I’m curious about the audience demographics of these videos.

I see these random videos with thousands and sometimes millions of views recommended on the trending section. These people are not famous stars of anything other than just being a regular family that decided to share their daily life on YouTube.

Sometimes they are very wealthy and I understand seeing snippets of the lavish lifestyle could be interesting to others. But most of the time these are average/medium-high income families. No mansion, no Bugatti.

Many of the trending videos have a reaction as bait ( ie. “Telling my partner I’m pregnant” etc) but when skimming through these channels most of their content is mundane stuff: “our breakfast routine”, “last Friday at the park”, " weekly update", etc.

What’s so appealing about this? I couldn’t care less but their following obviously says a lot of people do. Who watches this and why? I don’t know anyone in my circles following this type of content, do you? Why would millions of people follow some random stranger online?

  • jol@discuss.tchncs.de
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    6 months ago

    Some people just like following other people’s life around. It’s the reality TV on today. You can create strong parasocial bonds with people who don’t know you.

    I don’t personally follow any such channels, but I do follow other small Internet celebrities and grew do care about them. Like I was shocked when Simon Griez had brain cancer, and I feel sorry for Diane the physics girl for her 3 year long covid battle. These people have no idea who I am.

    Many times these channels start small and many users follow them since the beginning, so a bond naturally grows. Then the quality of videos grows as the income starts coming in.

    • Nougat@fedia.io
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      6 months ago

      I watch a lot of car revival channels, and my favorite is Sleeperdude, because it’s the whole family working together to do it, and that’s definitely a big part of the charm of the show.

      Also Josh is really good at what he does.