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In this article, we challenge dominant perceptions of social media as an archive of endlessly positive self-documentation by examining two subgenres of YouTube vlogging predicated on the expression of negative affect. Through analysis of the crying and anxiety vlogs of YouTubers ZoeSugg, Trisha Paytas and Nicole Klein, we recognize the productivity of negative affect, charting the translation of the mediated tears, sobs and struggles of these young female vloggers into affirmations of authenticity, (self-)therapy and strengthened ties of intimacy with followers. While these negative affect vlogs work outside of YouTube’s consumer economy, their popularity points to a booming economy of affective labour, where the exchange of tears for sympathetic ears is in consistently high demand.

Informed by my first six months of doctoral research, this paper offers a topography of virtual influencers that at once acknowledges their continuation of and breaking with the precedents of a lineage of “virtual beings” who have achieved celebrity status. Responding to the ahistoricism of much recent commentary, it draws on archival press and web research to situate virtual influencers at the intersection of technological advancements, discourses, and anxieties similarly characterising Hollywood’s “synthespians” at the turn of the twenty-first century; the legacy of “virtual idols” in East Asia (also known as “Vocaloids” in Japan); and the latter’s recent democratisation by a new generation of “vTubers” across video-sharing sites. Recognising this cross-medium migration of virtual celebrity—from anime, video games and blockbuster cinema to the participatory web—this paper adopts a platform-specific lens to highlight the affordances, cultures and vernaculars of specific social media as essential to virtual influencers’ aspiration to, and attainment and maintenance of, attention and fame.

This entry offers an introduction to vloggers, a label for individuals who film, edit, and upload personal videos (known as vlogs or video blogs) to the internet, most commonly to the video‐sharing platform YouTube. Through the self‐directed production of videos that foreground their daily lives, thoughts, and emotions, vloggers lay claims to representing the authentic, intimate, and “real” lives of ordinary people. In so doing, they offer rich contributions to our understanding of dominant cultural ideologies, including (though not limited to) gender. Adopting a historical lens, this entry considers the aesthetic evolution of vlogging as practice, the ongoing appeal of ordinariness, and the growing entrepreneurial spirit of vloggers within an increasingly commercialized (social) media landscape. With reference to YouTube's successful efforts to monetize user‐generated content, this entry draws attention to the ways in which vloggers reflect and contribute to normative performances of gender, and how gender can be seen to influence the dynamics of contemporary vlog production, reception, and success.

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