I was watching YouTube in the dead middle of winter. I watched the small screen of my phone with great attention as I browsed the many different videos of the Internet. It was a pretty normal day for me; I finished the homework I had to do for school the next day, I recorded and edited my latest video, and now I was relaxing and watching some of my favorite YouTubers.
Then an ad popped up.
It wasn't made by any of those companies where you can buy their product at Walmart or an insurance company telling me that I should buy their insurance. It was an ad by Google itself. I tuned in when the voiceover said "YouTube contest". Here is what he said word-for-word as they showed the various events going on:
"Hello there, creators and viewers alike! We would like you to participate in a little YouTube contest we, the people at Google, will be hosting! We will have many contests, each one drawing in thousands, maybe millions, of contestants and viewers worldwide. We have five main categories; animation, talk shows, music, memes, and gaming. So we don't have a flood of contestants, the minimum subscriber count you have to have in order to participate is 50,000. Our number one rule in the events is to have fun and stay optimistic! For more information go to YouTube dot com forward slash the youtube games. See you there!"
My immediate reaction was total silence as I was frozen with pure shock at what YouTube was doing. Then I did my Dad's signature "YES!" whenever the Pats scored a touchdown against the opposing team. It was really happening. My dreams coming true. I always imagined it happening one day, with me playing against the elite YouTubers of the Internet. Now I just needed to reach 50,000 subs by the deadline.