I found Youtube when I was probably around twelve years old and mainly just used it to watch the funny videos my friends were talking about. One of them I put into my playlist which is “Harry Potter Puppet Pals.” For awhile I just used it for that, but as time went on my use for youtube changed. I started exploring it more, I started finding funny videos on my own, watching hilarious youtubers trying to make a name for themselves, exploring the vast world of music. For awhile I was hooked on youtubers, I followed a vast majority of them and would spend my spare time watching their videos and all the ridiculous stuff they did in them. This addiction only lasted half way through highschool however, and then I started getting on the “weird” part of youtube due to my friends sending me strange videos and then myself wanting to be able to weird my friends out with videos as they did to me.  That fad faded too, and when I got to college I mainly used Youtube as a source for music.

I basically still do this today. Occasionally I’ll watch something that’s not music- cute animal videos, a video related to something I’m interested in, or just a video that me and my friends will watch to reminisce about the good old days.  I think it is important to know my Youtube user history to help explain my experience with Youtube. It shows not only what type of Youtuber I am today but how it has changed as a site for me since I have started using it. I use Youtube almost everyday and I do not really realize it, because a lot of the time I’ll be on a different website that will have a video posted on it, but the site itself got the video from Youtube. I still do however knowingly use Youtube everyday. I have tons of playlists on my account that show all of my Youtube history over the years, how my interests have varied as the years passed. I don’t use Youtube to upload any videos myself, because I don’t make videos except for my own enjoyment or to just show family and friends. I don’t take any videos that I would want to make so public that I would feel necessary to post them to a public site.

I personally love Youtube, there is just so much to explore and there is millions of new things on it everyday. When I’m bored it is the perfect place for me to go, or if I just want some music as background noise while I do work I just throw on a playlist with my favorite songs on it and get to work. It is amazing of how many different things can be found exploring the site. The one thing that does upset me about Youtube is that it is such a publicly used domain that people sometimes put personal things or videos of their friends on it that may be embarassing, and the next day they blow up into viral videos that are only viral because the people watching it are laughing at the person. With such a large public site though this is bound to happen, but before Youtube viral videos did not seem to be such a big deal. Despite that, I do love Youtube as a site and it is part of my everyday life. The playlist I am putting up with this is mostly filled with the various music I use Youtube for, but the other videos are to display what I will occasionally use Youtube for, such as parodies, remixes, funny videos, personal interests, and reminiscing videos.

Mae’s Youtube Playlist