Addiction (It's Serious)

Every now and then, I disover parallel universes. Like the time when Novala first told be about this thing called blogs. Until about half a year ago, YouTube for me was basically a kind of jukebox were you could find ALL the songs of your youth and beyond, including the most cringeworthy Eurovision Song Contest entries. I also associated it with practical hands-on demonstrations (I would sometimes watch Photoshop manuals), rants by all kinds of weirdos and funny(ish) home videos. A couple of months ago, I was doing some research for a work project when I discovered the phenomenon of make-up gurus and their channels. The first one I "met" was Panacea81, an extremely likeable and talented British girl who started out with few subscrivers and crooked teeth. She is now a MEGA phenomenon with shiny veneers and her own make-up-line and beauty-column in the Guardian who's on a mission to show that people from a disadvantaged background and with a less than perfect figure can make it big. Lauren (her real name) rocks!

Recently, when I hadn't watched any make-up tutorials for weeks, a video with the title "how I permanently go rid of my acne" on the YT homepage in the "videos being watched now" category caught my attention and although I'd never even had acne I watched it because it fascinated me that people would upload a video on that topic. Thus, I made the acquaintance of Allthatglitters21, another very popular make-up guru in the YT realm. She is the sister of Juicystar07, who in my opinion is not only prettier, but also a lot funnier to watch. The two of them aged 21 and 16 years respectively, live in an undisclosed Southern state of the US and have their own online shop (you can find many videos of their fans reviewing products they bought there), Glitzy Glam. Needless to say they also have blogs and can be found on Twitter.

My latest discovery and current favourite is RiceBunny, an American girl of Vietnamese descent whose videos are very origininal, edited really well and use backgound music and voice-overs. She often does tutorials on homemade masks and scrubs using fruit and veg and also has her own skincare range, IQQU.

Like other people are addicted to soap operas or gossip sites, these tutorials and vlogs hold a strange fascination over me and I would typically watch 10 videos in a row in lieu of watching TV.

When you type "make-up tutorial" into the search box on YT, you get 216.000 results. Oh-oh.