Hi! Welcome Back To Big Sigh.
You thought I forgot about you this week, didn’t you?! I was simply cranking out even MORE content than usual and it’s all EXTREMELY MEDIOCRE and I will REGRET IT but I DID IT. All for you. Let me start from the beginning.
I was born in 1995 and was one of the first generations to grow up online (ok 1997 is technically the cutoff point for digital natives but who’s counting). For as long as I can remember the internet has been a part of my life, and more importantly a part of my free time. As parents everywhere (including my own) learned how to navigate their children's obsession with surfing the net, it often became contextualized as a reward. Instead of an hour of TV time after homework you’d get an hour of computer time. The parents of a friend of mine even created fake money out of printer paper, each bill and coin corresponding to a certain amount of time to be spent as she wished. I remember going over to her house and asking to watch Skye Sweetnam music videos, she ran into the kitchen, took an envelope off the fridge and peered inside
“I only have 20 minutes left so we can only watch a few.”
How could we not be intrigued? There was so much to explore. It started off with games where you could stack sandwiches, command armies, or design footwear. Then videos, some of the first meme content out there. Numa Numa, Where the Hell is Matt, The Badger Song, anyone?! And since our malleable brains were churning out max dopamine during our “computer time” fix the experience was that much better.
Later in adolescence, beauty YouTube was the pinnacle. I’d watch hours of Juicystar07, a sixteen year old girl from Alabama with silky brown hair who had procured every Mac lipgloss on the market. She’d film tutorials such as “The Perfect Smokey Eye” and “How To Wear A Scarf”. Hauls, where she’d delicately hold up each sequined item of recently purchased Forever 21 clothing as if they were stitched with gold and explain how she’d style them to her high school homecoming game. Sometimes (if I was lucky) she’d even film a room tour where she would glide her perfectly manicured hand over rows and rows of colored bangles, shimmery eyeshadows, and scented candles.
In a lot of ways I consider these beauty vloggers to be the OG influencers, because where they led I most certainly followed. I saved up my allowance to buy the exact makeup brushes and palettes she recommended and spent hours learning how to cut my crease. I started bringing a backpack and a smaller shoulder bag to school because she recommended it, although hers was a Louis Vuitton Speedy and mine was a printed tote from Dylan's Candy Bar. I would drag my mom and grandma to the sixth circle of hell (the Syracuse mall) to fawn over those same sequined tank tops. I also recorded myself constantly on our family camera. I never posted on YouTube but I pretended I was a vlogger myself and all of that footage, to this day, lives in our cloud.
Maybe it’s because dopamine also enhances reward-related memories but it is INSANE to me how much I remember about these beauty vloggers. I still remember the exact perfume Juicystar07 wore in 2006 (Pink Sugar, duh). I crawled out of my YouTube hole around junior year of high school to focus on more important things like drinking Four Lokos in the parking garage behind the boba place. However, when quarantine hit I jumped right back in and BOY has the landscape changed. Most noticeably, there are so many people uploading content to YouTube now. In fact, 75% of children ages 6-17 want to be YouTubers/Vloggers when they grow up.
What always drew me to YouTube was the authenticity of it all. It’s a platform where people are prided for being relatable. Most kids who make it big start in their bedrooms using their families cameras and in essence must become their own production studio. They are the talent but they also learn how to use video editing software, Photoshop to create their thumbnails, PR if they're looking to get their content sponsored, social media marketing to promote themselves, the list goes on. Take Emma Chamberlain, an adorable 19 year old girl who has been making vlogs for a few years and now lives in a $4 million home in LA where she rates burritos, styles mom jeans, and attends Paris fashion week for Louis Vuitton, typical 19 year old stuff. It may sound silly to other generations but I just can’t hate on her for it! She worked hard, and she’s a hell of a lot more entertaining than a manufactured reality star when I’m tired and want to watch something ~feel good~.
ANYWAY, all of this got me thinking. What if I had started uploading all those years ago? Would I be living in West Hollywood making thousands of dollars in ad revenue on a video where I spend the majority of the time talking to myself in bed? It’s certainly possible! I was charismatic and scrappy with technology! I probably could have figured it all out. So this week I started pouring over the old footage and I decided, in one last ditch effort to make it big/honor my inner child I’d become a vlogger for a week. I’d film it all on my phone and put it together on iMovie. And it would be an experiment of sorts, to see what it’s really like to put your life on camera. I found it difficult, because in order to be a great vlogger you have to assume that people give a shit about the intricacies of your incredibly average life. But editing on the other hand, was fun. If you have a toenails worth of comedic timing editing is awesome. Anyhow, without further ado. Welcome to my channel!!!! Like 🦋❣️💟comment🍊🧚♀️🐡subscribe✌️🍒😇🛵