Guerrero 1
Cintia Guerrero
Professor Kim Knight
COMM 3342
May 6, 2012
Distinctions in Viral Media
The internet is a very important aspect in defining how our culture views their surroundings. In the late 19th Century, a camgirl by the username of JenniCam came to the scene to give the general public a whole new view and insight in what later would transition into other social realms. Today, we have come across various forms of media through different social mediums such as tumblr, twitter, and, yes, even Facebook that have become viraland dominant throughout our society. The most influential social media to date,however, would be the almighty and glorious YouTube who has gone above and beyond original expectations. “YouTube appears to be a new kind of media animal, with rules that are weekly emergent…[that has] a form of ‘networked individualism’”(Kavoori 1). JenniCam,like YouTube stars, was not only able become an online sensation but also one of the first internet public figures to be on the spotlight through many theatrical authenticities. This paper will analyze how JenniCam connects and varies with theseYouTube partners: Bubzbeautyand ChristiaanVanVuuren to see how our culture has evolved and transitioned in what we can identify as viral media.
JenniCam went live from Jennifer Ringley’s dorm room in DickinsonCollege in 1996, earning more than 2 million hits before it went offline in December 31, 2003(Senft 15).The webcast was viewed by anyone who had internet access whenever they wanted to, even if Jennifer was off her webcam since her everyday postings on were available on her website.
Figure 1. Camgirl aesthetics 101. At the JenniCam site, a small live image (to the right of the “start here” command) gave viewers a taste of what the site offers. “Chat now” led to a public bulletin board, inhabited mostly by long-time JenniCam fans, rather than Jennifer herself. Courtesy of Jennifer Ringley (Senft 17).
JenniCam was able to become popular radically not because of the sexual actions and adult content she portrayed, but because of her video’s down-to-earth vibeand for how easily the public could relatewhen viewing the broadcast. Jennifer Ringley was one of the first people to start what we call today as Reality TV. She told ABC News that she wanted to “show people that what we see on TV—people with perfect hair, perfect friends, perfect lives – is not reality. I’m reality” (Senft 16). What made JenniCam so interesting is the fact that this was an experiment for Jennifer to her audience. She did not expect to be a huge sensation, and quite frankly, she didn’t care who viewed her in any given situation. She was better than reality TV, nothing was edited and everything was done in real time, that’s what made her homecamming different and better than the rest.
“Unlike film and television audiences, Web viewers don’t seem particularly interested in purchasing products endorsed by Web stars. Instead, their interest takes an ethical turn: rather than speculating on who a Web personality “really is,” viewers tend to debate the personality’s obligations to those who made her what she is. This is because on the web, popularity depends upon a connection to one’s audience, rather than an enforced separation from them” (25-26).
This is perhaps the same reason that YouTube became such a popular source to turn to and watch. However, unlike webcamming, YouTube has more users, which means more competition. What is it that makes one person over another a celebrity on YouTube?
First off, let’s start off by saying that, “YouTube may be many things – a platform, an archive, a library, a laboratory, a medium” (Kavoori 3). You name it; YouTube is likely to have whatever you’re looking for, except for profane content. YouTube is more than just a website that delivers content;it’s a space where we are able to create and learn about our digital culture.
“YouTube itself offers a mode of organization (such as “directors” or “most viewed” or “most favorited”), but this misses the wider point that the Reading YouTube project sought to address – which was to identify relatively stable forms of storytelling (or genres), such as those that exist in older forms of storytelling” (11).
In order to understand what YouTube can offer and distribute; Bubzbeauty a YouTube Guruand ChristiaanVanVuuren aYouTube Comedian, will be analyzed due to the amount of attention they have received and what they have become after years of being publicized.
Lindi Tsang, or as YouTubers know her, Bubz came to the scene on August 6th, 2007 with a video containing various clips of her and her friends dancing “Dance it out.” Although this video was her first, she hasn’t posted a dancing video again till this day; she later started producing beauty tutorials and has grown ever since. As of April 30, 2012, her audience has grown to 1,022,078 and is still rising according to VidStatsX.com.
