let's discuss the STORYTIME era | Internet Analysis
hello my dudes my name is tiffany welcome back to my series internet analysis where i like to research and discuss things relevant to social issues and media today we're taking a deep dive into the story time era of youtube it was one of the most popular genres on youtube for quite a few years and these story time videos catapulted many youtubers to fame including some of the now most notorious creators like tana mojo and gabby hannah telling stories sounds like a simple and light kind of concept what could go wrong but spoiler over sharing exaggerating and exposing details about yourself and others can get messy i want to explore why these videos were so captivating and what contributed to the rise and fall of the prolific story time there are still many story time videos being made and i'll talk about that at the end but for the sake of this video i'm considering the peak of the story time era to be 2015 to 2018 ish these videos all followed a pretty similar formula ranging from 10 to 20 minutes on average popular story time topics included bad dates nightmare roommates embarrassing stories and later story times became notorious for extremely clickbaity topics like i got kidnapped by my uber driver the story time video was instantly recognizable you've got the cartoonish thumbnails neon colors titles and all caps of course the thumbnail is usually blocky and brightly colored like a children's book and it always has a picture of the youtuber with an over-the-top expression on their face despite the drama of the thumbnail the video is always just someone sitting in their room talking directly to the camera story time videos are almost exclusively made by young women and the fact that these videos were often filmed somewhere like on your bedroom floor made it feel like a friend was just telling you about something wild that happened to them the appeal of story time videos lies in their intimacy they tap into the feeling of being at the lunch table in middle school listening to your friends juicy story from sleepaway camp watching story time videos fills a small void in my life i didn't know i had a void normally filled by my close girlfriends as someone who used to exclusively film on my bedroom floor i can attest this wasn't an intentionally manipulative strategy to farm intimacy points but more so a practical one especially if you're a new or small youtuber who doesn't have a full filming setup or an office it makes sense to record wherever you have some space and privacy hence floor even though it is uncomfortable and my legs fall asleep every time it somehow feels less awkward or formal than sitting on a bed also the barrier to entry in this genre is super low all you need is a good story and enough charisma to tell it in an entertaining way and this is really great for small creators because you don't need fancy resources in order to succeed plus starting from such a humble position floor makes your audience feel like they are growing with you speaking of that connection this type of content can quickly form parasocial relationships as a viewer it feels like a friend is chatting to you opening up even though these videos are posted publicly the private nature of the topics makes it feel very intimate anecdotally i think the main audience of this story time era was preteen to teenage girls you get a bit of that dynamic like a big sister telling you about parties and dating the relatable stories can be very comforting and the less relatable ones are still appealing because they're so wild you may not have someone in your real life to talk to like this but you can always listen to your favorite story time youtuber so the combination of the parasocial relationship and the general likability of the story time led to the growth and popularity of the genre but also to set the scene in a larger context of the media at the time i think the appeal of the story time was similar to the popularity of the mtv show girl code which was also all about sharing raunchy stories and advice girl code offers over-the-top tips to open the dialogue about being a woman covering everything from frenemies and girl fights to dancing drinking and dating culturally i think we were just in the mood for this like loud funny content about just girly things whether from traditional media or social media in a more practical sense story times were a solid recipe for success for youtubers they were relatively quick and easy to film and for the audiences these videos were longer and engaging which made them convenient to listen to while cooking cleaning commuting whatever and as the genre got more popular story times got longer up to 30 minutes or even an hour and as we know youtube tends to favor longer content because it can increase watch time keep viewers on the platform longer and allow more space for more ads eventually lots of other youtubers were getting in on the trend because of the popularity with the algorithm and requests from viewers i myself made a few story times and i do not want to rewatch them even if you aren't the sort of person with tons of wild stories everyone has a couple good ones to tell so before we continue feel free to grab a snack or a beverage and let's give a shout out to the sponsor of this portion of today's video bright sellers bright sellers is a monthly wine club that matches you with personalized selections catered to your taste instead of going to the store last minute and picking a bottle based off of the design alone though they are cute having my bright sellers box delivered is super convenient and even better i know these wines will match my taste preferences so this is what came in my latest box i