Throughout my childhood, teenage years, and now early adult life, I have consistently had a comfort YouTuber. I’ve never actively sought out one, it’s just the person or people I slowly find myself looking forward to watching on their weekly upload day. I barely know life without watching people on the internet. I name the different periods of my life by the YouTubers I religiously watched at the time.Â
In my early childhood, I watched Bethany Mota, ThatcherJoe (and everyone else in the British Youtuber Universe), and O2L. Middle school was Emma Chamberlain and KianAndJc. But from early high school until now, my constant has been Sinjin Drowning–a sibling duo who mainly plays video games but also makes vlogs called “Coffee Cams.”Â
I originally watched Weston, one-half of Sinjin Drowning, in middle school when he had his own channel but it wasn’t until he started making videos with his sister, Kalynn, that he joined the list of my comfort YouTubers. Now, after six years of consistently posting, Sinjin Drowning is finally nearing one million subscribers. They post almost daily, with each video being around 30 minutes, give or take. If you’ve never heard of them and go look at their channel right now, it probably looks incredibly hectic and nonsensical–which is an accurate description of their energy in every video, but I don’t think anyone could accurately sense who they are through their thumbnails. While it’s clear they mainly play games together, it’s more for the whimsy of it rather than skills. But I personally prefer their Coffee Cams where they go and get coffee (and Kalynn’s order is always better), maybe go to a store, and chat to the camera. I say chat to the camera as if they’re just having a casual conversation but it usually includes, however, not limited to: never-ending bits from Weston, a random song they’ve decided to create in the moment, and imagining what they’d say if TimothĂ©e Chalamet walked by right then.Â
Weston and Kalynn are siblings from North Carolina who are incredibly close, effortlessly funny, and never take themselves too seriously. They are gifted with an extensive lexicon of internet references and watching their videos is like being let in on their rare sibling dynamic. They’ve moved all over the United States together from North Carolina to Los Angeles to Texas to New York City. It’s clear how close Weston and Kalynn are that they cannot imagine living in a different city than each other.Â
The relationship with a comfort YouTuber is one that typically breaches on (if not already is) a bit of a parasocial one. They’re comforting because they reflect parts of you. They reflect your humor or even take part in shaping it, without ever knowing you. It’s beautiful the ways we’re so similar to absolute strangers, and to be able to envision yourself being friends with someone you’ve never physically crossed paths with. Sometimes though, it can be sad to know there’s people who you’d enjoy being friends with, but you can’t be. However, other times it’s nice to have a relationship with no pressure; I can just enjoy their videos and there’s no expectations from my end. Perhaps, our relationship was always meant to be one with me as a viewer, and them as people I enjoy on YouTube while I eat my lunch or feel too anxious to go to sleep. There’s a consistency in a comfort YouTuber that other comfort sources cannot always provide. Movies and T.V. shows can get overplayed (I am evidence of this as I can tell you exactly what happens in each episode of Emily in Paris) and they are frozen in time. YouTubers are real people who have new content that reflects the current trends and culture.
Oftentimes, my friends will tell me they don’t really watch YouTube, to which I always respond with confusion because of how incomprehensible that is to me. So if you’re anything like my friends, I will say the same thing to you as I say to them: find YouTubers you like, especially ones that make you laugh, because you are missing out on a lovely form of human connection that acutely represents our digital age.