When did I become a Youtuber?

I said earlier that I would write a little about things that have occupied my time lately in lack of a reading mood and books to review. These last few months I`ve been spending way too much time on Youtube and I blame a certain theatre group and also my younger sister. I have mentioned this group on the blog`s facebook page earlier. A group of actors, writers, directors and designers met at The University of Michigan in 2009. They made a Harry Potter-musical, a fan-made parody called A Very Potter Musical and later called themselves Team Starkid. After the live performance they put it on Youtube so all their friends and family could watch it. It became a massive hit in the Harry Potter-community and quickly reached 2 million views. In 2010 they released A Very Potter Sequel and this march the third and probably last Harry Potter-musical was released on Youtube called A Very Potter Senior Year. In two years they reached more than 90 million views on their musicals. They have made other parody/musicals as well, that you can find on Youtube and this summer they`re doing an Alladin/Disney-musical called Twisted in a theatre in Chicago. I don`t know when it will be released on Youtube but I`m pretty sure it will be eventually.

I have to give my sister credit for this one as well as I did with Veronica Mars. Not only did she make me read Harry Potter in the first place, but she was also the one who told me about these shows. In combination with the Warbler Darren Criss (Blaine) showing up on Glee (which I showed her by the way) I finally started to watch these three musicals. The songs are really catchy and pretty good and the jokes are funny and a lot of the time ridiculous. The musicals are probably meant for an older audience than the books because of the language and some mature content. The best part though and probably why Team Starkid have such loyal and hardcore fans among the Harry Potter-community is the heart and love they have for their material which is mainly HP but also other popcultural phenomenas as Twilight and The Hunger Games. I think a parody`s rarely very good unless it respects and care for who or what they`re making fun of. The shows don`t follow a certain book each but mix parts of all the books together in a very creative manner. If you are not familiar with Team Starkid I hope you give it a chance and if you`re already a Starkid, please tell me what to watch next. I have left to discover the rest of their shows and I dare not think about all the other great stuff that`s out there on the internet.

I have to say that I`ve developed an ambivalent relationship to Youtube lately because it´s incredible how much time you can spend cliquing from one video to the nex,t and suddenly the whole evening is gone and maybe you haven`t even watched the thing you went there to watch in the first place. In many cases I really could have spent my time more wisely but in other cases you get to see something unique and really entertaining like with these Team Starkid musicals. They have their own channel on Youtube by the way. Enjoy! Here`s a clip from the first show: