Origin of casual celebrity YouTube interview trend?

August 19, 2018 2:59 PM

When did this more casual celebrity YouTube "interview" trend start? Who started it? I'm thinking of things like Wired's Google Autocomplete interview, Vanity Fair's Tinder hijack, GQ's celebs go undercover on social media, and Vogue's 73 Questions.

The earliest thing I can think of along these lines (seemingly less rehearsed than late night, trying to make celebs seem more like regular folks, no visible interviewer) is Amoeba Music's "What's in my Bag?" That started in 2008. Some of the early ones did have a staff member visible.

posted by waninggibbon to Society & Culture (6 answers total)

There's a french Youtube show called La Boite a Questions that I think has been running for many years. In the US, I think the first show of this kind was Moviefone's Unscripted, because there was no moderator and the questions were on a screen. The format was longer though. By todays standards they gave long, meandering answers to questions where as now they are just meant to be quick, giggly soundbites.
posted by ChickenBear at 4:02 PM on August 19, 2018 [1 favorite]

I feel like Josh Horowitz of MTV was a big part of the rise of this. I see that he started working there in 2006.
posted by BlahLaLa at 5:06 PM on August 19, 2018 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Addendum: what started the recent surge in these (generally with shared aesthetic of celeb facing forward, face and upper chest shown, plain white or solid color background)?
posted by waninggibbon at 5:15 PM on August 19, 2018

I always chalked it up to "media outlet acquires YouTube channel because that's what all the cool kids are doing and then realizes 'oh shit we actually need to do something with the channel now' and jumps on the easiest idea to make content".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:00 AM on August 20, 2018

Response by poster: All the linked channels have existed for over a decade. It’s definitely low effort content, but they jumped on this particular bandwagon relatively recently.
posted by waninggibbon at 12:12 PM on August 20, 2018

I'd say Buzzfeed is a major influencer. Also possibly Cut (the people who got famous for the 100 Years of Beauty format).
posted by divabat at 6:56 PM on August 20, 2018