“it will be ok”
Youtubers. Creators. Influencers. These titles are reserved for special individuals who are well known for their individuality and creativity to produce content for their designated audiences. An exemplary example of this is YouTube Sensation, Emma Chamberlain, who managed to gain over 10 million subscribers on the platform. Her relatable content and self-deprecating humor are what young individuals subscribed to. Unashamed of appearing bare-faced, she unveils her life as a regular person doing regular things while living an imperfect life. This coffee-obssessed, filter-free content creator has revealed her authenticity and managed to give herself an outlet for all to see.
In “Communicative Intimacies: Influencers and Perceived Interconnectedness” by Crystal Abidin, it states that “Influencers are everyday, ordinary Internet users who accumulate a relatively large following on blogs and social media through the textual and visual narration of their personal lives and lifestyle” (Abidin, 2018). Therefore in spite of having such a huge fanbase, Emma excels at keeping her humble, intimate state towards her audience by sharing her opinion towards the term influencer. She reputes it as a term for influencing, when she highly believes that her role as a content creator is to be an entertainer and friend. The consistent theme that Emma expresses in her videos plays a role in the FaceTime-like content. She incorporates her struggles, and hobbies and executes them in a way that allows her audience to feel at ease. The majority of the videos uploaded also contain montages of her eating, cleaning, crying, and even laying in bed.
Overall, Emma Chamberlains content attracts female Millennials and Gen-Zers. As Christian Lorentzen mentions in “Like This or Die”, “Their feeds tell them about culture. Their feeds are a form of comfort. Their feeds explain things to them that they already understand. Their feeds tell them about the people who make their culture, people who aren’t so different from them, just maybe a bit more glistening” (Lorentzen, 2019). As such, the algorithm that has located her content with her viewers has a direct correlation with her hobbies and interests. For instance, a great deal of her work contains coffee montages and thrift hauls which gauge the interest of subscribers. Christian Lorentzen also mentions that “We are cursed only by too many options and too little time to consume all the wonderful things on offer. The cultural consumer is therefore best served by entities that point them to the right products” (Lorentzen, 2019). Emma Chamberlain is a great example as to how this works, besides being a content creator, she also released a Coffee and Tea brand which inevitably had an impact on her channel, thus bringing in more viewers who have an interest in such drinks. A collaboration that also had an impact on her channel included famous beauty guru, James Charles, who often invited many of his viewers over to Emma’s channel. Hence increasing the amount of female viewers who are either in the Millenial or Gen-Z category.
Her most recent video titled,“it will be ok”, provides a great insight as to why her channel has immense success. Despite her large following base, she introduces the video with a clip of her speaking about her recurring panic attacks. This form of introduction is crucial as an influencer because it is a way that Emma engages with her followers “to give the impression of exclusive, intimate exchange” (Abidin, 2018). Throughout the video, she shows snippets of her doing chores, eating, and painting. Her declining mental health plays a huge role in the message that is expressed throughout the video while also displaying ways that she is overcoming such struggles. Furthermore, this is highly shown in the comment section where many of her viewers describe her content as “therapeutic” and “relatable”. In terms of the panic attack that she described in the intro of her video, some of her viewers left comments that show an appreciation for the YouTuber. Despite the monetary compensation that she receives through advertisements and sponsorships, Emma creates a closer connection with her viewers through the personal feature that she includes during her editing process. In her videos, she mentions that she does not hire an editor because she views her content as a form of art and the editing process is what gives her work value.
In addition, as Abidin states “A key feature of lifestyle influencers is documenting the trivial and mundane aspects of everyday life (i.e. outfit of the day, #nomakeup selfies, close-ups of pimples and bad skin, gripes about housework) and how well influencers can relate these to their followers in dialogue” (Abidin, 2018). Emma Chamberlain does an exceptional job in documenting her lifestyle by displaying herself as an imperfect person who enjoys creating content. Throughout the video she includes montages of her laying in bed, driving, and/or enjoying hobbies such as drinking coffee. As a content creator, she also speaks about her day-to-day activities but does not include a snippet of the networking event that she discussed so that she could give her video a more personal touch. Aligning with Abidin’s blog, Emma does a fantastic job with keeping her videos personal and close to give oDespite the definition that the title influencer has and her connection with it, she does an exceptional job with breaking the stereotypes that are tied with it. Thus Emma Chamberlain puts this term to shame, by actually showing up as a friend and entertainer while carrying the message that struggles are inevitable for everyone.
Works Cited
Abidin, C. (2018, February 28). Communicative ❤ intimacies: Influencers and perceived interconnectedness. Ada New Media. Retrieved December 5, 2021, from https://adanewmedia.org/2015/11/issue8-abidin/
Lorentzen, C. (2019, April). Like This or Die. Criticism.
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