Abstract
This article uses three coming-out YouTube videos to narratively map the emergence of “New Queer YouTube,” a phrase used in this article to describe the evolving tactics and styles deployed by LGBTQ+ microcelebrity YouTubers over the previous decade. Encapsulated by Ingrid Nilsen's 2015 YouTube video “Something I Want You to Know (Coming Out),” 2010s-era coming-out videos represent early attempts to reconcile authentic queer disclosure with the performative conditions of microcelebrity. In the 2020s era, coming-out videos and queer YouTubers frequently acknowledge and elevate this legacy with an aesthetic that evokes the postmodern sensibilities of New Queer Cinema and “post-Stonewall” queer documentaries. Two videos are of particular interest here: Natalie Wynn's “Shame | ContraPoints,” and Abigail Thorn's “Identity: A Trans Coming Out Story | Philosophy Tube ★.” While the creators of these texts declare authentic queer identities to their audiences, they pursue different approaches that nonetheless tangle personal confession with performance. These videos and their respective microcelebrity personas wield coming-out and LGBTQ+ embodiment as devices to simultaneously claim agency over a queer identity and, ultimately, enhance perceived authenticity through the revelation of performance and the reflexive rebirth of digital persona. These strategies exemplify an aesthetic of queer, postmodern YouTube microcelebrity necessitated, in part, by the site's increasing stratification and precarity as a meaningfully user-generated platform.