One of the only reasons I used to use Youtube was to watch the Vlogbrothers. The quote above always resonated with me and I think that’s why I liked them a lot. The idea that you can be excited about things and want to teach others about things, and build a supportive community around that was always important to me. I’ve expanded my watch habits now, I watch a ton of Wisecrack, Theorist Inc. shows like Game Theory and Film Theory, and a great deal of video game streamers. I’ve been wanting to make analytical but ultimately wholesome and enthusiastic content about the world we live in.
That being said, I have to honor my roots. I’ve been a freelance writer for 5 years with an emphasis on SEO content and I currently work as a Content Manager for a local marketing company. Working with publications like Femsplain, Bitch Flicks, Hello Giggles, and being involved in the Medium community, I don’t want to turn my back on solid editorial content, even though it may be trendy now. If you follow writers or popular publications like Mic, MTV, or Fox, you’ve probably heard about the “pivot to video”. As Bryan Curtis argues in The Ringer,
“Why this is happening is simple: The web has a surplus of copy versus advertising. Companies have decided that sticking an ad at the front of a video makes it less ignorable than putting a similar ad next to an article. It doesn’t matter what the video is. I often get a paragraph or two into a Sports Illustrated story only to find MadelynBurke in the lower right-hand corner of the screen, giving me a summary of the sentences I’m already reading.”
As someone with a background in both writing and performance, putting all of my eggs in the video basket makes sense, it did, until one day I was doing research on The Financial Diet. I found that the financial planning Youtube channel I was watching for years had BOTH an editorial and a video presence. I decided that as a brand, we don’t need a pivot to video but we should be producing content that honors both mediums. So that’s our plan here.
Me and Sarah Koop, armed with a cadre of contributors are starting out with an editorial presence. On the editorial side, in the coming weeks, you can expect criticism and celebration of pop culture. You can get commentary on TV, movies, video games, politics, and whatever else we feel like writing about. In the coming months, we’ll launch our Youtube space, probably with the same cultural criticism (honed with what we’ve learned from Google Analytics from our editorial side), and some other projects like:
- A cooking series, wherein me and Sarah cook through a Burmese cookbook and other family recipes to uncover our heritage a little better
- Video game streams or playthroughs, featuring commentary by Victoria Peach
- A series on the history of memes (because we live in a time of meme chaos and we desperately need a record
And whatever else works. We’re starting out here, on this site, so if you want to keep following us, you can follow us on our social media platforms or sign up for our mailing list below. So, this is the beginning.