VidCon: The evolution of the creator

BREAKING NEWS: Attenborough watch out –– a new species of a ‘creator’ has been discovered; the species is widespread around the world but the highest population can be found in LA.

Once a year, when the position of planet earth aligns with the creators sleeping patterns, this whole community flocks to one location... VidCon in Los Angeles. Find out what happened next in this episode, filmed and edited by Ben Hess with a voiceover from James Popsys..

“Having evolved over millions of years, the modern creator now largely focuses on a single medium: YouTube videos,” our tongue-in-cheek video delving into the natural habitat of the lesser-spotted ‘creator’ begins… In the best Planet Earth-style overview, our narrator James continues: “typically the creator is rarely seen in the wild, spending most of their time in dark places in front of a laptop screen crafting thumbnails for their new videos… but once a year, creators from all over the planet migrate to the lounges of VidCon, braving direct sunlight in search of free food… and collaborations (or as their known among the creator species: collabs)”.

Continuing on his exploration of the concept of collabs, unique to this particular species, James explains “collabs are a process of cross-pollination, where the creators appear in each others’ videos in the hopes of reaching a new audience… The annual VidCon migration is one of the premier places these once-endangered mammals can be spotted, as James adds: “just a decade ago creator numbers were in steep decline, but thanks to this cross-pollination - with the promise of attention, views and merch sales on Youtube - the creator population is now thriving in numbers never seen before; there are now 23 million YouTube channels, each contributing to the 46,000 years of content watched on YouTube every single year…”

So how does one spot these talented creatures? “Creators look much like humans,” the video continues, “the only reliable tells are the strange furry hats on their cameras…” Delving into the minds of the species, James describes how the the creator’s brain cooks up a new original idea roughly every one to three seconds, adding “mostly these ideas are terrible but occasionally an idea is good enough a creator deems it worthy of airing to their audience, in which case it will incubate for a week or two in their mind before being unveiled to the world in a scheduled upload and clickbait title”.

“The creator typically works late at night, alone,” James explains, “fuelled mainly on sugar and energy drinks. They can sometimes release several videos in a week. In fact, the most industrious creators will go through periods of uploading a video every… single.. day – a phenomenon known in the community as ‘daily vlogging’, achieved simply by giving up sleep and friends before crashing some months or years later and returning to the typical creator schedule of between one and three videos a week, then resuming basic hygiene practices (in most cases).”

“There’s one sighting that pretty much guarantees [the creator to come out of their natural habitat] –– a gold play button creator, these super-uploaders whose audiences number in the millions carry a special draw,” the insightful docu-video concludes, adding “much of the creators’ time at these gatherings is spent trying to hunt down these superstars, swarming like worker bees around a queen bee. their mission is to get a shout-out, a form of recommendation in the creator community that can lead to a boost of hundreds, if not thousands, of new subscribers…sadly these sightings are rare!”

Have you spotted a creator recently?