My first YouTube experience
At the time of YouTube’s launch, I was four years of age. Though I most certainly did not use it at that point, the visual media application would come to play a significant part in my life and my time. Digital media in general would be a considerable part of my childhood, such as playing Lego Star Wars on the PlayStation, as it was one of the few activities that I could do with both of my parents who had recently separated. Later Pokémon became all the rage, as I would battle with my friends and classmates, with my father concerned about the time spent on the Nintendo DS. It would soon become Minecraft, and with it came the horrible yet enjoyable pastime of watching other people play the game. Games were one of the few things that allowed me to bridge the gap between my split world, and YouTube was to become a more prominent part of that experience.
The magic of playthroughs
As said before, my first type of videos were playthroughs of Minecraft YouTubers, starting with The Yogscast’s Shadows of Israphel. Though this series was entirely staged, my young and moldable brain could release some of its creativity there, creating stories in my mind to escape from the world. This inadvertently also led to some of my isolatory tendencies later on, but 13 years later I can wholeheartedly say that the world at that point was worth escaping from. When I went on to middle school, Minecraft grew in popularity, which allowed me to bond with others far better than at primary school. At the age of 14, I switched from Minecraft to League of Legends, arguably the most toxic gaming community at that point in time. Watching League of Legends YouTubers was more about learning how to play and improve your game than Minecraft ever had, and while the ability to play League of Legends is a skill I one I tend not to value highly anymore, it is the beginning of learning through YouTube for me.
The rise and fall of my YouTube career
While most evidence of my attempt at a YouTube career is sadly luckily no longer in existence, there certainly was passion. Ever since the Minecraft days being a YouTuber seemed like a dream, allowing you to become rich from playing video games. Back then I already made my YouTube channel TeamRCXD, but please don’t ask about the name as I have no clue either. During my League period, I tried doing some streaming. While I did learn how to stream through YouTube, my skills were such that I could not generate sound. This I learned as my father was watching my 24-hour livestream and sent me a message about it. That this was both the beginning and the end of my YouTube had not yet dawned on me, but it is probably for the best. With the end of my middle school and the propedeuse year at the University of Applied Science, came also my most painful period.
Into the present through the past
Due to a falling out of my own design and the idea of a gap year, I fell into a hole I knew not how to escape. Without reliable friendships or general purpose, I spend the next few months barely doing anything except gaming and watching YouTube videos. Depression does not leave much energy to do else, and my parents sometimes had difficulty sympathizing. But the gaming videos went from League of Legends to Europa Universalis and Hearts of Iron, games less about cursing your teammates and more about shaping a historical narrative. This made it a short step for me to develop curiosity about history and find the YouTube channel that made me brought me where I am now, Extra History.
Their series on Otto von Bismarck would be one of the first historical narratives I’d ever voluntarily watch. While YouTube can hardly be given all the credit for pulling me back into the real world, as that honour I have to give to my colleagues, YouTube gave me something incredibly valuable, my interest in history. Half a year later, I would be in the EL CID as a first-year student of History. Extremely insecure about myself and my social skills, I didn’t make it easy on myself, but my student life gave me some things that nowhere in life I could have found: reliable friends, confidence, and purpose. 5 years later I have now done all that Leiden has allowed me to do, except graduate of course, and YouTube now has a time limit on it to prevent me from wasting too much time on it daily. While I highly value YouTube, I also see its dangers today, both through my personal isolation and incentive desire to drain your time, and the dangers of algorithms and disinformation which have allowed the populists to rise in their influence.
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