Hernandez 1

Amanda M. Hernandez

Professor Joshua Rust

Senior Research

April 21st, 2017 YouTube Celebrity as Icon Introduction The modern age has seen the introduction of the internet celebrity, and the YouTube celebrity in particular. Daniel Herwitz’s paper identifies categories of the celebrity, star, and icon. I argue that YouTuber is this breakdown is an icon, despite being called a celebrity, because they are both idolized by their audience yet their participation in the medium continually brings them back down to within reach of their audience.

YouTuber A discussion of the YouTube celebrity must start from what it means to be a YouTuber, and defining the unique properties of the medium of YouTube that create the qualities of their

YouTube celebrities. YouTube is user generated content--people are not hired by google to create YouTube videos. “YouTube’s ethos and its ability to create DIY celebrity (Turner 2010) through user-generated content mean its form is highly amenable to such a democratic and egalitarian ideology” (Smith 340). This means that YouTube, because it is generated by its users, is subject to their opinion in shaping the site as a whole. That also means that it is “…a democratization in the means of accumulation for ‘attention capital’” (Smith 339) everyone is now able to gain attention regardless of who they are. YouTube’s “…early success gave rise to a potential idea that YouTube promotes such an idealized democratic ideal of celebrity” (Smith

341). Before you needed a way into the media industry, something that most people can go Hernandez 2 through a life time of auditions and still never get a chance to be judges by the public, now

YouTube allows anyone to try at success.

This means that those that decide to try out being YouTubers are perceived differently than main stream celebrities. “Unlike other celebrity fields which employ a wealth of backstage intermediaries (impresarios, script writers, cultural brokers, PR and other expert advisors),

YouTube celebrity appears (if not actually is) devoid of these” (Smith 340) the content on a

YouTuber’s channel is entirely of their own creation and is all a reflection of them. This becomes important for the vlog based content on a YouTuber’s channel as it means that everything about a YouTuber’s vlog is considered an expression of themselves.

Though not all YouTuber’s are vloggers all YouTuber’s, at some point, create some form of vlog like content, whether in the form of reaction videos, a collaboration1 or different challenge videos. This content is all under the category of a vlog because it is not scripted or acted. The concept of vlogging goes back to romanticism with the “expressive turn… One’s

‘self’ is mined and forged from internal, inward introspection that is then articulated by voice or through some medium” (Smith 342) meaning that it is the act of self-reflection that is done aloud. For YouTubers, this is often done in the form of filming their life with self-commentary.

They get to “… witnesses the ‘self’ as a product of their own creation and an object distinct from themselves in its objectification” (Smith 343) by getting to comment on their lives with an audience. For the YouTuber, unlike the characters in Romantic era fiction, they are talking about themselves in a medium that they know can be continually viewed by everyone forever. What this does to the YouTuber is turn them into a ‘meta-celebrity,” “… part of their celebrity performance is bearing witness to the constructed; self-conscious nature of their own celebrity”

(Smith 348). “…Web 2.0 platform’s and older information technologies as a form of ‘free

1 This term is shortened on YouTube to just collab, so that is how I will refer to it from here on out. Hernandez 3 labour’… exploiting the free time, play and user-engagement involved in the production of content” (Smith 342) The activity of playing and working are combined for those who become

YouTubers, in turn combining the idea of private and public because work, especially in entertainment, is a public matter, it involves participating in society, but play is about your personal recharge with your private preference. This meta-celebrity and free labor principal of

YouTube makes the YouTuber an icon as it creates a star whose medium forces them to reveal their public selves.

Fame Whether a YouTuber is a celebrity, star or, icon they are clearly famous, but it still needs to be shown is what makes a person famous. A taxonomy of fame illuminates the details of what it means to be a celebrity, star, or icon. The distinction need to be made of how to define who does and does not count as famous, and how that fame works. Halberstam identifies three conditions for defining fame. The first condition of fame is that the person is well known, but

“[w]hile one can hardly be famous yet obscure, widespread recognition is only a necessary condition for fame; it isn’t sufficient” (Halberstam 94). Fame is not just about a lot of people knowing you because it is possible that a lot of people know you because you have simply met a lot of people, someone who does a lot of networking is not famous they are just social.

