YouTube as a platform has risen significantly since its beginning in 2005 allowing content creators to upload videos freely under their own management and control. An efficient way of making money if done correctly, as top Youtubers such as KSI, PewDiePie and James Charles have made millions off the back of their content.

YouTube provides entertainment from beauty blogging, game streaming to cleaning hacks and everything in between allowing the audience to decide what they want to view. C. Vernallis states ‘Some clips might be ennobling and others may provide guilty pleasures.’ (2013:122) This gives context to YouTube being a provider of quality entertainment and guilty pleasures, allowing the audience to pick and choose what they engage in.

YouTube has been prevalent in careers within media that the British mockumentary, ‘People Just Do Nothing’ (2012-2018) uploaded a spoof of the pirate radio garage scene from the early 2000s, which gathered so much traction that they are now contracted to BBC3 and have a feature film.  

Evidently, the viral success of People Just Do Nothing was noticed by BBC3 as the audience and views from the videos grew. It can be said it provided stories for an audience that had previously been unexplored by television. The comical tones and over-amplified personalities are relatable and nostalgic to some elements of working-class culture/underground garage cub cultures and became a prominent part of British culture. ‘Michael Wetsch and Henry Jenkins, on the other hand, claim that YouTube fosters community and acts as an agent for self-expression.’ Continuing to say YouTube creates ‘new identities’. (2013)

Without YouTube, this show might not have been commissioned but with the power of the individual sharing and posting of the videos and the ability for independent filmmakers uploading work to a free platform the success has grown exponentially.

Chloé Bloom

References:
Vernallis, C. (2013), “YouTube Aesthetics”, in: Unruly Media, New York: Oxford University Press

People Just Do Nothing – webisode uploaded to YouTube before being commissioned by The BBC