The first YouTube video was published 13 years ago today, but the voyeuristic feeling associated with watching someone broadcast their life feels timeless.
The video, labeled a clip from what we can assume is YouTube’s first vlog, is 18 seconds. It stars YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim (a PayPal Mafia member!) standing in front of a camera at the zoo, explaining what’s happening around him. Sure, there are parts of the video that feel dated, watching it now: the fashion; the song playing in the background (apparently Darude’s classic “Sandstorm”); even the grainy fuzziness of the video adds to the quaint, antiquated vibe.
Everything else, however, is timeless. It’s the quintessential vlog format — someone talking to the camera, in this case Karim redundantly explaining what we’re seeing (while making sexual innuendos) — which makes us feel kind of left out, forced to live vicariously through whoever we’re watching.
In 2005, that was someone having fun at a zoo. Now, we watch twentysomethings drive around in fancy cars, schmooze with other popular YouTubers on Melrose Avenue and live with 10 of their friends in fancy Calabasas, California mansions.
The FOMO is still very, very real.
I spend much of my time watching YouTube, and a portion of that time watching vlogs. It’s something I should probably be more embarrassed about, but I get my entertainment from watching David Dobrik do something ridiculous, tuning into an Alissa Violet trip or watching Liza Koshy do, well, anything. I, like so many of their millions of fans, tap on each clickbait thumbnail and settle in for 10 minutes of enjoyable nonsense. And I get pretty insatiable FOMO every single time.
There’s a reason for this: YouTube is the new Hollywood. YouTubers are successful and famous, living the luxurious lifestyle and broadcasting it every single day. We get to know these creators over the course of a few videos, sometimes spending years watching their content. This develops a parasocial relationship — a one-sided infatuation of sorts between a viewer and creator. Originally used to explain the connections people developed with soap opera characters and reality TV stars, these parasocial relationships have only gotten stronger as television sets moved into bedrooms, laptops into bed, cellphones permanently attached to our hands, resting by our heads as we drifted off to sleep with a playlist of videos playing.
The more our infatuation with vloggers deepens, the more we think of them as people we know, not just strangers in front of a camera. As vlogs get more ridiculous — going from visits to the parks and graduations to exotic vacations and world tours — our levels of FOMO increase. We want to be there with our favorite personalities, too, but we can’t be. We’re still in our beds at home, consuming as many vlogs or behind-the-scenes videos of vlogs or vlog-adjacent videos that we could. I watch Q&A videos with their friends and watch their collaborations with other creators, all in an effort to get to know more about this person that I’m getting to know through their vlogs every single day.
But YouTube still predominantly exists online. The screen is a physical barrier between the world that we immerse ourselves in every single day, four hours at a time, and the creators we watch. So we sit, we click, we watch and we wait for the inevitable FOMO to creep in. We’re addicted.
YouTube is at its best a unifier of people, bringing them together to celebrate different aspects of their lives; but YouTube also has a dark side. It’s a platform with billions of hours of content, open to anyone, and that means people will try to take advantage of that public space.
I don’t think Jawed Karim or his fellow YouTube co-founders had any inkling of what kind of monstrosity they’d created. YouTube is more than a platform; it’s a beast, with different cultures making up its exoskeleton. It’s formed an entire culture around displaying every aspect of people’s lives. YouTube was built to help people around the world connect, just like Facebook, Twitter and Reddit. But the problem with designing a place with good intentions is that we fail to prepare for bad actors too.
When Karim posted his video 13 years ago, he only meant to show off what YouTube could do. Now, more than 400 videos are uploaded every minute, and the company is battling rampant toxicity. The top one percent of creators are multi-millionaires, going on tour to appease their legion of fans. Teens cry when meeting their favorite vloggers, in the same fashion as teens fainting at the sight of the Beatles or Elvis back in the ’50s and ’60s.
I report on YouTube almost daily, and I’ve watched more hours of videos than I can count. I unabashedly love YouTube, but I couldn’t tell you if it’s a benefit to society or a necessary evil. All I know is that 13 years ago, a man uploaded a video of himself at the zoo. Before I knew it, I was soon watching a couple of other vloggers hang out at their own local zoos, wishing I was there, too.