely baffled. I couldn\u2019t figure out why anybody wanted to watch videos about their lives. Today, they have more than half a million subscribers to their channel, so I seem to be the odd one.<\/p>\n

As I keep pondering whether there\u2019s a media opportunity for me \u2014 on YouTube or something similar \u2014 I keep coming back to the puzzling realization that the public wants something which I don\u2019t yet understand.<\/p>\n

And how could I possibly be successful in a medium which I apparently don\u2019t even understand?<\/p>\n

For at least 15 years, I’ve had the peculiar feeling that I needed to publish some sort of video or audio content. I’ve talked about this in the past \u2014 and I even tried some podcasts last year \u2014 but I can’t say I’m any closer to resolving my dilemma.<\/p>\n

My professional experience was in print — the old-fashioned kind which relied on us writing serious stories and making photos and then printing them on dead trees. Newspapers. That’s the industry which is almost dead by now. Although I had some minor interest in stage acting and public speaking when I was a teen-ager, I had never been interested in being a television or film performer.<\/p>\n

As the old saying goes, I have a face for radio and a voice for print. I’d always been happy to write in my old-fashioned, newspaper-influenced style and leave video to others.<\/p>\n

But I can’t escape the feeling that there is a tremendous opportunity for me on YouTube. Worse, I can’t escape the feeling that there’s something important that I need to say to the world — something which I won’t be able to say in any other way. And this baffles me.<\/p>\n

I accumulated the equipment to allow me to make videos. I’ve even experimented with making and posting a few. But what I’ve made hasn’t been very good. I figure I can get better with practice, but I found it hard to convince myself to invest the time in learning how to make better content — and performing better on camera — if I didn’t know what I was trying to achieve.<\/p>\n

(Here’s an example of one of those videos<\/a> I made as an experiment a couple of years ago. After two years, it’s had something like 60 views — and I’m surprised that anybody actually watched it, if I’m being honest.)<\/p>\n

I’m torn about video creation. Those who’ve been reading me for a long time know that I still have my heart set on filmmaking. My one short film — a political satire from about 15 years ago — was far more successful than it had any right to. It got into about 25 film festivals — smaller ones, of course — and it won a few awards. It’s been watched on YouTube more than 300,000 times.<\/p>\n

So should I just try to make traditional films and stop listening to this ridiculous voice telling me to go after a different kind of modern video content? Honestly, that would relieve me, because I’m really uncomfortable trying to be a performer. And I do need to make some traditional-style films anyway. I guess it seems easier simply because I understand<\/em> that format, even if I fear I’m to good enough at it.<\/p>\n

But this peculiar feeling won’t leave me alone. Every time I decide to ignore the gut feeling that I need to pursue it, something draws me back to it. Every couple of months, I start obsessing about it again. I start thinking about how I can plan and produce some content that could actually find an audience — and then I find all sorts of excuses not to do it.<\/p>\n

When I was a teen-ager and even when I was a young adult, nothing scared me. I plunged into whatever crazy idea I had. I was too arrogantly confident to consider that I might not be good at something, so I achieved things that I shouldn’t have been able to achieve.<\/p>\n

Today, I’m far too conscious of my shortcomings. I’m far too apt to doubt myself. And I’m far too willing to let myself off the hook, even when I know I ought to plunge forward and ignore my fears.<\/p>\n

In a perfect world, I would make a nice living writing articles and taking photos and designing pages, just as I did when I was a young newspaper editor. I’m still comfortable with all those skills. In a slightly scarier world, I would write and direct movies which allowed me to say the things I wanted to say, but which allowed me to remain on the other side of the camera.<\/p>\n

But in the scariest version of the world, I would somehow figure out how to produce video content which can attract a substantial audience — with my own performance front and center.<\/p>\n

That is a future which scares me — but it’s one which my gut tells me is what I really ought to do. For this week, though, I’ll find plenty of excuses to keep whistling past this particular graveyard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Katie and Cullen seemed like perfectly normal people when I met them six years ago. They lived in an upscale neighborhood of a Birmingham suburb. She had been a child psychologist. He had been a software developer. But they had both left their secure, high-paying jobs. Why? They had become YouTube stars \u2014 and they Keep Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-33806","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1x9iR-8Ng","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33806"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33806\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33815,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33806\/revisions\/33815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}