She takes her glass and work upstairs and tells me it’s time for bed.
She has no idea I’ll be up for hours.
THE HEADLESS HORSEMAN
In school the next day, everyone who takes Mr. Ennis’s class is talking about how many views their videos have received, as well as some of the funny comments. Tyler’s YTP site has lots of absurd remarks, which only makes sense. Umberto’s are very positive, which makes sense too.
The real surprise is Carly’s channel; while the rest of us have single-digit viewers, Carly received more than thirty comments in twenty-four hours, even a few from people who DON’T wear braces. I check my channel between classes and at lunch, but only have seven views—all of them probably mine when I was testing it last night.
“The day you’ve all been waiting for,” Ms. McCoddle says before she dismisses us. “Your class pictures are back.”
Just what I need—MORE bad news.
There’s lots of excitement as she hands the pictures out; I just hope that lady who took them was better with a camera than she was with people.
Ms. McCoddle stands in front of my desk, wavering. “I’m not really sure what happened here. Maybe you should sign up for the reshoot day next week.”
She hands me the see-through envelope. I DON’T want to see it, but like an accident on the other side of the freeway, I can’t help but look.
My head is suspended against a wall of books. Just. My. Head.
Matt cranes his neck toward my seat. “Dude! It looks like you were decapitated.”
It doesn’t take long before everyone is on their feet, mocking my head floating amid a backdrop of books.
I’m not sure if my parents will laugh or be annoyed that I didn’t pay attention to the photographer’s dress instructions. Either way, they’ll insist I do a reshoot.
I grab my pen and write NO GREEN SHIRT on the back of my hand. Hopefully I’ll remember to read it this time.
NUMBER CRUNCHING
Both Mom and Dad think the class photo is hilarious; Mom even insists on buying it AND scheduling a makeup. She removes an old family portrait from the shelf above the TV and slips my disembodied-head picture into it. After all these years, I still can’t tell when Mom will find something funny or not.
I end up working all night EVERY night for the next week. Finding new ways for Frank to be obsessed with hot sauce, staging, filming, editing, adding sound effects, uploading, creating playlists, tagging them, tweaking the tags, responding to people who leave comments—who knew being on YouTube was so much WORK?
Carly’s vlog continues to get tons of comments; she’s got the most viewers and subscribers of all of us, by far. It’s actually infuriating because her videos take a few minutes to shoot, even less to edit, with hardly any pre-production. How can she put in the least amount of work and get the best results? I should realize by now that my accomplishments will NEVER compare to Carly’s. Ever.
Tyler continues to create bizarre YTP videos that have no point to them, which of course IS the point. Matt’s channel is kind of a one-joke bit, but since he uploads a new video every week, he’s gotten a few hundred subscribers. For someone who goofs off as much as Matt does, he is surprisingly focused. He hasn’t said anything, but it makes me wonder if he might end up going into filmmaking for real.
We all knew Umberto’s videos would reach a wide audience; there are other people doing accessibility shows on YouTube but none are as funny—or by someone as young—as Umberto’s. I can’t decide which of his videos is my favorite. I love the one where he’s trying to order a smoothie but can’t see over the counter because he’s in his chair and the guy working there can’t tell where Umberto’s voice is coming from. I also like the one when his shirt gets caught in the mechanism of his wheelchair and he brings pedestrian traffic to a halt as he tries to remove it. I’ve been in the world with Umberto enough to know that he’ll never run out of new material.
Monkey Love Hot Sauce is doing okay; I’ve had lots of great comments and proudly have 165 subscribers. But I barely sleep, barely stay awake through classes, and, most important, I’m so busy MAKING YouTube videos that I no longer have time to WATCH YouTube videos. Unless you count my own.
Is it weird to watch your own videos to increase your views? Are the other kids in this class doing the same thing? Or am I the only loser in the bunch? These are the questions I’m too embarrassed to ask the others, even my best friends.
