You don’t need to attend a VidCon meet-and-greet to be across the fact that young people are watching a lot of online video content; a casual glance around any bus, tram, cafe or quadrangle will reveal smartphones, tablets and laptops glued to favourite channels. The international phenomenon of teen YouTube stars is, by now, well-trodden ground – but who are the young YouTube superstars in Australia, and what are they peddling?
It happens to us all: one day, we wake up and realise that we’re no longer at the crest of the internet wave. For some of us, this can be shattering.
I realised my ship had begun to sail when, late last year, I attended a local wrestling promotion. After the show, two young women hopped on stage and had an impromptu photoshoot with the championship belts. It was only after I grumbled something about the rudeness of youths and how nobody would let me touch the belt that I was helpfully informed, by a very excited fan, that the two women were YouTube superstars, in town for the online video expo VidCon.
Upon my return home I looked up their YouTube accounts. Between them, they had upwards of 3.5 million subscribers, countless views, astronomical amounts of “thumbs ups” ... and, in a moment a Wonder Years voiceover would pinpoint as watershed, I struggled to understand why. “But they’re just talking about stuff!” I whined to a friend, their eyes glazing steadily. “Do people really watch this??”
At the age of 36, the generation gap had yawned open before me. How do you do, fellow kids?
I attacked my problem with an anthropological zeal, and went straight to the source: the Young People all around me, both viewers and content creators. I wanted to better understand the viewing habits of those for whom “funny cats” compilations and jokes about Marxism (oh, how I laughed!) were no longer cutting it.
(My 15-year-old friend Isaac generously reassured me, “I don’t think that ‘grownups’ are a group that inherently can’t understand certain things.”)
A handful of Australian YouTubers have enjoyed immense success beyond the boundaries of the site, from Troye Sivan to SketchShe, but there are plenty who are uploading content consumed by a mind-boggling number of viewers, often multiple times a week.
Exact numbers regarding exactly what young people are watching are closely guarded by Google, but by reverse engineering view counts and subscriber numbers for some of Australia’s more popular YouTube accounts, it’s safe to assume that many young people, both here and abroad, are eating the content up.
(On that note, many of the Australian YouTubers I spoke to suggested large slices of their audiences are from overseas, while the young Australian viewers also mainly watched international accounts. “I mostly like to watch people from other countries to see what they like and how they do things over in their part of the world,” said Edie, 13, who also enjoys hearing different accents; there are likely great swaths of teens in places like Manchester, Atlanta or Yokohama who are, right now, thrilling to the mangled vowel sounds of the Australian accounts I explored.)
My travels through young YouTube were eye-opening, and while I might not necessarily be signing up for a triple helping of certain types of content each week, at least the next time a YouTube superstar crosses my path I’ll be able to nod knowingly and say, “Ah, yes, I’ve seen their channel.”
Wengie
Genre: Lifestyle
Most popular video: 42m views
Subscribers: 10.8 million
Officially Australia’s most-popular YouTuber as of late 2017, the channel of rainbow-haired Wengie is like a Lisa Frank Trapper Keeper come to life. Through her channel I have learned that “pranks” no longer necessarily means “jumping out of a bin and scaring your friends” – nor does it always mean the more sinister “pranks” of the disgraced YouTuber Logan Paul, whose video of an alleged suicide victim – uploaded to his 15.6 million, mostly-teen viewers – resulted in official reprimanding by YouTube. Now, the word “prank” also means making edible school supplies and worms, so that you can “prank” your friend by seemingly eating pencils in front of them.
I meditate on Isaac’s reassuring line about grownups not getting things, and move on.
RackaRacka
Genre: Comedy
Most popular video: 55m views
Subscribers: 4.5 million
I’ll just say it: the Adelaide-based comedy collective RackaRacka’s WrestleMania video is one of the finest works of satire in years. Like South Park’s Emmy-winning episode Make Love Not Warcraft, it is funny on two levels: amusingly ridiculous to those who’ve never partaken in WWE product, and sidesplitting to those who know the tropes of “sports entertainment”.
As I wandered through the Philippou brothers’ (many) videos, I did wonder if it was a case of lightning striking once – but then remembered a common theme among the responses from young YouTube viewers: this humour is not made for me.
Archie, 20, reckons the rapid-fire editing of much online comedy (and present in many of RackaRacka’s videos) “isn’t always understood by older people” – a position echoed by Michelle, 19, who told me, “If you’re not down with internet culture you won’t necessarily understand YouTube culture either.”
Bella Fiori
Genre: Beauty (... and murder mysteries)
Most popular video: 4.1m views
Subscribers: 1.5 million
Who knew strobe cream and the Lake Bodom murders would one day go hand in hand?
Bella Fiori’s account is a fascinating testament to the “multiple tabs open” mindset: she’s a cruelty-free beauty blogger who tests out new makeup products, posts “haul” videos and vlogs about her holiday trips, but who also uploads in-depth videos about missing persons and murder mysteries each Monday.
It raises the question: did she see beauty vlogging as a way to crack the market, and then use her profile to become an investigative journalist? If so, I’d like to shake both her hands.
Grace’s World
Genre: Toys/lifestyle
Most popular video: 60m views
Subscribers: 1.1 million
If you time-travelled to 1993 and told me and my best friend that our “Barbie videos” might one day translate into YouTube superstardom, we probably would have looked very confused. But 12-year-old Grace Mulgrew is one of YouTube’s “child influencers”; her episodic Barbie videos are so popular internationally she now also runs a Spanish-language channel as well as a more casual vlogging channel, Grace’s Room.
