YouTube: The New Window Shopping

(photo source: <https://www.youtube.com/yt/creators/>)

Penny Lai

      As social media becomes the most popularized form of communication and even entertainment, more and more Internet personalities have popped up. A YouTuber is a person who creates and distributes contents on the free video-sharing website, YouTube. A YouTuber can make money through partnering with the website and shares the revenue with YouTube by playing commercials embedded in his or her videos. If the YouTuber has certain number of subscribers and the viewer counts are stable, the revenue can be very impressive. Now in Taiwan, being a YouTuber is one of the top career choices for the young generation. Why are YouTubers so fascinating? What are the factors that make Internet personalities seems so glamorous?

       As viewers scroll through channels on YouTube, they can see various kinds of channels, from daily vloggers to educational channels. However, most of them have a similar feature—the flawless lifestyle they present to their audiences. This phenomenon occurs mostly among vlogging channels. Vloggers are creators who record pieces of moments in their daily life and compose them into videos as their diaries. It is easy for viewers to get tired of the vloggers’ content if they live a normal everyday-life just as everyone else. Therefore creators have to up their games constantly, either with exciting activities or expensive belongings.

     It seems that the more a vlogger “flexes,” the more subscribers he gets. Expensive clothing, first-class traveling and mansions are the necessities for a popular content. What’s more, the creators often build the image that they are only ordinary people who work hard on their dreams so they get to have the expensive things. It is like the new window shopping for the young generation: looking at things one does not have but covet and dreaming about living a “perfect life” one day. This scenario could mean more than mere materialism; it is more like a modern version of the “American Dream.” Everyone wishes for an expensive life and assumes that luxurious things amount to success. Consequently, social media users, out of envy, tend to follow Internet personalities that seem to have a perfect life.

     However, viewers should keep in mind that most of the images the Internet celebrities create are not real. The images are mostly presented by the celebrities by design and on purpose because they know exactly what they need to sell in order to get attention. It is nice to encourage viewers to pursue their dreams and live a better life, but people should also know that being successful is usually not about the things you own and the personal image you create for the public.