YouTubers are the most influential celebrities of today
but, if you're anything like me,
you'll probably have no idea who they are,
what they do, or why they're so maddeningly rich and happy.
HE FARTS Oh, my God!
My name is Liam Williams. I'm a critically lauded
but commercially unsuccessful comedian...
No, it's not funny - that's the point!
..who only really uses YouTube to watch clever academic lectures,
which you can only pretend to understand.
'..in orthodoxies, your Marxist praxis.
I think we know the answer to that.'
Despite how out of touch I am,
the BBC has given me the chance to make a show about YouTubers.
Well, there's a whole community of us,
but we're all completely different.
I'm not looking forward to hanging out for six weeks with a bunch of
vloggers or, as I call them, self-manipulating content puppets.
But if I stick this out, then I could win a £10,000 prize.
And rotate... Oh!
Focus!
KLAXON SOUNDS
HE SCREAMS
It was a typical Friday night.
I was too skint to go out,
up late, drinking alone and worrying about my life.
All of a sudden, an irritating advert popped up.
BOTH: So you think you can vlog?
Stupid pricks!
The person who gets the most votes will win...£10,000!
Oh!
People love dogs.
And I've got a dog.
Weather, clothes, jewellery, rugby, anything -
just give me a topic and I can talk about it.
I love talking about myself.
I have really poor bone structure.
Can I still take a good selfie?
And the answer is yes!
Everything's burning.
The seas are getting...cooking.
And everything's going to collapse and you aren't even talking cos
you're all watching vlogs!
With a cute little goon...
..smiling at you, saying, "Everything's fine."
Well, it isn't fine.
It's a great tragedy for the whole generation
that this is all that we've got.
That's what the internet is.
It's one big, broken, stuffed-up...
..shit-ridden bowl.
A million billion arseholes spilling out..
..fresh shit.
The PR company behind the competition tried to disqualify me,
saying that my video wasn't in the right spirit.
But the will of the people must be respected,
even if the people turn out to be masochistically stupid.
So James Wirm, Beam's MD, came up with a compromise
and invited me to his headquarters to find out what it was.
Vloggy McVlogface.
The thorn in my side.
The bane of my life.
Welcome to Beam. You met Caroline?
Yep. Caroline, could you get me half a pear...
..some granola with banana on it
and...a chocolate orange
and a fried egg sandwich, please, no butter.
Come on, poppet, down we go!
Would you care for a water?
Yes, please. It is riddled with your friend and mine...
..concombre.
Cucumber. Cucumber.
The cucumber of the sea.
The sea... Well, no, just normal cucumber.
Shall we have a look at your video?
I'll be... level with you, I need money.
I need money because I don't have any,
and I don't want to go to work.
The winning video.
I do not remember filming this.
No, you look fucking lashed.
I was absolutely fucking hammered.
They voted for you.
Democracy is having a bit of a mare at the moment,
let's be honest.
Well, here I am.
Here you are. What are you getting out of this?
What I was hoping to do was to discover the next superstar vlogger.
That's why I set this competition up.
And a vlogger is?
Wowee!
Go on, what's a vlogger?
Come on, son, come on, my son.
Like... What's a vlogger? They... ..they...
..film... ..film... ..themselves. ..themselves.
Perfect. That's it.
Even though YouTubers do the filming themselves,
the most successful ones are managed by big companies,
and Beam is so good at PR that they teamed up with the BBC
to spin my surprise victory into free publicity.
These guys will be following you around, the sort of...
The BBC? The BBC. Filming me? Filming you!
Want to make a show about me?
Well, yeah, yeah.
We're going to set you a series of challenges.
Six challenges over six weeks.
If you pass all of the challenges, you win the prize.
What's the prize? What's the prize?
£10,000.
Ooh!
And I've got every faith in you, young man.
Right, your first challenge.
Drumroll, please...
Create a welcome video for your channel.
Hey, guys, I'm Charlie SouthMouth!
And welcome to my channel!
That's my slide!
Whoa! Aargh!
Two things you need to know about me.
Number one, I'm an expert in reverse psychology.
Number two, I don't want you to subscribe to my channel.
That's Miley, Cyrus...no. Yeah, Miley and Cyrus.
'James Wirm's sent me to visit Charlie
'so that I could learn how to become a better vlogger.'
So, this is it. Crazy. This is home. It's insane.
Yeah, this is just, like... Like an insane person's home.
Oh! Yeah, well, this, actually,
was a present from James when I got 1 million subscribers. OK.
Yeah, he got this put in.
I actually had to move out for a week cos they had to do the whole...
I don't know what they were doing.
So, yeah, it's a show for BBC Three.
Yeah. Yeah, no, I know, this...
I don't really know that.
I don't really watch, like, old telly, really.
It's all online only now. Oh! Oh, that's good.
The first challenge is to create
a "welcome to my channel" video.
OK.
So, right, so first off, you've got to, like, think about your persona.
Like, your look, like, your voice...
Yeah, I was going to ask about this, actually.
Do you think there's such thing as a YouTuber voice?
What do you mean? Like, a particular special voice that all the YouTubers
seem to have that's, like, "Hey, guys!"
You know? "Very energetic!" That's good. Quite inoffensive.
Yeah, yeah, you should speak more like that.
You know, yeah, cos your normal voice is, like, a bit boring.
A bit boring?
'Charlie tried to make me appear happier on camera.'
You're not going to go down? I just know how it's going to...
Just go down the slide! I can just... I've been on a slide before.