Therefore, the second condition is that you need to be known to more people than you have met or that you simply have a direct connection to (Halberstam 94). Meaning a person whom you say is famous is someone who is talked about by people who have never met them, yet seem to know something about them. The final condition that Halberstam gives is that there needs to be a reason that sparks the act of becoming known (Halberstam 94). This condition is about the reaction you have when told someone is famous, “Famous for what?” (Halberstam 94) the idea Hernandez 4 that Halberstam is trying to assert is that it does not make sense that someone can just suddenly pop-up famous without something spurring their notice to the general public. But he decides to refer to this as a reason for why they are famous even though that over imposes that there is a single moment that can be connected to fame rather than referring to this condition as the trait that made them recognized.

The third condition given for fame forces Halberstam to say that someone can be famous for being famous “…these celebrities are now famous for something, i.e., for being famous”

(Halberstam 94), since there are individuals in the modern age that people cannot think of a good reason for their fame or can name exactly what they did that gave them fame, like Paris Hilton or

Kim Kardashian. But saying there famous for being famous does not provide new information to answer the question famous “for what?” it just repeats the question in a none open ended manner. This comes from the misunderstanding of the “for what” question. Asking “for what” is not about justifying the person’s fame, but pointing out who the person is when you are spreading around knowledge of them so that people can know who you are talking about even without having met. It is also a way to justify why they would want to get to know a person that they will never meet. That makes this third “condition” actually just a consequence of the second condition, not a requirement of its own. You do not have to have a distinguishing trait that caused your fame in order to be famous rather your traits being spread to more people then you know makes them a distinct trait, as there may be other handsome target cashiers but Alex from

Target is the only one people are spreading information about because the trait of being handsome being spread is what made him as good as distinct (Bilton).

Halberstam gives us a quantitative method of defining fame allowing the ability to objectively determine if someone is famous it fails to capture the ethereal property of fame. Hernandez 5

Fame has a glow to it (Herwitz 31) that makes it shine for those who see it. This glow comes from the first and second criteria, but to word it more romantically, since someone famous is someone who has been seen frequently, creating the ability for them to be well known. The image of the celebrity comes with the after image of all the times people have seen them. The repetition of the person’s image creates the after image that makes up fames glow (Herwitz 31).

“Famous people glow… and it’s a glow that comes from the number of times we have seen the images of their faces, now superimposed on the living flesh before us-not a radiation of divinity but the feverish effect of repeated impacts of a face upon our eyes” (Herwitz). Someone famous has a property of glowing because when they are seen you have a large number or recollections to go with them. But this glow can exist in many forms, not always as a halo, with an important contingency of if they have respect to go with that glow.

Appraisal Respect One reason a person can be famous is because they have achieved respect from their peers. There are two distinctions in respect that will be used in this paper both derived from

Darwal’s paper these distinctions are appraisal and recognition respect. As from here on out it will be important to note what kinds of attention the famous person is being subjected.

Recognition respect is simply what you are entitled to just for being what you are “…giving appropriate consideration or recognition to some feature of its object in deliberating about what to do…” (Darwall 38). An example is the descent treatment we are all entitled to as human beings, there is no earning this respect it is simply something you are already entitled to. Fame is not about this kind of respect because as notes everyone gets this form of respect, the type of respect that is used in forms of fame is something that only a few get. Thus, warranting the attention that these few have that others do not. Appraisal respect, however, is that “…the person Hernandez 6 has manifested characteristics which make him deserving of such positive appraisal” (Darwall

38-39). The key points here are that the qualities are “manifested,” therefore, not something you just have but something you have gotten acknowledgment from the group for gaining, and

“deserving” meaning that the trait is assets to earn something positive. Unlike recognition “…it does not essentially involve any conception of how one’s behavior toward that person is appropriately restricted” (Darwall 41), appraisal respect shows that their accomplishments entitle them to respect in terms of a direct requirement of the type of behavior they deserve, humans by being human deserve to not be stepped on as an example, but it does not say exactly how to enact that appraisal respect. For some types of fame are gained through a person’s manifest qualities and attention from the public is what they are owed for that quality. Showing how fame has no definite need that the person earned appraisal respect, as having attention does not mean having manifested anything to deserve respect. As fame has no inclusion of manifesting qualities it only requires that the person have the glow that comes from the after image of being repeatedly mentioned, but as stated this glow is not always a halo.

