A little over a week ago an English pensioner calling himself Geriatric1927 set himself up a YouTube and began uploading five minute video blog posts.
Already the video-sharing community’s members have taken to him and he has found an enthusiastic
audience, notching up over 430,000 views of his videos, approaching 7,000 subscribers and almost 9,000
comments (mostly positive).
A widower who lives alone and whose real name is Peter, Geriatric1927 was taken aback by the positive reaction from the mainly younger users of YouTube, coming close to tears as he said how moved he was to receive over 4,000 emails, subscribers and video "responses" to his work.
Peter started his YouTube videos with a couple of experiments, took
some school governors to task about an overreaction to a vicar who kissed a
girl on the forehead at a fete, before settling into his stride with a series
called "Telling it all", recounting excerpts from his life story.
The man is a technology enthusiast, who proudly tells of making many
friends on MSN Messenger and Skype prior to his YouTube experiment. His personal profile says:
I am a widower living alone in the county in the middle of England Uk.
My life has been very varied but my love of motorcycles has remained
with me all of my life (no, I don’t have piercings or tattoo [sic]
His posts
are peppered with admiration for the creativity of people on YouTube and
optimism for the future of online culture.
It’s a striking (and charming) demonstration of the power of the new medium to unleash creativity of individuals, all the more emphatic for geriatric1927’s being so very different to the so-far typical YouTube auteur.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.