How passionate are you?

As discussed, our analysis of video content and user comments identified some important rules to be followed when seeking popularity on YouTube’s beauty scene. In addition, we collected various pieces of relevant community-specific data highlighting the notion of “passion” and of “being passionate” about work, career, content creation, and YouTube, among others. We suggest that the most important step is to clearly convey the message that you do, whatever it is you do online, because “you really want it“ and not to gain status, money or perks, but due to selfless, “altruistic” (see also Duffy, 2015; Duffy and Hund, 2015; Marwick, 2013a) and passionate reasons.

Moreover, on YouTube, usually being passionate about something, means exactly the opposite of “doing it for money”. There is no middle ground. There seem to be only two possibilities: if a user does not create a channel and uploads videos (only) because it is their biggest passion, and with the aim of motivating or helping others, then it must be surely created out of greed. These users are, then, seen as “just seeking attention” to gain views and to capitalize on their videos. On YouTube, paths to fame and recognition must not seem premeditated; moreover, they better be unintentional and unplanned.

This would mean, depending on the specific community, having a certain “vision”, which can, and will, in some way, help people or contribute to making their lives, easier, fuller, and happier. For instance, a YouTube channel dedicated to “finding your inner beauty”, and to “inspire others” as Bubz described her aim when uploading content. Gurus have to be authentic, honest and trustworthy, and, must accordingly, only upload content or even decide to create a channel for the “right reasons”. This implies, for instance, that it would be not well seen to name money or fame as reasons for starting a new YouTube channel. Therefore, and similar to the narratives of makeover and reality TV shows, aspiring practitioners and influential gurus are supposed to participate for the right reasons: this can be a deep-rooted dream, or selfless, solidarity missions such as “helping others”.
In this context, it is essential to contribute to the image of “working hard to achieve” dreams, with passion and commitment. Then, and only then, the person would be considered by the community as deserving their eventually successful career, as well as the subsequent professional, social reputation, and fame it entails. The relevance of authenticity, particularly a successfully and consistently performed authenticity, as well as the notions of talent, and hard-work as seen by this community are very relevant to understand the subject position of “beauty guru” (see García-Rapp, forthcoming).

Being an attainable role model
Successful gurus must be fun, creative, open, honest, spontaneous, and most importantly, they have to, always and at all times, be authentic. These habitualized and shared community norms helped establish authenticity as the epitome of legitimized online popularity (also Abidin and Thompson, 2012; Duffy, 2015; Duffy and Hund, 2015; Marwick, 2013b). As Hearn and Schoenhoff write, authenticity is currently “the ultimate arbiter of value” (Hearn and Schoenhoff 2015: 200).

At the end of the day, it all comes down to how authentic someone is or is displayed to be, something which has also been traditionally relevant for cinema stars (Dyer 1986). Bubz remains worthy of emulation and praise for being “a regular girl”: down-to-earth, relatable, humble and ordinary. As seen on these examples of user comments, Bubz is considered a relatable person and praised for her truthfulness and honesty: ‘You are TRUE, Bubz. REAL. And we can ask for nothing more than that. I am a better me because you are trying to be a better you. We may live continents apart, but we are sisters. I hope to one day meet you. Until then, m’dear, keep filming. I’ll be here ^_^’

To summarize, in order to sustain interest and popularity, she is expected to reveal the right amount of information to remain down-to-earth by displaying transparency, honesty, and commonness. At the same time, she has to balance the need to remain aspirational, worthy of emulation, and somehow unreachable enough. After having started sharing content in 2008, by the end of 2009 she already was the fifth most subscribed YouTube user in the U.K. but still depicted herself as an “everyday girl” and far from being a beauty expert. Moreover, she described herself on her channel profile as “the biggest dork on the planet”, always highlighting her amateur nature: “Just your everyday girl who wants to share makeup, beauty and hair innovations”.

Conclusions
The phenomenon of YouTube beauty gurus clearly brings together the social aspect of sharing personal information, footage of daily activities and building affective connections with revenue-oriented aspects: namely self-branding, achieving high status and maintaining good reputations as professional, responsible, and influential personalities. This juxtaposition of two differing, and often antithetical, societal spheres — the commercial logic of self-promotion and the social creation of feelings of closeness with the audience — has implications for the construction of gurus’ subject positions. These creative, cultural activities are also commercialized and due to this, they are ambivalent and often contradictory (Tolson, 2010).

We undertook this ethnographic project in order to better understand the culture surrounding Bubz and her viewers in view of online popularity. More specifically, it was our objective to address and help articulate the dynamics of YouTube’s beauty community and the core values guiding online practices. Because groups foster certain types of community-dependent ideal personas, it is relevant to note that “achievement that is considered sufficient to rightfully inhabit the micro-celebrity subject position is highly variable and context dependent” (Marwick 2013a: 135). Therefore, we sought to shed light into the politics of success of this particular community. In the case of YouTube’s beauty community, the right to self-branding is awarded only to those considered “real”, honest, hard-working, talented and inherently “deserving” gurus (see also García-Rapp, 2017). While YouTube expects gurus to perform a carefully monitored, business-oriented, online persona, the community of pairs and viewers expects them to always be reachable, trustworthy, honest, and authentic. This implies in daily practice that she needs to manage with care the opinions she shares so as not to damage her reputation in the eyes of advertisers, while being relatable and close to her viewers.

As a “subcultural celebrity” (Hills 2006: 103), Bubz grows from her niche community to actively perform not only consumerism but celebrity. Thanks to the blend enabled by her tutorials and vlogs, legitimized, and accepted by the viewers, she continues working on her external, commercially oriented positioning and value by uploading more tutorials. She gains recognition through her informational tutorials and achieves the strongest sense of connection through her vlogs, which not only sustain and renews viewers’ interest but also re-signify her condition of “ordinary” relatability (García-Rapp, 2017). By doing this, her vlogs confirm and legitimate (Dyer, 1998; Tolson, 2010) her subject position as a renowned personality, a YouTube celebrity.