Fame on it is own does not have the property of appraisal respect because being famous does not necessarily mean doing well, or even being liked, such as for the infamous. Fame does not necessitate any form of success as “[i]n some fields, such as politics, success does as a rule ensure fame, and in other careers fame may be a criterion of success- the notion of ‘stardom’ in film acting comes to mind” (Halberstam 94) showing how some career comes with automatic fame once one is in the career because they require the person to show their image to the populace over and over again. But this fame is not proof that you have respect it simply a field that forces they have been seen a lot by a lot of people they do not know, though it is likely that Hernandez 7 the politician has appraisal respect in order to earn election. This allows fame to be broken down into a taxonomy.

Fame Taxonomy Fame plainly put describes no more than this distinction of being well known, but the term can be dissected to show that how a person is known affects what the after image their glow is casting, or “[t]he nature of the fame a person possesses is determined by that aspect by which he or she is recognized” (Halberstam 94). The types of fame come from the parts of their image that are being repeated, the images that make up the glow that Herwitz describes. The first distinction being between the qualities’ that are personally manifested and the qualities that are derived from other sources. Derived qualities fame is fame that does not come from a person’s own manifested qualities, but rather a connection with something else that has been recognized.

Personal qualities come from an assessment of appraisal respect with the qualities they have personally manifested either breaking them down into meritorious fame and infamy.

Meritorious

For those whose personal quality or their repeated image has earned appraisal respect they are called meritorious respect. This does not just refer to people who are considered ethically good, like the Dali Llama. This form of fame is for all individuals that have performed an action that the public are praise worthy for their accomplishment, earning them appraisal respect. This, therefore, includes Olympic athlete, singers, actors, and a lot of individuals whose fame is not questioned. What is required for meritorious respect is an element of glory.

Halberstam’s piece conflates glory and other kinds of fame: The act of achieving meritorious fame different from having infamy or personal fame. Halberstam claims that “[i]n noting that fame within certain professions (particularly those that enjoy access to the media) provides more Hernandez 8 total fame than does fame within other endeavors, I am keeping within this strictly quantitative reading of fame which is determined independently of the quality of fame involved” (Halberstam

94). But he is not being purely qualitative as he jumps straight from a desire for attention

“Surely, there are many who enjoy, and not a few crave, seeing their name in print, their face in newspapers and on television, and who delight in the knowledge that they are the topic of others' conversations,” to a desire for praise, he sites Hume’s in his assertion that “…in seeking fame, we seek to be praised for qualities we ourselves respect and have little interest in being famous or praised for qualities we do not ourselves esteem” (Halberstam 95), a difference in quality of the attention not amount. Because desire for attention leads to any form of fame, as it is just the desire for the image to repeat, but the desire for praise is the desire for a quality of the images to be deemed as good making it a desire for meritorious fame.

Attention is not necessarily praise, therefore, fame is not always honor or glory.

Halberstam’s directly equate fame and honor, even though we have seen that there is a distinction. He uses Aristotle in the symposium to analyze arguments that reject fame as a value even though he says “…Aristotle is rejecting honor as the ultimate source of happiness…” clearly showing that Aristotle is talking about honor specifically, not fame, and does this same mistake again saying “…even if we allow that honor and fame ought not be anyone’s ultimate goal…” he is not acknowledging the gap between the two (98). Honor and glory cannot just be used as a synonym for fame. Honor is not even meritorious fame because it only needs one to be recognized in a specific matter, say for success in battle, not by a certain quota of people. Zuko2 was not after the approval of a certain number of people to regain his honor, only his father, or as we see in later seasons himself, was what really mattered. Glory on the other hand is meritorious fame as it achieved by obtaining appraisal respect from the group for victory. Glory needs to be

2 Avatar the last air bender Hernandez 9 distinguished from fame because otherwise the distinction is lost between the categories of fame, making someone who is infamous have the same halo as someone with circumstantial fame.

Glory can be shown as meritorious respect by Balazs, who breaks down the meaning of glory stating that it is a quality obtained through victory, the greatest being victory over death.

