There's this YouTube channel (you can trivially find it it with the titles below if you really want) that appears to be one of the biggest and most successful channels on the entire platform: 14 million subscribers and, most astonishingly, every single of its several dozens of full-length videos has views in the millions. There are only two videos that have less than a million views (which are named like "Q&A #2" and "Q&A #3", something the channel owner probably learned her lesson about). From the rest well over half have views in the tens of millions.
And the thing is, this is not some kind of high-production-value YouTube channel which content is being created by an entire large team of professionals, even if the channel is named or only references the author (think of the MrBeast channel, who has a professional team of dozens, perhaps even hundreds of people behind him creating his videos.) This is an extremely low-budget channel genuinely run by a single person (as far as I know), with maybe at most only a contracted editor behind the scenes, like is so common.
Needless to say, it's extremely rare for a channel run by an individual person to have this astonishing amount of views per video.
What's notable is what "category" of sorts this channel falls into: It's one of those "female artist" who apparently is really shy and introverted and has huge insecurities and self-image problems, the "I'm so nervous in public, particularly when meeting fans", pandering to a sort of "moe" appeal, to the "I'm so shy and cutesy and nervous and I think I'm ugly even though everybody says I'm pretty" image. Needless to say, like with so many of such channels, this one also often uses video thumbnails of an "animesque" cartoon character representing herself, often depicting shyness, surprise, embarrassment and other similar emotions. It's really appealing to the "awww... how cute and adorable and huggable!" crowd.
I noticed a curious pattern in her latest videos. Let's look at the titles of all 16 videos that she has uploaded during the past year or so. See if you notice the pattern:
"My Funniest Fan Interactions"
"I was almost in Squid Game."
"My Biggest Hyperfixation Yet."
"I went to the Pokemon Cafe!"
"I played Pokemon, but with 50+ New Types"
"I got a cat."
"They put me in a video game..."
"I Won Mr. Beast's $1,000,000 Youtuber Challenge"
"So it's been 10 years huh..."
"I found out I have ADHD."
"My Obsession with Hatsune Miku"
"Pokemon sent me to Japan!"
"My Birds Laid Eggs..."
"I caved and tried Genshin Impact..."
"My First Time Playing DUNGEONS & DRAGONS"
"I Let Psychics Read my Future"
You might have noticed the pattern: My, I, my, I, I, I, me, I, I, my, me, I, my, I...
From among those there's only one video where the title doesn't directly refer to herself, but the subject of the video still is, surprise surprise, about herself (ie. "so it's been 10 years huh...")
And it's not just the use of the first-person pronouns, as that's relatively common with channels where the author eg. challenges himself to do something (things like "can I draw this blindfolded?" or the like). Most of these videos are about herself as a person, what she is like, what she did in real life not specifically for creating youtube content, etc. In other words, she is mostly talking about herself.
Curiously, this appears to be only a recent trend. Browsing the list of videos farther towards the past starts bringing up significantly more videos that are not about herself, what she is like, her life, and what she personally did in real life (eg. titles like "The Weirdest Pet Games", "The Hardest Mario Game Ever", etc.) There are still some videos of that egotistical type, but not nearly as many.
This is not the only channel of this type that exists on YouTube. In fact, I got reminded of this channel precisely because I stumbled across another channel of the exact same type, with very similar kind of content, with an author who presents herself very similarly. Female artist, very "shy" with huge self-esteem problems, cartoony thumbnail pictures depicting herself being embarrassed etc, telling anecdotes about her life, eg. embarrassing moments. It's almost like a carbon copy.
What all this reeks to me is a sort of "soft narcissism". Funny how people who are so "shy" and with so many insecurities and self-image problems are willing to tell about their "embarrassing" and awkward real-life moments to millions of strangers on the internet.
Who knows, maybe they aren't pretending. Maybe they are insecure and with self-image problems, and this is a sort of coping mechanism: Trying to overcome these insecurities by telling about them to the anonymous million-crowd faceless "psychologist" that's the internet. And raking hundreds of millions of views, and a hefty ad revenue, while at it.
Fake or real, at least they have got the formula honed down on how to monetize it.
(Now, don't get me wrong: Most of her videos are not bad by any stretch. Many of them are actually quite entertaining. This is more of a kind of side note that's not so much criticism of the content itself, but more about the overall theme and the motivation behind it.)
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