As the Sun begins to set over the garden of a luxury villa inside a gated community 32 kilometres outside Madrid's city centre, 100 young men and women in swimming shorts and bikinis sing along to the Spanish-language version of "I'll Make a Man of You" from the Disney film Mulan. The younger ones - aged 15 or 16 - paddle in a pool filled with giant inflatable donuts topped with pink plastic icing. Those aged 18 or older mill around nearer the two-storey house, which has been rented from a local family. They hold hamburgers, hot dogs and bottles of Desperado beer served from a room where a white curtain Sellotaped to the wall hides children's toys and DVDs from would-be drunken marauders.
The young adults singing the Disney classic aren't drunk, however: they're just a little overexcited - but only temporarily. For this is no ordinary pool party. It's work.
Everyone here is a YouTuber, or connected to one. They are young men and women striving for fame by pouring out their lives to a camera and posting the results online. Their lives - or a form of them - are fair game for an engaged audience. "They're their own scriptwriters, directors, editors and social-media managers," says Bastian Manintveld approvingly, straining to be heard over the sound of the music.
He's the 41-year-old co-founder and chairman of 2btube, the company that has organised the pool party. "They're little one-person enterprises," he adds. "Look at them! I was delivering newspapers when I was 15." In the lulls in conversation, between the singing and the dancing, cameras and smartphones appear from their bags and pockets. After all, everything is content.
"Never in the history of mankind has content creation and distribution been so democratic," boasts Manintveld, as the music switches to a Spanish-language version of the Pokémon theme tune. All it takes now is a webcam and a decent internet connection to reach the other side of the world.
"We're starting to hear about high-school kids who say: 'I want to be a YouTuber when I grow up'," says Laura Chernikoff, for seven years an organiser of VidCon, the online video industry's main global conference, and now executive director of the Internet Creators Guild, a trade body providing advice to YouTubers. "That's a phenomenon that wasn't even a job five years ago."
Alice E Marwick, a researcher in online identity and celebrity at Fordham University in New York, agrees with Chernikoff. "Rather than celebrity being something someone is, celebrity is now something someone does." But is "the celebrity of tomorrow" a legitimate career that young children might aspire to, or a flash in the pan?
"The celebrities of tomorrow?" shouts Manintveld. His firm acts as talent agent, ad company and PR group for most of the YouTubers eating burgers and sipping beer here as the Sun starts to set. "They're today's celebrities. There's a whole bunch of young kids, and to them these guys are more important than George Clooney or Matt Damon." As if on cue, a pre-teen Paul Rudd lookalike with a GoPro strapped to his forehead jogs behind Manintveld and bombs into the pool, throwing water up into the air.
The road to fame isn't always glamorous, sometimes seeming a long way from pool parties, burgers and beer. In a nondescript classroom at Francisco de Vitoria University, half an hour's drive from Madrid, nine children furiously chop and edit videos, their faces scrunched up in concentration, illuminated by the stark blue light of computer screens. Hanging on the far wall, looking down on them, is a cheap ornament of Christ on the cross. The place is airless and lightless, the blinds drawn to keep out the afternoon Sun. Stuck to a tiled wall at the back of the classroom are A4 sheets of paper daubed with felt-tip illustrative descriptions of their planned channels.
The children are reaching the end of an intensive two-week camp run by 2btube that aims to teach them how to become YouTubers. Prices start at €650 (£545) per person for tuition alone, topping out at €1,705 for a full-board experience at the university. Ten students signed up to the course, although, according to Manintveld, another 100 enquired. On the curriculum are lessons in "building your channel's brand", how to "grow your audience" and "monetising videos uploaded to your channel".
On this, the penultimate day of the camp, they are putting the finishing touches to their YouTube channels before presenting them at a graduation ceremony - though the news crew, and excitement at the impending end to their adventure, makes learning difficult.
Like all children (none is older than 14), the camp's attendees are a precocious bunch, bustling around in a state of perpetual excitement, despite doing their best impression of being an adult. There are shy ones, older, more confident ones and some who are furiously attentive. Among the most precocious are a pair sat at the back of the room, hunched over a PC screen clipping together footage from browser game slither.io: Alex Bortnyk, 11, and Julien Seny, 12. Both are full-board campers, taking Spanish lessons in the morning and learning how to monetise their brand by night.
Seny's A4 channel sketch included a stick-figure representation of him wearing a top hat and the words "Mr Chapeau". "It means Mr Hat," he explains, chin tucked into his chest, bright blue eyes looking up to the fluorescent light. "I have four hats, and that's going to be my thing," he says. "You need a 'thing' on YouTube."
By his own admission, Seny is not the centre of attention at his school in Belgium - "but that will change," he says. "I'm going to do a lot of things with YouTube. It's work for the young. You can make some money. I'll go along the street and people will know me." He has already launched two YouTube channels, largely focused on Minecraft videos, and hopes to hone his skills to make it third time lucky. But he's a pragmatist, acutely aware it's a competitive field. More than a billion people watch hundreds of millions of hours of footage every day, and an increasing number of creators have the backing of big agencies promoting their work.