She now has 3 channels she keeps track of which are her main channel (Bubzbeauty), her comedy channel (bubbiosity), and her video blogging channel (BubzVlogz). Bubzbeauty has even expanded out to other horizons making a website of her own and creating her own business selling clothing and her famous Bubbi makeup brushes, tumblr, and even on blogTV. What makes Bubzbeauty distinct lies in the fact that her audience has seen her grow as an individual. Her audience consists of predominantly teenagers and women. They see Bubz as not only someone they could relate to, but also turn to for advice even if it’s not face to face. She has a special connection and not to mention personality that captivates the viewer because she is so different than the other YouTube Gurus out there such as Michelle Phan. Bubzbeauty and JenniCam are both women who successfully were and in Bubz case, still able to maintain a good crowd. If JenniCam were to have continued webcamming, she most likely would have been still successful as well. They both also were not afraid of letting the world know about their personal lives. The difference between the two would be that JenniCam was more of a “My life” kind of site while Bubz is a “For fun” kind of site. “For fun” sites are defined as free, largely nonsexual, and often contain photos or occasional updates, while “My life” sites framed a representation of everyday life(Consalvo & Paasonen46). Perhaps though, the reason why Bubz and JenniCam are and were such big hits was because they were women. After all, we shouldn’t look for differences in behavior of men or women towards a technology, but instead to “look for the ways in which the technology is used to construct us women and men through the social practices that put it to use” which in this case would be YouTube (Shade 15). Others would say that “more attention needs to be paid to how communication technologies alter, aid, or constrict women’s opportunities for interacting with each other, and with the wider public domain” (Shade 16). Could it be possible that gender has an effect on fame?
ChristiaanVanVuuren is a male YouTube user who earned his fame while being in quarantine for Tuberculosis in Sydney, Australia on December 2009. He produced his first video “I’m not sick, but I’m sick sick” gaining world wide popularity because of just how humorous he was while being isolated. He continued to make videos of his isolationuntil he was released on June 28, 2010. He now has a series called Bondi Hipsters that has been in the spotlight in Australia and has boosted his views to over 4 million as of March 2012 according to VidStatsX.com.
ChristiaanVanVuurenwas able to create the witness genre on YouTube. “Witness videos are lamos always low quality (acoustically, visually) and characterized by little or no storytelling elements” (Kavoori 152). Yet even, with the horrible quality videos, ChristiaanVanVuuren was able to gain interest everywhere in Australia and was interviewed constantly.
“It is possible for tiny actions to occasionally have huge consequences on the Internet — like the creation of a Facebook or a Wikileaks by tiny teams — because many thousands of people over decades set up the underlying structure of that seeming magic trick” (Lanier).
What made ChristiaanVanVuuren go viral was specifically that different factor he possessed. Not because of his gender. Same goes for Bubzbeauty and JenniCam. Gender might be a characteristic that a viewer might take into consideration when watching something, but overall it’s about the content an object possesses that will either make them or break them.
The importance of connecting JenniCam with Bubzbeauty and ChristiaanVanVuuren is to state that it doesn’t matter what, who, where, how, or when an object is shown. Truth of the matter is, society wants a story, even if it doesn’t make any sense at first. We want to be able to have a relationship with a viral object and have it relate to us somehow someway.
Citations
Kavoori, Anandam. Reading Youtube: The Critical Viewers Guide. New York: Peter Lang Publishing Inc., 2011. 1-20. Print.
Senft, Theresa M. Camgirls: Celebrity & Community in the Age of Social Networks. New York: Peter Lang Publishing Inc., 2008. 15-26. Print.
Consalvo, Mia, and Susanna Paasonen, eds. Women & Everyday uses of the Internet. New York: Peter Lang Publishing Inc., 2002. 1-46. Print.
Shade, Leslie R. Gender & Community in the Social Construction of the Internet. New York: Peter Lang Publishing Inc., 2002. 15-16. Print.
Verboord, Marc. "Cultural Products Go Online: Comparing the Internet and Print Media on Distributions of Gender, Genre, and Commercial Success." Communications: The European Journal of Communication 36.4 Nov. (2011): 441-62. Print.
Bubzbeauty Channel. Ed. Lindi Tsang. N.p., 6 Aug. 2007. Web. 5 May 2012. <
ChristiaanVanVuuren Channel. Ed. Christiaan Van Vuuren. N.p., 25 Sept. 2006. Web. 5 May 2012. <
Lanier, Jaron. "The Hazards of Nerd Supremacy: The Case of WikiLeaks." The Atlantic 20 Dec. 2010. Web. 5 May 2012. < supremacy-the-case-of-wikileaks/68217/>.