“I wasn’t looking to start a channel,” she tells me. “When I was six, I loved playing with dolls and I’d been starting to watch YouTube videos so I asked my dad to film me doing a tour of my doll house. When I finished I asked him to put it up on YouTube. We forgot all about it after that, but 10 months later someone pointed out that it had about 9 million views, so we thought we’d make more videos. And the rest is history!”
Grace’s World is now so popular that her dad, Greg, quit his job to help manage it. Somewhere, my father is weeping with regret.
Muselk
Genre: Gaming
Most popular video: 11m views
Subscribers: 4.3 million
Across all the young people I spoke to for this piece, nearly every one of them – from nine-year-old Milli to 15-year-old Isaac – watched gaming videos, though few of them self-identified as “gamers”.
“What I most enjoy about watching gaming videos is not the game itself,” explains Edie, 13, “but rather the players having fun and laughing over their mistakes, or some funny reaction they’ve had while playing the game.” (Isaac even cops to enjoying “videos of people just talking about what games they like”, revealing a saintlike patience not just for “grownups” but also for water-cooler chat.)
While I’m not immune to the charms of a Mickey Mouse in the Castle of Illusion boss playthrough, videos like Muselk’s, which feature sardonic live commentary as he and his friends play with or against each other, gave me flashbacks to unsuccessful Friday-night raids in World of Warcraft.
This seems to be a common generational issue when it comes to gamer vids; Gabe, 10, complains that: “Dad says [UK YouTubers] Dan and Phil are stupid, and they are really funny!” The war continues ...
CKN Toys
Genre: Toys/unboxing
Most popular video: 253m views
Subscribers: 5.4 million
My first exposure to toy videos on YouTube was via a friend who’d become a father, who remarked that his young daughter was “obsessed” with watching Kinder Surprise unwrapping videos.
CKN Toys, a family of YouTubers from Melbourne, do exactly that: crack open surprise eggs and “unbox” newly released toys – and unlike many popular international unboxing channels, CKN is actually presented by children.
As someone who can no longer justify her expenditure in the toy aisle at Kmart, I freely admit to being fascinated by unboxing videos as a hallmark of late capitalism. This suggests, perhaps, that a large slice of the audience for channels like CKN Toys may more likely be comprised of people like me than those who you’d assume to be their prime audience. At least as far as Olli, 11, is concerned, who declares all toy videos to be “the worst scum in the history of the galaxy”.
Her little sister Henri, five, disagrees, assuring me that “toy videos are my favourite”. Perhaps this is why CKN Toys have comments turned off on many videos.
Mighty Car Mods
Genre: Automotive
Most popular video: 6.9m views
Subscribers: 2.6 million
The MCM guys may no longer be considered “young people”, though they certainly were when they began their channel in 2007, and their audience remains full of youthful enthusiasts.
Moog and Marty, who have undertaken enough “automotive projects” to release a 10th anniversary coffee table book, are aware of the dangers that come with role-model status. “I am conscious that there are a lot of people watching from very diverse backgrounds and there are some sensitivities that I think anyone in the public eye needs to take into consideration,” says Blair “Moog” Joscelyne, one half of MCM alongside Martin “Marty” Mulholland’. “A lot of children are watching, but I don’t think you can necessarily creatively cater to their specific needs, because then another group will feel a shift in the tone of what you’re creating.”
They needn’t worry about tailoring their content to suit me, however, because as compelling and entertaining as I find their videos (especially the “feature-length” projects), I can’t drive.
Superwog
Genre: Comedy
Most popular video: 8m views
Subscribers: 853,000
Following in the footsteps of the Wogs Out of Work and Fat Pizza crews in translating grassroots success into (possible) television fame, Theo and Naithan Saidden have parlayed their YouTube channel (mostly sketches, and rap videos inspired by the US channel Epic Rap Battles of History) into a TV-length pilot.
Of all the Australian YouTubers, Superwog seemed to be the one with the broadest reach; YouTube fans Gabe, nine, and Edie, 13, were well across it. It’s just as crass (and frequently hilarious) as their aforementioned forebears, but when it comes down to it, I’d rather see the Greek-Egyptian Saiddens skewering Australian multiculturalism than, say, FriendlyJordies’ strangely classist and very white Chronicles of Yilmaz. (Also, I get it: my mum was once on Acropolis Now.)
Tammy Hembrow
Genre: Lifestyle/fitness
Most popular video: 9.6m views
Subscribers: 1.1 million
Even as someone desperately trying to increase glute strength, it doesn’t take a genius to work out why Tammy Hembrow’s “Bigger Booty Workout” is about to crack the 10m view mark. Unlike many other “fitspo” vloggers, however, the 23-year-old Australian-Trinidadian Hembrow’s commitment to keeping things raw (and, when her children are around, chaotic) is a refreshing change from workout videos where the vloggers never break a sweat and cut away before the point of muscle failure.
(Don’t look for sweat or muscle crampsshakes on Instagram, however, where she has 8.1 million followers and a far more manicured presence.)
Georgia Productions
Genre: Lifestyle/comedy
Most popular video: 3.2m views
Subscribers: 253,000
Georgia is a 17-year-old self-described “aspiring YouTuber” whose “random and relatable” videos speak, presumably, directly to her peers. (Given the production values of Georgia’s productions, once she is no longer “aspiring” she’s likely to be producing major live television events.)
She has made a number of videos speaking to the difference between Australian and international teens, which reminds me of something Edie told me: “I adore the way [YouTube] lets you watch people from all over the place doing what they love, whether it be humour, adventure, story, make up, gaming or any other type of videos, and being able to share it with us so we can have a good time watching it.”
Who can argue with that?