love that each box comes with these wine education cards that include tasting notes suggested pairings best serving temperature and origin recently i shared this bottle of crypsis zinfandel with my friends and we made a little game out of trying to guess the tasting notes uh fruit cake figs apricots other than that red i got a majority of white wines because that's what i typically go for and we have already finished some of these bottles so next i'm really excited to try this in duluth blanc from south africa plus this sun shower riesling which is from washington and i have this one chilled already it is a tag and title gruner veltliner i always have to google how to pronounce these it's part of the learning process i think we're going to drink this one tonight chill poor post i'm always happy to work with bright sellers and i really appreciate them supporting my channel through these sponsorships and brightsellers is giving my viewers 50 off their first six bottle box if you would like to try out some new wine soon you can click the link in the description take their tasting quiz and get started today so let's highlight some of the most memorable storytellers from this era while some storytellers were more on the chill end somebody who was comforting and relaxing to listen to the top story time creators were typically very charismatic funny a bit sarcastic there was a distinct physical and vocal performance during this era very loud animated dramatic this was very much a personality driven genre welcome back all right so i've been sitting on these stories for a while now hi guys it's jana mojo welcome back to my channel hey guys i'm back with another story time where i tell you about a [ __ ] weird ass experience do you guys love my story time videos finally i'm doing my story time for my crazy neighbor story tana mojo and gabby hannah aka the gabby show were two of the most popular storytellers while i know there were a ton of other prevalent storytellers during this era these two creators were constantly at the top of my recommended and by the way i'm using them as examples of this section of youtube history but this is certainly not an endorsement of or an excuse for any of their bad behavior over the years of which there has been a lot but honestly it would be difficult to talk about the story time era without these two creators because they were very popular and very influential at that time tana mojo is often touted as the blueprint of the story time era and she actually reached her first 2 million subscribers her first year making videos there definitely was an element of luck in her rise to fame right place right time write content but also tana's stories were uniquely unfiltered which was super rare for like a 15 or 16 year old on youtube at the time compared to some other popular female creators like alicia marie lore diy my life is ava who were appealing to younger viewers via sanitized disney-fied pg-13 kinds of videos two pre-teen or young teen viewers tana seemed older edgy she did still have a young audience but she captivated them with a very different approach for many viewers tana became like the big sister they never had who was not shy about sharing all the juicy details without shame or any regard for trying to be a good influence for her young viewers then we come to gabby hannah interestingly the end of vine intersected with this era and a lot of x-miners move to youtube i'm going to make a massive generalization and say a lot of the popular guys from vine started to make comedy commentary videos and popular girls started to make story times the gabby show story times often involved tales of her being wronged bad roommates bullies scams one interesting thing i want to note is that tana still has like all of her old videos up and gabby hannah recently took down i think most or all of her videos other than music ones but i wish i could have found more of gabby's old story times a few have been re-uploaded from other people so you can kind of get the gist but it's hard to research history without archives now let's get into the issues with story times story times turned into a collection of creators lives your recommended became an insider view and a highlight reel of the wild lifestyles of youtubers but as a creator how do you keep these stories coming can any person be that interesting my friend carrie dayton recently made a video about her experience in making over a hundred story time videos reminiscing about the good the bad and the ugly when it comes to being so vulnerable and open online story times were another example of the classic trade-off of basically selling your soul for clicks as many of us do on youtube in many different ways but in this situation it's like would you tell all of your secrets to the world very publicly for a chance at that good good ad revenue let's talk about over sharing when it comes to story times and i kind of experienced this and i only made a few story time videos but very quickly you can lose yourself in wanting to tell the wildest stories and the most stories in order to get views and i think sometimes i took it a little far when i was looking to tell an entertaining story and ultimately i just kind of made myself look petty and catty you know and especially if you have the personality where you consider yourself to be an open book you're happy to tell people things about your life it's a very slippery slope to basically not having any boundaries at all and not knowing the limits of what you should keep to yourself in your own private life or what you should share with the world and therefore monetize not everything has to be shared on the internet there are certain things that i kind of wish i had