
Emma Chamberlain dropped out of school and changed the world of online video - bookofjoe
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/09/style/emma-chamberlain-youtube.html
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petercooper
This is a good piece, but I can't see it playing well around here. Modern
youth culture is treated in an as facile and impenetrable manner by today's
adults as our cultures were by our own parents. Yet.. as with any generation,
there's a lot of good and bad to be seen, and this generation will surely give
way to one that's even more intriguing.

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neotokio
Some time ago I always looked down upon such creators, but, with time - what
is the difference between those influencer kids and Hollywood (especially in
times of netflix cut-cost model)? Its still only about content provided, and
content market is biggest ever today. Of course, I doubt that this (being
employed as YT persona) is sustainable on a long run (there is myriad of
reasons, including platform dependence), but girl already has a foothold in
entertainment industry, far easier to start for her now than if sending
screenplays to random producers. My point being, people watching it (or
authors creating it) are not stupid, they are market driven, its almost a
systemic problem that we can create value out of nothing and sustain this
value doing nothing. World continues to spin.

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piokoch
I can't believe my eyes. Am I just too old? Some random persons shows herself
in 5 different shirts or shows herself sitting all day on the balcony? Why is
that interesting and so many people want to watch this?

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majos
My conjecture, for which I offer no proof: people get a lot of utility from
friendship, especially if that friendship is with someone
popular/fun/cool/beautiful. People are also not very good at distinguishing "I
see this person on a screen every day and it's like we're hanging out" from "I
hang out with this person every day".

Way back when this effect played out in the way people connected with the
people on their favorite TV shows. If anything, it's compounded now, since you
can watch these people do normal hangout stuff like "sitting all day on the
balcony". That stuff used to be reserved for friends and family, or at least
acquaintances. So we still attach a special feeling to taking part in it.
Again, this is most true when we see the person as cool.

Might even be further compounded by the rise of actual friendships (i.e., two-
way streets) that mostly play out online -- if many of your interactions with
actual friends occur over Instagram, it's easier to see "I see person x's
Instagram posts" as a kind of friendship.

These are just guesses. I follow some people on YouTube, but they're all very
skilled practitioners of at least one of my hobbies, and I'm not into their
sporadic "my life outside my hobby/vlog" videos.

Also, on reflection, I probably stole most of these ideas from an old essay
David Foster Wallace wrote about television, "E Unibus Pluram" [1].

[1] [https://jsomers.net/DFW_TV.pdf](https://jsomers.net/DFW_TV.pdf)

~~~
number101010
I have noticed this effect in myself while watching streamers on Twitch. You
start to feel like you're sitting on a couch with your buddy playing a game.

~~~
celticmusic
perhaps this is why I've never been able to get into streamers. About the only
online content of that type I've been able to consume is HCBailey's lets play
series, and that's because he does old school FF, et al, and I enjoy the
nostalgia. It's more about the game than the person, although I think he does
a great job.

But otherwise, the entire culture of watching other people online is weird to
me.

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minikites
>Chamberlain edits each video she makes for between 20 and 30 hours, often at
stretches of 10 or 15 hours at a time. Like other professional social media
users, the work has taken a physical toll on her. (She releases roughly one
video a week.) She used to edit at a desktop, but she developed back pain. Now
she works from her bed. She keeps blue mood lighting on, but her vision has
deteriorated.

