I keep planning to write something long for work about my YouTube obsession. I’ve written a little about it before, but I envision something bigger, more discursive, a rambling but all-encompassing look at all the YouTube people I watch — which has become a lot of people — and what they more broadly represent. But then I’m thwarted by my own ambition, imagining myself flying to Vancouver to interview a little-watched gay makeup guru who would inform the larger gay makeup guru world, which would then lead to an even larger discussion of YouTuber sexuality, and then I start to feel overwhelmed so I just close the imaginary cms post window in my head and go and watch another British guy prattle on about his day. Sigh. Oh well.

The point is, good grief do I watch a lot of these videos. In a way that has become, in a weird way, my chief source of entertainment. I know that sounds horrible — many of these people are teen-girl obsessions, young-ish and fit (in the British sense) as they are — but there’s really nothing sexual about it for me? I mean maybe there is a *little,* but mostly it’s this weird and dire fascination with how this odd Internet experiment, this created junkheap for every baby fart and video game walkthrough (love watching those too, even though I don’t play video games) imaginable, has over time fashioned itself into its own hierarchy, the good-looking and dynamic people soaring their way to the top while the rest of the jerks murmur below them, sometimes spiking into embarrassing notoriety but mostly staying lost and alone. 

My understanding was that YouTube was supposed to be egalitarian, and yet this select set of handsome and pretty people have insisted themselves into the fore. Or been dragged out by the audience. It’s both, really. YouTube is just like television, or the movies, it turns out. You’ve got your quirky, less-than-attractive few getting attention to be sure, but mostly it’s the features-blessed elite who make their way, and their living. Isn’t that a little depressing? It is, I think. And a little gross. And yet I still watch obsessively, diving ever deeper and deeper. (Or I thought I was diving deeper, Jacques Cousteau swimming through code, but a popular YouTuber I’ve become virtual friends with tells me that I’m really only watching exactly who YouTube wants me to watch. I’m intellectually inclined to believe him, but emotionally still want to fancy myself some intrepid and resourceful explorer.) 

There’s one particular user, he’s not a Brit but a flat-voiced upper-Midwest American, who has become a particular interest. Mostly, I’m waiting for him to come out. Not because I want to fly to Minnesota and hit on him in his dorm room, but because as someone who’s interested in performance, to me his is a dizzying and terrifying one, all anxiety muffled with a layer of faux-wacky enthusiasm. And yet his young girl fans on YouTube — and on Twitter and Instagram, the Internet now terribly lousy with ways to analyze a faraway person’s life — seem oblivious, willfully or not, to that fact. He’s clearly a gay person, and I’m watching and waiting, like a favorite television show, for that big moment to happen. 

This probably makes me nuts. But I have dragged one friend into this bizarre vigil, at least. I don’t know. I guess I should write something about this for work. I just saw Grace Helbig in this big Comedy Central promotional ad with Sarah Silverman and other physical-world famous people and felt prompted to say oh my god, maybe this whole YouTube thing is really a thing. Maybe how I spend my time has never been that unique. It just so often feels that way. I guess that’s the YouTube experience, right there. Community, alone.