“Many are nostalgic and happy to see what I have become”. At the end of the line, Pauline Simon still can’t believe it. This freelance director and photographer recently posted a humorous video on her TikTok account, titled “But what is happening to Popi, the Minecraft youtuber?”. In this video, Pauline, formerly Popi on YouTube, presents with a big smile on her face her new life and her walks in the mountains to take pictures or film the scene. In just a few hours, his publication exceeded one million views. “I gained 30,000 subscribers and saw nearly 5,000 comments surge, I absolutely did not expect it,” she breathes.
These enthusiastic reactions took her back a decade earlier. At the time, Pauline Simon was 13 years old and she loved the video game Minecraft, which involves building your own universe from virtual blocks. She decides to launch a channel on YouTube to present the best moments of her games. It’s 2013 and the video platform attracts a billion visitors per month. The teenager at the time published her videos “out of passion,” she remembers.
Among the most popular French content of the 2010 decade on YouTube, there are a lot of videos dedicated to video games, the beginnings of so-called “beauty” youtubers, and channels dedicated to amateur sketches, all filmed most often in a bedroom. . “The YouTube of the 2010s is really characterized by a ‘homemade’ aspect. Users share what they like to do, some make amateur scenarios, others even simply film their screen to tell things, ”describes the youtubeur and student Adam Bros whose channel, of the same name, is devoted to the analysis of different media cultures.
For her part, Pauline Simon quickly totaled 50,000 subscribers, then 100,000 and finally “nearly 475,000” in 2016, just three years after publishing her first video. In the meantime, the industry has continued to structure itself. “In 2014, regularity becomes essential to be better referenced on YouTube and therefore to be paid, we are already moving away from the simple aspect of leisure”, describes Adam Bros. “I started to make two or even three videos a week, it very quickly became redundant”, abounds Pauline Simon.
In 2016, the young girl earned “enough to make a living” on her channel and she was supported by her parents in this activity. “I was a minor, so they always accompanied me to conventions that were organized and supported me when I was being harassed online,” she recalls, before continuing: “I was one of the only girls to make content on Minecraft. Sometimes the public could be violent, some even called our house to insult me.”
If Pauline decided to stop her channel, it is because she is gradually losing the taste for playing Minecraft. “I was entering first, I wanted to take advantage of high school, she says and I did not see myself doing all my life, what I had been doing since I was 13”. Without really telling her family, she gradually stops posting videos on her channel. “It was a bit like stopping a high level sport or an extracurricular activity that took up a lot of my time”. Once an adult, the young woman set out on her own as a director, photographer and documentary filmmaker. Never regret anything. “I have youtuber friends like Furious Jumper, who today have more than 5 million subscribers because they continued, she assures, but I am happy with the choice I made”.
Like Pauline, other leading youtubers of the 2010s have completely changed their lives. Like the youtubeur Jigmé Théaux. The latter launched his channel “Les clichés de Jigmé” in 2012 and published short humorous videos there, such as “Parents on vacation” or “Valentine’s Day”. The young man hijacks situations that everyone has experienced in their daily lives to caricature them. A format popular with the public of the time and which made known personalities like Cyprien or Norman. Jigmé has almost 2 million subscribers and his videos sometimes exceed 5 million views.
But for four years, Jigmé has not posted anything on his channel. In the description, he clarifies the reasons for this absence: “It’s been a long time since I posted a video here, because I’m flourishing on my other projects! “. The main project to which Jigmé alludes is none other than his land in the Dordogne. Of 3.5 hectares precisely, he cultivates his vegetable garden there. “My ultimate goal is self-production all year round within 3 to 5 years for vegetables and 7 to 10 years for fruit,” he explains on Twitter. Now, the former youtuber uses social networks like TikTok and Instagram to show his dishes cooked with fresh produce from his land.
A total change of life that fascinates his community. “Jigmé is my hero, he has taken off in a lost hole in the countryside and he is living his best life”, reacts for example a surfer under a publication, where the ex-youtubeur presents his cherry jam. “In recent years, there has been a public awareness of the fact that YouTube has become a big industry, with its flaws and its share of pressure for creators, remarks Adam Bros., it relieves their community to see that they are ‘flourish into a new life’.
The rapid transformation of the platform, before the eyes of an audience that was very young in the 2010s, is enough to provoke powerful nostalgia. “In the comments of my TikTok video, some told me that they were in CE1 when they watched me and that they are starting their studies today,” says Pauline, “they were almost moved to see me again.” Especially since this first decade of French YouTube is marked by its share of mysteries and its legends. If some former stars of the platform communicate about what they have become, others have sometimes stopped suddenly.
Among them, youtubers like Digidix whose last video dates from nine years ago, “Adeline makes videos” which deleted all its content, or the player DiabloX9. The latter made a brief appearance a few months ago as a guest on a show from the streamer Gotaga. He explained his disappearance from YouTube by a burnout mixed with harassment. “At that time, it was tempting for people to attack me,” he recalls during this show. “To put such notoriety aside and try to do something else, it seems a little bit of a headache, and it is. But it was mostly a personal choice. Because in reality, it’s a huge pressure. It’s not to be the guy who says fame is hard to live with. It’s much deeper and more complicated than that to explain.”
In the comments of the replay on YouTube, some do not believe their eyes. “For those who didn’t know him, imagine that he was the equivalent of Squeezie who disappeared for ten years and resurfaced overnight,” says one of them.