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State of the Younion
By Stephanie Kemp
State of the Younion
By Stephanie Kemp
I’m not going to make it.
In 2016 my husband and I had a meeting with YouTube. We had been making films for Sesame Street and other world bettering shows (CNN Heroes, Red Nose Day, Stand Up To Cancer) together for over 10 years.
People liked what we made. Mostly kids. And their parents. Millions of them. We made films about friendship, counting by 2s, letters of the alphabet, imagination, inclusion, diversity, the perils of getting dressed.
We were excited to meet with YouTube. It seemed like a logical next step and I was finally coming around to what YouTube could do and be. “Maybe it won’t be the end of life on earth as we know it,” I said to my husband, trying to believe it and wanting to want to “own my own content.”
We got to the YouTube Space in Playa Vista and I immediately felt like Veruca Salt. An overhauled airport hangar (once owned by Howard Hughes), it is 40,000 square feet of pop culture and modular color block furniture, overflowing candy jars and huge screens playing YouTube content 24/7. Foosball. Sushi and latte bars. Twinkle lights and barn wood walls. A jaunty, retired helicopter out one window and palm trees and blue sky out the rest. Everyone was young and interesting and on a mission. There were massive sound stages and cozy edit bays. Green screens and cocktail tables. Every square foot was being used by people creating everything from a napkin scribble to a restroom interview to a custom waffle. And this was only in in one common area.
As blown away as I was in the moment (and as evidenced by my use of the word “jaunty”), I knew I didn’t belong. I felt relieved. And left at the altar.
And we hadn’t even had our meeting yet.
We made our way to a sort of conference room (one side was all glass - everything is always in view at YouTube, as you would imagine). We sat down and started to talk about what YouTube does, is, wants to be, can do, offers.
It was the conversational equivalent of the physical space. Hopeful, Playful, Aspirational. An invitation to the world’s greatest playground.
And/or addiction.
I had forgotten why we were there, but luckily my husband didn’t. He refilled our coffee filter with more m&ms.
We were loved up (sincerely) for a few minutes over all the work we had done before moving on to the educational component of the meeting. The showing of some things that we should get our brains around in order to figure out what sort of content (“these are not films!”) we might want to make.
“What will be hardest for you guys is that these have to be fast, they shouldn’t look good, they just have to catch you and stick. Don’t overthink it. The most important thing is that you can produce them quickly and put them up. Get one up at least once a week. At least!”
While I didn’t love this, my soul was still intact and my mind was already spinning toward fast and sticky.
“You might want to try to ask some of your famous friends to do something with you until you build your platform.”
Do I have famous friends?
Do I want a platform?
(At least!) once a week?
My husband let me drink some of his latte as I tried not to think too much and we, thankfully, moved on to watching videos.
Great care was taken to make sure we were following what we were seeing:
“The ‘Shaytards’ have been posting family moments every day for 6 years since the father posted a video of himself dancing around in his wife’s unitard. They are millionaires now and there is a documentary about them that is about to be released.”
“This one was just posted - a guy on a snowboard being pulled by a car down a snowy abandoned New York City street. It already has over a million views.”
“You will love this one! ‘New Father Chronicles’ is a dad interviewing his toddler and subtitling their conversations.”
While the Shaytards seemed adorable and fun, I couldn’t get my brain around their chosen channel name or what I worried might happen to them, as a family, in the future.
The snowboard video was beautiful and eerie, but I didn’t understand how it related to us or how it could (already) have a million views. Does half the population just walk around with a camera hoping something will happen while the other half watches YouTube in hopes that something will, to someone else?
But I was in love with the Dad and his toddler. This is is where I wanted to land and leave the meeting. Keep this as the take away invitation to action and not have any more caffeine or sugar.
But no. There was one more video to see.
“This is the one. These guys are going to be on Ellen next week. This will show you how simple and great it can be!”
A high school kid with a camera comments on his friend’s shoes, saying “Damn, Daniel!” over and over and over again. “At it again with the white Vans!”
45 million views “within days”
The Ellen Show
A donated lifetime supply of Vans
Stories in the New York Times and Rolling Stone
Time Magazine includes the boys in their “30 Most Influential People” list
This will be my takeaway:
I will not have a successful YouTube channel.
I want to put a plug in the part of my brain that has been popped out by my YouTube 101 visit.
I wish I could hate it more evenly, effectively, thoroughly, but the boys donated the Vans to a children’s hospital and after our meeting I found an adorable channel called ‘Street French,’ which promises to make my French sound younger.
We are absofuckinglutely doomed.
And it will probably have to be YouTube that saves us.
___________
ps. On this day in 2021, I (still) don’t have a successful YouTube channel, but we are directing and producing a series with YouTube Originals about kids and books. YouTube (like the original boob tube) is never going away. We all just have to pull a Sesame Street on it and reclaim some (more) of its mental real estate.
“You know, for kids!” (It feels like a good time to steal from the Hudsucker Proxy.)
pps. While I am grateful that YouTube (at least the team we are working with) is trying and that the friend who invited us into the fold is an unstoppable badass, I am a little bit sad that they just announced a show about the weight gain of the only celebrity I (think I) ever knew, but always liked very much. (I am not sad about the show - only that I didn’t think of it first - I had not noticed his weight gain.)
But that’s a story for another day. It isn’t ready to be written yet, but will be called:
“State of the Younion: What We Can Learn from the New FOMO Aftermath.”
