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Eric Garner

Unfiltered YouTube 'changing diversity' for minorities

Lindsay Deutsch
USA TODAY Network
Franchesca Ramsey creates videos on YouTube, where she got famous for a parody video, 'Sh** White Girls Say... To Black Girls.'

Franchesca Ramsey became a YouTube sensation overnight. And like many great stories, it began at a party.

"I didn't have natural hair in high school," says Ramsey, 31, who in 2011 visited her hometown West Palm Beach, Fla., without chemically straightening her locks. "As my friends from home got more intoxicated, they started petting my hair like a dog, asking me all these questions about it."

The experience was "awkward-funny," she says, but also stuck with her when she returned home to New York City. Ramsey decided to film "Sh** White Girls Say... to Black Girls," an online parody video. It features Ramsey in a blonde wig exaggeratedly petting the camera, mimicking the aggressive, personal and tone-deaf grooming questions her well-intentioned, tipsy friends had asked that night.

The video went completely viral.

"Sh** White Girls Say... to Black Girls" has garnered 11 million views since January 2012. It elicited comments from viewers who commiserated, viewers who hated it, and viewers who just laughed. It became so popular that it propelled her to quit her designer job in New York to begin a career as a YouTube creator.

It also built Ramsey a community.

"YouTube is amazing because you can say, 'you know what mainstream media, I don't really want to play that way. I want to tell this story. I want to be this character," says Ramsey.

"For people of color, it's a portal to provide authentic stories online you're not seeing anywhere else."

Watching the Internet

Freddie Wong, filmmaker, YouTube celebrity and one of the creators of the wildly successful production company RocketJump, best distills the power of the world's biggest video sharing site.

"YouTube is as big as the Internet. In every conversation, just replace 'YouTube' with 'the Internet.' That's how vast it is. And it's accessible," he says.

From housing unfiltered news to fostering diverse personalities that redefine the notion of "celebrity," YouTube has become the go-to social network for teens and millennials in just under a decade of existence.

More than 6 billion hours of video are watched every month on YouTube — as the site touts, almost an hour for every person on Earth. According to Nielsen, YouTube reaches more U.S. adults ages 18-34 than any cable network.

Seventy-four percent of teens aged 14-18 report that they frequent YouTube — more than Facebook, iTunes, Instagram or Twitter, according to a survey from The Intelligence Group, reported in February.

With the Census Bureau predicting a majority-minority U.S. population by 2043, YouTube's value is poised to expand.

"I think seeing a lot of different types of people represented is really the epitome of diversity online," says Ramsey. "Whether it's LGBT, people with disabilities, different gender spectrums — on YouTube if you don't see your story told, you record it."

#NoFilter

If you want to gauge YouTube's impact, just look at its reach around this month's news stories.

The clip of Eric Garner gasping "I can't breathe" while in a chokehold by a New York police officer on Staten Island has been viewed at its original source some 2.2 million times, making YouTube part of the social media influence on the nationwide protests on community and policing.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, a 24-year-old fashion and beauty vlogger named Zoe Sugg, aka Zoella, became the best-selling debut novelist – ever -- in the U.K. this November, even topping J.K. Rowling.

Hype around her book Girl Online was spurred by her YouTube nation of 6.5 million followers — many of them the same ones now feeling duped by revelations the book was written by a ghost writer.

A July survey of 1,500 Americans ages 13-18 commissioned by Variety found that the five most influential celebrities among the population are YouTube personalities. It's important to note that of the top five, all are male and two are minorities.

Smosh, The Fine Bros., PewDiePie, KSI and Ryan Higa top the list, before Paul Walker and Jennifer Lawrence. KSI, whose real name is Olajide Olatunji, is a British video game commentator (specializing in FIFA soccer commentary) and comedian. Ryan Higa, also known for comedy and a striking video about bullying, was born in Hawaii and is of Japanese descent.

"(YouTube) is changing diversity in the sense that it gives individuals the chance to decide for themselves because there's more out there — and gives them an opportunity to spread their thoughts and opinions and organize in a way they have not had access to," says Ava Thompson Greenwell, a video journalism professor at Northwestern University.

A changing face

Alba Garcia started filming hair and makeup videos when she couldn't find the advice she needed.

Known online as SunkissAlba, the 26-year-old New Yorker of Dominican descent still smiles and laughs at the camera from her bathroom as she gives natural hair and makeup tips to her more than 460,000 YouTube subscribers.

She used to film her spots from her apartment bathroom. But now, she's just as likely to be shooting from a professional YouTube studio.

When she first started on YouTube in 2010, "You'd see African Americans and blondes with blue eyes. There really was not diversity in brown Latino and curly hair. That's why I was inspired to create the in-between -- I am Dominican and I speak Spanish and my channel has really supported a wide variety of people," she says.

Garcia recalls the struggle with her own mother over wanting to feel confident in natural hair, rather than constantly straightening it and damaging it.

She found that many of her subscribers could relate.

"There were comments from a girl who said her mom told her she could not go to a wedding or take a class picture because it would look -- I don't know the English equivalent -- but basically, messy and unpresentable," Garcia says.

"I started to realize that was just like my own mom, and she was following a cycle. It was her grandmother, and her grandmother's mother."

Garcia has been able to connect with her viewers through their shared experience.

"It's like I'm talking to a friend," she explains. "People have literally watched me search for my own identity and that has connected with them."

Follow @lindsdee on Twitter.

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