Editor’s Note:
For the last several months, our team at the Publish Press has gone in depth, shoulder-to-shoulder, with a group of creators calling themselves the YouTube New Wave.
Their goal: to rebel against the so-called “Beastification of YouTube” by shunning traditional metrics like retention and clickability in favor of an almost filmmaker-like focus on storytelling and deep personal truths. Welcome to our series unpacking the New Wave—let’s jump in.
Intro by Nathan Graber-Lipperman
It's 11 p.m. on a Thursday night in late March when I receive a rather noteworthy text: Your flight has been canceled.
I should be asleep by now. I’m spending the weekend in a log cabin an hour southeast of Salt Lake City, set for a whirlwind of activities and conversations with over 70 talented individuals still (mostly) early in their creative journeys—it’s called Creator Camp, and the Press has been invited to watch and learn. At least, that’s where I’m supposed to be.
I’m up late because I’ve been prepping for the weekend, reading up on creators I’ll be meeting for the first time (like Natalie Lynn and Simon Kim) and watching their videos for hours. At this rate, if I’m lucky, I might nod off for four hours before facing the inevitable mad dash to Dulles International Airport.
I should be asleep by now. But closing my eyes is hard when I’m considering the future of YouTube as we know it. This new group, the “YouTube New Wave,” encourages our industry to shed views and likes as metrics for success. They prize making what they consider to be meaningful art over making content optimized for retention.
Simultaneously, the New Wave is sounding the alarm on how they believe social media algorithms and the spectacle-style content that dominates them grind creativity into a meager pulp.
Creator Camp is this group’s way of flexing their muscles and, truthfully, announcing their arrival to the rest of the industry.
I should be asleep by now. But I’m finding it tough to nod off as I consider whether actively defying a universal set of YouTube creators’ best practices is…a best practice in itself. “If you’re gonna be happy in this world, you have to provide a service in some way, shape, or form…those are the realities that people who want to be indie filmmakers, or do YouTube, have to accept,” Kevin Wu, a veteran sketch comedy creator known as “KevJumba” in a past life, tells me.
While going against the current trends might be preferable for artistry’s sake, is it bad for business? Or, maybe, could this new generation—the one that grew up online, watching careers rise nearly as quickly as they fall—be onto something? And should the New Wave succeed in their vision, will the increased attention (and subsequent cash) splinter the group as some start to become rich and others drift into obscurity?
These are the questions I ask myself as I frantically look for a replacement flight late into the night. Along with a more straightforward query, of course: Is there anything more to explore here, really?
Two layovers and 10 hours of travel later, I arrive in the snowy mountains of Utah to find out.