A youtuber is a person who posts videos on Youtube. The word is an intuitive construction for the English language. The more generic term would be content creator but that's two extra syllables and the only two things this typically refers to is TikTok and Youtube which are pretty interconnected media ecosystems. While the user base is so large that generalizations are hard to make let alone substantiate there is a sort of average youtuber that exists in the minds of viewers. This average youtuber will be different for each viewer. It's a really banal point but also one that's easy to lose sight of. Youtubers can be small time or big time, professional or amateur, of any creed or caste, and focused on just about any topic. All of that gets filtered through the site's algorithm to present you with the version that will generate the most engagement. (Which should be understood as different than what it thinks we want)
What meaningful things can be said about youtubers as a class of people? Informants, gurus, narcissists, opportunist, creatives, scammers, specialists, critics, reviewers, conspiracy theorists, science educators, partisans, political activists, hypocrites, experts, fakes, millennials, zoomers, boomers, groomers, gamers, artists, musicians, attention whores, hobbyist, professionals, shills, ASMRtist, thirst traps, skeptics, religious fundamentalists, trolls, communists, socialist, crypto-fascists, patriots, boburnham, memesters, and grifters. How many of those resonated? Can you see a bias in what I listed and glean some insight into my orientation from who I left out? Without doing a web search, did I make any of those words up? If there is one thing that can be said about youtubers it's that your personal feelings toward the word and the group it represents probably say more about yourself than anyone else.
IRON NODER XVI: MORE STUBBORN-HARD THAN HAMMER'D IRON
How am I the first person to node about this?