Friday, November 06, 2015

Happy Anniversary Part 4: The YouTube Boom


By the beginning of 2010, I was no longer making videos. I also found that all these podcasts were way too time-consuming. It was one thing to listen to a radio show while I worked. I could work while the music played and tune in when the show came back on. But listening to podcasts meant several hours of listening and getting nothing done. I had been out of school for a year, and was trying to make money designing websites, so I had to drop the podcasts.

After a few months, one day, I decided to reminisce by watching some old videos that I remembered from the old YouTube days. I also checked out some of the YouTubers from the old days who I was familiar with, but had never gotten around to watching. This brought back the desire to be a part of that old YouTube community. That's when I realized: if I wanted to be a part of it, I could choose to BE it, whether YouTube wanted to promote it or not. I made my comeback by joining in with the Hitler Downfall parodies which were popular at the time; the ones where you add your own subtitles over the bunker scene from the movie, "Downfall".

I had always wanted to be more a part of the Vlogging scene, so I began producing more Vlog type videos than I typically had in the past. I refer to this as the beginning of "The Modern Format". This is when I started using my common vlogging location, and began to develop my style of vlogging with jump cuts and overlays.

Although the angle has changed over the years, this is the familiar background of my vlogs, which I started using in 2010.

2010 turned out to be the most booming year I'd had on YouTube. I began posting videos once a week, which was considered a lot in those days. This was before the boom of daily Vloggers, or YouTube shows with regular schedules. I became involved and actively participated in the YouTube community like never before, making a lot of new friends and acquaintances, and my subscribers jumped up several hundred, which was the largest amount of growth I had ever had in one year.

One day that Summer, a bunch of videos began popping up from a YouTube gathering called "VidCon". I had always wanted to go to a YouTube gathering. In the beginning of 2007, I had watched videos from the first YouTube gathering, "As One", put together by Corey "Mr. Safety" Williams in San Fransisco, and after that, there were Summer gatherings once a year. I had thought about collaborating with Nalts on a gathering in Portland. But that year, this "VidCon" event turned out to be the big YouTube gathering, and I wanted to be a part of it. So I made a video about having my own VidCon in Portland.

I continued my video routine in 2011, while the blogging dwindled. At this time, I mainly used my blog to post my videos, while only occasionally writing a blog post. One thing I just had to cover, was the final demise of KUFO. It had been a while since I'd paid attention to KUFO, Portland Media, Cort and Fatboy, or anything of that ilk. One day, I turned the channel to 101.1, and heard talk radio. I did some research, and found out that KUFO had been gone for about a month. I remember KUFO from my childhood, however, Alpha Broadcasting's changes had soured its audience, and by March 2011, they had to pull the plug. There was almost no coverage of this event, in contrast to the uproar surrounding the canning of KUFO's personalities.

But the YouTubing kept going strong. One of the highlights, was my parody of Rebecca Black's "Friday", which I called Tuesday. I began a new series called the YouTuber Awards, in which I feature different YouTubers. I became a YouTube partner, and could now monetize my videos. Then, in the middle of the year, I started to do bi-weekly videos, but soon after, I got a new job, which made this impossible. In fact, it was difficult to concentrate on Youtube as I adjusted. The second VidCon came and went, and I barely noticed.

I had to slow down on J-Dubb's Theatre a bit. The last thing I posted to my blog was a video to Greg Benson, where I disguise myself with a paper mustache, and try to sell him a fish tank under the guise of a time-machine. This fish tank has become an inside joke between me and Greg, and one of us brings it up whenever we see each other. I started to write an anniversary post, as I had every previous year on October 11, where I would post the same fireworks images from my first blog post, and summarize the past year. But I never finished it.

The videos slowed down, but they were far from done. Once I had adjusted, I began to put my focus back into YouTube. In 2012, I took J-Dubb's Theatre to the next level...

Continued...

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