Zall Good!

Alexis G. Zall is a popular 19 year old YouTuber who makes mostly comedic videos, many parodying YouTube culture, or the norms and trends of the YouTube community. I'd say I kind of grew up with YouTube, from cracking up over ComputerNerd01's parodies of popular songs in 5th grade to discovering the beauty guru community and falling head over heels with YouTube's resident teen heartthrobs in middle school. I've definitely grown apart from my passionate investment in becoming a famous YouTuber and deep rooted desire to check my Subscription tab whenever possible, but I do watch a few creators regularly. YouTube has revolutionized media and career opportunities with its heightened accessibility, and despite the fact that I miss the old, pre-algorithm YouTube, I do believe so many good things can and do come from the platform.

To me, Alexis's videos are funny and refreshing, and it's a breath of fresh air to see her use her (young and extremely talented) voice to make a statement on both the YouTube society and society at large. One of my favorite satirical videos of hers is titled Reacting to People Who SMASHED or PASSED Me!, and is part of her series in which she jumps on a popular YouTube trend with extreme hyperbole and irony in order to point out its flaws. In this video, she presents an over the top, extremely bubbly personality - so much so that it's hilarious and cringe worthy and clearly mocking the fake front that many popular YouTubers put on for their videos. As this sugary sweet persona, she explains the trend of YouTubers publishing videos saying who they would smash or pass. She is also playing off the spin off trend in which YouTubers react to people who have smashed or passed them in their videos. She deems it as a trend that has "surprisingly gotten a lot of hate!", dripping with irony (it is a trend 100% worthy of hate). She also says with exaggerated confusion and air quotes that it's been dubbed "misogynistic" and "objectifying." Throughout the video, she uses extreme hyperbole to act like she's trying so hard to appear sexy and enticing. She wears a black lace bodysuit and takes off her jacket because "Oh my god, it's so hot in here," twisting and turning to conveniently end up in a sexy pose for the camera, commenting on YouTubers' tendency to present themselves in the best light possible, whatever it takes.

She says that she's not on the Internet to brighten viewers' days with comedy or spread messages about positivity and confidence, she's actually here so that "dear God, hopefully, someone wants to f**ck me!" Alexis is using irony to call out the smash or pass trend for demeaning women and reducing her and other young female creators to a merely sexual presence, continuing to say, "Quick, before I get any older or less desirable, lets look at some people who have smashed or passed me!" She holds up bleach while viewing the videos in case someone doesn't want to smash her and ruins all her self worth, and sobs with relief when people say they'd smash her. After watching a few videos in which "how funny, looks like they...forgot...to mention me?" she decides to just take the question straight to her friends via phone call, imitating the YouTube norm of being "so nervous" to call your friends on camera and ask them a quirky question. She tells one of her friends, "This YouTube trend came around and its been the perfect opportunity to finally get like this thing that everyone's been talking about, self esteem?"

Overall, Alexis employs irony by saying the opposite of what she means, and she does the entire video in a hyperbolic manner, exaggerating the mannerisms and cheesy norms of popular YouTubers in their typical videos to shed light on the absurdity of YouTube culture and this trend. This all combines into one pretty clever parody that points out creators' tendency to simply follow blindly whatever the newest online trend is, resulting in a total lack of interesting and original content. Alexis also calls out this specific trend for objectifying women and assuming that they should place their entire self worth in whether or not some random person on the Internet would smash them.