100 Subscribers?!

The other day I logged in to youtube to discover that I had reached the 100 subscriber mark which was quite cool but it also brought up a fear that I never knew I would have.

Originally I got into youtube thanks to John and Hank Green, and I had a blog when I was in AmeriCorps and my first videos on youtube were just supplemental to my blog and were just like the blog posts except in video form. Then I made a video response to hank and john green in November of 2007 and I started to get really excited about the nerdfighter community. Then in 2008 the nerdfighter online community got a home with a social networking site similar to facebook (except way more awesome) and I began to network and carve out my own niche in this giant community. There were about 10 of us who became fast friends and communicated quite a bit over the span of about 3 months. Then, all of us being kind of burnt out/busy with our own lives went our separate ways. I still communicate with a few of them on youtube and the nerdfighters page but not as much. Meanwhile my subscriber base was around 30 people, the readers of my blog numbered roughly 30 non-youtubers and I was having fun on the internet. I was an obscure blogger/vlogger who was having a blast making video responses to songsfromahat, or getting first on the fiveawesomegirls videos (really happened). After the end of AmeriCorps my blog sort of died because my life became vastly less interesting, and my youtube videos ceased for a few months.

Luckily one friend I made on the ning, Liz, contacted me to join a youtube collab known as nerdfightastic. I would become the internationally loved Mr. Tuesday who would make people love Tuesdays. This took up some of my creativity which left my personal youtube channel in limbo for a few more months. During the beginning of Nerdfightastic my videos were not that great, my blog was inactive, my youtube channel was never checked, and I was generally having a rough time in life. But the people I got to know through Nerdfightastic have been awesome and I talk to them regularly on skype, we have a nonstop chat going that is awesome. Seriously I heart them. However I was still kind of depressed.

The awesomeness of nerdfighters saved me, as my enthusiasm for youtube returned when I absentmindedly insulted another collab channel thus starting a war. The collab is vlogsmoothie, which is about 5 girls who tell you how awesome each day is (sound familiar?) anyway we began verbal insults back and forth, and then another collab channel known as vlogtag joined in. This did a few things for me, 1) it forced me to watch their videos so that I would have material for my insults, and 2) it introduced me to the made of awesome Ms Tuesday, Amber, who is the greatest arch-enemy that I have ever encountered. I mean sometimes I say mean things, specifically about her, and she not only shrugs off the insults but returns them with a venom that makes a cobra envious. I am glad I found someone who does not take what I say personally and insults me back. I am currently writing her a love song 3) watching all their videos helped me get to know them, and some of the people who watched nerdfightastic videos better so I made new Internet friends, 4) I feel that the three collabs kind of have a community in and of themselves that is awesome which made me do blogtv where lots of them came and I actually got to know them better and it has been quite fun.

Really it all comes down to having a community to interact with. When I stopped the blog I lost that, and thanks to my collab, and vlogsmoothie and vlogtag, and our awesome commenters I have that again. But the strange fear I mentioned in the beginning, about getting 100 subscribers, is that I never want to get to big to interact with people. I answer comments to videos. All comments. I answer them. I tweet and @reply on twitter to other youtube peoples. I use skype to talk to various people from youtube, and now I have this blog as another means to interact and be awesome. And I like that. At my last blogtv show there were like 20 people commenting during the show. That is fun. I was able to interact with them. John Green at his last show, had 1,200! but only 150 get to be in the room with him to comment. 1200 people? how do you interact with them? I never want to get that well known. I prefer obscurity. I prefer being unknown and having a small group of people to talk with and hopefully some day meet. That is what excites me about the internet. Charlie who happens to be so cool like (famous youtuber guy) have lots of fan girls. I mean Nsync has nothing on this guy. I never want that. (unless they are millions of natalie portmans) but seriously, I'm gratefully for 100 subscribers, I really am, however I hope I stay obscure and known only to a few people, because that is what I enjoy. Should youtube ever ask me to be a partner I will most likely turn my camera off, and that, I feel, would make the world less awesome.

Thanks again readers and youtube viewers. Please don't tell anyone about me.

Keep on rocking in the free world.