Blogger (or Vlogger? or Viral Video-er?) Makes it Big: Go Brookers!

I have been tracking this Cinderella story for a while now, and it amazes me every time.

A twenty-year-old Massachusetts girl has hit it big: she put up videos at YouTube of herself talking, singing, or dancing to the camera, and because of those vids she now has a deal with Carson Daly to help make creative videos and things. Impressive, huh? I know some people think she is a talentless, mentally unstable woman who is just incredibly lucky, but I say they are probably just jealous; it's okay to admit it, I am a little bit too!

Here's why I think she deserves the fame and the subsequent deal: her enthusiasm, her expressiveness, and her inventiveness. The enthusiasm is in the energy and emotion she puts into each video, which is refreshing in an age of cynicism and boredom; her expressiveness is in the way her face and body language perfectly match the song or the situation; and the inventiveness is in the approach, however grassroots it may be, to say whatever it is she wants to say. She is obviously 100% commited to each video she makes and is just doing it for the sake of doing it, devoid of the stink of desperation that people who grasp at fame seem to have. And since she is fully aware of the exposure she is submitting herself to, we can laugh with her and not at her, unlike the Star Wars Kid videos, which I loved but stopped watching after I learned how traumatized they made their sweet, unsuspecting star. She is the master of the joke instead of being the joke, which is a lot less mean-spirited and much easier to swallow. (As a bonus, I also love her bedspread and trying to read all the words on it.) And that sums up why I like her videos.

Her farewell video to her fans, which has a good clip show of some of the videos she's done, is below:



Here's whitney's post about it at the Candy, with really great links to interviews with Brooke herself and talking about the craze. I especially like this one.

I read throught my new Entertainment Weekly at lunch (EW, my fave Entertainment mag since US went slutty a few years ago,) and it so happens that this week's issue has a whole section devoted to viral videos, blogs, vlogs, you name it. Here is their article discussing the viral video phenomenon and the journey of their own, actually humorously-written foray into making a popular YouTube video (how lucky were they to have the story about Brooke break halfway through prepering for the article? Talk about serendipitously tapping into the Zeitgeist.)

And here are other fun EW links to said EW video, some popular viral videos throughout the years, and their own blogger's post on the Brooke deal.

While these articles list most of the famous viral vids I already knew about (Hasn't everyone seen and loved "Ask a Ninja" by now?), there are some I love but aren't mentioned. Maybe I'll post my own fave list of viral vids someday, so at leat I will be able to easily find their links. Yeah, that sounds like a plan.

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And yes, no AB today, I totally suck. I will post two next week or something to make up for it, I swear.