My Daughters Want To Go To A YouTuber Book Signing

If I say no, she’ll badger me until I take her phone away from her. (image via wikimedia)

A YouTube star is coming to a local book store for a signing, and my daughters want to go.  I have a tough time calling a YouTuber a star, but this guy has millions of subscribers, and his first book was a best seller, so I guess not calling him a star would be quibbling.

I’m not looking forward to the book signing.  We’ll probably have to get to the book store early and stand in line just to get our slip with the number that tells us where to stand in the real line.  Those lines will be filled with a bunch of people whom I don’t want to be around.  I don’t even like standing in book-signing lines when I’m surrounded by fellow book readers.  There’s no way I can handle a line filled with teenage YouTube fans.

I’m going to be a bad parent that day.  My plan is to drop my kids off in the line and go far away.  Thankfully, the line will be in a book store, so I won’t go too far.  I’m not driving away and going home for a few hours.  I’m not that kind of a bad parent.

The YouTuber is in his late 20’s and is obnoxious (by my standards).  He eats food and makes stage faces.  He does DIY videos and also conducts an occasional interview with other obnoxious people.  He curses way too much.

The first time I watched one of this YouTuber’s videos, he used the word “f#cking” twice as an adjective in his first two sentences.   I would have felt better if he had used the term “f#cking” only once in his first two sentences.  I’m not sure what the “f#cking”-per-sentence ratio should be, but it shouldn’t be once-per-sentence.  That’s just lazy.  Maybe once every two sentences is approaching respectability, but I expect higher standards for somebody with millions of subscribers.

Then again, I’m not the YouTuber’s target audience.  I’m probably not any YouTuber’s target audience.  I’m the guy who pays for the YouTuber’s target audience.  That should mean that the YouTuber needs my approval, but things don’t work like that anymore (if they ever did).

When I was kid, if I had talked the way this YouTuber talks in his video, I would have gotten my mouth washed out with soap or have gotten the belt.  I’d kind of like to see a video of this guy getting his mouth washed out with soap.  That would make a great YouTube video.  Even though I’m not in his target audience, I’d watch that.  And I’d pay to see it.

This YouTuber churns out a new video almost every day, and within hours has hundreds of thousands of hits.  It’s a little deflating to me.  I write one blog post a week, and a few people read it.  Maybe I’ll get a few comments but nothing like this guy gets.  Most of his commenters don’t seem to write very well, though.  At least, if they do know how to write, they don’t show it.  On the other hand, people who comment on my blog write very well and are probably smarter than me because half the time they’re correcting my own errors.

In case you can’t tell, I really don’t want to spend money on this YouTuber’s book.  I feel like I’m just rewarding his bad behavior.  Even worse, I’ll probably have to buy two copies, one for each daughter, so both of them can take individual pictures with him.  This means I’ll be rewarding his bad behavior twice.  I don’t even know if this new book is any good or not because it won’t come out until a couple days before the signing!

Despite my better judgement, I’m probably going to let my daughters go to the book signing.  But they’re going to do a bunch of my own chores around the house to get there.  And they’re going to have to wait until I get home from work to do these chores.  And while they do my usual chores, I’m going to get extra time for reading and writing, and they’re going to leave me alone while they do my chores.

I’m going to get so much reading and writing done while they’re doing chores that I’ll get bored of reading and writing.  Maybe, just maybe, my daughters will do so many chores that they will start to despise this YouTuber.  And if they do enough chores, I might even start to like him.

*****

I think YouTube is great.  I watch YouTube, but my viewing habits are different from my daughters’.  They watch new content (which I don’t find appealing), and I watch old content, such as old comedy routines, scenes from old movies, football games from years ago, and the occasional Game of Thrones commentary.  Most of the YouTube stars I’d want to meet are dead already.

*****

What do you think?  Would you allow your kids to go to a YouTuber book signing?  Would you even want to read a book written by a YouTuber?  What is respectable “f#cking”-per-sentence ratio for a performer?

*****

When I was a kid, I got my mouth washed out with soap for saying the word “crap.” Looking back, that ticks me off because now I know that…

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