The slogan “broadcast yourself” is definitely true to its words when depicting an imagery of what YouTube is and what the users who create accounts on YouTube are trying to do. Thousands of people that we know as the “average Joe” has created accounts on YouTube, trying to promote and advertise themselves for the entire world to see what they are made of. Popular stars such as Justin Bieber, Mia Rose and Esmee Denters have all come out of YouTube with stardom that will follow them for the rest of their lives and has changed the way the “average Joe” is depicted on YouTube. It presents YouTube as an opportunity for the average person to someday be recognized and become famous stars in the Hollywood world.
A present real life example of how an average person created an account on YouTube and is now globally recognized is Kevin Wu, or better known as YouTube’s online comedian KevJumba. Although Kevin is not a singer of any kind and is not a millionaire celebrity with millions of fans like pop star sensation Justin Bieber, Kevin has accumulated more than one million subscribers world wide and received more than one hundred million collective video views since creating his videos in his junior year of high school. As his popularity continued to ascend at a rapid rate, the money Kevin was making began to accumulate as well. With the knowledge of earning a substantiate amount of money off of YouTube, Kevin used this opportunity to create a charity account in the name of “JumbaFund” where he used the revenue he made off of ads to donate to charity for each video he posted. Both his charity channel and personal channel are widely successful and continue to rake in more and more viewers and subscribers on a daily basis. In addition to his success on YouTube, Kevin and his father (whom also become well established on YouTube from his appearances in Kevin's videos) was granted the opportunity to be on the CBS hit television show The Amazing Race, currently on air.
However, with the fame from his YouTube channel, Kevin faced some personal challenges as well. In Kevin’s real world, it was time to graduate from high school and move onto university. As his viewers followed him closely, they too recognized the change in his life and began questioning where he was going to go to school. More questions about his personal life began to surface and the commencement of a privacy paradox in relation to his online YouTube life and his personal life was prevalent. Viewers wanted to know everything about him, from where he was going to attend, where his lived at the moment, what high school he was graduating from, to if there was a significant other in his life, etc. It was hard for Kevin to keep up with the attention, and soon a break was taken from the YouTube celebrity where he admittedly told his fans that it was overwhelming responsibility having a YouTube channel. The security issue of his life obviously had a toll on his YouTube experience in the end.
As this illustration of Kevin Wu exemplifies, YouTube can open very large windows and doors of opportunity for the every day person. It has in the past with stars such as Justin Bieber, and it will continue to do so for many people looking to find a way to show off their talents. It will most definitely not be surprising if more singers are signed to big record labels in the future because of YouTube, or are widely recognized across the globe for their ability to make others laugh like KevJumba. YouTube in the year 2020 will continue to be the prime destination for just about every kind of video and even more forms of communication through the art of video creation will be brought to life on YouTube.
Below is an example of one of the videos posted by Kevin Wu on the JumbaFund Charity Channel, announcing the amount they made over a month and where the proceeds were going to.
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Written by Shelley Luc
In addition, Kevin's popularity on YouTube was so great that he created a social networking community on his site www.kevjumba.com where his fans are able to socialize with each other. Kevin also frequently updates his websites on new information, news and when his next video postings will become available.
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