The Fault in our stars movement

Hello everyone! Prepare yourselves, I am back for another article!

So today, as you have probably guessed, I’m going to talk about youtube. Obviously.

I’m going to explain the obsession that youtube and all the community around it creates on the daily users. But don’t close this tab! This will not be another scary, weird post about how I love him (despite the fact I still hopelessly do). It may not be as gripping as other very scientific research about addiction because I definitely don’t have the skills to write something that clever, but this is just my point of view.

Now you must be utterly lost but I’ll stop beating around the bush and just go straight to my point.

I’m not really addicted to youtube because I could totally live without it. But I realised, after watching a lot of videos from the same “youtube stars”, that they were creating some kind of obsession.

I’m going to talk about one example I’ve participated in. All the youtube community (and when I say all, I really mean ALL) was talking about/ praising THE book “The fault in our stars” by John Green. Indeed, John Green is a youtuber and has been running a youtube channel called “vlogbrothers” for more than six years. Not to mention he has created “Vidcon”, which has become a huge youtube convention where users get to meet their favourite youtubers (18’000 people attended in 2014).

But let’s go back to the book. So, basically, here is the plot: a teenage girl called Hazel who suffers from terminal cancer falls deeply in love with Gus, a handsome guy, who (guess what?) also has cancer (and obviously, he is older, duh). Their love is infinite (“OMG I want to be Hazel so bad, she has a cute boyfriend – and cancer“haha). And at the end (SPOILER ALERT!) one of them dies and here we go for an oh-so-long rumination about death.

I’m being really cynical but I must admit that, at first, I loooooved that book. Seriously. Loved. It. And this is all because of you! Youtube! Because everyone was talking about it, saying it was so breathtakingly clever and true how John was meditating about life, death, love and blablabla. But this is a book clearly aimed at lonely teenage girls complaining about their lives. And, yes, it is a good book to start thinking about “what the hell am I doing on this planet?”. And yes I read it twice, and yes I went to the cinema to watch the movie adaptation, twice too (which makes 30 Swiss francs in total), and yes I did a freaking poster with quotes of the book that is still on my wall! And yes, I suppose I can tell, when I look back, that I’m a suggestible fool.

But when Youtube calmed down, I did a little reality check. I saw the trailer one more time, read some parts of the book, looked at my poster and suddenly realised that… this book wasn’t as good as everybody was pretending it was and certainly not as good as I was pretending it was! That struch me in my journey above the skies and brought me straight down to earth. The book was just bringing to life a new feeling which a lot of girls my age have never experienced before. And, I mean, who doesn’t like a heart-breaking love story? But there are so many other superbly written books that go so much deeper in one’s soul.

As you can tell, I can’t really nail my colours to the mast because I love the book but hate myself for loving it, and you may think that my post is not directly related to Youtube. But I’m sure all the Youtube consumers see a direct link between youtube and their probable addiction to “The fault in our stars”.

Anyway, I hope you found this article interesting, and if you did, please make sure to share and comment it.  See you soon for another post.