#connorfranta

SO TRUE BESTIES

https://www.instagram.com/p/CBqlq_2l5Al/?igshid=ij83zrrbdynv

Someone help 😅😂

BANKS for V Magazine photographed by Connor Franta

Connor out here doing the lord’s work - glad to see someone with a high sub count that is actually fueling positivity right now

Connor in If My Dog Were a Person 

Have been thinking a lot about YouTube and how it has influenced a whole generation of creators and perhaps more crucially a whole audience. I know only a small bunch of people who grew up watching YouTube regularly and religiously and there was always a sense of community I derived from knowing other people who did, but also a sense of possessiveness, like YouTube was my secret space to consume content and other people watching it felt like encroachment when after a point that became futile because, well, EVERYONE was watching YouTube. But I think it's interesting how there's been little to no serious conversation / interrogation / discourse about what YouTube meant to people and what it continues to mean, what it represents/represented as a platform, what it can offer and why people were drawn to it, what brought it into the mainstream, what has caused so many YouTubers to stop creating content etc. Many used it as a way to launch music and other careers right from the start and some found something in YouTube that made them not want to leave it even when aforementioned careers were established (dodie for example) but others stopped altogether, like Troye Sivan and Savannah Brown by the looks of it. Others integrate it very seamlessly into the rest of their careers like John and Hank Green and Tessa Violet while others use it as a side creative channel. I just think there is a LOT to be said and thought about the uniqueness of this platform and it influenced the way we consume content (and consume people, essentially, and how it has blurred the line between what is a personality or a person and what is content meant to be consumed) and it's done so in ways other social media hasn't, I think it allows for a level of creative exploration that other platforms don't, and I think it's really unique and interesting that for a good while it remained a sort of secluded place on the Internet (much like Tumblr or Reddit) but has now come into the mainstream and the particular way of creating content For YouTube and not just ON YouTube has sort of died down. Idk I grew up on YouTube and I've recently felt a sadness at its dying down but haven't necessarily stopped to understand / analyse why it's "dying down" and what that "dying down" means. But I think that seclusion from the rest of the Internet isn't there anymore, everyone knows who Zoella and Dan and Phil and Connor Franta etc etc etc are, YouTube is very seriously a payment mechanism more than it is a communication / creativity outlet, but I think its uniqueness is something that seriously goes overlooked, there was a very specific moment in Internet history that allowed YouTube to flourish and that moment has probably passed, but it gives us a lot to be studied about how we are constantly evolving in the way that we communicate and converse with each other and how we create moments of very unique character that pass and are lost without any of us explicitly deciding to let them pass.