"There's a whole world out there," he says, "and all of them want to be on YouTube. They're professionals; it's like a job for them. And for me."
His new friend, Ukrainian/Greek Alex Bortnyk, is less certain. "I did think about being a YouTuber for quite a long time," he whispers nervously, barely audible above the class noise. "I've been thinking: it's nice to be here, but I just can't decide whether I really want to do it." Bortnyk is as shy as Seny is confident.
Next to them, a small boy with olive skin, barely four feet tall, is focusing on his video. He introduces himself as Francisco Javier Zurita, 13.
Zurita spends, he estimates, two hours a day watching YouTube. "In the morning I go to the swimming pool but in the afternoon I watch videos - a lot of them. They make me feel happy," he beams with eager eyes and an easy smile. "And they motivate me. I think, 'What if I create my own channel?' If you keep on doing videos, you can get a channel big time, with 100,000 subscribers. But I do it because I enjoy it, not for the fame."
To enter the 2btube offices, located in an airy converted mechanics garage near Madrid's Buen Retiro Park, you pass a Buddha sat at the foot of a wall painted with the words "You are coming from the outside world" and a slowly deflating set of silver helium balloons that spell out "100k" - the last remaining vestiges of a party held to celebrate a client reaching 100,000 subscribers. Thirty-four employees - many vloggers themselves, including a fair-skinned, rainbow-haired 25-year-old who uses the screen name "SumiBunny" - work on their laptops at desks and breakout areas adorned with cushions. One reads "Persigue tus sueños" ("Pursue your dreams").
The company is a multi-channel network (MCN), a cross between an old-fashioned talent scout, a production company and an ad agency, which signs up and promotes youngsters with a knack of opening up on camera. At last count, 2btube was the 24th-biggest MCN in the world.
Bastian Manintveld co-founded the company with Fabienne Fourquet, former head of digital at French TV firm Canal+, in September 2014, after he noticed that his two 13-year-old daughters had stopped paying attention to television. "Completely," Manintveld asserts, a lingering Dutch accent stunting his consonants. "One day they're monopolising my living room and I can't watch television. The next, all of a sudden they're not in the living room any more. They're on my iPad watching YouTube videos."
Manintveld, tall and sporting a mane of golden hair, worked in television in the UK before looking into YouTube. "I saw it wasn't just my daughters doing it. It was an entire generation."
Within two years of the company's launch, 2btube represents around 150 YouTubers. Twenty per cent are under 18, and ten per cent above 30. It's closing in on 400 million monthly views for its YouTube content. Manintveld says that 2btube is inspired by traditional Hollywood management agencies like William Morris or CAA. But the traditional companies are themselves muscling into the online media world: Telecoms firm Verizon bought a 24.5 per cent stake in MCN AwesomenessTV in June, valuing the company at $650 million - not far off what Disney paid to acquire another MCN, Maker Studios, in March 2014.
Manintveld surveys 99 white-framed pictures of the talent his company represents lining an entire wall of the office, considers the youngsters going through his summer camp, some of whom show the intangible promise that separates the few YouTube superstars from the many vlogging also-rans,and announces: "What's happening here is a revolution."
Naturally, the revolution will be televised. A television crew from a local news station hovers around the camp, recording snippets of interviews with the participants. Outside the university, near a basketball court, three youngsters are more sanguine about the sight of the camera. The Trillizos0201 are triplets, 15-year-old sons and a daughter of Ana and Javier de Miguel, both 44. They're here to provide advice to the camp attendees in a Q&A session with parents; the shining example to which the attendees are meant to aspire. Pablo, Alvaro and Paula de Miguel, currently at that awkward, slightly gawky point in teenagerdom, started their channel in their spare time when they were 13, recording their sibling squabbles and in-jokes and publishing them online.
"We didn't realise it was big until they came to us and said: 'Look, we already have 4,000 subscribers," says Javier de Miguel. Two years on, they're minor celebrities. Javier opens up an app on his iPhone. "This is real time," he says. The numbers on the screen tick up, dials revolving until they settle on 174,109 subscribers. He grins. "If you watch this for five minutes, it increases."
WIRED asks de Miguel if he has seen his children change in the two years they've been on YouTube. He nods. "They've changed from being kids to being teenagers. I don't know whether the changes they've made are natural or because of the internet."
Mantintveld looks on approvingly as the triplets take it in turns to step in front of the camera. Would he let his children, reaching the same age as the de Miguels were when they started and with a father directly connected to the industry, become YouTubers?
"Not yet," he replies. "They're a little bit too young. It's like another job. If you want to do it well, it takes a lot of time. And the other thing is that if you do it, you're super-open to criticism."
"Every day I worry about it more,"says Javier de Miguel, kicking the sand beneath his feet as his daughter sits in front of the TV camera outside the university. YouTubers find themselves subject to a twin set of problems: malicious commenters who have an open platform upon which to criticise; and obsessive but well-meaning fans who can take their fandom too far.
British YouTuber Marina Joyce was forced to deny she had been kidnapped by Daesh in July because overzealous teenage fans fell into a black hole of speculation. "I think a lot of young people see it as something that would be really fun and cool to be famous," says Marwick. "But in reality, this type of fame is very precarious. It can be difficult for the young people who are successful at it."
Marwick draws a comparison with Hollywood child stars who became hugely popular at an early age. "We know they don't have the easiest of lives later on," she explains. "I think that goes double for these young people who are becoming stars through other media that don't have the financial upside that broadcast celebrities have had."
"Years ago, if you asked a teenager what they wanted to do in the future, they would say: 'I want to create an app and sell it for millions'," says Javier de Miguel. "Now they say 'YouTube'."
But success isn't guaranteed - not even after intensive training at a two-week specialised YouTube camp. Daniel Callejón, 27, is a talent manager at 2btube and has vlogged since 2006. "It's more difficult today," he explains. "As a spectator, I have more content to choose from now. Way more."
Certainly, some YouTubers do strike it rich. Felix Kjellberg, known to his 47 million subscribers as game streamer PewDiePie, filed accounts in Sweden for his production company that showed an $8 million profit in 2015 from revenue of $8.6 million - up 18 per cent from the year before. But in a universe where ever smaller niche communities can pick their own celebrities to follow, select few can build a sustainable career.
"This is why I talk about this as a fantasy of social media," says Marwick. "In reality it can be very stressful, very difficult, and it's not always profitable. You can have half a million followers on YouTube and still be working at Starbucks. Many people do. There's not that economic cushion that can insulate you from the downsides of this type of fame."
Even if they can't make a living wage posting videos online, popular YouTubers are still valuable commodities, particularly to advertisers. Ninety-two per cent of 16-to 24-year-old non-China internet users visit YouTube every month, according to research firm GlobalWebIndex - and they're eager to listen to their celebrity peers and will mature into consumers with purchasing power.
"I want to build bridges with those companies," says Manintveld. "To build bridges between our world - digitally native creators who have taken the young audience away from television - and the television companies." He cracks a smile. "I think I can give them their audience back."
After two weeks of training, the nine participants at 2btube's summer camp are about to bid farewell to each other. The graduation ceremony is an understated affair. Seventeen people are here to watch the fruits of two weeks' work by the students - including the de Miguel triplets and the camp attendees. An hour after the ceremony starts, a few more parents file in.
It's tough going: partway through a Q&A session where parents pepper the de Miguel triplets with questions about how they adapted to YouTube fame, a couple of the campers yawn and pull out their phones, loading up Pokémon Go. Alex and Julien start to arm wrestle. But when they get on stage, there's a sense of pride and achievement. After two weeks' work, each of them is about to press "publish" on their video, releasing it online for all to see.
Francisco Javier Zurita, the tanned boy with the broad smile, sits down with two boys, each a good 30 centimetres taller than him. He proceeds to talk through the video, playing a relay game of slither.io where each of the trio swaps seats every 30 seconds. Zurita's voice comes deep from his diaphragm, confident and engaging, his dark eyes scanning the room for the few minutes, narrating the action in the video. It ends with a call to "like y subscríbete" and generates a hearty round of applause.
When Alex and Julien step up to present their video - likewise, playing slither.io - they do so with trepidation. Alex takes a deep breath as he pushes the "publish video" button. The two stare at the screen for the minute or so it takes to upload, barely aware of their surroundings. As the video plays, on-screen captions in gaming jargon pop up against a backdrop of royalty-free hard rock music. When Julien's slithering snake dies, "slither noobs" scrolls across the screen. At one point "#hitler" flashes in a distant corner. At the end of the video, the co-opted language of YouTube appears: another call to "by [sic] and subscribe and explode that like button". The boys seem satisfied as they sit back down.
After a couple of hours of video presentations, discussions and applause, the kids leave the classroom and go outside to play in the late evening Sun that stretches across the university campus. WIRED asks Julien what he thinks makes YouTube so popular. "It's fun," he says, shrugging his shoulders. "You have the ability to do what you want. When you've done a video, you're so proud of yourself." He stares for a moment, one hand in the other, a 12-year-old grappling for more words to say. He doesn't find any, so he nods. Then he goes to play.
2btube plans to run the camp again next year. "We're a next-generation media company," Manintveld says. "It's not much more advanced than the previous generation, but we make content for the younger generation." There remain cynics. As he folds up his notes after interviewing the de Miguel triplets, Arturo Lopo, 26, a Spanish television journalist, is asked if his own job is at risk. "I don't think so," he laughs. "There were two TV programmes in Spain presented by YouTubers, but they didn't last long."
Had YouTube been as big ten years ago when he was a teenager, would he have been doing it? "Never," he replies dismissively. He scratches his head. "I'm still asking myself how can these guys have so much success."
The previous day, WIRED asked Alex Bortnyk and Julien Seny if their parents understood what YouTube is. "No!" they answered in concert. "When they were our age, there wasn't this technology," continued Alex. "There are so many things now that weren't there before. It's different."
Whether the adults playing in the kid's world can improve the industry or whether they'll break it through the sheer brunt of calculated business remains to be seen. For the time being, children with a dream will keep watching on their laptops and smartphones, wondering when they'll get their invite to the party.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