My parents seem mystified by what they think is my YouTube channel.
“So are you going to take these mash-up action figures and DO something with them? Some Robot Chicken kind of thing?” Dad points to the pile of figures on the kitchen table. He picks up half Batman/half Pikachu and walks him toward me.
Sure, Dad, great idea. Why don’t I create a THIRD show?
Mom just shrugs at the pile of misfit toys. I can tell she’s not impressed. I just want them both to go to bed so I can shoot more secret videos of Frank.
I DID have time to watch Mr. Ennis’s new video a few days ago. In this one, his friend Chris joined him in the weekly digital magic show. Chris has set up a Slip ’N Slide in the yard and Mr. Ennis walks by in a tuxedo. Chris blasts Mr. Ennis with the garden hose and suddenly the tuxedo becomes a tuxedo-printed wetsuit. Mr. Ennis slides down the Slip ’N Slide and lands perfectly dry in his regular tuxedo again.
Carly’s newest videos follow her same vlog format and you can see that the positive response she’s received has made her even more confident. In one, she talks about having lunch with her cousins, then looking in the mirror later and seeing her braces are covered in everything from lunch meat to gingerbread and how embarrassed she was.
“None of my cousins told me my mouth looked like the inside of a garbage disposal,” she says on-screen. “Not one!” As usual, she throws herself onto her bed and fake cries. She ends the segment by saying she’s putting up an AMA video next week. Mr. Ennis says Ask Me Anything videos can be fun but cautions Carly to make sure all the questions are appropriate before she answers them.
I’ll be the first one to admit that I didn’t get Carly’s vlog in the beginning. But the more I see it, the more I understand why others are attracted to it.
People mostly watch videos for entertainment and to learn how to do something, but over the past few weeks, I’ve seen there are also other reasons. To connect with people or to feel like you’re a member of a group. Without planning to, Carly created a forum for other kids to share their thoughts, feelings, and stories about having to deal with braces. And it’s paying off.
“Do you think we were wrong to just go for laughs?” Matt asks.
We’re at my house where he’s helping me set the stage for Frank to forage through the tub of old sports equipment looking for hot sauce. So far, I’ve spent half of my birthday-money savings on ketchup, which Frank has devoured.
“I just wish I’d done something easier,” Matt continues. “I have to get into my caveman costume, put on makeup, find something new to unbox, beg Jamie to drive me to the trail, then film me.… I hate to say it, but it’s not as much fun as I thought it would be.”
“You had me fooled,” I say. “I thought you loved it.”
“I did,” Matt says. “But my channel’s been up for weeks. That’s practically forever in YouTube time. I thought I’d be a star by now, like Logan and Jake Paul or Jacob Sartorius—girls screaming, hit records, the whole thing.”
“What bothers me,” I confess, “is that it makes you realize how you’re just a drop in the bucket—one of a zillion people posting videos every day. No one’s sitting around waiting for us to post something, that’s for sure.”
“Do you think anyone in our class will get BIG?” he asks. “Superstar big?”
“I doubt it. The chances are minuscule for that kind of fame.” I hide the bottle of hot sauce in the bin. “You’re not thinking about SINGING online, are you? Because you have a terrible voice.”
“It’s not about the singing,” he says. �
��It’s about the fans.”
When Mom appears in the garage, I block the tub of gear and the hot sauce. The whole reason we did this today was because she wasn’t supposed to be home until later.
She asks what we’re up to.
“Just going through stuff.” I hold up my old baseball mitt, which is so small I couldn’t fit into it if I tried. “Remember this, Matt?”
“We played a lot of baseball with that mitt,” Matt agrees.
“I hate to interrupt the nostalgia party,” Mom says. “Just wanted you to know I canceled my appointment and I’ll be working here if you kids need anything.”
She leaves—along with my plans for filming Monkey Love Hot Sauce today.