(Balazs 330) Showing it as a form of appraisal respect for the quality of victory. This does not mean that glory is something that you obtain individually, “…without the recognition of others, our glory or gloriousness is senseless” (Balazs 329) showing glory as a type of fame. As a type of fame glory comes through the recognition of others, in the case of glory it is meritorious fame because it is an acknowledgment of your achievement from society itself as a whole, therefore, there is no need to check the second criteria of fame because society as a whole is definitely more people than they would know. “Glory is not, thus, the antithesis of fame, understood as being talked about in praise; rather, it elevates and makes fame perfect” (Balazs 335) it is a form of perfected fame by Balazs’ account because fame on its own is a necessarily scarce resource, as people will only give so much attention for so long, that requires no notable accomplishment while glory is achieved through victory. As there will always be struggles to overcome it will always be praise worthy to overcome them. This shows how fame, just using the term on its own, only has that beginning part of people noticing you while glory is about achieving appraisal respect by doing something

Infamy

The net category of fame falling under manifest quality based fame is infamy. This is a categorization of fame that is already known to exist. This type of fame comes from personal qualities that do not warrant appraisal respect. Though they are credited for manifesting the personal quality they are not seen as praise worthy for doing so. Like Hitler’s Final Solution, a Hernandez 10 personal quality, as it occurred by Hitler’s efforts, but not one that society has assets it as worthy of respect, quite the opposite. But there is also the category of fame that does not come from manifesting a quality, but is derived from the qualities around them.

Association Fame

There are people, who are famous but not for any accomplishment. Recall, that the definition of fame says that the person simply must be noticed for a reason--not that they have to noticed for good reasons. This can be derived from their association with a person who has already achieved fame “…feeding off various kinds of associations with other established famous persons or institutions” (Halberstam 95). Association fame is such that they need not have accomplished or personally done something in order to be famous someone who they know must have fame that hey then get featured in. This type of fame come when the person’s image has been repeated since they appear in the background someone else’s repeated image.

Beyoncé’s daughter, Blue Ivy, is famous even though she has not done anything because of her association with Beyoncé, therefore Blue Ivy’s fame is made from the number of times she became visible because of the attention that Beyoncé, as well as Jayz command. This category of fame is for those who have fame because of association with a famous person, but there can also be fame from association with other things.

Circumstantial

Separately from association with someone famous, association fame, is they could also be famous for a major event they are associated with. Circumstantial fame refers to those whose image or the idea of them, maybe not even their name, is famous because an event they were at is well known, but that they had nothing personally manifested in relation to that event. The first test tube baby or the first dog in space, since they did nothing to warrant that fame--they did not Hernandez 11 create that event. But if told this was the first dog in space that dog would have that same glow of fame despite playing no role in it happening because you have heard about the event that necessarily includes them when mentioned. These two types of fame are one’s that are unearned there are three different types of earned fame.

Fame in Action This understanding of what fame is only the beginning; what this paper is looking at is what fame becomes when it is more central to a person’s life. This taxonomy serves as a framework to talk about what it means to be a celebrity, star, or icon. How one becomes famous affects their ability to join the other categories, and the way their fame changes across the taxonomy affects their shifts star to celebrity, or icon; or any other the other directions their enacted fame could shift.

Celebrity

A sufficient requirement, not necessary, to be counted as a celebrity is that they are professionally famous. This being a form of glory the task of maintaining public notice. This public notice is something that can be achieved from any of the other forms of fame. Therefore, the celebrity is encompassed by those whose lives center around being famous. Celebrity is a professional field, but it is closer to a company that is functioning to maintain its own economy, with the celebrity as both the manufacturer and the product that is produced for public consumption. “Celebrity is something we know how to understand; it is a system of production with history an economy that, like all markets, expands and contrasts until the mode of production falls into disarray and something else happens” (Herwitz 36-37) showing celebrity as something like an economy or a factory. Trapping the celebrity in vulnerability to the public gaze that created the celebrities fame, because the public, as part of an economy, wishes to get all it Hernandez 12 can out of the celebrity. Celebrity can be derived from any form of fame initially as it only requires that they have an image to sell to the public. Once this initial fame is gained it is more sustainable for the celebrity to be maintained by having meritorious fame due to the appraisal respect of not just having fame but the glory from the victory of becoming famous. The appraisal of the victory as an accomplishment sustaining them between releases of new content. The glory being for having achieved getting the public to not just see them but to wish to buy the product that they are. Their status as celebrity is maintained as long as their fame is maintained therefore allowing the consumable image to be reproduced repeatedly. An actor who is a celebrity is not a

C list actor, but rather one who has achieved a victory by doing a praise worthy performance in a notable role because that is when they public has decided that they like the product and want more, as opposed to when the person decides they want to start their brand. want to consume them.

