Intellectual Used-Car-Salesman Voice

It's crazy, right? Yesterday YouTube was all about cat and music videos and all of a sudden: YouTubers. I don't even know where they all came from but when I noticed them many of them already had a celebrity kind of status. And by now, being a YouTuber is already seen as an upcoming new profession. Which might not be as surprising considering what being a YouTuber is really all about: they are entertainers. Those are the kind of people who'd like to be on television, be it comedian, advertiser or sports commentator - and YouTube has provided them a platform to show their more or less DIY-style videos. If you're lucky you might become really famous by building a strong fanbase that buys literally everything you've ever touched and getting in touch with the right promoters co-op partners...

Doesn't sound that bad, does it? Everyone gets their 15 minutes of fame and just about everybody enjoys the freedom of creativity. Okay yeah, no. They don't. The problem with giving just about anyone a chance to put their work out there is the sheer number of competitors. And this in turn results in people copying each other, pitting one against the other and being so driven by this need for success that they actually forget that they wanted to have fun being creative. Don't get me wrong, I'm all in for this sort of open platform thing, but the sad truth is that it's never that easy.

You know what's really interesting? Many YouTuber have naturally adapted a certain way of talking without actually being that aware of it. A linguist from the University of Pennsylvania called that way of talking "intellectual used-car-salesman voice", hence the title. And I love that description so, so much. Actually, once you pay attention to it you really start to notice that many English-speaking YouTubers are quite similar - not in their accents really, but mostly in the way they pronounce vowels... and in the way they behave. Lots of elongated vowels and variations in the volume of their voice in combination with very strong hand movements. Those are actually quite the same techniques a performer uses. Makes sense, doesn't it? Just stiffly sitting there, telling some story... Few people would really watch ten or more minutes of that. In the end, it's the same as everywhere else: In most cases it doesn't matter what you do - it matters how you do it.