She works harder than many "adults" I know. Considering the USA's collective
obsession with "hard work" and long hours she should be lauded, but I mostly
see comments denigrating her, probably because there's no stock price at
stake. We only value hard work when somebody else benefits from it.

~~~
dahdum
I don't quite understand how her "physical toll" is any greater than other
computer workers, other than she now does her work in bed. It's certainly a
lighter load than any labor or trade job, so that part of the article falls
flat to me.

She should be lauded for producing something people want to see, with no
external harm, that makes her a living. That's difficult, unstable, and
stressful. It could disappear overnight from a gaffe or any number of other
causes both within and outside her control.

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gravitas
Did everyone forget about JenniCam? The subtitle gore of this NYT post is
myopic.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Ringley](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Ringley)

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saxonslav
This isn't real news. The whole "what if YouTube is a real job?!?!?!?"
Bullshit was hyped up 10 years ago, at the earliest, if I recall correctly,
when pewdiepie was starting to go mainstream and vloggers were getting
traction. It's always difficult work. That's not the purpose of the article
though - it's just trying to shine another light on an old topic to revive it
for the public and make some easy clicks.

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RandomInteger4
As someone currently doing backbreaking work, please fork off with this
bullshirt.

Yeah, I get it, it's mentally tiring and a lot more effort than we see in the
video. Cry me a river. Be glad your everything from the waist down doesn't
feel like it's falling apart without taking an iburprofen because you didn't
just have to clock in a half forking marathon in some cheap sneakers from
walmart.

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DanBC
You can say fuck on HN.

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nihil75
OMG! The internet is so changed I can't even comprehend! My JS won't run, even
backend Python/PHP won't run, And my mouse turned into a moose. Much change.

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drivingmenuts
I made it about 30 seconds hoping for something funny, but hey, if it works
for her, more power to her.

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bookofjoe
[https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/07/emma-...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/07/emma-
chamberlain-and-rise-relatable-influencer/593230/)

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lostmsu
The title was misleading for me. I expected a tech project in the domain of
online video. Can we change it to include "YouTube" or add "influencer"?

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casefields
Mirror: [https://outline.com/ZgEY5K](https://outline.com/ZgEY5K)

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mothsonasloth
[Warning cynical and bitter post below]

Ah, Youtubers. I am not sure what's more tragic about them; making hyperbolic
or fake events to attract viewers.

Or allowing viewers a "no-bars" tour around their personal lives and sometimes
their own heads.

Or is the real tragedy the viewers, who binge vicariously into these empty
vessels. Relishing in the rise, peak and eventual fall from fame of these
online stars, with all the emotions and vulnerability put on for display.

Then for this audience to move onto the next piece of entertainment?

The worst part is the propagation that Youtubing is a legitimite vocation /
lifestyle. It's almost as bad as these other fake lifestyles:

* Travel Bloggers, desecrating and ignoring local customs for the entertainment of readers.

* Forex / Bitcoin millionaires (Buy my eBook).

* The mum that makes £50,000 a week from doing online surveys.

* ASMR escorts

* Instagram influencers, prostituting themselves literally or metaphorically to businesses / media / rich saudi princes

To read more like this, please check out my blog, so I can live out my dream
of being a digital nomad and pose with my expensive Macbook in a third world
country...

tomaytotomato.com

~~~
pjc50
How much of this is just disintermediated "reality" television, though? It
used to be the case that only very few people could become celebrities, and
this was mediated by the existing power brokers. Now people can become a TV
star directly without having to go through the TV. Long hours are still
required, but this is fundamentally a competition: you'll be beaten by someone
putting in more hours. The real curse of full commoditisation of time and
life.

The difficult bit is trying to untangle whether the audience's participation
in it is just entertainment, or takes on unhealthy aspects of boundary
crossing, addiction, or delusions of closeness.

> Forex / Bitcoin millionaires (Buy my eBook).

Popular financial frauds have a centuries-long history.

~~~
casualm
Although I believe that the amount of effort put in will also provide an
amount returned, this isnt always the case, and moreso in this type of
"showbiz" career. It also doesnt help that by lowering the bar in this field,
you yield better results (see early pewdiepie, belle delphine) it provides
better results with a fraction of the effort.

~~~
pjc50
There's definitely a vicious cycle of outrage and controversy inflation that
pushes people to become fascists simply because that's what gets clicks. They
then try to say they didn't mean it, but that has the problem that they sold
their entire channel on the basis of "authenticity".

Similarly the demand for sex work appears insatiable, especially if it can
successfully pretend not to be. Someone mentioned Jennicam, which may have
been broadcasting before Belle Delphine was even born.

Only external braking factors can reduce this. The thing that stops youtubers
from going all the way up to snuff films for the clickbait is the moderation
and risk of getting banned. Something to think about for those that think it
should just be an entirely neutral platform.

Youtube, by paying these people, has been the invisible hand that's called
them into this role.

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AFascistWorld
The wording of the title feels like an ad for youtube or the gig economy, but
besides these winners there are far more losers.

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jadel
Honestly I don't think there is much to be seen. Young people are playing the
hand they have been dealt, it just isn't a very good one.

~~~
brownbat
"Joel got the idea for the song when he had just turned 40. He was in a
recording studio and met a friend of Sean Lennon who had just turned 21 who
said 'It's a terrible time to be 21!' Joel replied to him, 'Yeah, I remember
when I was 21 – I thought it was an awful time and we had Vietnam, and y'know,
drug problems, and civil rights problems and everything seemed to be awful.'
The friend replied, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it's different for you. You were a
kid in the fifties and everybody knows that nothing happened in the fifties.'
Joel retorted, 'Wait a minute, didn't you hear of the Korean War or the Suez
Canal Crisis?' Joel later said those headlines formed the basic framework for
the song."

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dgellow
Which song?

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PhasmaFelis
Sounds like Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire."