Stardom

The celebrity must be constantly present, the star must always be out of reach. As for the

Star they are a product of their company, but in a different since then the celebrity, as it is a persona that the company creates that is given to the public, never the star’s private life. The Star is someone above everything, like an idol figure, there created person is fictional, therefore, they are always out of reach. The star is not selling themselves in whole, like the celebrity, but rather they have had a distinct public and private image created with only the public image up for sale.

The star is a fictional character that is always selling the story and enticing the audience with the next chapter. Withholding the private image and only allowing the public fictional image to be consumed. This allows the star to create whatever they want for the audience to consume, and at the same time protecting themselves from the public, since the private image is always out of Hernandez 13 reach while the celebrity is always vulnerable since they are putting themselves up for sale. It is the hidden private image that create the star’s allure. The desire for intimacy is what drives the star’s audience, for the celebrity it is more the need for the empty calories of entertainment. The star offers themselves publicly, but it is never the private image that the fans get hinted at the exist of, through things like press interviews and the like. Making them only shown through the bright light of the silver screen, never in the everyday cast of sunlight. They should be present to the world primarily on-screen, not off. If they became too close the audience would be victorious in seeing the star as a person, quickly consumed by the public the star loses their idol quality and quickly becomes just a one night stand. A star achieves fame while withholding their personal life; idolized due to their audience’s desire for intimacy. The icon walks the line between these two.

Icon

It is important to show that neither the celebrity or the star is sufficient to be an icon.

“…[I]cons differ from mere celebrities by virtue of their star qualities- and from other stars by virtue of the way the public reads their star quality against the narrative of their lives” (Herwitz

27). The icon has the celebrity’s publicity, but the star’s privacy. However, in the icon these two things are brought together to make a third—the icon. The icon has an ethereal status of the star as what they do is credited to a world outside of the everyday, meaning that for the star “[t]wo things are clear: her audience loved her and they loved an artifact floating above, in the media, in their imagination” (Herwitz 26), but the icon is not a star because they are not just a fictional figure floating above they do reveal their private selves. This is what makes the icon’s consumption by the populace much bloodier than that of the celebrity’s (Herwitz 29), as the farther the icon falls the closer the public can be to touching the ethereal realm of the star, Hernandez 14

“through misrecognition ourselves in her we become transported above ourselves” (Herwitz 28).

The icon by being shown to have the type of flaws that everyday people possess elevates those flaws, they now become part of the higher realm, and others who have those flaws, as well, see themselves as becoming closer to that realm. In this system, the celebrity is a mere consumable, but the icon is also adored while doing so, “[t]he life of the icon is an adulated life, but it is also as a mere consumable” (Herwitz 32). The celebrity is someone who has succeeded at being a product, the icon has become an idol that is within reach, both have the quality of being consumable but only one must create more than is possible. “Her sustainability as an icon is always at issue, under threat” (Herwitz 32), as she is treading the same line as the star, and cannot tip over into being entirely consumed. “Except in a Warhol picture, and this was his true genius, to realize that the life of an icon is one that celebrates and sustains the aura of the individual and multiplies her into something that has the permanent capacity to reduce her to self-logo, mere consumer item” (Herwitz 35) the public continues to multiply her star image sustaining her celebrity consumability. “repetition is not only about the conditions of reproducibility… a sense of their inexhaustibility” (Herwitz 36) the icon must not only be able to be reproduced, but must appear as if their reproduction is both as unique as the stars and as infinite as the celebrities. “Warhol’s pictures are about their doubleness: on the one hand effervescent, beautiful, inexhaustible, on the other totally consumable, products among others in the department store of things bought and sold, circulated and collected” (Herwitz 37). The icon is a star who stumbled just enough to fall into public grasp, but recovers enough continue to sustain themselves. The YouTube celebrity does this same recovery, but is rather working to sustain celebrity status. Hernandez 15

YouTube Icon YouTuber as star. “the vlogging culture of YouTube has spawned an economy of stars”

(Smith 347). YouTubers that are not stars are not who this paper is referring to. There are viral videos, but those people are not stars. Though it can vary whether they have derived fame, what is clear is that if they are a one off viral video success then when their referred to their video is what people are talking about not them themselves. Such as with Daniel who may be mentioned a lot in a viral video with “Damn Daniel! Back at it again with the white vans,3” but when quoted these people are not actually talking about Daniel they are talking about the meme. This paper is not talking about that form of viral video YouTube celebrity it is talking about celebrity on

YouTube who have an audience that likes them not just the video content. Others on the platform can be considered stars as they are idolized by their fans, there is a point when channels achieve personal fame and their audience is no longer assessing them because they simply view them as too great for it.

