Online fame is just as good as TV or Movie fame, if not better

I had an interesting conversation with a standup comedian from LA who was in town on tour.  My best friend actually grew up with him so we all went for drinks afterwards.

Ian Bagg has been pursuing his dream of being a big actor/comedian for 15 years.  And he’s done pretty well.  He makes a living at it and travels around the world doing standup.  He gets TV appearances, interviews stars, and has a following.

We got into a discussion on YouTube on whether or not being an actor online was actually legitimate.  Chris’ conclusion was no.  YouTube to him was a place where anyone with a webcam or digital camera felt they could take a short cut and just try to get famous for nothing.  He saw it as a place for lazy people with no talent to showcase themselves.

And he’s not alone.  The majority of people don’t really understand or see the full potential of YouTube and the way many of us use it.  Sure, there’s a ton of crap.  But you don’t have to watch that stuff.  In fact, it’s mostly hard to find.  With hundreds of thousands of videos added every single day, it’s usually the most viewed videos that are watched, and they’re usually most viewed for a reason.  I mainly watch videos of users that I’m subscribed to or videos that my friends share on facebook or twitter.  I’m subscribed to people who produce consistently good videos.  People who are really entertaining to watch and put work into their videos.  People who could quite possibly be on TV or in Movies if they didn’t live in some remote city with a day job and a life they enjoy.

YouTube and sites like it are really their own industry. And getting seen or creating a following on there is no easy task.  Every minute 10 hours of video is uploaded to the site. That’s a lot of competition.  If you produce crap, you’ll be lucky to break the double digits on your view count.  People won’t watch your videos and won’t come back to your channel (profile) again.  You can’t just put up a video of your family vacation and get famous.  It takes work, creativity, and talent to get noticed, get subscribers, and create regular quality content that people will come back for.  There are plenty of people on YouTube who are great actors, but haven’t been able to become a movie star.  That doesn’t mean they aren’t worth watching or they’re cheating the system.

I used to think like Ian. I resisted opening an account on YouTube for a long time.  Then when I finally did I just planned for it to be temporary – just a way to get noticed by people in TV land.  Now I realize that it’s completely different than TV and movies and something that to me is even more exciting. A way to get viewers and fans from all over the world who can easily share my content with their friends and can interact with me.  TV and movies don’t offer that.  And I even make some money at it now!  More about that in a future post.

So I’ve completely shifted my thinking from using YouTube as a way to get more into the Film & TV industry to being something separate and valid on it’s own within the bigger scope of the online video industry.  And if you’re good at it you’ll stand out from the rest and even make a successful career out of it, just like with TV and movie actors.

What do you think? Can you call yourself a successful actor if you’re doing it online?  Or do you think it really is just a small stepping stone to the TV and Movie industry, which is the only really legitimate place to be an actor (outside of live theatre)?