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"Baddest Bitch," has amassed over 1.4 mil-
lion views.
Oakley began vlogging in an attempt to
keep in touch with friends going to school
elsewhere. But not long after he began
vlogging, one of his videos hit 100 views.
"That was the first time it hit me,
because I was like, 'I don't have 100
friends,' " Oakley said.
His fame only grew from there. Last
February, Oakley posted a video of himself
walking around Ann Arbor, focusing on the
fairy doors interspersed around Kerrytown.
He now receives about 50,000 views for
every video he posts.
Hearing numbers like this may make it
easy to associate vloggers like Oakley -
who vlogs about being friends with Perez
Hilton and meeting Lady Gaga - with
actual celebrities. And to their fans, they
really are celebrities.
"If I saw (John Green) in real life ... it'd
be crazy," Dolsen said. "I almost look up
to him as a role model, he's got his life in
order. But it's not just me, they definitely
are celebrities to a lot of viewers."
Dolsen said the coolest part about You-
Tubers like the Vlogbrothers is that they
are normal people, but they're doing
something creative and entertaining that
hundreds of thousands of people think is
worth their time.
Oakley distinguishes himself from other
vloggers in the Nerdfighter community by
maintaining a connection with as many of
his fans as possible, even though he has
never met the majority of his followers.
YouTube's comment feature and other
social media outlets allow for interactions
between Oakley and his fans that aren't
possible in other forms of communication,
he said.
"I spend time commenting on YouTube
comments ... If someone @-posts me on
Twitter, I'll usually send them a direct
message," he said. "I feel like it's impor-
tant. I don't want to be that YouTuber that
is above people."
The connection between fans and celeb-
rities are strengthened through social
.onedia and YouTube, but in reality, there
isn't much evidence of any relationship.
But that doesn't mean popular YouTubers'
comments don't impact their fans.
From fan to fame
LSA senior Chellie Carr is a fan-turned-
vlogger.
Carr started vlogging for a period of
eightcmonths after her sister moved away
for college as a way for them to stay in con-
tact with one another.
The sisters posted videos on YouTube to
one another every day, with Chellie post-
ing on Monday, Wednesday and Friday,
while her sister would post on Tuesday
and Thursday. The next week they would
switch.
"My first videos were really awkward,"
, Carr said. "I was trying to mimic other
people and it didn't work very well. It's
really weird the first time you sit in a room
by yourself and talk to a computer screen."
After their first year apart, the Carr
sisters - also known as shortsisters756
on Youtube - stopped vlogging on a daily
basis, but still posted content.
On Aug. 8, 2008. the sisters filmed a
Nerdfighter convention they attended and
posted a video of the event. Their video
was featured on the Vlogbrothers' chan-
nel, which led to more than 11,000 views.
"It's strange, but also thrilling and
exciting," Carr said.
Now about 5,400 people subscribe to
Carr's channel - nearly enough followers
to stand in for an entire freshman class at
the University - but she said doesn't feel
like a celebrity at all.
Expanding the community
Last year, 21-year-old Dan Brown (user-
name pogobat) tested YouTube's capacity
to connect the virtual masses. With over
120,000 subscribers, he wanted to see how
far he could push the relationship.
"(YouTube) is a two-way thing, as
opposed to what other mediums have been
like before this," Brown said. "The rela-
tionship with the audience is inherently
more personal."
Brown is no newcomer to fame. In 2007,
at age 17, Brown posted an instructional
video that demonstrated how to solve a
Rubik's Cube. 1.5 million views later, he
was approached by YouTube and asked
if he would like to be a participate in the
Partnership Program.
That same year, YouTube flew him from
his home in Nebraska to New York where
they awarded him best instructional video
of the year.
A few years later, as a sophomore and
political science major at the University of
Nebraska, Brown was still posting wildly
successful videos.
"By the end of my freshman year, I real-
ized that it was really starting to go some-
where," Brown said. "I realized that the
time I was spending on school ... could be
(spent) on YouTube."
Knowing college would always be an
option later in life, Brown dropped out.
He posted videos on an almost daily
basis, covering everything from contro-
versial topics like abortion and global
warming, to the less serious issues of spi-
ders and McDonald's.
"I wanted to expose my ideas to a big,
diverse audience and see if they would
pick it apart and point out flaws," Brown
said. "I just wanted to vent."
Brown's videos also featured his per-
sonal life, including details about his
girlfriend Danielle deLeon and the story
of how they met online. That video has
almost 100,000 views.
DeLeon applied to manage a forum
Brown was collaborating on with the Vlog-
brothers. Brown thought she was cute, so
he e-mailed her and contacted her through
Facebook. After Skyping a few times,
Brown went to visit her for New Year's,
and they fell in love.
Brown's fans ate the video up. Though
the situation was incredibly personal,
Brown didn't mind.
"My philosophy with YouTube is that
it's an extension of myself," Brown said.
"What I'm doing on my personal YouTube
is what I personally want to do."
About a year ago, he decided to conduct
an experiment that gave his fans even
more access to his personal life than they
previously had.
At that point, Brown considered himself
to be an o-list celebrity (he used Angelina
Jolie as a reference point for an A-list fig-
ure), and wanted to use his large audience
to test how far the vlogging medium could
be stretched.
