YouTube breakup videos are basically a requirement now. Here's why.
On YouTube, there is.
Like how celebrity couples release joint statements to the tabloid press when they break up, it's become somewhat of a requirement for popular YouTubers to announce the demise of their relationships in joint videos posted to their channels.
The latest participants in the breakup video trend were the YouTube couple: Liza Koshy and David Dobrik.
Liza, 22, and David, 21, built a content empire together over the last few years. Between their two main channels and two side channels, Liza and David collectively had more than 32 million subscribers — to put that into perspective, their total subscribers outnumber the population of Haiti, Greece, and Portugal. Combined.
They celebrated their two-year anniversary in November 2017, and in a sweet Instagram post David wrote, "I am in love with all that you do and all that you create."
But this week, David posted a video to his main channel announcing the end of their relationship. It deviates from his usual goofy vlogs — instead of all-caps clickbait titles like "WE PUT TWO POOLS IN A MOVING TRUCK!! (SCARY)" and "JUMPING OFF THE ROOF INTO 10,000 POUNDS OF DRY ICE!!" the video's title is a somber "we broke up." Between sobbing and laughing, Liza and David explained that although their romantic relationship was over, they planned on staying best friends.
"We already felt like we were living separate lives," Liza says in a tone that sounded a lot like parents explaining a divorce, "But neither of us were coming to terms with it."
The video reached #1 on YouTube's trending, and in the last week it's gained 26 million views. And people are still crying about the breakup.
So much of these vloggers' content revolves around their personal lives, from discussing their morning routines to recording apartment tours. It's only natural that when they start dating someone, they become part of the content they create.
But it also means that when the relationship ends, they have to explain it to their faithful subscribers. Julie Spira, founder of Cyber Dating Expert, expected Liza and David to vlog about ending their relationship because they already shared so much of their lives on YouTube.
"Millions of people have shared an intimate glance at the couple for quite some time," Spira says. "Since so many millions of followers watched the relationship blossom, it's natural to announce their breakup on this platform."
It's kind of addicting to fall into a rabbit hole of someone else's relationship. When YouTube was blowing up in the late aughts, Jenna Marbles and MaxNoSleeves were the internet's sweethearts. As one of the first established YouTube couples, they recorded the classic "boyfriend does my makeup" videos together and charmed their followers with their two dogs. When they broke up after four years, they blindsided their followers by announcing it in the middle of a drunk Christmas tree decorating post.
"For the record, MaxNoSleeves and I did breakup," Jenna slurs in the video, leaning into her ex, "We've been broken up for like two weeks. It's been really not fun. I was really sad. Were you sad?"
Then the video cuts to the pair resuming their holiday decorating.
Obviously, YouTubers don't owe their followers any explanations of their personal lives. But for the millions of followers, watching a public relationship fall apart is like having their hearts broken, too. Fans mourned when Hollywood's iconic couples like Brad and Angelina (or Brad and Jen, depending on who you ask) split up, but with vloggers, it's even more personal. It's literally their job to share such intimate parts of their lives.
And since vloggers' audience demographics skew younger, their fans feel the end of a relationship more viscerally — and usually vent about it on social media.
"For young adults who haven't been in a serious relationship and looked at this couple as the ideal relationship, it can break their hearts as viewers because they had them on a pedestal," Spira says.
"It's like there was a breakup in their own life as well," she adds.
It's almost cathartic to watch breakup videos. When Colleen Ballinger — better known by her wild alter ego Miranda Sings — announced her divorce in 2016 after an eight-year relationship, it was just as heartbreaking as watching a best friend end a marriage. Her viewers watched her get engaged, plan a wedding, and exchange vows. With a couple name like "Joshleen," Colleen and her husband became a YouTube fairytale.
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