Watch me!
Whoohoo!
BANG
Come on!
BANG
All right, let's just practise being positive about things, OK? Sure.
So... Easy.
All right, take this, take this pillow,
and tell me what is amazing about this pillow.
But it's just a simple, plain pillow. Yeah...
No, no, exactly, but you tell me, like, what's amazing about it.
Oh, that's the point. Sell it. Yeah, tell me what's good about it. OK.
It's soft, nice and soft for your hair...
..to sleep on. Hope you get a good sleep.
Yeah, but it's, like...
All right, guys, this pillow is the best!
With the energy and... Let me tell you why...
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, guys!
This pillow's the best pillow in the world!
It's great, it's all right, you can throw it around, have fun.
All right, if you try it... OK, sometimes, I just have a long day,
and I just want to get home, put my head on the pillow and just...
You know? Just, like, get it all out. I get it. Yeah, yeah. OK.
Hey, guys, sometimes, when I get home,
I just want to get my pillow and just...
HE ROARS
Is that...
..with the energy...?
Charlie clearly works hard and has become incredibly popular,
but even more popular is his girlfriend, Millipede.
Question number seven - what is my blood type?
What? Any boyfriend should know what their girlfriend's blood type is.
In case I got in an accident. This is ridiculous.
What is my blood type? OK...
A? A what?
Positive?
Oh, he's getting a pie in the face! No!
I'm Millipede, and welcome to my channel.
Whoo!
I actually look like the Prime Minister.
I'm kissing a cat.
So what you have to ask yourself,
is anyone going to like me if I'm just sad all the time?
Yes!
I have pied him!
Millipede has over 10 million subscribers which,
to give you a sense of scale,
is roughly the number of military deaths in the First World War.
SHE LAUGHS
She is the most in-demand vlogger in the country
and is now too successful to turn up to her own tour shows.
I'm just not feeling great, I'm a bit sniffly.
SHE SNIFFS Can you hear that?
Yeah, it's quite bad.
So I was keen to pick her brains,
but the meeting didn't quite go as planned.
Hi, Millie.
SHE SPEAKS WITH MOUTH FULL
Sorry?
She says she prefers being called Millipede, not just Millie.
Why is her mouth full?
Well... Well...
SHE SPEAKS WITH MOUTH FULL
She's doing the Smarties challenge.
She's got to put Smarties in her mouth?
She's got to put Smarties in her mouth.
All day. All day.
Or what? Or she loses.
Loses what? Lose the Smartie challenge.
Lose the Smartie challenge.
You mean, she loses the fee from Smarties?
She loses the challenge if her mouth becomes... Dop-dop-dop!
Careful.
Millipede is also known for promoting lots of different brands
in her videos.
Wipes.
There's five in a set. They're £5.99 each.
And if you don't have one, like, it's kind of weird,
do you know what I mean?
She earns, from adverts alone, around £20,000 a month.
Enough to pay the annual salaries of six smartphone factory workers.
THEY SCREAM
On camera, you guys seem really happy together.
# We're on fire tonight... #
But I wonder, off-camera, are you as happy all the time?
SHE SPEAKS WITH MOUTH FULL
Sorry? She says they're incredibly happy together.
What? We don't... BOTH: We don't kiss on camera.
What, are you annoyed? No, it's fine.
After my first meetings with the YouTubers,
I realised they were more complicated than I had thought.
But their job of vlogging now seemed even less appealing.
I didn't have loads of friends at school, I guess, but now,
obviously, millions of friends, I've got... You know what I mean?
Do you feel like they know the real you?
Yeah. Like, this is it?
Yeah, they know, yeah... There's nothing more than...
Yeah, this is me. That's all there is? Yeah, of course.
There you are. 500 grand, it's just not worth it.
400 after commission.
Are you all right?
As I pretended to look sad for the camera at Piccadilly Circus,
I questioned whether the life of a YouTuber was for me.
I thought about walking away from the whole project,
but as I went home I was reminded of the positive side of vlogs.
I realised that YouTubers provide solace and connection for lonely,
young people in a way that traditional TV no longer can.
Watching the new Millipede video?
Don't speak to my four-year-old daughter!
Sorry. I'm...
I decided to continue my challenge in the hope that my own vlog might
bring comfort to others.
Have you got any money? I wanted to get...
Have you got any money?
Also, I really needed that ten grand.
Hey, guys, welcome to my channel!
I used to be a really negative, pessimistic person,
and what I've realised from my first meetings with vloggers
is that it's better to be happier.
Like, loads of bad stuff keeps happening
and the news is really depressing,
and I think the right way to respond to that is
to not really pay too much attention
to all those sad things and to not really read the news.
The new voice is good. Very good.
It's not me, really. Well, yeah.
There's a certain life to it
that you don't really get from you in person.
It's like a robot. I like it.
Are you up for carrying on?
If the ten grand is still there, yeah.
But are you...
..beginning to be...
..a little intoxicated by the world of YouTubing?
Um... It's... A little bit? Sure.
Good luck to you. Thanks.
So my journey to becoming a YouTuber was truly underway.
There were many more vloggers to meet, all with unique,
specialist talents, including cooking, pranking, music.
I'm about to get...lit!
And owning a cat.
And there were five challenges
still standing between me and that ten grand.
Next up, beauty and fashion.
Do you eat a lot of cheese, Liam?
Cheese? Um...
Like, an average amount, I guess.
Yeah, I can tell. Oh, really?
What, just from my skin? No, because of your breath.