kept private because when someone meets me on the street it's like now they know personal things about my dad or my brother or my family you know and it's like these are kind of things that i wished that i'd kept to myself again when this becomes your job and it's the matter of getting a paycheck or not it can be very easy to really just feel like you can sell every bit of yourself and that you have to continue doing that in order to stay successful and this isn't even just related to story times i'm like vlogs a lot of being a person online requires some degree of giving yourself up and it can be very scary so again when it comes to over sharing like the the sorts of topics that you'd cover a lot of story times involved relationships friendships family trauma and after you've shared that much with your audience naturally the viewers start to kind of feel entitled to know more and to know everything there would be the people who like couldn't just take something at face value they would have to try and like find out where i went to high school find out who i was talking about and my videos like it became a bit invasive after a while again that's one of the most insidious parts about the parasocial relationship is even as an audience member if you try to be aware of it and try to remember that this person is somebody you watch an entertainer not necessarily somebody you know you can still feel kind of betrayed if a creator starts to draw those boundaries and doesn't let you in on everything the juicy details all the hot goss and this element can be especially problematic when it comes to the other people featured in story times because naturally when people are telling stories other people are involved that haven't necessarily agreed to be featured in a story time video it was common practice for people to give an alias or a nickname to anyone they were talking about in a video but sometimes the audience was very dedicated in finding out who those people really were before i start i have to say you have literally no idea who it's about i promise don't try to speculate in the comments because i know you guys love to do it because you'll never guess you just don't know her she's a stranger to you especially when the situation is the creator being wronged and the other people are harming the youtuber the audiences with these very strong parasocial relationships can feel fiercely defensive of that youtuber and they want to go harass that person on behalf of the youtuber which is not okay and also a youtuber could actually weaponize their audience their following against anyone if they want to they might even intentionally make it easy for their audience to figure out who a story is about so that they can go attack them now it's no secret um tana mojo has posted a youtube video which was a story time now while she did use different names in the video she gave plenty of contextual clues and within the first 30 seconds of it being posted people were figuring out exactly who she was talking about you guessed it i'm the best friend i've since received thousands and thousands of comments dms tick tocks tweets you name it basically telling me i'm just a terrible person a terrible friend and believe me i'm seeing all of it and i hear you so generally the oversharing can eventually lead to viewers and audiences digging to unearth more information potentially finding things that the creator meant to keep private including other people's real identities contact info people have been doxxed over this keri mentioned in her video this was something that got to her was that it wasn't just about her telling her stories and having it not impact anybody her videos started to intersect with her real life and the people that she had been mentioning were first of all watching the videos hearing about it from mutual friends and i used to get questions like have any of your exes that you've made story times about reached out to you yes yes they have i think the way that you would tell a story changes depending on if you expect the person to see it or if you think they will never see it next issue exaggerating and lying after making a lot of story time videos naturally a creator may run out of stories and due to the constant demand for more and juicier stories creators began to exaggerate a little bit or a lot and sometimes even outright making up fake stories allegedly today i have a really crazy story for you guys that didn't really happen but i'm going to pretend like it did for the views now at first i wasn't going to share this story because it's not true and i made the whole thing up so this story starts off with um way too much backstory which i'll tell you so that this story will seem more believable this causes problems for many reasons but one being that the audience subscribes to a storytime youtuber because they like genuine true stories they like to be entertained but they want to hear about your life so once various creators were accused of starting to lie or embellish their stories a lot of audiences became disillusioned the fact that a creator would exaggerate or lie takes away some of that trust that's one potential problem with story times we tend to want to believe the storyteller is telling the full truth but at best they're just telling their side at worst the story or representation of the situation could be a complete lie so already you have to take everything with a grain of salt and i fully believed that like the audiences of story time creators would get upset if the creator was lying but i discovered tana for example she recently posted her first story time in a while and her audience is stoked despite all of her scandals and all the bad [ __ ] she's done repeatedly