Brown came up with an idea for a vlog-
ging project called Dan 3.0, in which his
fans could not only tell him what he should
vlog about, but also control how he lived.
"In theory, Dan 3.0 was the ultimate
interaction with the audience," Brown
said. "When you tell the audience 'You
have control of my life,' they have expecta-
tions, and I bit off more than I could chew."
With nearly total control over Brown's
life, his viewers eventually told him to
move to San Francisco - so he did.
Dolsen, who is an avid Dan Brown fan,
remembered how Brown's move to San
"My fans still
interact with me
through a screen,
and on a certain
level, I'm stilijust a
character to them."
-Dan Brown, YouTube vlogger
Francisco impacted his life.
"It kind of failed because (Brown)
wasn't happy," Dolsen said. "His videos
became more about doing things than
talking about controversial issues like he
used to."
In one of his videos during the project,
called "D3PO So Far," Brown updated his
fans about his life in San Francisco, and
also told them that he broke up with deLe-
on.
"I want to make sure that it doesn't
seem like I'm just sweeping this under the
rug," Brown said in the video.
Even in the intense emotional situation
of a freshly ended relationship, Brown's
fans still knew what was going on and had
a relatively large window into his personal
life.
But despite his openness with his fans,
Brown admitted they didn't know every-
thing about his life, though some may have
felt otherwise.
Brown didn't anticipate the way some of
his fans started to treat him. After break-
ing up with deLeon, he received comments
from viewers who didn't agree with his
decision, siding with his ex.
"Some of the feedback I got about (the
breakup) I took very, very personally,"
Brown said. "Even though it was a per-
sonal relationship, my fans still interact
with me through a screen, and on a certain
level, I'm still just a character to them."
During his experience at Dan 3.0, Brown
didn't always maintain a positive relation-
ship with his fans, but according to him, it
was humbling and insightful.
After the Dan 3.0 stint, Brown's content
and views have been wildly inconsistent,
but he's not concerned. The YouTuber
still posts content while working full-time
in New York City, but his viewership has
dropped to 20,000 views per video.
"Everyone has their ups and downs," he
said. "But if I need to, I can do five videos a
week and still get 20,000 views and make
money."
Real people, real problems
For the last two years in Los Angeles, a
Nerdfighter convention known as VidCon
has brought Nerdfighters and their favor-
ite vloggers together for two days.
VidCon brings everything that happens
on YouTube to life.
Nerdfighters can meet online friends
for the first time in person, get autographs
from vloggers and meet new people who
love watching YouTube videos just as
much as they do.
The convention's atmosphere mostly
consists of fans fawning over online celeb-
rities, as they do at movie premieres.
But according to Oakley, some YouTu-
bers choose be alone in their hotel rooms
when they aren't giving speeches or at
scheduled events.
It's easy to forget these people became
famous by talking to a camera alone in
their room, Oakley said. They aren't neces-
sarily interested in being in a room full of
screaming fans - being a celebrity in reali-
ty is different than being a virtual one, and
some vloggers just can't do that.
And so fans might not be as connected
to their virtual idols as they think, since
comments and tweets can only go so far.
But for Nerdfighters, friendships made
online with other fans can be just as real
as other relationships.
And sometimes, it's not just about the
videos.
At a Nerdfighter event Carr went to, two
of her Nerdfighter acquaintances met and
had more in common than a few videos
they both liked. Last summer the couple
got married and spent their honeymoon at
- where else? - VidCon.
"We're juggling our personal lives and
our public lives at the same time," Brown
said. "Everyone has a public persona now,
and you just have to figure out how much
of that you want to reveal. We're all trying
to figure it out."
Wednesday 12012 3B
Will Ferrel Parody w
#Tebow threw for 316 yards...
think not.
tweets of the week
#timtebow
John 3:16. Coincidence?
H.........
a week of daily stories
Chris McCall
Not since OJ's excellent adventure has a white bronco
made so many headlines. #tebow
9 Jars
almightygod a m,.-t.o;}
You're welcome, #Tebow. But in exchange for that
magic pass, you now owe me 20% of your income.
Lady Gaga : ..
Giants fan but wow. #Tebow Thats what the fuck a
champion looks like.
1
...
fi
Ciao Down Pizzeria, the restaurant located in
the basement of South Quad Residence Hall,
temporarily closed down beginning Dec. 15
due to a cockroach infestation.
status update: ralph williams
by jordan rochelson english professor
What are you reading right now?
I just finished a book by Harold Bloom. He is
marvelously learned, particularly on lyric poetry. The
book that he has done is "The Anatomy of Influence."
What about movies?
One that I found surprisingly close to my interests and
to my interpretation of the work, with which I deal
a good deal, was "The Merchant of Venice." There
was a recent film of it starring Jeremy Irons and
Ralph Fiennes, a surprisingly insightful film into the
complexities of that text.
Where's your ideal travel destination?
I've not been to China. I'd very much like that. I'd been
wanting to do Chinese as a language.
Daniel Armitage, a firefighter for the Ann
Arbor Fire Department, was struck and
killed by oncoming traffic on 1-696 in Farm-
ington Hills Thursday.
MARISSA MCCLAIN/LDaly
Notable alumni, among them former pro
basketball player Cazzie Russell, celebrated
the dedication of the Crisler Center's new
Player Development Center last weekend.