Alfie, Marcus, Zoe, Sam, Jim, Joe & Jack – All the best YouTubers…
Two of the best guys on YouTube…
I have lately been developing a new obsession and a surprising one at that.
For the past couple of days, after stumbling upon a video on YouTube by MarcusButlerTV, I have become aware of a select group of avid bloggers, or video-bloggers (apparently called volgs) who are young, British and in all possible sense of the word, ‘normal’. They post quite often to their various channels about many topics, mostly comedy, quite often personal, that, given the normal tide of vacuous, screaming and attention-grabbing tide of people there is found on YouTube, this is very refreshing. It is a nice surprise to watch and listen to normal, grounded young guys and girls talk about their normal and, in a quintessential British way, funny lives.
For so long now, us the viewing public have been continually bombarded, both on the inter-web and in telly-land, with outrageous and wildly talentless idiots that are then thrust down our throats in many different ways as there is. We have shows like Big Brother, X Factor, TOWIE, Made In Chelsea, Geordie Shores et al. Shows that like to put on all the self-same preening, stupid, wannabe-famous twits that, if they happened to walk into your local pub and behave as they do on the shows they ‘star’ in, they would quickly find themselves chased out of the pub and then out-of-town and asked never to show their stupid faces again. These shows send up and then make starts of some really idiotic and crap talent in the UK today that it has come to a stage where even though we know these people are being throughly laughed at, and not necessarily at their expense, we then make them the ‘role-models‘ for our children. These ‘reality‘ stars fast become the style icons of the masses, their words of useless wisdom become catchphrases, and drunken antics which become lauded by all the gossip selling press.
This is not what I want for my niece and nephew to understand of the world around them by the paragons of stupidity portrayed through today’s media.
That is why I am extremely heartened that there is a fight back happening, and the fight is being fought in the most insidious place, on YouTube.
For the past couple of years it seems, there have been a growing group of bloggers who have taken to using YouTube to record daily and weekly videos. These bloggers, or vloggers, are young, British, and well-rounded individuals that using the social power that can only come from YouTube, to show us that the rise of the reality celebrity is coming to an end. These guys draw a combined weekly audience that are just touching on, if not exceeding, what the current series of X Factor brings in. They vlog about their everyday lives, make social comments on items and issues that are important to themselves and their peers, and do it with such ‘wholesome‘ grounding it is as close to a ‘breath of fresh air‘ I have experienced on the internet that I think I will ever see.
Don’t just take my word for it, go and see for yourselves. I am certain you will experience that same warm and delighted glow in your heart that I did and will be just as relived that the next generation is not so socially doomed as it may once have appeared.
