With the increase of popularity of social media and the numerous social media platforms, many users that have gained a large following begin to create their own personal brand, whether they know it or not. This increase in popularity has created a new form of celebrity, one that focuses mainly on the connectedness wth fans, for they are the ones that carry out the influencers name and image. One of the social network sites that I follow very closely, which has many up-and-coming influencers, is Youtube. One of the more popular social media influencers that has over 11 million subscribers, is David Dobrik.
Over the past three to four years that David Dobrik has emerged onto the social media scene, he has made a huge splash in the social media market, in terms of personal branding. At first, he was just a high school student that would make 6 second videos on the application Vine. Once vine was no longer available, he switched applications and went onto Youtube. He now creates 4 minute and 20 second vlog videos that consist of him and his friends doing crazy things, as well as David rewarding his friends or gifting them very expensive gifts. My fascination with David began when I saw a video of him giving away three cars to his best friends. I began to ask myself how is it possible that he is financially stable enough to be buying his friends cars? So I started doing some research. David has partnered with the company SeatGeek, with when David gives them a shoutout in his videos, they allot him substantial money, which he then uses to buy his friends their dream gifts.
The Youtube “celebrity” is something very new and different than our previous definitions of what a celebrity is. A celebrity used to be a person that you really would only see in the contexts of their professional fields, whether that be movies, television, music, sports, etc. However, with the introduction of Youtube and other social media websites, the idea of celebrity has many more meanings. They are way more connected and personable to their fanbase. For example, in David’s vlogs, it appears as though he is talking directly to the viewer, almost as if you are friends. You get the sense that you know exactly who David is because you are seeing him interact with his actual friends in his real life, not one that he is acting in. It is with this that David’s “brand” is established. David, along with other known vloggers on the same platform, “positions himself as part of his own fandom” in order to appear more relatable and likable to viewers and fans [1].
Social media influencer walk a fine line between celebrity and just your average person. They are “meant to be relatable, yet at the same time, be apart of the masses” meaning being something other than the rest [2]. Vloggers on Youtube “need to shift between authentic and staged intimacy on the same medium; they have to straddle the line between the familiar and the other” [1]. With this in mind, David does this by letting the fans into his world, however, with his editing style of his vlogs, still stands “apart from the masses.”
David’s digital identity on Youtube as well as other platforms can reflect many aspects of the honeycomb framework. For instance, his constant connectedness to his fans exemplifies the relationships aspect of this framework. Everything he does is for and because of his fans and he does everything he can in order to build a greater relationship with them. Another aspect of the honeycomb framework that David exemplifies is reputation. He knows where he stands socially in comparison to his friends and other youtubers and uses this in his own content and jokes with his friends.
Works Cited:
- Burgess, Jean and Joshua Green. 2008. ‘Agency and Controversy in the YouTube Community’
- Cunningham, Stuart & David Craig. 2017. ‘Being ‘Really Real’ on YouTube: Authenticity, Community and Brand Culture in Social Media Entertainment.’ Media International Australia 164, 1, pp. 71-81.
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