a lot of her audience has stood by her and i've seen so many comments that blatantly say they do not care if she's lying or making up these stories they just want to be entertained then we have a general insensitivity or lack of care for extreme topics so though many story times started out as pretty innocuous you know talking about bad roommates or bad friends tinder dates there is definitely an incentive to continue covering more extreme and darker topics one harmful aspect of story times that i can highlight especially on reflection is the emphasis on like psycho roommates or neighbors or exes in recent years i've really tried to stop using language like crazy or insane to describe events or things you know because it's related to mental health it's ableist so i'm trying to be aware of that in the storytime genre we also saw a big problem with creators telling stories that weren't necessarily theirs to tell for example gabby hannah made a video a story time about a classmate of hers who passed away and though it's something that she experienced in witnessing or hearing about it that was not her story to tell i think as a youtuber especially in this genre and others it's dangerously easy to start convincing ourselves that we can use anything and everything for content continuing on i want to highlight a couple of specific topics that were very very popular for story times anything involving stalkers kidnappings or being trafficked on one hand i totally understand why these topics have been so popular because they're very common fears especially for women or lgbtq plus folks like my uber driver kidnapped me at first that might sound kind of absurd but honestly it is a valid fear it can be very scary to get into a taxi or an uber especially when you're alone because you realize that you're essentially at the mercy of the driver and by the way i don't say this to try to make drivers look bad they're just trying to earn a living and also many drivers themselves feel unsafe and worry about what their passengers might do to them so it kind of goes both ways unfortunately both sides of these fears come from you know real tragic events that have happened so so these topics can actually feel quite relatable everyone has a story of a time where they felt unsafe or they got that pit in your stomach where you just know something isn't right some of these videos do include actual helpful tips advice red flags to look out for what should you do if a stranger is harassing you how can you safely get out of an uncomfortable or dangerous situation i think that's great and really important it sucks that we even have to put an extra effort to try to avoid being attacked or harassed but that's another story for another time so let's talk about the branding because i do have a problem with that for this tangent i want to introduce another prolific story timer simply an sf15 nessa had been making lifestyle videos and vlogs for years then she started to make story times as well many of them were pretty heavy topics like getting attacked run over falling off a mountain and the thumbnails were wild lots of photoshopped injuries which was a choice throughout the story time era nessa had a few infamous almost kidnapped stories that were actually more so stories of being harassed on the street or getting creeped out by someone's behavior which again valid complaints but to say you were almost kidnapped is just a bit of a stretch and that's clickbait for you regardless of what you think about nessa's clickbaity stories there is something to be said about the fact that she seemed to receive the most hate and criticism during this era from what i recall even compared to creators like tana who were also accused of exaggerating their story times i think it's important to note that often white creators are encouraged to do more be louder and bipod creators are told they're too much tone it down anyway back to my main point i think people wouldn't have had a problem with these darker story time topics and not just with nessa but with story timers overall if they were just marketed more accurately why not i was harassed or creepy encounter instead of i almost got kidnapped it's just strange to see a story that's apparently about something very traumatic with an emoji-filled thumbnail bloody scary fonts and ridiculous titles and this was probably one of the biggest complaints about the story time era overall the excessive click bait became a massive joke something horrible happened not clickbait so what happened to story times do they still exist when i first started writing this i had assumed that the story time genre was dead and i was very wrong i actually searched story time to see like some old examples and i was very surprised to see not only were there a lot of recent story times but also the entire first page of results were all videos created by black women and i don't think i've ever seen that in searching such a general term like story time so that was surprising and very fascinating and proved to me very quickly that yes story times are indeed still being made and the fact that they maybe aren't coming across my recommended doesn't mean that it's not still a very popular thriving genre that was honestly a great reminder of how personalized and how insulated our feeds can be you know just because a certain type of content isn't on your radar doesn't mean that it's not happening other things i discovered or rediscovered while researching this video include animated story time channels these have been popular for many years but basically these are animated and faceless channels which definitely have the benefit from that separation of the stories and the self from what i've seen