In June of 2018 long-time YouTube creator and controversial web determine Shane Dawson uploaded the primary a part of his first YouTube documentary collection onto his channel titled, “The Fact About Tanacon”. The thumbnail encompasses a sobbing Mongeau in misery and a perplexed-looking Shane. There have been three YouTube video essays inside the collection, each exceeding 10 million views; by the top of the collection, Dawson had garnered over 62 million views. The collection and Dawson’s transition into longer-form content material established the start of deep-dive content material movies on mainstream YouTube.
What are video essays?
Video essays on YouTube are usually longer-formed content material movies overlaying a selected subject of popular culture or movie star or influencer. These commentary channels discover success in discussing the long-term results of social media on psychological well being, physique picture points, ultra-feminine beliefs, and so forth.
The probabilities are countless because the media is continually evolving and rising round itself with the dying of previous developments and the start of recent ones. As developments and patterns grow to be extra established over time, audiences and customers of media grow to be conscious about their results. Video essayists are merely pointing them out, giving their viewers one thing to consider as they scroll by means of their feed or watch an A24 film.
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The Roots
Video essays on YouTube, nonetheless, had a way more humble starting than the collection of one of many largest YouTubers on the platform. Deep-dive content material started with channels like Watch Mojo, The Listing, The Take, and Nicki Swift. These channels rose to favor within the mid-2010s and located an viewers by means of analytical movies about films and popular culture. Nicki Swift’s channel uploaded an essay titled “Why Hollywood Gained’t Solid Taylor Lautner Anymore” in 2016 with over 7.2 million views, breaking down the ebbs and movement of the actor’s profession because it coincided with the fickle beast of Hollywood.
As influencers and influencer information grew to become more and more frequent, mixing the traces of conventional celebrities with the brand new age of media, their movies altered and mirrored this evolution as properly.
Extra lately in 2020, The Take’s “The Cool Lady Trope, Defined” displays on the rise and fall of a very widespread and fawned-over film trope that was widespread within the early 2000s. The video has now garnered over 2.6 million views and is one among their hottest movies to this point.
These film clichés and popular culture tropes now translate onto TikTok, mixing into numerous brief kind developments and memes satirizing the tropes and archetypes offered in these YouTube movies.
Video Essays: Now
Now, as longer-form content material has, as of late, been rewarded on YouTube’s platform, and the algorithm is taking part in notably into these deep-dive movies, video essays have taken a brand new kind. Longer movies of real evaluation are not reserved for personal video-producing firms. Particular person YouTubers cowl the positioning with essays on “the rise of [insert topic here]” or comparable titles in the identical lower-case font.
Viewers grow to be fixated on any such content material for lots of the similar causes over 60 million folks tuned into Shane Dawson’s video collection concerning the Tanacon scandal: everybody loves an excellent present. Deep dives are merely the most recent iteration. This obsession and curiosity promoted a rising curiosity in documentaries and biopics over the previous couple of years, as properly.
For Gen Z, video essays are good and poignant. They watch their friends draw conclusions about matters that they see every day on their feeds and tune in as space professionals present obscure and area of interest info.
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Julia Cudney and Teen Rom Coms
Julia Cudney is a 24-year-old YouTuber whose channel and content material are critiques and commentaries on widespread teen romantic comedies and TV reveals. Her channel began in 2016, however she solely lately started posting constantly.
One in all her first movies that grew to become extraordinarily widespread acquired over 1.4 million views and talked concerning the “104 Causes to Ship Bughead”. Three uploads later, Julia Cudeny discovered mainstream success within the video essay area of interest of YouTube along with her video titled, “imply women 2 is a rubbish film” which acquired over 3 million views.
Nonetheless, the video she is probably going most well-known for is the video on Anna Todd’s After collection, “what after reveals about immoral romance” the place she dives into the dynamics of an abusive relationship, the risks of its defective characters, and the potential impacts on the viewers. Her viewers responds properly to her content material as a result of it’s genuine and demonstrates a transparent understanding of the matters at hand, as Cudney consumes this media herself.
Mina Le: Style and Movie
“I’m only a woman who likes trend and flicks,” she says in her YouTube bio. With over 1,000,000 subscribers, Mina Le and her eyebrows have constructed fairly a popularity for introspective evaluation of the pervasive methods of popular culture.
Her most up-to-date video titled “the messy rise and fall of Victoria’s Secret” goes into the scandals of the lingerie firm and its makes an attempt at salvaging the rest of its popularity. Her hottest video, “tiktok is type of dangerous for trend” has over 3 million views as she sits with a microphone and discusses the empty high quality of quick trend and the devastation TikTok developments and creators have performed to the surroundings.
The intersection between movie and trend is undeniably fascinating. Mix that with clever commentary and her viewers can not get sufficient.
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Tee Noir
A commentary channel on YouTube overlaying matters from the fetishization of Black ladies within the media to hypersexuality, Tee Noir offers her two cents on matters that the mainstream tends to gloss over. Her hottest video with over 1.6 million views, “The “Blaccent”: Nonblack Creators’ Key to Fame” responds to the appropriation of ebonics and Black tradition by non-Black creators.
Her movies converse totally on the subject of Black womanhood in movies like “Society vs. The “Common” Wanting Black Lady” the place she says bluntly, “I don’t need peace, I would like issues at all times,” anticipating the backlash on the video. Tee Noir analyzes the covertly problematic points of popular culture that we encounter each day on our screens in 20 to 40 minutes on her channel.
D’Angelo Wallace
With 2 channels, each of which have surpassed properly over 1,000,000 subscribers, D’Angelo Wallace is probably going essentially the most famend commentary channel on YouTube. In 2020, Wallace went “from 600,000 subscribers to 1 million subscribers in a single week,” Insider reporter Kat Tenbarge wrote in an interview with the YouTuber.
Since then, Wallace has launched many video essays diving into the likes of Jake and Logan Paul, Artist Lana Del Rey, and most famously the influencer and Covid-19 scandal.
His movies all acquired over 3 million views every, however the video titled “INFLUENCER-19” at an hour and 9 minutes lengthy garnered over 7.7 million views as Wallace breaks down the risks and irresponsibility of assorted TikTokers and YouTubers in the course of the Covid-19 pandemic. The video was extremely properly acquired and praised by fellow YouTubers. D’Angelo Wallace’s content material holds influencers accountable and establishes confidence in his viewers.
Video essays have been part of YouTube for a while, however solely lately established a real area of interest for themselves on the platform by means of eye-catching thumbnails, cohesive titles, and thought-provoking commentary. The rise of video essays is indicative of a extra considerate viewers and viewers, ones who wish to perceive the world round them and the media they eat. They’re not being fed concepts, however, as a substitute, they’re desirous to dissect them.
