Jon Cozart aka Paint breaks down the YouTube Culture in a song and it is scarily accurate
[Read this in the David Attenborough voice. If you don’t know who that is, then you are making this YouTube Culture worse:]
The year is 2065.
The family is huddled up by the crackling fire. Delicious smores and hot chocolate in hand as the family settles in to hear a story. In the distance, a faint wolf howl can be heard over the sound of the nearby waterfall adding nothing valuable but just setting the scene.
One of the little girls says: “Grandad, tell us again that story about this thing you called YouTuber back in the day” as she kicks another log onto the fire which nearly squashes her brother’s foot.
This was his time.
“I can tell you about starting a blog when it was still called a website or being involved in South Africa’s first podcast station called Cliffcentral, or starting a YouTube channel when we moved to the United States.” he says recalling distant memories from 2008.
“But there is no better capture of YouTube culture, then a song written by Paint aka Jon Cozart. Yes. That was a real name-thing back then. There were people like PewDiePie (he was the biggest Tuber), Ninja (he battled with Drake on Twitch), and of course JackSepticEye (great Irish gamer and funny as F*ck).
To know what the YouTube Culture was really like back then, this is the song you need to hear:
VERSE 1
I’m a famous clown in a flower crown
My friends are dictated by similar subscriber counts
My channel takes you through my bedroom routine
It’s just between you and me and 100,000 other tweens
Don’t care for money, Don’t care about the fame
I’m just collabing with my friends, though I only know their screennames
After five minutes a week you think you know me offline
I exploit fandoms for a bottom line
I conjure fame with challenge vids and
I play drinking games to target kids and
I hope Lucifer will sell me a selfie stick in hell, weeee
Welcome, welcome to the YouTube Culture
The YouTube Cult
VERSE 2
Hey guys, I’m on tour, so tug on mommy’s hair
If she pays two hundred bucks you can meet-and-greet a millionaire,
HA HA Hopping town to town in my first class flight
Which you kinda paid for when you bought my book I didn’t write
YouTubers had morals back in 2011
More virgins were at VidCon than in Al Qaeda heaven
Now we’re snorting lines of cinnamon, copycat cashin’ in
Quality to quantity, it’s Kubrick to Kardashian
I idolize your idle eyes
and I’m monetizing kissing guys and
I won’t come out the closet till I’ve got something to sell about it
Welcome, welcome to the YouTube Culture
The YouTube Cult
Welcome, welcome to the YouTube Culture
The YouTube Cult
BRIDGE
There’s a mystery to being at the top
People think I’m divine
But the truth,
I’m no hero
I just play one online
VERSE 3
I’m like Hercules or Thor with a slightly slimmer bod
Cause, yeah, I’m just a normal guy but also I’m a god
So I didn’t write my book, Jesus didn’t write the bible
I spread my message through the land with twelve-year-old disciples
I got more slave followers than Moses at the Red Sea
They purchase my biography, despite the fact I’m twenty three
So love me, and I’ll love you more
Cause I love the way you love me, my church is a merch store
I’m privileged, white, and rich, and male and
You are not, so worship at my YouTube sale
I put the “I” in “defy” and suddenly you deify me
Welcome, welcome to the YouTube Culture
The YouTube Cult
Welcome, welcome to the YouTube Culture
The YouTube Cult
END
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