sometimes these channels share their own stories and sometimes they are retelling stories that have been either submitted to them or found online on reddit or something i didn't include these in the main part of the video because obviously stylistically they're very different than the ones that i've highlighted but many of these channels are still getting millions of views there are also story times in other languages of course not that i forgot that there are other languages of videos on youtube but you know again my feed only recommends me things in english unless i'm going through a french video spree i'll get a little bit of those sprinkled in there i also want to mention that i think there's a huge difference between being a dedicated story time channel like many of these story time creators were where once they started to gain popularity from telling stories that was what they did all the time that was where they got their views there's a lot of pressure in that and i think at one point there was an emphasis on quantity of stories rather than quality just the nature of the algorithm we're all trying to keep up on the hamster wheel and i think that was part of the downfall of the story time era creators felt obligated to use that click bait in order to get those clicks and stay relevant which started to annoy their audience and i'm sure many story time creators started to be burnt out because it's hard to continuously think of new stories multiple times a week so back to my point i think there's a big difference between being a dedicated storyteller and telling a one-off story when you're feeling inspired when you have a really good story to tell i realized that some of the creators i follow do actually tell stories they're just not branded as story times such as kelly stamps i really love her stories about dating or just other interactions with people and also drew monson i could honestly listen to him talk about anything lastly there are also story times on tick tock tick tock story times take many forms you've got the tell me about the time prompts which are pretty self-explanatory tell me a story about work or celebrity encounters childhood memories etc typically these stories are pretty brief but they can still be very entertaining i love that these prompts invite lots of people to get involved in a trend or even just a simple question then of course you've also got some of the classic story times on tick tock but because it's a short form platform the stories are often broken up into multiple parts i've got to be honest though if it's a long story i hate this format some of these will tell like 15 seconds of the story leave us on a cliffhanger and then be like stay tuned for part two stay tuned for the next part why would i wait around or go searching on your profile to find another 15 seconds of this 20 part story that probably could have been said in like two minutes just do it all in one do it all in one please i know it's probably because of the algorithm and the algorithm favors more parts but for me as a viewer it's too much i can't do it there are also lots of other formats such as nail art story times oh my god these are so satisfying and addicting to watch and it's not just nail art you can find basically any satisfying trend combined with story times like slime wax making i found a compilation for just cakes let's get into final thoughts storytelling as a form as a narrative device is not going anywhere it may be in different forms than during the peak click baity era of this kind of story time youtube but we still love stories i want to end with another little tidbit from carrie but there was something about just sharing such deeply personal things that i really loved so much and we just became like this you know it was like we unlocked each other's vulnerabilities and told stories that we all connected to and it was just really wonderful and that's why i still love doing story time videos from time to time because i genuinely love that aspect of it i love the community i love the conversations that we have i just love sharing i love talking i love connecting with people and this has been such an amazing way to do that the story time era uniquely captured something very human about youtube and the relationships that we form online and i think we should use it as a reference when we're continuing to work out our boundaries and figure out how much and what should we share about ourselves and others on the internet so thank you guys for watching i hope you guys enjoyed this video a little bit of youtube history a little throwback and when it comes to small channel shout outs i don't have any for today i'm sorry i am still going through the hundreds of submissions that have been put on my google form which by the way if you have a small channel or want to nominate somebody you can do that link in the description going forward i'm not promising that i'll have a shout out every video just because again time constraints but i will do my best to at least have a few shout outs per month now let's give a shout out to my sweet sweet patrons if you want to see bonus content i do these like behind the video videos where i basically recap my process of making my videos i respond to some comments just a bigger discussion about each topic sometimes i put other different bonus videos up there we do monthly live streams and extra hellos to caseyluck vivianeolidon.com jeff oowoo face jaden marty schmeichel abby hayden and rebecca devillier one more thank you to today's sponsor bright sellers once again if you would like to try your first box of wines click the link in the description you can get your first six wines for half off okay thanks bye
2022-01-27 03:01
