The great television adventures are passed to YouTube

Since he was little, Rubén Díez (Castro Urdiales, 24 years old) liked to ride his bike, go out there, to the river, play the hooligan, look for animals, live little adventures. Later, a little older, at the age of 15, he became interested in making YouTube videos; he started with a friend dedicating them to scientific experiments. But the goat goes to the bush (almost literally) and Díez ended up producing survival, travel and adventure videos. “Everything changed when it became fashionable on YouTube to try military survival food from different countries,” he explains, “people did it at home, but to make it more realistic, I went to the mountains, the place it was intended for. that food, and a lot of things happened to me.” Videos of him started to become popular and he is now followed by more than four million people on his channel, called Lethal Crysis. Among his best adventures, already much larger than those of his youth, are those he lived with the Congolese Tata Gonda "sect", with the Munari in South Sudan or with the Kalash in Pakistan.

Díez is one of the very young content creators who succeed online with videos dedicated to adventure, travel, survival, urban exploration. Far from the usual channels, these youtubers set it up to offer a quality and interesting product without the support of the big media, although, yes, with frequent financing from brands (technology, cars...) that see them as a good form of promotion. among the young, and not so young. Some of his reports and documentaries have nothing to envy to those produced for television and platforms, and at the same time exude the freshness and closeness of new media. In addition to Lethal Crysis, names to keep in mind are Pau Clavero, Portillo, Marc Vilas, among others. On many occasions they collaborate with each other. In addition to a lot of courage and not a little knowledge, they have great communication skills.

“There were many travel channels, but they were all dedicated to beauty, recommending beaches and restaurants”, says Pau Clavero (Barcelona, ​​23 years old, 1.55 million followers), “we decided to look at the darker side of travels". On his channel, with a very good audiovisual bill —Clavero also dabbles in photography and has his own sustainable clothing brand, Kioto13—, the adventurer delves into the underworld of the dangerous neighborhood of Alexandra or the vertical ghetto of Ponte City in Johannesburg (not recommended places), meet transgender people in Pakistan or investigate exploitation in the fashion industry in Bangladesh. Videos of him often have a strong journalistic component. "Ours is an adaptation of the traditional youtuber genre, with its personal and close touch, to the professional audiovisual format of television," says the adventurer.

"I started exploring abandoned places in the city: they were experiences that did not cost money, they offered me great photographic possibilities and, in addition, a story," says Clavero. Then he was obtaining financing from companies or tourist institutions to carry out adventures that were more and more distant and elaborated. Clavero is a guy full of concerns: this Saturday, within the Inverfest festival, in Madrid, he presents his new electronic indie pop musical project, with influences, in the words of the artist, from bands like Daft Punk or Babasónicos.

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We usually identify the figure of the youtuber with the young video game fan, the talking head that broadcasts from his home and likes to goof off with his friends, as in the case of Ibai or El Rubius, who have achieved unprecedented success. . But it is a much broader and richer world, and on the platform there is material of interest in multiple subjects such as music (Jaime Altozano, Music Radar Clan), architecture and design (Ter), art (Antonio García Villarán) , history (Play Academy, Puto Mikel), geography (An Immense World), science (Quantum Fracture, Schrödinger's Cat) or politics (Visual Politics). "It's something that should change people's mentality: on YouTube there is endless and free content that hasn't just been discovered," says Clavero. If on television entertainment matters, that things happen, no matter how banal, on YouTube what matters is the content: that things are told, and that they are interesting. The public, contrary to what it may seem, is of all kinds. “I have heard from parents who know me from their children, but also from children who know me from their parents,” says Díez.

Also interesting are some of the proposals of youtuber Portillo (1.9 million subscribers): like Clavero, he began with urban exploration, visiting abandoned places, but has led to curious experiences of resistance: spending 24 hours on a turntable, or 14 hours in the Parisian catacombs, submit to Chinese gout torture or spend a day sailing a toxic lake. In one of his last adventures, he travels to Iceland to cook bread under lava, the traditional Icelandic lava bread. His friend Marc Vilas (1.7 million subscribers) travels similar paths: building an apocalyptic bunker, navigating the flooded Valencia metro or entering an abandoned tunnel boring machine. Sometimes the contents are a little less flashy and risky, but they have a daily originality: these are the cases in which the protagonists try to sneak into a cinema (successfully), go shopping in Barcelona or try all kinds of street food In New York.

YouTube channels are becoming increasingly professional and make it possible to fulfill the promised dream of the Internet: that everyone, from their home (or from a nearby forest, or a toxic lake, or a vertical ghetto) and with their own means and efforts can reach the general public, and even make a living from your product. “With their freshest, most independent content, digital platforms far outnumber television today,” concludes Díez, “but television continues to move more money in advertising: that is the only thing missing to complete the transition, the What needs to change."

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