A YouTuber is already seen as an internet celebrity, celebrity is the primary word used to refer to them in Smith’s paper, and that includes in Herwitz’s sense of the word. The vulnerability of the celebrity is seen in that fact “[t]he vlogger exists in an infinite ‘open-event of being’ but once the vlog is recorded, they are consummated and finite” (Smith 343) open to public consumption and media exploitation. They have a constant demand to produce and create content to allow what they make to continue to be consumed.

But what is importantly unique about the icon is that they perform a battel between the two. By definition you are not supposed to be a star and celebrity at the same time, as the star battles to be considered distant while the celebrity fights to be considered intimate. The icon is

3 This is a link to YouTuber’s reacting to “Damn Daniel” that explains the viral video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpPnDhMEV-o Hernandez 16 someone who has managed to pull of the balancing act required to be in between both. The celebrity is merely famous while the star is also hidden behind a veil, but the icon is someone who has pulled back the veil therefore creating a mingling between intimacy and publicity. As explained in the section “YouTuber” “Here democratization is a form of cultural labour dedicated to capital where one’s identity and working life compromise together and could easily lead to empowerment or exploitation” (Smith 342) this is the careful line that the YouTuber treads when joining YouTube as a career. “It is on the one hand an antinomy between freedom to forge a sense of oneself and individuality beyond ascribed (traditional, religious, status, or classed) criteria. While on the other this same freedom is the basis of voluntary servitude to capital, exploitation and domination” (Smith 341) the YouTube is volunteering themselves to the public, but still maintaining their personal freedom that they can do anything with their content that they want. What makes the YouTuber an icon is shown in “[w]hat the celebritisation of vlogging has instituted is how the simple state of ‘being watched’ is indicative of a celebrity culture which elevates ‘ordinariness’ and accentuates the ‘extra-ordinarily’ celebrity” (Smith

341) the YouTuber is presenting supposed to present no more than their ordinary self, but they are still adored by their public while doing so making them not suitable to be called celebrities or star, but icons. Creating the paradox for the YouTuber, “…the digital interface that users experience with online, media technologies is indicative of ideas of infinity, finite, divinity, omnipotence, plentitude and preservation” (Smith 343) there medium, being able to be taken up by anyone, is about regular people yet success in the medium means being seen as more.

The medium, being based on user generated content, favors authenticity based content from regular people, but those that are successful on the platform risk becoming stars from the way their fan base idolizes them, so they must put in effort to continue to bring themselves Hernandez 17 down. They are at risk of becoming stars, but the medium only favors idols. Different then the

Marylyn Monroe’s and the princess Dianna’s of Herwitz’s paper, who are always reaching toward stardom but being pulled down by the public, the YouTube celebrity is one being pushed toward stardom by the media, but having to work to hold their place in consumption as a celebrity. There are types of videos that YouTubers all create that shows their battel between becoming a star and maintaining a sense of still being a celebrity, reaction videos, collabs, and challenge videos while they serve multiple functions for the YouTuber one of those functions is to continually humanize them. To demonstrate this will be a couple of examples of YouTuber’s doing this careful push and pull.

Reaction Videos

For this category, the definition of reaction video includes the act of trying out something for the first time to film their reaction. There are a good number of content creators on the site who create these sorts of videos that are not at the level of the YouTube icon, as the FineBros4 channel shows what are supposed to be average people creating to content. These would be more, so about gaining public agreement for your opinions. But this is also common content for successful individuals on YouTube. Shane Dawson5 is known for his comedy skits featuring fairly dark humor, but he has a good number of videos about him trying things like beauty products, life hacks, melting things in waffle irons, etc. What is more common, however is things like beauty gurus, like Jeffree Star6, doing a video reviewing beauty products. This shows both the high way the YouTuber’s opinions are valued and is a way to bring another part of them down to earth. People think would I try this, or is this good, well if Jeffree Star approves this highlighter than it must be the best highlighter. At the same time the YouTuber does not have

4 https://www.youtube.com/user/TheFineBros 5 https://www.youtube.com/user/shane 6 Beauty guru channel. https://www.youtube.com/user/jeffreestar Hernandez 18 control over the product they are viewing as the point of a reaction video is that they do not know what could happen hey also cannot fully control how they react bringing out a little more of their private selves. Along this same line of reasoning is challenge videos.

