Christmas of 2011, I got an iPod Touch which came with the pre-installed YouTube app. This was back when the YouTube logo looked like an old TV instead of the red play button it has become today. Aside from watching a few videos my friends had shown me, this was when I really became a "viewer" and a "subscriber".
Needless to say, I watched YouTube constantly on that little 2 x 3 inch screen. I went through a huge Minecraft phase when I was in middle school, and one of the YouTube channels I watched back then had a small Minecraft server that I used to play on every day. It was a small community where I ended up learning everything from how to mine for diamonds in Minecraft to what DDOS attacks were. It's really funny looking back on it, but Minecraft had sparked my interest in programming. There were all these server commands you could type in the Minecraft console in order to spawn to new places, set up permissions, or do other things based on the plugins that the server had installed. It was so interesting to me that I could type words and have them do something. It was kind of like magic.
Minecraft was my first exposure to an online community as well. It was constantly changing with people ranging in ages from ten to in their twenties to even older. I was drilled with internet safety from school, so I had a fake "real" name and a fake "real" hometown when people asked. I caught Minecraft in it's golden age, right before it became super commercialized and the updates strayed further and further from the original game. The server had a bunch of good people that I'll never know the real names of, and we had a lot of fun adventures exploring the world and building castles.
Who knows if I would've gone into computer science had I not been a Minecraft player? Before that game, I didn't really do much with computers because I didn't know anything about them. But Minecraft got me into gaming in general as well as coding in a slightly indirect way. And I don't think I would've gotten so invested into Minecraft had I not found that YouTube channel.
Overall, I think that I've been positively influenced by YouTube rather than negatively. After my Minecraft phase, I was absorbed in channels that talked about films, animation, writing, and directing. It fueled my passion for filmmaking and storytelling, which I'm still heavily interested in today. There were also channels I watched that talked about mental health, something I really appreciated hearing in high school. I looked up to a lot of these influencers since they seemed like me--they weren't celebrities living in Hollywood but people in their late teens or early twenties figuring out the messiness of life. As they shared their experiences, they were also helping people to not feel so alone who might be going through the same thing.
YouTube was and still is a place where I can find inspiration for my passions. I still watch a good amount of YouTube today. I get inspired by short films, cooking channels, or fashion vlogs. It is interesting to see how YouTube has changed throughout the years--there's certainly more ads for Squarespace on every channel I watch--but the platform is full of creative people as long as you search for them.