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“How It Feels to Be Viral Me: Affective Labor and Asian American
YouTube Performance” by Christine Bacareza Balance discusses the importance of social media, Youtube specifically, in the advancement of Asian American exposure to the general public.
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“Many critics have heralded YouTube as a launching pad for Asian Americans, a group otherwise lacking representation in U.S. mainstream pop culture.” (4)
-With the exponential growth of YouTube, Asian Americans are able to market themselves to the general public in a way that was difficult in the past. Moreover, we have seen how Asian Americans dealt with unfair representation in mainstream media due to being “unmarketable” or simply due to an unwillingness of western producers to air them. As discussed in the article, YouTube acted as a catalyst for Asian Americans to gain exposure in mainstream media without the feeling of being restricted by someone of higher authority.
“Asians got tired of waiting to get into the mainstream. With YouTube, you don’t have to wait for somebody to sign you, or give you a budget of millions of dollars to make a film; you can just do it.” -Korean American Rapper Dumbfounded (5)
-Here Dumbfounded demonstrates the importance of YouTube as a platform for Asian Americans. With YouTube, Asian Americans could proactively post any video without anyone’s approval. This is significant because it was a clear change of how Asian Americans gained exposure to the general public. YouTube takes away the restrictiveness that Asian Americans have dealt with in the past when trying to become bigger names in the entertainment business. In addition, the easy access of YouTube took great appeal to Asian Americans and as a result did not wait to cease the opportunity.
“By invoking a certain set of shared affects for these Asian
American youth audiences, these YouTube stars’ vlogs, song parodies,
skits, and cover performances produce something “intangible: a feeling of ease, well-being, satisfaction, excitement, passion—even a sense of community” (13)
-Asian Americans in our technology driven world have shown to use social media as a way to voice their opinions and gain exposure that they once were lacking in mainstream media. This quote reminds me of the advertising form of “grassroots,” where Asian American producers reached out to the communities they wanted their film to reach out to. Asian Americans through social media are able to provide content to communities they know that would give them continuous support. This is important because not only are Asian Americans able to become bigger social media influencers, but they are able to do so while building strong communities that would last throughout the future. Asian American youtubers are able to consistently provide content to their subscribers on topics that they are able to relate to. This demonstrates how times have changed in how Asian Americans in the past had to follow producers and screenwriters in being characters they could not relate to in real life. Now through YouTube and other platforms they are able to be unique personalities that attract audiences that appeal to them.
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Asian American- is “symbolic, because of its rhetorical and deliberative nature, but, nonetheless possessed of real-world implications” (11)
Viral media- An image or video that is circulated rapidly and widely from one Internet user to another