I remember binging so much of a gaming YouTube channel when I was around 16 years old that I used to dream that I hung out with the vlogging stars. They’d become something like my closest friends without us ever having met in real life. It sounds lonely or, frankly, creepy for anybody who didn’t grow up or ever get into watching vloggers. Who could possibly be entertained by a livestream, essentially, of someone’s day-to-day life?
It seems a bit like The Truman Show, doesn’t it? What makes it so interesting for us to watch internet personalities go about their daily lives? I don’t know how to describe it. It’s like some Gen-Z state of mind where social media becomes as real a connection as touch. We’re so connected without ever meeting. We share so much of our real lives, that it doesn’t seem like we’re singing over anything to a computer. It’s just ingrained in us.
One of my professors described the phenomenon as data bodies, how we’re all amassing data. Our social media profiles. Our passwords and usernames.
Now, the vloggers I grew up with are going onto next stages of their lives. Meeting their spouses and life partners. Maybe taking breaks from the original platforms that made them famous. It’s bittersweet, like seeing your friends graduate high school and move away. And even if we eventually stop watching, a part of us still remembers what it’s like sharing a community in the comment section and freaking out over the new content our favorite vloggers posted. Gen-Z vlogging/vlog-watching culture’s like that with social media. It connects us even if we never connected IRL, seeming both wonderful and slightly terrifying.