Why YouTubers Hold Microphones Now

A video about the rise of YouTubers holding microphones, and what this can tell us about the future of the platform.

Written, directed and presented by Tom Nicholas.
Edited by Georgia Burrows.

*Chapters*
00:00 YouTubers All Hold Microphones Now
05:49 I, YouTuber
15:27 PragerU and the Politics of Style
26:54 Casey Neistat and the Rise of Internet Ugly
36:39 Why YouTubers Hold Microphones Now
56:33 Epilogue

*Bibliography*

Over the past year, a new trend has been sweeping YouTube: holding microphones. On one level, this might seem like a fairly silly little trend; but it can actually tell us a huge amount about some of the underlying tensions which exist beneath the site and where it is headed in the future.

Select footage courtesy of Getty
Music from Epidemic Sound

[Tom_Nicholas]

Hey there! Hopefully you've noticed that I've really been pushing the production value of what I make over the last few videos.

I'm really proud of the videos we're putting out, but doing so is fairly costly.

If you'd like to support me and my team to make more videos like this then you can do so in a couple of ways:



Thanks so much and I hope you enjoyed the video!

[Althocke]

Reminds me of Lindsay Ellis's video "YouTube: Manufacturing Authenticity (For Fun and Profit!)". She pointed out that the channel "How to cake it" started incorporating outtakes, banter with the producer behind the camera, and even breaking the 4th (3rd? 5th?) wall by speaking directly to the editor in the video. So later, when the video enterprise Craftsy decided to make their series called "Man About Cake", the banter with the producer behind the camera was there from the start to give it that authentic YouTube feel. This producer being mic'd up to make sure you hear the "outtakes" clearly. Lindsay's video is over five years old now and I highly recommend watching (or rewatching) it as it's clear she completely nailed where the platform was going.

[Noodlyk]

This is why I fucking love YouTube sometimes. Open it up, get recommended a one hour video essay that answers a question I never explicitly asked but was vaguely aware of. YES, they do do that, I noticed but didn't care to wonder about it, but now I'm extremely interested and will not be able to sleep if I don't get an in depth answer, so fuck it, TELL ME WHY TOM, WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?

[davecgriffith]

Thanks for your videos Tom. I am slowly making my way through your older stuff and am enjoying them greatly.
Sorry to see that your vaping video was demonetized - that's BS.
Take care.

[MedlifeCrisis]

Bless your heart Tom you put my geriatric millennial face on screen when you said “Zoomer”. You’ve always been my favourite YouTube Tom.

[TomSka]

Great video as always, Tom! For my corner of the platform, I'd strongly credit Julian Smith with triggering the arms race to make the most polished and cinematic sketches possible. By 2012, if your sketch wasn't shot, graded, and scored like a movie, you weren't doing it right. Then in 2013 Vine exploded onto the scene and the zoomers immediately reclaimed and popularised amateur aesthetics. Hell, I foolishly wore a wig for a TikTok recently and a couple folk genuinely made fun of me for trying too hard. As you said, it's essential to signal your amateurness to an increasingly savvy/media literate audience lest you be mistaken for a corporate tryhard.

[reijin]

i was like "why is this going to take an hour?" and then learned a lot of interesting stuff. great vid. i love analyzing internet culture, we need more people to do this sort of work, it's really important.

[cradio]

I HAVE BEEN WONDERING THE ANSWER TO THIS QUESTION FOR LIKE A YEAR. It’s a bizarre phenomenon. Everyone went from having out-of-frame mic setups or wearing hidden lav mics, to now holding these giant old-school corded microphones. And it seems like they all did it at the same time. It’s like the new bold yellow text on the thumbnail.

[moderndayjames]

My only issue with professionalization of youtube is that it often drives people to create videos they are not passionate about to meet a deadline. The biggest advantage of early youtube was that it was run purely by passion. That being said, I also like making a living off of my labor

[Sword_Boi]

It reminds me of the rap scene around a decade ago, where music videos would show the artists reading lyrics off their phones in the recording studio. "enthusiastic unprofessionalism" is a perfect description. It was like it was an honour to look like an up-and-coming artist rather than a mainstream one.

[GrandLineReview]

I feel like an out of touch old man having my mic rigged on a boom arm.

[scifino]

As a German, especially one that consumes German media, I firmly recommend anyone to treat any media produced by anything affiliated with Axel Springer with extreme scepticism. It's basically the German version of Rupert Murdoch.

[TheBlueArcher]

I'm glad you mentioned the irony of holding a lav mic, I always thought that was funny. What I also find funny is placing a blue-yeti on screen incorrectly, and it obviously not being the device recording the audio... (which, SEEMS to be the case with you holding the lav mic? ) I love all of it. especially that last idea of having a mic on screen just to not use it and have a hidden mic somewhere else.

[combogalis]

I've always found it interesting to watch how [people who make videos for youtube] develop over time in a sort of inside-out manner.
They often go from unprofessional professionalism to professional unprofessionalism.

[joshuapowers]

It would have been hilarious if when you panned out on that final stage shot there was a boom mic just over your head, revealing the lav in your hand being soely ascetic.

[Ponk_]

The answer is really simple, most "content" makers, tend to follow the trends that give them the most views. No matter how stupid those trends are to normal people, who don't spend every waking hour on a screen device.

[cs]

I like how this video is about microphones, yet its so quiet that I had to set my volume to 100 across the board

[algomaone]

Another observation I have as a member of Gen X, having memory of the pre-internet world: Holding a large dome microphone used to be the ULTIMATE sign of having made it in broadcasting as a mainstream roving reporter or actual journalist on TV. To me it is totally amazing and ironic that the hand held mic is now viewed as “internet ugly”, having gone full swing from a status symbol of skill, education and success to a cool sign of “sticking it to the man”.

[ZBott]

Holding microphones also really helps the "what do I do with my hands" problem most people just attempt to fix by doing polished flailing.

[chris]

I always feel a deep ambivalence about the professionalization of Internet content. Like, on the one hand of course I want people to get paid for their work. But 20 years ago, teenage me felt like posting art and bitching about politics on livejournal made me part of the community, but as some people managed to make a living with it, the rest of us got kind of pushed out to be just passive consumers, and it's so much lonelier and emptier now. What's the difference anymore between this and old-fashioned tv? Just a different shaped screen.