Challenges Videos

There is an endless amount of content on YouTube that is referred to as challenge videos.

Many of these work as examples of people just wanting to pry more, so into the YouTuber’s personal life, such as the boyfriend does my makeup challenge. Doing these videos is partially strategic to maintain their fame and to get high views, “Indeed parodied and ironically performed

‘success formulas’ such as ‘The cinnamon Challenge’ actually suggest that the tropes are famous, not the vloggers who perform them” (Smith 341) as for some channels doing a popular challenge is how they gain the viewer ship to become famous. But this view does not factor in that most challenges are created by popular YouTubers on the platform, such as Phil Lester

(Amazing Phil7) with the 7 second challenge, and they are then used by other less famous

YouTubers as a way to gain views from the popularity of the original video. They are a way to get a better sense of the individuality of a YouTuber and to show a YouTube celebrity outside of their comfort zone. As since these challenges have been done by so many others seeing how your favorite YouTuber does it shows more about that YouTuber.

Collabs

Another popular form of content done by most YouTuber, especially professional

YouTubers, is collaborations. Tyler Oakley8 is known for his collabs9 ever since he reached his current level of fame, having at least 90 different collab videos with people from all over the

7 His most famous challenge is the 7 second challenge which I only include because he was often not credited for it in the past. https://www.youtube.com/user/AmazingPhil 8 https://www.youtube.com/user/tyleroakley 9 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL29MYs08TJ6OCjajrY3ct9cTXUp1uGmNY Hernandez 19 world, totally about 20% of his overall content. Collabs main use to the YouTuber themselves is a way to sell themselves to a new audience. But for someone at the level of Tyler Oakley the need is not there to do collabs to gain an audience, rather, collabs serve another function of showing a star at his level outside of their comfort zone. Content of most collabs are done on both YouTubers channels that means that there is a good amount of content that Tyler is a part of that he has little to no power over how it is presented. It is a way to show what he is like when he cannot edit himself or plan what will happen. Why the collab on one hand is a show of force for the YouTuber, being asked to collab is proof of status as successful and it serves as a way to use the force of your audience to promote another channel, it is also a show of vulnerability as you are now subject to react to whatever the other person does without full control over how that is presented. But what shows this relationship between being loved and being brought down most clearly is in the trend of draw my life videos.

Draw My Life

Virtually all YouTubers did this “challenge10” whether at the initial point of the trend, about 4 years ago, or at the point when their channel becomes popular enough at their fans want to see it. These videos usually show the YouTuber using a white board to visual draw the story of their life, therefore giving the audience a chance to know things about them that the usual content of their channel would not include. An example of the draw my life videos from gaming channels, like Markiplier11, their channels content is defined as just them playing games, but as

YouTubers they are still expected to participate in making these sorts of videos as well. Idolizing these YouTubers is why their audience has this hunger for intimacy, to know more about their private life, but unlike the star they are providing the information.

10 There is some criticism that the word challenge has been over used on YouTube to refer to things that are not challenging. 11 https://www.youtube.com/user/markiplierGAME Hernandez 20

Conclusion The modern YouTuber gains fame in a style that seems like a celebrity since their audience is achieved through the appraisal of their content. But due to the nature of the medium despite being called a YouTube celebrity a YouTuber is an icon. Because while they are absolutely beloved by their audience they are a category of fame that is within reach to their audience with the medium itself always demanding them to reveal more of their own personal self. The popularity of the YouTube celebrity, shown actually to be the YouTube icon, shows the modern demand for icons. As a medium that is directly influenced by its fans the continued growth of the platform shows that the public has a demand for icons. YouTube being user generated content the fact that success on YouTube means becoming an icon shows that the demand of the public is for icons. The public has always been trying to pry open a star’s personal life, but in the case of the YouTuber this desire is fulfilled while still leaving the audience hungry for more. But with the icon as a part of YouTube the icon is now puts the icon into a mass production sphere, this puts a risk to the distinction all together. The risk becomes mixing the category of icon and celebrity as the category of icon becomes more normalizes. The status of the icon becomes the standard for celebrity.

Hernandez 21

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