YouTube has been a part of my life for as long as I have remembered, having been created in 2005. I was barely three years old when it came out, so it truly has been around for most of my life, so goes for everyone my age. Having been a consumer of the multimedia platform for so long, I have found some people that I find I often watch, some people I am always gravitating towards for entertainment.
Stephanie Soo/ MissMangoButt
Having two separate channels, Stephanie Soo has been one of my all-time favorite YouTubers. She does true crime mukbangs on her main channel and does fun challenges and vlogs on her second channel. I love listening to true crime and she is such a great storyteller; it is so easy to listen to her. She has videos that can get as long as an hour and a half, but I find myself engaged the entire time as she never fails to keep my attention captured.
The Try Guys
The Try Guys consist of Eugene Yang, Ned Fulmer, Keith Hasbersberger, and Zach Kornfeld. They are one of my favorite groups on YouTube, doing silly videos like Cooking Food Without A Recipe to serious videos on the Immigration process or Driving Under Several Influences to show why it is dangerous. I appreciate that the group balances each other out, all of them utilizing their various characteristics to make a well-rounded team. Something else that I enjoy is that they don’t force themselves to be in every single video they do, some of them doing independent work or one or two people missing, it never feels like they are not having fun because they give themselves the choice to be in videos or not. One of their projects that I enjoyed was Eugene’s coming-out video, which not only showed his life as a closeted gay and struggling with his identity, but was also a fundraiser that helped to raise money for LGBTQIA+ youth. It truly was one of the most artistic and beautiful ways to come out and it helped me come to terms with my sexual orientation. I felt seen as he is also an Asian-American LGBTQIA+ person.
Linh Truong
Another YouTuber that is so comforting to watch is Linh Truong. She does a lot of college-related content and vlogs. I appreciate her editing style and she is so fun to watch because she is my age and it truly feels like she is a friend of mine, as we have many similar hobbies and interests. I like that she is also a queer Asian-American, again like Eugene from the Try Guys, showing the representation that we lack queer Asian-Americans in media and entertainment.
Safiya Nygaard
Another woman of color who has been a favorite of mine for quite a long time is Safiya Nygaard. Her videos consist of mostly makeup and fashion content, but a lot of her videos are very scientific and contain math, especially when she is mixing her lipsticks to get the average of all of them together. Some of my favorite videos she has done are when she buys items off of Amazon and when she wore Digital Clothes for a week.
Anthony Padilla
One of the OG YouTubers, having joined in 2005 under Smosh, he has been around for as long as the platform has been created. Now having his channel, he does videos where he looks into the lives of different people, which are not only entertaining but very informative. He interviews people of all walks of life to give everyone who can’t relate to them a look at how they live. A few of my favorite videos have been him talking to people with DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder) and when he interviewed people who were Viral Meme Stars.
As you can see a lot of my favorite YouTubers reflect parts of my identity. I like that YouTube allows me to have representation that isn’t completely in mainstream media but is easier to find in general. It’s nice to see people who can actually represent people like me while also being entertaining and talking and doing things that I am also interested in.