ELANA FOGEL

I met my best friend for the first time when we were two years old at a halloween party. We didn’t really have anything in common, but played nicely together according to our parents. The next time we saw each other were were nine and both happened to be at the YMCA Gymnastics Camp. She went to a public school and I went to private; she danced and I played soccer; she lived in Bernal Heights and I lived in Noe Valley. Then, at 12-years-old we happened to end up in the same cabin at sleepaway camp. I wrote home after the first day to my mom something along the lines of: Guess who’s in my cabin! Sophie from gymnastics camp! Maybe we’ll actually stay friends this time…  I figured it would be one of those awkward I-kind-of-know-you-but-not-really interactions but it was actually quite the opposite. In just two weeks I knew I had found my forever friend even though I didn’t really know her yet.  

 

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                                                 Over the next few years we quickly became inseparable and learned everything                                                   we could about each other. I came to her dance recitals and she came to my                                                        volleyball games. I told her about life at a Jewish Day School and she told me                                                      about life at a secular public middle school. We would spend hours filming and                                                    editing ridiculous music videos and recorded ourselves painting our nails and                                                      dancing a long to songs when nobody was home to judge us. Once we put a                                                          music video up on Facebook and even though it garnered quite a few likes our                                                      parents made us take it down because it was “too suggestive”. We continued                                                      on to go to camp together until we got too old, went to the same high school,                                                          even had a crush on the same boy who she ended up dating senior year (still a little bitter about that). I know that Sophie wants to be a nurse in the pediatric oncology unit of a hospital, that she someday wants to adopt a child with down syndrome and give him or her all the love in the world. She loves to dance, loves hot cheetos and prioritizes Grey’s Anatomy on Thursday nights over anything else. I know what her voice sounds like when she gets upset and how her sarcastic voice defines her. And for each aspect of her that I know so well, she knows me. Even though there were moments where I felt like I put more value and energy into our friendship than she did, I would never call her anything less than my best friend.

 

One day Sophie sent me a link to a YouTube video. The video introduced me to four girls who were all our age or a few years older: Arden, Andrea, Jenn and Lauren. Sophie was our mutual friend of sorts.  These four girls were living in a house on their own in Los Angeles, making a living off of posting YouTube videos. The same types of videos that Sophie and I made when we were younger. I could be doing that instead of taking the SSATs and algebra 2?

 

I decided that I liked these girls. These were people that I wanted to know

more about. Not because there was a hope that we’d cross paths at a

summer camp someday but because I was intrigued by their lifestyle.

So I dug a little deeper and realized that it really wasn’t difficult to gather

information. These weren’t just some girls in their living rooms like Sophie

and I, they were pretty much celebrities -- YouTube celebrities at least.

 

At the surface, YouTube is a platform for video content. It’s a digital space where anything can be uploaded by anyone at anytime. YouTube was conceptualized in an apartment located above a pizzeria in San Mateo, California by three men who had formerly worked for PayPal. YouTube progressed to be one of the fastest growing sites in history partially due to its easy video sharing capabilities but also due to the culture it started to create. Underneath the compilations of cute cats and the music videos is a whole subculture supported by tons of people from all over the world. There are people, YouTubers, who create content on the site for a living. These young people, not even actors or professionals, literally just people like Sophie and I, started in their bedrooms before finding a fanbase. As they gained more followers there became an increased demand for content. Eventually professionals in the entertainment industry caught on and created agencies and networks exclusively for YouTube talent. YouTube had real potential as a community building tool and these companies capitalized on it not only for monetary profit but to foster this sense of community both for the creators and consumers.

 

Arden, Andrea, Jenn and Lauren, along with many others just like them are redefining fame. They are making new rules and creating new avenues to achieve what Beyonce has through her music and what Ryan Gosling has through his movies. But on the internet there is a level of intimacy that is hard to achieve otherwise. Part of this comes from part of what exists on most channels these days, which are vlogs. These are blogs, in video form, of their life. Sometimes I try to imagine myself creating a vlog. I’d show what I put in my smoothie in the morning, and my drive to school. I’d show my dad’s antics in the house and the never ending homework assignments. But who would want to watch that? I sometimes hardly even find my own life routine to be interesting. But when these four girls do just the same, I’m hooked.

 

I’ve been watching their videos for probably over five years now. I’ve watched vlogs from Jenn’s dressing room on set, I’ve watched Lauren cooking herself dinner in her apartment and attend holiday parties. I’ve watched Arden’s travels back and forth from London to Los Angeles to spend time with her boyfriend. I’ve also watched Andrea sit in her apartment with her friends doing nothing interesting on a Friday night. Overtime it began to feel less like watching their lives and more like living right alongside them. Aspects of my life would mirror theirs -- learning how to drive, moving across the country, getting a puppy, fighting with my friends, discovering new stores, and many other things that young women come across growing up. As social media developed more I followed them on Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat and their content would appear on my phone in the same way Sophie’s did. I felt like these were people I really knew.

 

What’s tricky about the internet is how edited it really is. The way that I know Sophie is not the same way that I know these people and sometimes I had to remind myself of that. I know the look on Sophie's face when she gets a bad test grade back and I know how happy she is when she dances on a stage. But any of these traces of sadness or happiness or any true testimony to someone’s character can’t be conveyed through a video. Arden, Andrea, Jenn and Lauren get to decide how much or how little they’ll let their viewers really see who they are. So do I really even know them?