In 2016 my husband and I had a meeting with YouTube. We had been making films for Sesame Street and other world bettering shows (CNN Heroes, Red Nose Day, Stand Up To Cancer) together for over 10 years.
People liked what we made. Mostly kids. And their parents. Millions of them. We made films about friendship, counting by 2s, letters of the alphabet, imagination, inclusion, diversity, the perils of getting dressed.
We were excited to meet with YouTube. It seemed like a logical next step and I was finally coming around to what YouTube could do and be. “Maybe it won’t be the end of life on earth as we know it,” I said to my husband, trying to believe it and wanting to want to “own my own content.”
We got to the YouTube Space in Playa Vista and I immediately felt like Veruca Salt. An overhauled airport hangar (once owned by Howard Hughes), it is 40,000 square feet of pop culture and modular color block furniture, overflowing candy jars and huge screens playing YouTube content 24/7. Foosball. Sushi and latte bars. Twinkle lights and barn wood walls. A jaunty, retired helicopter out one window and palm trees and blue sky out the rest. Everyone was young and interesting and on a mission. There were massive sound stages and cozy edit bays. Green screens and cocktail tables. Every square foot was being used by people creating everything from a napkin scribble to a restroom interview to a custom waffle. And this was only in in one common area.
As blown away as I was in the moment (and as evidenced by my use of the word “jaunty”), I knew I didn’t belong. I felt relieved. And left at the altar.
And we hadn’t even had our meeting yet.
We made our way to a sort of conference room (one side was all glass - everything is always in view at YouTube, as you would imagine). We sat down and started to talk about what YouTube does, is, wants to be, can do, offers.
It was the conversational equivalent of the physical space. Hopeful, Playful, Aspirational. An invitation to the world’s greatest playground.
And/or addiction.
I had forgotten why we were there, but luckily my husband didn’t. He refilled our coffee filter with more m&ms.
We were loved up (sincerely) for a few minutes over all the work we had done before moving on to the educational component of the meeting. The showing of some things that we should get our brains around in order to figure out what sort of content (“these are not films!”) we might want to make.
“What will be hardest for you guys is that these have to be fast, they shouldn’t look good, they just have to catch you and stick. Don’t overthink it. The most important thing is that you can produce them quickly and put them up. Get one up at least once a week. At least!”
While I didn’t love this, my soul was still intact and my mind was already spinning toward fast and sticky.
“You might want to try to ask some of your famous friends to do something with you until you build your platform.”
Do I have famous friends?
Do I want a platform?
(At least!) once a week?
My husband let me drink some of his latte as I tried not to think too much and we, thankfully, moved on to watching videos.
Great care was taken to make sure we were following what we were seeing:
“The ‘Shaytards’ have been posting family moments every day for 6 years since the father posted a video of himself dancing around in his wife’s unitard. They are millionaires now and there is a documentary about them that is about to be released.”
“This one was just posted - a guy on a snowboard being pulled by a car down a snowy abandoned New York City street. It already has over a million views.”
“You will love this one! ‘New Father Chronicles’ is a dad interviewing his toddler and subtitling their conversations.”
While the Shaytards seemed adorable and fun, I couldn’t get my brain around their chosen channel name or what I worried might happen to them, as a family, in the future.
The snowboard video was beautiful and eerie, but I didn’t understand how it related to us or how it could (already) have a million views. Does half the population just walk around with a camera hoping something will happen while the other half watches YouTube in hopes that something will, to someone else?
But I was in love with the Dad and his toddler. This is is where I wanted to land and leave the meeting. Keep this as the take away invitation to action and not have any more caffeine or sugar.
But no. There was one more video to see.
“This is the one. These guys are going to be on Ellen next week. This will show you how simple and great it can be!”
A high school kid with a camera comments on his friend’s shoes, saying “Damn, Daniel!” over and over and over again. “At it again with the white Vans!”
45 million views “within days”
The Ellen Show
A donated lifetime supply of Vans
Stories in the New York Times and Rolling Stone
Time Magazine includes the boys in their “30 Most Influential People” list
This will be my takeaway:
I will not have a successful YouTube channel.
I want to put a plug in the part of my brain that has been popped out by my YouTube 101 visit.
I wish I could hate it more evenly, effectively, thoroughly, but the boys donated the Vans to a children’s hospital and after our meeting I found an adorable channel called ‘Street French,’ which promises to make my French sound younger.
We are absofuckinglutely doomed.
And it will probably have to be YouTube that saves us.
___________
ps. On this day in 2021, I (still) don’t have a successful YouTube channel, but we are directing and producing a series with YouTube Originals about kids and books. YouTube (like the original boob tube) is never going away. We all just have to pull a Sesame Street on it and reclaim some (more) of its mental real estate.
“You know, for kids!” (It feels like a good time to steal from the Hudsucker Proxy.)
pps. While I am grateful that YouTube (at least the team we are working with) is trying and that the friend who invited us into the fold is an unstoppable badass, I am a little bit sad that they just announced a show about the weight gain of the only celebrity I (think I) ever knew, but always liked very much. (I am not sad about the show - only that I didn’t think of it first - I had not noticed his weight gain.)
But that’s a story for another day. It isn’t ready to be written yet, but will be called:
“State of the Younion: What We Can Learn from the New FOMO Aftermath.”