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Phase 3

Phase 3

Ming Gui Xiao

11/25/22

                                                Is being a youtuber a sustainable Job?

As technology in terms of communications has evolved, people who have read newspapers now can hear the news on radios, then they can see what goes in the world in the television; there used to be a cliché where kids would fight over the remote in order to switch to their favorite show before time runs out but in today’s time, they can view it anytime thanks to archives created on the internet. Another TV trope that that was always pondering in my head when I was a kid was concept of how people making an appearance on Television would be a dream come true, and it wasn’t until a few years later when I was in my preteens, that the same trope had manifested a billion times over when people started to film themselves on a video streaming platform called YouTube. From the time when I was 8 to the age of 14, I have noticed how the quality of a YouTube video went from a random low-quality recording of someone doing something interesting to a professionally structured video produced in a same quality of the 10-o clock news but with an indie twist. Because of this shift in quality, I ask myself, “Could producing videos on the internet actually be sustainable?”.

Upon speculation, most of the media today is explained in a narrative like structure. The author, Cynthia L. Selfie, in her informative essay, “What are Literacy Narratives?” published in 2013, address the topic on the various ways in which Literary Narratives can be applied. She supports this claim using research of the social, cultural, ideological, and psychological connection between the author and their narratives. Selfie’s purpose is to expand the factors that her audience must consider when they write their narratives. She adopts an informative tone for her audience: the readers of “What are Literacy Narratives?”, rookie authors, and anyone who wants to learn storytelling. Here, Selfie wants her audience to view the pages that define a Literacy Narrative instead judging it by the cover. What makes a YouTube Video special is that the viewer can visually see the author’s creativity as the video is documented as if it were a narrative. Selfie lists factors that the author must consider when expressing their narratives. “As people tell literacy stories, they also formulate their own sense of self: with each telling, this self-changes slightly according to a constellation of social and cultural factors, personal aspirations and understandings, the audiences being addressed, and the rhetorical circumstances of the telling itself, among many other factors” (Selfie, 1). When a story is told, the author dedicates apart of themselves in the story, sometimes there are outside factors can affect the authors themselves which can potentially affect the narrative. When viewing YouTube videos, its important to notice the detail (style of editing, jokes, captions, etc.) because one can assume that these details can foil the creativity of the creator in their videos and just as how a book can grab the attention of readers because its story, YouTube videos attract many viewers of the internet because a YouTube video can be seen as an animated story which can make the creators produce more videos to further express their creativity to their audience.

Usually, what influence’s part time creators to pursue YouTube as a fulltime is the chase for success: to earn money as well as to earn a reputation on the platform.  A blogger, Braveen Kumar, in her informative article, “How to Make Money on YouTube in 2022: 7 Simple Ways”, published in 2022, addresses the various ways on how the creators can profit from the platform where they produce videos. She supports her claim using research from YouTube’s monetization programs and policies as well as the business practices the most creators follow. Kumar’s purpose is to explain to her audience the various ways on how creators can monetize their creativity. She adopts an informative tone to her audience: First time and Veteran Youtubers who are exploring on ways on how they can make money from being video bloggers. Here Kumar argues that Youtubers should not create videos for the sole purpose of money. Usually, the best way for a creator’s career to be financially successful while retaining a creative passion is to monetize their creativity in terms of fanservice. While listing one of the ways on how Youtubers can make money, Kumar comments on how it is a very good chemistry between creativity and monetization. “Merchandise increases your exposure by putting your online brand and personality out into the offline world and deepens the relationship between you and your fans as they literally buy into what you’re doing.” (Kumar, para 2) While youtubers can visually express their ideas in the form of videos, by collaborating with a manufacturing company, they can transfer their creations as a physical product for purchase like an action figure from a cartoon. As a Youtuber’s career progresses, the start to generate not only a feasible revenue but also some fame and this is where one can experience the hard part in the career of content creating. For an average Youtuber, the point where they become financially successful and gain some notoriety, is where they are vulnerable to burnout due to the large amount of effort that they put on themselves to get where they are at now and its continuation. A scholarly reporter, Daniel Smith, in his informative essay, “The Tragedy of Self in Digitized Popular Culture: The Existential Consequences of Digital Fame On YouTube”, published in 2017, addresses to readers that pursuing a career as a video blogger on the platform can be very harmful to one’s self as they pursue deeper into their careers. He supports this claim by using research about the experiences of 3 YouTube creators from the UK who are labeled as “micro celebrities”. Smith’s purpose is to emphasize to his audience that the creators who went from a person with a passionate idea to gaining a celebrity status can be very stressing. He uses an informative tone for his audience: the readers of “The Tragedy of Self in Digitized Popular Culture: The Existential Consequences of Digital Fame On YouTube”, Youtubers who are deep in their careers and those who are establishing it. Here, Smith argues that the Youtubers who gain a celebrity status often focus ways to attract followers and commerce, putting the creativity that got them up so high in the first place- into the shadows. Compared to how Kumar’s ways of making money appears on a individual scale, Smith’s documentation on how these 3 content creators make money appears more complex. “The three vloggers and their individual vlogs are chosen as they demonstrate a transition in the in YouTube as a media platform. They are early users of YouTube who have ‘found fame’ in the initial stages from user generated sharing and community building. At the time of analysis, they were experiencing its move toward a corporate medium which has formalized previously chaotic user-practice” (Smith, 24). Due to their notoriety, these 3 youtubers are now entering the corporate side of YouTube to produce shows in the same style of shows in television but their creativity is more utilized to gain the approval of the suits for money than the fans for passion. In the case for these types of You Tubers, most fans say that their golden age was when they were posting videos for fun while setting up merchandise and donation pages as a way to rise up in their careers but when they start to focus their intentions on money and fame, that’s when their fans start to lose faith in them as they start to lose their identity from before. To make Vlogging sustainable, one needs discipling in balancing out fame and money while trying to keep Creativity and Passion limitless.

Looking a YouTube as a kid, I see all these rising Vloggers starting their careers and I wonder what will happen to them as time passes. I recall when they first began, as timid, blissful idiots just having fun on what they were doing. Then they stamp donations page or Merch at the end of the video- I didn’t really think it was anything back then. As I got older, I see them being burnout for being on the platform for too long: some start has declines in mental health so that they retire to recover, some are only popular as they are forced to model their creativity to appease their fanbase for views. I think that Content Creating is only sustainable if the creator never fully hangs up the towel. Some creators etch their legacies on the site while other retired creators sometimes return after a much-needed hiatus to create in the same manner as when they first started.

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