Since when does "be yourself" work? Apparently since YouTube.

You know, I think I'm figuring out the hardest thing about the internet, and it's exactly what you might (not) think.

As I posted about a few days ago, I've been working on a YouTube/TV Tropes project that could (on a very off chance) get me into the YouTube vlogger community.  Here's the thing: it could work.  I know it could work.  I know the odds would be against me, but I also feel like this project really has the potential to grow if people gave it a chance.  But the biggest problem is the following: no matter what vloggers talk about, half of what they're selling is themselves.  For example, it doesn't matter how well a television show is written, directed, or scored if the actors don't sell their roles.  If the characters aren't interesting, the show will almost certainly fail.  Do I have proof for this?  No.  Are there exceptions?  Oh yes.  *cough* Twilight *cough*  Actually, Twilight did at least have an engaging plot from what I remember of it, if in much the same way that soap opera plots are engaging.  The point is that for this to work, I have to sell myself.  And herein lies the problem of my future relationship with the internet.

Be yourself.  Yea verily, the advice they gave us when we were children seems to be true.  If you want to be popular on the internet, you must be yourself.  If that isn't what you want to do/isn't a good idea if you are not an interesting person, you must be a character that is very distinctly a character.  Here are my two examples to back this up.  Charlie McDonnell, a.k.a. the most subscribed person from Britain on YouTube, ranks in the top vloggers of all time.  He has stated several times that the "product" he has to market is himself.  People like him because he seems like a genuine, nice, and funny person, and none of what he does feels fake.  The Nostalgia Critic, on the other hand, is clearly a character made up by Doug Walker, but he is so clearly over-the-top that no one cares he is fake.  My hypothesis is that the problem is trying to hit somewhere in between.  Someone who is clearly not shy making a half-hearted attempt to seem shy on camera in order to seem more likeable will only be seen as fake and lose viewership.  A vlogger must decide where they stand and how to market it.

This is where my project has its greatest weakness.  I know that my friends find me funny sometimes.  Hilarious at other times.  Painfully annoying many times.  I would have to find the aspects of my personality that could appeal to an internet audience and put those on camera.  There are two problems with this.  One, my humor tends to be spontaneous and not amenable to being set down on paper as a script.  Two, the internet is an unpredictable place.  Hyperbole and a Half is my favorite blog, but what it boils down to is a woman in her twenties with unmedicated ADHD writing things that are often quite random and accompanied by somewhat low-quality drawings done on Paint.  And yet it is absolutely hilarious.  Everything works together: the random statements, the Paint art, and her personality.  Any one of those things could have gone poorly, but she makes it work.  No one can tell what about you the internet will like.  Therefore I would have to take risks.  Not too many at first, but more if/when viewership increased (unlikely).  I would have to make sure that my true personality came through, but not the parts that would drive people away.  I couldn't be fake, but I couldn't be annoying.  I would have to be funny, but not let the humor sound forced.  It would be hard.  I think I have an idea of how I could get started, though.

I'm expecting a lot of tl;dr for this post, but that's okay.  Zombie story will have to be deferred to tomorrow, if ever.  If you actually read this far, congratulations.  You win a word of this post to keep as your very own for all time.

P.S. I hope that some of that maintained its coherency.  I know what I mean in my head, but sometimes it comes out less eloquently on digital paper.