When YouTube first began in 2005, the site mostly consisted of homemade videos meant to be shared only with friends and family. Fast forward to 2015 and suddenly it’s still filled with homemade videos, but now they’re posted with the intent of becoming internet famous. People all over the world make videos and post them on the internet in hopes of being noticed. Sophomores Shreya Jane, Sonali Doshi and Adi Wineland have all taken a stab at becoming the next YouTube star.
“I’ve always loved making people smile and spreading positivity. I’ve always enjoyed entertaining people,” sophomore Sherya Jane said when asked about why she makes videos.
The videos on Jane’s channel consist of everything from hair and fashion to vlogging (a term often used to refer to “video blogging”).
Although she has loys of variety on her channel, her favorite videos to make are her advice videos.
“They end up helping other people,” Jane said. Jane is close to one thousand subscribers, something she never imagined to be possible when she began her channel. “I never thought I would have almost a thousand people watching my videos,” Jane said. “I can only hope for the best for my channel.”
While Jane’s YouTube channel is a mix of themes, sophomore Sonali Doshi focuses primarily on singing on her channel. Her first video consisted of her playing guitar while singing “Radioactive” by Imagine Dragons. The video garnered a hundred and three views in its first month. “I was not expecting that at all,” Doshi said. “I woke up and it had a ton of views and comments. I was really surprised.”
When asked about what she hopes to achieve with her channel, Doshi said she simply wants to document her achievements and music, though she’s not sure she wants to become the next big YouTube star.
“That would be cool, but I’m not striving for that. I just love spreading my music,” Doshi said.
Doshi has collaborated with fellow classmate sophomore Adi Wineland on a duet of “For Good” from the Broadway musical, Wicked. The two often collaborate on Wineland’s channel, also focused on singing.
Wineland has been posting on his channel for 3 years. In one of his most popular videos, appropriately titled “Boy performs 10 Taylor Swift songs in under 5 minutes,” Wineland shows off his musical talents. Not only did he produce all the music in the video, he also wrote the medley himself. The dream to become a star has been on Wineland’s mind since the first day he began uploading.
“I’ve always dreamed that maybe someone important from a record label might stumble on one of my videos,” Wineland said. “So I try to post as much as possible because you never know when someone important is surfing the web.”
Although he gathers hundreds of views on all of his videos, Wineland is slightly disappointed in the lack of reaction his videos produce.
“I actually feel like my channel hasn’t progressed the way I hoped,” Wineland said. “But at the end of the day I’m happy that I was genuine and honest in my videos, because that’s all that really matters.”