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4B3 Wednesday, January 11, 2012 / The Statement
4B -. ' - S - -
rv;sO. SEN YouT
occupation: nerdfighter--
made of: awesome
Wednesday 5B
s r a Dan Brown - pogobot
t s rea V
ube turns the personal
into public
By Lucy Perkins
L SA freshman David Dolsen's hobby
wasn't something he talked to friends
about - not at first.
"It's something you do on your own
time," Dolsen said. "It's not something I'm
ashamed of. I just didn't talk about it."
Dolsen is a Nerdfighter, on a quest to fight
world suck.
"Instead of being made of cells and body
stuff, Nerdfighters are made of awesome,"
Dolsen said.
Nerdfighters are part of an online com-
munity centered on a series of YouTube
vlogs - short for video blogs - posted by
brothers John and Hank Green, also known
as the Vlogbrothers.
Though many people see YouTube as a
virtual hub where they can find music vid-
eos and watch that one idiot majorly wipe
out on a skateboard ramp, the Nerdfighters
view YouTube as a community. Channels,
schedules and videos are full of inside jokes.
Comments come from familiar usernames.
The Vlogbrothers didn't initially see
their channel as something to be shared.
They merely vlogged as a way to keep in
touch with each other while they lived at
opposite ends of the country. Each day, one
brother would post a video on YouTube
for the other one, telling the other brother
about funny things that happened to him,
often challenging the other to do things
and report back.
Rather inexplicably, the Vlogbrothers
developed a following. First appearing on
YouTube in 2007, the community surround-
ing the Vlogbrothers now includes more
than 500,000 subscribers and upward of 187
million total upload views.
"YouTube is an incredibly powerful way
to connect people," said Will Luers, a visit-
ing professor in the Creative Media & Digital
Culture program at Washington State Uni-
versity. "People can convey ideas through a
personalized approach."
Since the Vlogbrothers' arrival to You-
Tube, other vloggers have joined the Nerd-
fighter community. Some of their videos are
about random things that happen to them
during the day, while others read "Twilight"
or talk about comments they receive from
their fans.
With a wide range of videos being posted,
Nerdfighters can view new content every
day by visiting the channels of the vloggers
they follow.
"It's television on a smaller scale," Luers
said. "But it can reach a wider audience,
because everyone is searching for content at
any point in time."
The work is virtual, but the
money is real
For the vloggers, becoming a part of this
online community has been something of a
financial success.
The YouTube Partnership Program,
launched in Dec. 2007, works with popular
vloggers to generate revenue in a way that
is beneficial to YouTube and the YouTuber.
According to its website, YouTube now has
more than 20,000 partners in 22 countries
around the world - some making six-figure
salaries just by creating and posting their
videos.
Tyler Oakley (username tyleroakley), a
Michigan State University alum and a vlog-
ger within the Nerdfighter community,
applied to the program in early 2008, and
was accepted as a partner.
After joining the Partnership Program,
Oakley obtained access to tutorials and tips,
courtesy of YouTube, that suggested how to
improve the quality of the videos he posted.
YouTube is keen on the adoption of these
suggestions by big-time YouTubers because
the more popularity and success people like
Oakley receive, the more successful You-
Tube is too.
Essentially, when a vlogger becomes a
partner, ads are featured on their video. The
more views the video gets, the more money
YouTube generates and the vlogger gets a
bigger cut of the revenue.
Oakley never expected to have a career as
a YouTuber, and for the most part, he still
sees it as a hobby. He has a full-time job in
social media. Though he said YouTube is a
great boost to his income, he does acknowl-
edge that it's difficult to just make a living
off the website.
"It's hard because at any time you can go
up and down in popularity so quickly," Oak-
ley said. "You can't control it."
Oakley said about 70 percent of his
120,000 subscribers are preteen girls, a per-
centage that sounds more like Taylor Laut-
ner's female fanbase from the "Twilight"
saga. His top viewed video, "HOW TO: Be A
Bad Bitch," in which he lip synes and dances
wildly in his computer chair to Nicki Minaj's
Chellie Carr -shortsisters756
PHOTOS COURTESY OF DAN BROWN,
TYLER OAKLEY AND CHELLIECARR