ANALYZE THIS
“It’s important to try and understand why some videos work and others don’t,” Mr. Ennis says in class. “Let’s talk about Carly’s latest video on her playlist and try to analyze why it already has 212,530 views.”
WHAT? I had no idea Carly was bringing in those kinds of numbers. If I had numbers like that, I’d make sure the whole school knew.
He hits play as we watch Carly tell a story about talking to her mom when one of the rubber bands on her braces snapped.
“You’ll never guess where it landed,” she says. “In my mother’s mouth! I mean, she’s my mother, but still! Suppose it had been someone from school? OMG—suppose it was someone I had a crush on!”
Does Carly have a crush on someone I don’t know about?
Mr. Ennis hits pause and asks us for feedback.
Natalie raises her hand. “Carly isn’t afraid to be vulnerable. If you have braces, you can really relate to her frustration.”
“She’s cool and funny,” Tyler adds. “I bet half of her subscribers don’t even HAVE braces.”
Is Tyler the one she has a crush on?
Mr. Ennis asks Carly if she’s tried to figure out who her subscribers are.
“Sixty percent of them are girls,” Carly says. “And in my rough calculations, approximately seventy percent of both boys and girls who leave comments wear braces.”
Is she kidding? Who does this kind of research on their viewers?
“One girl—at least I think it’s a girl, but you never know—is so cute, writing her own braces anecdotes in the comment section every single day. I actually look forward to Power73’s thoughts.”
Mr. Ennis is impressed with how much work Carly’s put in to analyzing her data. “Today we’re ALL going to look at our numbers.” He pats his stomach like he just ate. “Guess what the number one demographic is for my channel, LOL Illusions?”
We all make different guesses, with most of us estimating Mr. Ennis’s audience to be made up of kids and teenagers like us.
He shakes his head. “The biggest group of viewers I have are women over eighty. I have a huge following in the assisted-living community.”
“No way!” several of us shout.
He laughs and shrugs. “You’re right—it’s kids your age. But wouldn’t it be great to reach seniors too?”
He tells us to go to our YouTube channels and head to the Creator Studio. We follow his instructions and click Analytics in the menu on the left.
“You can also check your videos individually by clicking the Analytics button under each video.”
A few kids in the class—Carly and Natalie—seem familiar with these pages but for the rest of us, this information is a revelation. How many people liked and disliked each video, how old they are, what kind of device they watched it on, how long they watched it, if they shared it, even how many times they watched it.
Mr. Ennis walks around the room as we study who our viewers are. He stops when he gets to my desk and points at the graph I’m staring at.
“For example,” he says, “this shows that Derek had two hundred and twenty-three views on his new Monkey Love Hot Sauce clip from last night.”
I puff up my chest a bit. Not too shabby!
“But what this column shows is that two hundred and twenty-one of them were from the same person.” He looks at me and laughs. “I’m guessing that’s maybe a grandparent who misses you?”
I can’t let my classmates know I spent all last night clicking on my own videos to raise the number of views for today’s class! I laugh and say my grandmother watches everything I post multiple times.
Mr. Ennis continues to study the chart then moves to another area in the menu. “Well, unless your grandmother is a twelve-year-old boy in Los Angeles with a smartphone, your enthusiastic viewer doesn’t seem to be her.”
Umberto and Matt start laughing hysterically.
“You’re tweaking the stats by watching your own videos?” Umberto says.
Everyone laughs, including Mr. Ennis. I can feel my checks flush bright red.
“Okay, that’s enough humiliation for Derek for one day,” he finally says.
It turns out Mr. Ennis is wrong because Matt, Carly, and Umberto remind me of it endlessly for the rest of the week.
Many, many times.
COMMENTS
We’re all very aware that because Mr. Ennis’s class is a weekly after-school elective, it runs for a shorter period of time than our other subjects. When I realize there are only three classes left, however, I go pedal-to-the-metal to maximize my number of subscribers. Matt, on the other hand, tries to ratchet up his views. Even though Mr. Ennis keeps telling us that views and subscribers are only one way to track YouTube success, my classmates and I spend a lot of time debating which is better—to have a lot of subscribers or to have a lot of views. In the end, I guess they’re BOTH pretty important. Not that it matters much in terms of the competition, with Carly and Tyler so far ahead of the rest of us.
