Over 20 years, YouTube has become the premier destination for video entertainment. Built upon user submitted material and bodying commercial television, it barely goes a week without stirring new controversies. For younger generations, their nostalgia for bygone streamers holds a special place. Warts and all. YouTuber and reporter Steven Asarch has taken a close examination at the fans who want to follow in the footsteps of their heroes, regardless of well known stumbles.

“Children born after the year 2000 got their content through YouTube, where there were little to no guardrails for what they could watch,” says Asarch in his latest video. “A decade is a long time on the internet. And as a creator, you either evolve or you die.”

A new, inherently niche trend has been cropping up on YouTube. Asarch puts a microscope over the scene known as “LARPtubers.” These are content makers who are not merely replicating the style of videos they grew up with, but outright impersonating them like an Elvis reading wedding vows. What you end up with is something beyond charmingly anachronistic, but surreal spectacle. Dredging up memories that some streamers were hoping to avoid.

YouTube and all social media encourages bigger, more dramatic and often more startling. Such a model is a trouble factory, and the platform has endlessly struggled to balance what users indulge in and what advertisers are willing to associate with. PewDiePie paying others to praise Hitler . Logan Paul simultaneously chased off YouTube and Japan . ” The depravity hasn’t exactly culled itself from the culture, but corporate is always trying to add new guidelines to discourage it.

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