Recently I met the coolest YouTuber ever, smoothiefreak (A.K.A Akilah Hughes) at VidCon and although I made myself out to seem like a shy, introverted, creepy little dork (which is all completely true) she was still so nice. To be honest, it took me 8 hours to get the courage to walk up to her and say âhiâ. (SIDENOTE: In those eight hours I saw her approximately 7 times. SEVEN FREAKINâ TIMES!! And I said nothing.) Now, you maybe asking yourself, âWhy, child, did it take you so long to say something to this lady who has gorgeous hair?â To that I say âHold on let me explain.â Hereâs the reason why. Every time I went to go say something to this amazing person my legs felt as if they had instantly transformed into jelly and my stomach (possibly my large intestine, if you want to go medical) expanded into twice its original size, leaving me immobile and frozen in place. This feeling did not go away until exactly 2 minutes after she had left my eyesight. When I finally went up to her, all I was able to do was tell her my name, hand her the bracelet I made, and awkwardly ask for a hug. Now Iâve realized that this just doesnât happen to me. In fact Iâd talked several people at VidCon who had similar experiences. A girl I waited in line with told me that she cried after hugging Grace Helbig. I was almost stampeded, Lion King style, by thousands of screaming teenage girls because they thought that they saw Nash Grier (In the end it turned out to be this random guy who was doing it for a joke). I witnessed a 13 year old child literally act as if she was overtaken by the Holy Spirit because Dan and Phil touched her hand. My dear cousin, who waited in line for 11 hours to see some  British vlogger duo, said that only words she could mutter was âI love youâ because she was so excited and nervous at the thought of actually meeting them. She also made the photographer videotape the encounter because she knew, before going in, that she just would not remember anything that had happened (and to be honest she doesnât).  So many other people have suffered from this fear and overwhelming excitement of really interacting with these beloved YouTubers who have transformed their life for the better.
    So the question is this: Why do people, like me, idolize these YouTubers who, in a way, are just like everyone else? Now, I may have an idea of why this occurrence might happen but just donât quote me on it. Personally, I look up to these people and view them like an older brother or sister. But more like the funnier and cooler estranged big bro or sis that's stuck on an endless voyage around the Arctic Circle in hopes of discovering the true meaning of Christmas, whose only way of communicating with me is through these hilarious weekly video messages. In other words, I respect them and have a "connection", if you say, with these content creators, but the relationship is somewhat purely one dimensional. Before one of the panels I was watching started, I was ease dropping on a conversation in which a girl was complaining to her friend about all these kids who were ambushing this famous YouTuber for autographs and pictures. To which her friend replied âYeah I donât understand why they do that. [Insert famous YouTuberâs name here] is a person too.â At first I nodded in agreement and smirked at our mutual annoyance of the situation. However, it wasnât until the actual panel started that it dawned on me that I was a contributor to this, as she described, problem too. I have met, all thanks to VidCon, these YouTubers who, for years, Iâve watched and only fantasized of actually speaking to. And when I finally got the chance to meet these amazing and creative people, the idea of them being real human beings finally formed in my brain. I mean, of course I knew that they were people, it's just that actually seeing them, or in my case awkwardly hugging them, reinforced their initial existence. I think that we get so overwhelming excited at the idea of finally meeting and interacting with these individual who are, unknowingly, such a huge part of our lives that we, as fans, just donât know what to do. For me, when I finally met Akliah my body was on auto-pilot and it was as if I was having an out-of-body experience, because there was so many things that I wanted to tell her and thank her for but all I was able to do was a sound like an idiot. Now, I canât promise that this wonât happen again (For all I know, every time Iâll meet her Iâll probably make a fool of myself.) but what I can say is that now I know that she, just like every other YouTuber out there, is in fact a human being and does human stuff (like binge- watching Netflix, over- sleeping, singing in the shower, casually mourning over his/her favorite character death etc.) just like you and me. Â