From studying the comments, I discover that lots of people really like my Monkey Love Hot Sauce theme song. A few people think I shouldn’t be using a capuchin in my videos in case he gets hurt. (Frank getting stuck inside Mom’s bangle drew several negative comments from people who were worried about his safety.) But on the whole, most people seem to really like my channel.
In class the other day, Mr. Ennis talked about the pressure to always come up with something new, having to best yourself and make every video better than the last. “At first, I was just pulling things out of pictures and books,” he said. “Next thing you know, I’m climbing out of a mailman’s pocket to surprise my mom on Mother’s Day and jumping through subway cars without opening the doors.” First and foremost he talked about making sure what you do is safe. I always try to be safe with Frank—no matter what people might suggest in the comments.
All this thinking about Frank makes me miss him, so I head to the kitchen to take him out of his crate. Mom’s cleaning up after dinner then sits down at the table with us.
She reaches over to pat Frank’s head. “I thought Frank looked like he’s been putting on weight, so I took him to the office to weigh him. He’s gained three pounds in the past month—that’s a lot for a capuchin this size.”
I suddenly wonder about the caloric content of ketchup.
Frank leaves my arms and jumps into Mom’s.
“You’re not feeding Frank extra snacks, are you?” she asks me. “The woman at the foundation wants him to stay on a pretty specific diet.”
I tell her I feed him the chopped-up veggies and fruits we’re supposed to, along with his monkey pellets.
She holds Frank in front of her and talks to him in her baby voice. As a vet, she’s professional 99 percent of the time, but once in a while the kid inside her pops out and she lets herself be amazed by how cute all these animals are.
“Who’s putting on a little weight? Who is?” she coos to Frank.
Between Frank’s unpredicted weight gain and Mr. Ennis’s class coming to an end next week, it looks like I’ll only be able to film one more Frank video.
It’s got to be a showstopper.
RACE AGAINST TIME
My parents are next door at the Blakes’, which should hopefully give me enough time to
film.
After my conversation with Mom about Frank’s weight yesterday, I decide to use something else besides ketchup and monkey biscuits to get him to go nutty over the bottle of hot sauce.
I take out the jar of mealworms from the cupboard where we keep Frank’s and Bodi’s food. But what should I put them in? Eureka! I place the dead worms in the mesh bag Mom uses for delicate clothes. Thankfully, the holes in the mesh are small enough to keep the worms inside. I hang the bag of worms and hot sauce from the dashboard of Mom’s treadmill like a piñata that Frank will try to grab. Frank is really going to have to work for his hot sauce today.
“Okay, buddy,” I tell him. “This is going to be fun.”
Frank’s as excited as I am and leaps onto the base of the treadmill. He immediately starts jumping to reach the bag. I lean over him to the dashboard and put the treadmill on its lowest setting. Frank doesn’t miss a beat, just takes tiny steps and begins to run.
This time I don’t use the tripod so I am able to move around and get some action shots that I’ll edit into a fast-paced scene. Frank is doing great! He continues to hop up during his jog, striving to get those worms. Would it be bad to let a few of them loose on the treadmill?
I open the bag and take out some mealworms, filming myself as I do it. I dangle them in front of Frank who starts running even faster, trying to grab the snack. As he’s about to, the worms fall out of my hand and roll into the guts of the treadmill.
A few dead worms can’t break a big piece of machinery, can they?
I scrunch up my face, waiting for the treadmill to come to a grinding halt, but it continues to move. To make sure it doesn’t get stuck, I raise the speed a little. Frank runs even faster so I increase the speed a little more.
My Life as a Youtuber Page 7