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We Need to Talk About YouTube Meet and Greets
As online video creators look more like celebrities, figuring out how to allow fans to meet them — and them to meet fans — gets harder. What we have now isn’t working for anyone
Thousands of fans of online video’s biggest names made their way from across the United States — and all corners of the world —last week to descend on the Anaheim Convention Center for VidCon. It was a chance for them to learn more about the world of online video, to meet friends — and for the lucky few, to encounter their favorite creators.
The meet and greet is a staple of VidCon, with lotteries held for often teenage fans entering ballots to meet some of YouTube’s biggest stars. 170 different meet and greets were organised across the four days of VidCon this year.
But in the year 2019 — the 10th year of the conference, and YouTube’s 14th year — the meet and greet is looking ever less suitable a way to broker connections between YouTube viewers and stars.
It doesn’t work for creators, who can command audiences equivalent to Hollywood celebrities, and it’s becoming increasingly unsuitable for fans, who get a snatched photograph and a split-second embrace from people they feel an intense personal connection with.
“YouTube has shifted from being about personal connections to being about business, and so these things have a lot less ‘heart’ than they used to,” says Simon Clark, a British YouTuber. The meet and greet has changed because it has to, explains Laura Chernikoff, a freelance consultant for YouTubers who previously worked at VidCon, organizing the conference and its meet and greets.
The format of the 30-second hello, photograph and goodbye “was born out of pure necessity,” she says. “You had 25,000 VidCon attendees, two hours in which someone could meet people, and quite literally they can only meet 300 people in a couple of hours.”
The meet and greet is looking ever less suitable a way to broker connections between YouTube viewers and stars
