Pick up your phone and you’re halfway to becoming a new-breed movie star. It’s a phenomenon that would have seemed inconceivable a couple of decades ago… however, new research confirms that celebrity is changing – and online content creators are leading the charge.

Instead of being discovered, selected and groomed by fat cat studio execs, stars are born thanks to the accessibility of technology: laptops, cameras and phones make for personal production studios, right at our fingertips. We now all have the potential to create and share content that resonates with an audience, and while a star can be anyone with an internet connection, it’s most likely to be a young person: a teen or twenty-something.

Needless to say, this represents a profound shift in the way we think about celebrity – and who can, and who will be, creating the best video content in the future.

How Technology Changed Celebrity Culture

Technology and celebrity culture have always been inextricably linked. While cinema, and then television, multiplied the potential for performers to be seen and known – birthing mass culture in the process – personal devices have disseminated that exposure further. But even before digital disruption, we gravitated towards a more intimate connection with celebrities.

Critic Tom Payne argues that humans have been obsessed with celebrities since the dawn of civilisation; Alexander the Great’s face became a public emblem reproduced in coins and jewellery, even before he died. Like Greek gods, celebrities have been paradoxically unattainable and relatable. It’s why we imitate the style of our favourite stars – and want the inside track on their lives. YouTube’s stars take this intimacy a step further: their direct communication with fans, candid humour, risk-taking spirit and lack of filter contrasts starkly with the carefully orchestrated images of their Hollywood counterparts.

Variety has suggested that teenagers’ emotional attachment to YouTube stars is “as much as seven times greater than that toward a traditional celebrity”. They found that the top five most influential figures among Americans aged 13-18 are YouTube celebs, including American comedy duo SMOSH , The Fine Bros, and controversial gamer Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg, AKA PewDiePie.

The top five most influential figures among Americans aged 13-18 are YouTube celebs. It’s a trend that’s not surprising given what we know about the thinking and spending habits of millennials and their younger siblings, Gen Zs. The first-ever digital natives, teens know how the sausage is made, so to speak, whether that’s in the world of advertising, entertainment, or art. And because they’ve always had the ability to create a YouTube video, Facebook photo album, or Instagram selfie, their peers have quickly risen through the ranks to compete with movie stars for attention and influence.

This authentic experience is also translating into commercial success; in 2015 there were more than 17,000 YouTube channels with more than 100,000 subscribers, and nearly 1,500 channels with more than one million subscribers. Consumers aged 13-24 watch two-and-a-half times more video per week on YouTube and social media than they do television.

So, What’s Next For Our Beloved Celebrities?

Now YouTube has upped the ante, with original content subscription service YouTube Red – but that doesn’t mean they’ve stolen notes from Hollywood, so much as performed a lifehack on it.

They’ve picked out a lineup of the most popular YouTube stars, from all corners of the internet, and helped them turn what were already pretty professional operations into seriously legit, could-be-put-on-the-big-screen-except-let’s-be-honest-we’d-prefer-to-watch-in-bed content. Though there’s still plenty of room for self-made YouTube videos, these days the stars online have just as much polish as established celebs on the red carpet. Original series that look like they could have come straight out of a moneyed-up studio are becoming the norm, and there’s plenty of content for everyone.

High school dating realness; tick. Video games come to life with the internet’s fave nerd MatPat; yep. Lols courtesy of childhood friends turned comedians Rhett & Link featuring Saturday Night Live alum Molly Shannon? You bet. High-octane pranks and hijinks with a squad of 19 year olds who remind you of your own friendship fam? Jake Paul and Team Ten are there for you. There’s also inspiring documentation of the LGBTI experience, through the lens of the personal, care of Gigi Gorgeous.

If you don’t already know Joey Graceffa, you should. He’s the OG YouTube king and a quadruple threat; he’s a gamer, a vlogger; he does skits, he does music.

His first YouTube Red series, Escape The Night, is a microcosm of the new breed of online celebrity. The series is an elaborate escape room-style murder mystery and stars a veritable who’s who of YouTube personalities. As the host, Graceffa enlists various friends to don 1920s attire and solve puzzles in order to escape a haunted castle. It brings Graceffa’s infectious sense of fun to a classic trope, then mixes in the best parts of reality TV (to camera addresses and the thrilling immediacy of in-the-moment reactions). And it’s coming back soon for take two.

If there’s anything that solidifies online video as the place to be for celebrities in 2017, it’s the fact that traditionally established celebs are clamouring to get in on the action.

The most noteworthy example? Katy Perry’s recent four-day YouTube Live Stream, which was scheduled to coincide with the release of her new album Witness. It amassed 49 million views worldwide as Perry opened up to media figures as diverse as James Corden, Black Lives Matter activist DeRay McKesson and YouTube’s own Gigi Gorgeous.

With Perry, along with comedians such as Shannon and documentary makers such as Morgan Spurlock on board, it’s clear that YouTube is not only the new home for stars to connect with audiences on an intimate level; it’s increasingly where all entertainers want to be. Case in point; Ellen DeGeneres and Kevin Hart both recently announced they would be debuting original programming on YouTube. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, it’s not hard to imagine a future in which celebrity – and creativity – is synonymous with the word YouTube.

We love YouTube celebrities because they come to us as they are; let’s face it – it’s easy to spot a fake these days, and teens most among us have a nose for it. As technology has empowered us all to be publishers, we’ve seen the old Hollywood star-making machine begin to lose its sheen, and those YouTube creators we watched make their first videos, in childhood bedrooms with webcams, grew into stars with a new kind of power; that of the click, like, subscribe and share.

YouTube stars are the new movie stars, but they’re also our peers. We all create stories with our technology now – and we’ve been part of creating the star power of the YouTube celebrities who are just like us.

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Feature image: Escape The Night/YouTube Red

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YouTube Red Originals is home to the latest original series from your favourite YouTube creators. Check out Escape The Night here.