> The majority of “influencers” are young women, and only a minority would want to follow a 50 year old uncle.
One interesting side effect of this is that some of the most popular male YouTube channels I follow never show the host's face. Everything is carefully staged to only show their hands / body.
Its strange because random old people channels produce great content. Its just that, most of them don't try to be annoying influencers. I follow some old dude who repairs his motorcycle and writes music. He doesnt talk, and its great.
Very true. I came across a channel run by a 60 something man where he sits in his music room, puts on a record and talks about what that piece of music means to him, when he first heard it.
I usually don't watch the whole video as it can get a bit dry, but otherwise it is nice to just see someone expressing themself without shilling their Patreon or using clickbait thumbnails and titles like the more commercial "personal" channels do.
(BBC radio is at the very opposite end from begging for likes; once someone establishes a show, if it's not in a highly contended timeslot it can basically run forever no matter how obscure or unfashionable it is, until the presenter dies)
Doesn't that sort of depend on the channel? eg Radio 1 has always been Obnoxiously! Trendy! Pop! Music!, Radio 2 a lightweight blend of news, musical standards, and entertainment, Radio 3 classical or music and Very Serious Discourse, and Radio 4 intellectual topics, politics, and and quality news, little or no music. I know there are a few other radio channels but I can't remember what their focus is. And of course all of these channels have variations of their own depending what time of the day/week people are listening.
It's so refreshing to have content that is actually just good content and isn't some trainwreck of seeking attention from an increasingly more vapid audience.
The Signal Path? Largely just hands, although he has appeared occasionally.
Wendover Productions? Disembodied voice.
CGP Grey? Disembodied voice.
Real Engineering? Disembodied voice.
Not to mention innumerable video game streamers.
Of course, disembodied voices aren't in-and-of-themselves a new cultural phenomenon: Radio has existed for years, as have podcasts. And there are TV formats like nature and history documentaries where the narrator may rarely or never appear on screen.
And even on Youtube, there are a number of female voice-only celebrities - for example "vtubers", where a female voice actor plays games while pretending to be a cute anime girl. Of course, one could say that's an example for the theory people want to see beautiful women, not against
There's several more factors to vtubers than that. It's more interesting if you like lore, it fits with the aesthetic of the rest of the video better, you don't need to get dressed or do your makeup, etc.
As far as privacy it doesn't necessarily apply because the famous ones almost all have previous careers as face streamers, and their fans know who they are since they use their real voices. But if you are doing it to hide yourself then it works, and it means that everyone else can interact with you and seem to be in the same world.
One interesting side effect of this is that some of the most popular male YouTube channels I follow never show the host's face. Everything is carefully staged to only show their hands / body.